My Little Soapbox

This morning was the day for my six month dental checkup. Which for me usually means a relatively nice appointment with my favorite dental hygienist, squeaky clean teeth and roughly two hours after a nice fat headache.

But this morning went a little differently as our Jr. wasn’t feeling well about half way or so through our trip to Daddy’s office. The boys had been planning on spending my appointment hanging out with Dad and eating all his cookies. Well you could say that there were “cookies”.

Just after putting the van in park Jr. lost his “cookies” all over. Yeah. Not exactly my plan for the morning. Thankfully I’m slightly - though only very slightly prepared to handle these things. Mostly it was sheer luck that I had an extra jacket and a few other pieces of clothing to keep him warm after we removed the offended clothing.

We got Jr. as cleaned up as we could. Strapped them all back in and sent Daddy homeward with the boys. Lil’B was pleased to report that he did NOT puke up anything he’d eaten for breakfast to just about everyone when they got home. Jr. felt much, much better after ridding himself of his breakfast so we’ll chalk it up to carsick rather than sick, sick.

Needless to say my afternoon changed as well. I had been planning a relatively benign afternoon of waiting around for the washing machine maintenance man. Instead I spent a little over two hours putting my van back to rights. And washing up all things needing to be washed.

Silver lining: my van looks much cleaner now. And since I was cleaning anyway I took care of those couple puppy related spots as well. Lil’B FINALLY gets to ride in the back -back of the van something he’s been asking to do for a couple weeks. The washing machine is now good for another year of service according to Ivan our maintenance man. And I thwarted the headache with a preventative dose of tyl*nol.

The boys wrote you notes this week. I’m sure you don’t get to many notes but we felt it was probably necessary since we were really hoping you’d bring us a card game instead of candy. Jr. copied his whole letter with out any complaints. Perhaps we should write you every week?! Lil’B was so cute as he told me how to help him write his letter. Both of the boys were very enthusiastic about asking for LESS CANDY! Needless to say I was a little shell-shocked at the ease of my dastardly plan.

In the end Mister Bunny, I think we all won in our own ways. The boys are really enjoying their huge, gigantic 8 in tall solid chocolate bunnies - remind me next year to send you to the store write you earlier so that the two inch tall ones are still available. Best of all we spent the whole day yesterday in various states of being together as a family playing thomas tank engine go fish, learning how to play a new card game with Jr. and generally enjoying the day.

Jr. played his LOOT with just about everybody that was home. Lil’B had a blast inventing new rules for his train cards. The boys played with us. They played with each other. They played and played with only a smidge of chocolate and jelly beans. It was one of our best Bunny Days.

So thanks Mister Bunny for being so nice and reading our letters.

With love,

Mama

that’s where we are this week. As much as we can.

I had some other thoughts but they were mostly cranky, crummy third month of tax season thoughts. Maybe if they improve I’ll post them.
In the meantime I’m off to tromp off some steam raking leaves while the boys play.

Honey extraction began for us with the discovery that our hives had died. This put a rush on the extraction because if we are to put in new colonies we have to get everything cleaned up and ready by early spring. So first Grandpa gathered up the hive boxes:

While Jr. & Lil’B checked out the extractor:

After a little over a day the honey was ready to flow so we got to work:

And found some “treasures”

“wild” honeycomb and shaped like IOWA honeycomb

It was very exciting for Lil’B (Ha ha ha) but finally we had Honey:

What did we do this weekend? Extracted honey from our beehives. Unfortunately our bee’s did not make it through that last super cold snap, but we were able to salvage the honey. Pictures will be coming soon.

Earlier in the week we spent some time catching up with friends. It was fantastic! I think we squeezed in just about as much as we could and we still have a few to catch up with. But it was great to see some of the people we’ve been missing these past weeks.

Jr. had piano on Saturday and he finalized his recital pieces. He’s gone from playing 1 to playing 4! Granted they are really small pieces after all this is only this first year as a full piano student. His past two years were introductory classes rather than the focused, move forward with lessons and practice time type classes. I’ll see if I can get him to play his pieces for a video and upload that soon.

Lil’B spent much of the weekend (along with his brother) using the spare moments to play Mah-roh-eee Kart. I almost made him ask to play twice each time just to hear how he says Mario. (Yes I’m bad like that!) I was pleased on so many levels. One it’s a game they both can play with modest success. Jr. is pretty proficient but Lil’B keeps up okay. But more than that I am pleased with how conscientiously they have been caring for this borrowed game. Their own discs often make pit-stops on shelves, tables and floors. But this game is back in its case each time. And they both have been keeping track of the day of the week often with follow-up statements of  “we only borrowed it till Monday then we have to take it back to M—. So all in all I think its been a good learning experience in sharing as we swapped, caring for other peoples property and being a good borrower of things.

Jr.:
It was a difficult month for our 6 yr old boy. He spent a good portion of the month getting very upset at small things. Sometimes dealing with the small things of the day just seemed to big. But I’ve seen a little improvement so maybe were out of this latest rough patch. He’s been working more diligently on the work I set forth which has resulted in some small hops forward in reading. He’s progressing so very well in Piano and will have an upcoming recital in April. I expect we’ll try to have a practice recital very soon. He’s also been much more interested in playing with his brother versus fighting with his brother. That has been a welcome transition.

Lil’B:
I sometimes think this child has the worlds biggest imagination. At the very least his imagination hardly ever turns off. We are constantly seeing  new bits of imaginary stories, characters and a constant level of THINKING. It is so very fun to be privy to some of his thoughts and to see how very real they are already. His sensitivity still surprises me sometimes and we’ve noticed that we are having to take more care in conversations, movies and story choices when he’s listening in. He’s been our budding artist this past month too. Lots of pictures colored, painted, markered and drawn. What’s fun is that there is usually a story to go along with the picture so its like our own version of a “picture show.”

Harley:
Well he’s doing pretty good on the house-training. And we’ve only lost a few toys to his chewing. Side benefit to the new puppy is our living room and other toy infested areas are being kept picked up more. A good habit to develop in our boys. He’s playing fetch pretty well and I’m quite looking forward to spring when we can really throw his ball! Though its hilarious to watch him slide around on the kitchen floor when he runs so very fast to get his ball. He’s big enough to jump in MY chair now too!

For some reason this winter feels longer and colder than years past. It’s also been harder to manage the cabin fever. So I took a look through the pictures from winters past. Much to my surprise we’ve actually had snow more times than not in February. Perhaps its the snow falling earlier and actually staying around that’s making it harder this year? Here’s a sampling from my photo look back. The first is Jr. in 2003. Then a tree picture from 2005 The ones with ZERO snow are from 2006! And the snowy three are from 2007.

What happened to Winter 2004? Mostly the I was busy chasing Jr. while working on the our second original project:

Lil’B born Spring 2004