Last night, I took the kids to a Phil Baker concert at the school. Phil Baker is a children's singer from the area (kind of like Raffi). The kids had a great time dancing the night away.

Before the concert, Elena was asking about who was going to be putting on the concert. We have been to see him before, so I said, "You've seen him before. Remember the guy who sings? He's tall with black, curly hair."

To which Elena replied, "We're going to see Ray Charles???!!!"

Look who's 3!

Sam turned 3 on Nov 30th. A few times he complained that he didn't want to be three. "I still want to be 2! I don't want to be a big boy." I don't even want to know what he's going to be like when he hits 40 if he's having trouble coping with 3.

His favorite gift was his toy coffee maker. Sam loves to help me make coffee and tries to do it himself much more often than I would like. I'm shocked our coffee pot hasn't been broken yet. I hope this one will help keep him away from ours a little more!

Sammy continues to be as cute as ever and he makes us laugh on a daily basis. He also keeps us on our toes - if we take our eyes off of him for a second, he is guaranteed to get into some mischief. A friend of ours calls him Calvin because Sam reminds him so much of Calvin and Hobbes. Before he had even mentioned it, that similarity had struck me on several occasions.

For example, we took the kids out to eat at a restaurant last night and told them that if they were good they could get a treat at the end. The restaurant had some of those little vending machines that you stick a quarter in for a handful of candy. They did well and got their treat, but as we were heading out, Seth and I stopped to talk with some friends. When we turned around, Sam was putting another quarter in the machine and getting a new handful. We asked Sam where he got the quarter, and he said he found it. Figuring he had found it on the floor, we started to leave. Then he pulled another quarter out of his pocket and started heading for the machines. We asked again where he got the quarters, and Elena pointed to a table nearby with some tip money lying on it. After we returned the money, we had a nice little discussion about stealing on the ride home.

We also went to story hour with Santa at the library yesterday, and while Santa provided entertainment for the kids, Sam provided entertainment for the adults.

At one point, Sam got up and gave the girl sitting next to him a kiss on the top of her head. Then he proceeded to go around the room and kiss every little girl there on the head. Once he had handed out kisses to all the girls, he looked around the room and started walking over to a little boy (about the same age as Sam). I don't know if he was planning to give him a kiss or not, but this little guy was not about to take any chances. As soon as Sam got near him, he immediately stiff-armed Sam. I wish I could have caught that on camera - we all got a pretty good laugh watching them.

Later, the librarian was reading about Santa, and she came to a picture with Santa holding his list of Good Boys and Girls. She asked, "Do you think you're on this list?" To which Sam yelled out, "Not me!"

We love you, Sammy! Thanks for brightening our days.

How do they know?

4 days out of the week, we have to be up and out of the house by 8 - 8:30. Somehow our kids almost always manage to pick these mornings to sleep in to the point where we have to wake them up at the last minute, throw some clothes on them and grab breakfast to go. And we're usually late.

The other 3 mornings of the week, we are generally able to sleep in as late as we want. On these mornings, without fail, the kids always seem to wake up an hour or so earlier than on the other days. Whether we keep them up late or put them down early, whether we tell them it's a sleep-in day or not, they almost never sleep in on Monday, Thursday or Saturday.

If Seth and I happen to stay up extra late the night before, they bump it up even earlier.

From the sounds of it, this is a pretty universal occurrence among kids, and I want to know why so I can fix it. But I guess this will just remain one of life's great mysteries.

Fortunately, they're so lovable, it's hard to stay annoyed for long.

"Look, Mom! I'm a Y."

That's what Elena said to me the other day after making this pose:

Jophes

That's what Elena called the play we went to this weekend. Marshall High School put on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and we brought Elena and her friend, Ana to the show. There was a row right in front with just 2 seats so they were able to sit all on their own to watch the show. We sat 2 rows back, and watching them was almost as much fun as watching the show. The kids did a great job - as a bonus, our next door neighbor was the narrator and a friend who I used to babysit was Joseph. That actually made me feel a little old, but then I ran into my old babysitter and my kindergarden teacher, and them mentioned how I made them feel old, which made me feel a little younger :)
Here are the girls before the show:

And about 3 minutes after the show (we hadn't even gotten out of town when I took this picture):

Updates

We've had an eventful last month. Here are a few of the highlights:

First the kids both had the chicken pox. Elena had them first, and Sam came down with them 2 weeks later. We really only had one rough night with Sam; other than that they hardly complained and rarely itched. My most memorable moment was when Sam was up in the middle of the night because his pox were bothering him - especially all the spots on his bottom. At one point he, whimpered to me in the most pitiful voice imaginable, "Mommy, my booty-butt hurts." I couldn't help but laugh.

Here's a picture of Elena reading a book to Sam about chicken pox when he came down with them.



In other news, Sam potty trained himself in pretty much one day. We hadn't really been pushing him because that hadn't helped at all with Elena. I was planning to hit it hard once he hit 3, but he beat us to it. Ironically, he trained himself at exactly the same age I did (1 month shy of 3) and he did it the same way - just decided on his own he was done with diapers. Yay! This is the first time in 4 1/2 years I haven't had to bring a diaper and wipes with me everywhere I go.


Around the same time, Seth's dad had a triple bypass surgery. We were able to take the kids down to Sioux Falls to visit him while he was in the hospital. I'm happy to say the surgery went well and he is recovering nicely - although I know it's hard to him to suddenly go from a such a busy life to a full stop.


Lastly, we welcomed our new nephew, Noah Thomas, into the world on Nov 17th. Seth's brother Jason and his wife, Tina, had their 5th baby - we now have 10 cousins living within one block of our house! Sorry I don't have a picture of the wee one - you can click on Tina's link on the side bar of my blog to see him (her's is the Stay Salty blog).

Drummer Boy

As promised last month, here is a shot of Sam joining the band on the drums:

Halloween Fun

The kids had a great time on Halloween, including the weeks leading up to it. Elena was set on being a skunk, but Sam was undecided until the day of Halloween so they had a lot of fun going through all of our costumes in the meantime.

Here they are Halloween morning, sporting a few pirate accessories.

These were taken a few weeks before Halloween when they discovered a bag full of wigs and some old glasses:

Ready to go trick-or-treating with friends, Ana and Toby. We have a train, a fairy, a leopard and a skunk.

The girls were having so much fun, we decided not to seperate them, and they had their very first sleep-over. Ana changed her mind momentarily around 9:30, but then realized she could have Life cereal for breakfast if she stayed. I don't think Ana slept too much being in an unfamiliar bed, but they made it through the night and had a great time!

The things you learn at storytime

I love the way kids will surprise you with both the things they know and the things they don't know.

Something Elena didn't know:
Tonight while we were reading books, one of the stories had a character tell his sister to stand on her head. As she was listening, Elena started to stretch her leg up, trying to put her foot on her head. I didn't think much of it since she's always moving, but soon she asked, "Why did he tell her to stand on her head?......You can't stand on your head." I realized that what she had been doing with her feet before was her trying to literally "stand on her head."

And something she did know:
The next story was about Jonah, and Elena asked why the fish was rainbow colored. I told her that the guy who drew the pictures probably wanted to make the story look really pretty so he made the fish lots of colors. To which she replied: "The illustrator did that?" Yup. And thanks to my 4-year-old for the reminder that "illustrator" is so much easier to say that "the guy who drew the pictures."

1:39:09

That's how long it took Seth to run his 10-mile last weekend at the Twin Cities Marathon. He was hoping to run it in under a 1 hr 40 min, which would have been 10 minutes a mile, and he just made it. Being someone who only runs when being chased or when chasing others (I do a lot more of the latter), I was pretty impressed.

I was really impressed, however, when we were able to watch the 1st 8 marathon runners finish their race just 34 minutes later. Did I mention they started at the same time as the 10-mile runners? We watched 4 guys cross the finish line at 2 hours, 13 minutes. Unbelievable. Honestly though, I think the most impressive runners of the day are the people who can't run as fast, but kept going for 7-8 hours to finish the run. Ouch.

We had a great weekend in the cities, staying with Seth's brother, Craig. The kids loved having Uncle Craig come along with us to the children's museum and eating out at a couple of wonderful restaurants - that's one thing we're a little short of here in Minneota :)

Saturday night, we especially had fun visiting some of our more musically talented friends who had a get-together with several of their musician friends. In one living room, there were several guitars, a banjo, a bass, a fiddle, a mandolin, an autoharps, a piano, a harmonica, an accordian, tin whistles and a bongo drum. It was so great to be able to listen to such talented musicians. Sam even got a chance to play the drum for awhile - after that, he decided he wanted to be a drummer for halloween.


Above is a shot of Seth and Turtle Sam at the science museum. Below is Elena making a music video at the museum; stand back, Beyonce! (Whenever we watch this Elena asks me, "Why were you laughing, Mom?")



I'll put up a video of Sam playing the drums later - it's not working today.