Nine Months Old!

Here is Zach's Nine Month picture. I had the paper by him, he was posing and had a really cute smile.. and the battery was dead in the camera. So I hurried and grabbed the second battery (which we have for this very reason) but he had already moved (of course!). So I had to take some "action shots", and yet again I never seems to catch his actual smile. He does have one I promise!



Alex is still doing really well in preschool (YEA!) this week they are studying "D" so yesterday he brought home a dinosaur and they had homemade doughnuts.

Two Peas in a Pod

We put the boys in the tub together for the first time the other night. Alex thought it was great! Zach was indifferent, but it kept him from crawling all over the place so that was nice. So of course we had to snap a picture to remember the event!

Green

The other night Alex had been coloring with his markers and apparently the lids didn't get put back on all the way before Zach found them. This picture just sums it up.

He looked like he had a "Frenchman's mustache" and the look he has on his face goes so well with it.

Lather Rinse Repeat

Do you ever feel like you are stuck in "repeat mode?" I am totally feeling like that this morning! No wonder I can't remember what day of the week it is, because every day is the same as the day before. It's almost getting predictable, no it is predictable! Right down to what the boys will fight about and when. Even the cats are stuck in repeat mode, I seem to let them out at the same time every morning and I know that within five minutes that Chloee will want to come back in, then the other two will come back in when the kids start lining up for the bus. I could go on with that but it is really rather tedious. I feel like a doorman for the cats! But I digress... I guess we have a "routine" but it just seems more like deja vu. The same shows on TV, the same breakfast the same rush to get everyone diapered and dressed so that I can finally sit down to get some work done. Time just marches quickly along and I trudge along in our "routine". To quote my mother "there just isn't enough hours in the day!" You would think with the same things happening day in and day out I could figure out a way to have more time! I complain about the monotony but honestly when something happens to change my routine it completely throws me off. Oh well I will just continue to lather rinse and repeat!

On a side note here is Alex's "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" coconut tree. (For those of you who don't know what Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is it's a book about all the letters of the alphabet climbing up a coconut tree. We don't have this book but one of Alex's friends does, so it took me a minute to realize why there were letters on the tree...)

Woo Hoo!

Alex had another really good day at preschool. He didn't cry at all, he went right over and put on his paint smock and he painted! So I am excited. I know it is an environment that he will thrive in that if he just lets himself relax he will enjoy it. He made a "coconut tree" that I will scan and post when the glue dries.

Oh so funny!

Ok so I just had to post this! Alex just came up to me and said "green beans and purple beans and cheese, stir it to make milk." Um... right...

Life in general

Well I think we survived another one of Shawn's business trips. He was gone for three days and will be home tonight, thankfully this one didn't seem too bad. *At least for me, Alex might tell you differently* It's always so hard to have him gone and he doesn't travel nearly as much as Dave (his brother, who he also works with for those of you who don't know). I don't know how Mya does it! Shawn went to Georgia this time (which come to think of it's usually Georgia or Florida) he usually travels with one of the sales guys and if it's not one of his clients he travels with the account manager whose client it is. Tom (the sales guy) had arranged for them to use the company's box suite at the Atlanta Braves game, which isn't something you get to do everyday so he said that was fun. Dave (also a sales guy) was also in Georgia and so he arranged to take some of their other clients to the game as well, so Shawn got to spend the evening with Dave.

On a different subject here is Alex's craft project from Wednesday's preschool class, it's the first one he actually did and I thought it was cute. (It's a bird that they glued feathers to.)
His teacher just has some really cute ideas. The letter of the week was B and on Monday she sent home a little roll of bread for the kids to bake and I guess they got to "make" butter. Alex loves show and tell which is on Wednesday's but he thinks he has to take something with him everyday. Which is fine if it helps him get excited to go. So they are suppose to bring something that goes with the letter of the week so I debated what to send with him (trying to avoid the obvious "Ball") so I decided to send his "Blue" book a little board book that has pictures of blue things. I showed him and put it in his backpack, well right as he went to leave he said "I have to take something" I said ok so he runs over to Zach's toys and grabs one of the stacking cups, it happened to be blue so I said that it was fine. Well when Ruth (my friend/neighbour whose daughter is in the same class) brought Alex home she said that his teacher said he showed his blue cup for show and tell. Ah kids are so funny aren't they? Here is another stab at a digital scrapbook page...

Yea!

OK so Alex did like his first 3 days of preschool and I had tried to think why he didn't like it. So yesterday I sent him off with trepidations. I had really talked up preschool and tried to get him really excited about going but I wasn't sure if he would buy into it. So Shawn and I went to pick him up and I was so nervous about talking to his teach for fear of another report of him asking when it was time to go home and not wanting to participate. She said that he did much better and that he only cried 3 times (ugh.. 3 times is a good thing???) and that he didn't lay down on the floor and cry at all. (Well that's a relief!) She said he wrote his name in his book for the first time and she had all the other kids cheer for him. She said he still didn't want to paint and do the craft project (which was a butterfly because this week is B). But he likes to watch. I can't figure out the painting thing, he loves to paint at home! Then she asked me if I knew that he could count to 20 and I said "yeah" and she said "he knows them all by sight too" and I said "yeah". Then she told me that he was the only one in his class that could do that including the 4 year olds! So YEA ALEX! We told her that he has know his numbers for a long time. I should have told her he knows most of the x10's (i.e. 20, 30, 40 etc) and that he knows 100! He loves numbers! So over all it was a successful day and I think he might make it after all! He loves to learn so I think once he gets adjusted to the structure and schedule he will be fine.

Odds and Ends

So life is crazy right now but I did want to post these two things. The first is a website my visiting teacher told me about that is a fun way for little kids to work on their letters. Alex loves it.
http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f

The other thing is a recipe that I tried the other day. http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/capellini-caprese-111255.aspx

I thought it was really good. I made it with spaghetti and I didn't have any of the Tuscan House Italian Dressing but I had Sun Dried Tomato so I took that and mixed a little Italian with it. It was really good. I did think after wards that it would be really good if you marinated some chicken in the same dressing, cooked it up and served it with it. So there you go my cooking tip for the day!

Preschool

Alex starts preschool tomorrow and his teacher had an open house today, so we were able to go over and get a little refresher. His teacher is really fun and has such a passion for preschool (bless her heart, I could never do it!). I am not sure Alex fully understands what is going on with it but he is SO ready for school. I am glad we have the opportunity to let him go, he is more then ready to start learning how to read and write. I am also glad that this isn't going to fall solely on me and Shawn, he would probably never learn!


For the record with these pictures I could not get Alex to hold still and I was taking them really fast because there were a lot of people around, I didn't realized until I got home that he is blurry in most of them... Oh well... Also in his picture with his teacher he was eating a pretzel and I didn't realize that you could tell...