William: Three Years!

On more than one occasion during the past year I thought to myself "I should really do an updated post on William because he has changed so much". And--not too surprisingly--I never got around to it (although I did do a pretty good job getting through all of Garrett's monthly updates, so there's that). Even now I have kept pushing this post off (hence why I'm barely getting it finished before the end of his birthday month)--not just because I'm in denial about how big my (first) baby is getting, but mostly because I just don't think I can do William justice in a blog post. You guys, he is seriously turning into the most fun kid ever. His personality is just so fun, he has the cutest mannerisms, and yes--he says the darndest things. And there is no way I can capture even a fraction of that in my post. But, because he is my favorite three year-old, I'm sure going to try.

At his three-year well-visit, he weighed in at 31 pounds, 6 ounces, and was just over three feet tall. Somewhat surprisingly, this puts him near the fiftieth percentile for weight--but only the thirtieth for height. He's such a beanpole that I would have expected the percentiles to be the other way around, but Darrell assures me he's "hiding" all that weight as muscle (because obviously that's what three year olds do). He's wearing size five diapers around the clock and pretty much shows zero interest in potty training. In fact, he's told us that "big boy undies are uncomfortable", despite the fact that he's never put on a pair. So that'll be fun to tackle (probably sooner than later). He recently started wearing 3T shirts and pajamas (although some of the pajamas already seem to be a little small!), and as long as they will stay around his waist I'm going to start moving him up to 3T bottoms as well.

With a few exceptions due to traveling or illness, William is consistently a good sleeper. We usually finish our bedtime routine right around 8:00, and although he rarely falls asleep before 8:30 (and sometimes it's even closer to 9:30!), we can usually count on him to stay in his room and read or entertain himself quietly during that time (don't be too envious, though--it took a fair amount of work for that process to get accomplished). Most mornings he is up right around seven, although occasionally he likes to get up as early as six (which--shockingly--Mom does not appreciate). We still enforce a nap every day, although lately there have been days where he just reads in his room instead of sleeps. I'm definitely not ready for him to give up his nap, and will probably continue to require quiet time in his room even if he does refuse to sleep.

I could spend a week trying to compile a list of all his favorite foods, and I would still probably forget half of them. Truthfully, the list of stuff he won't eat is significantly shorter--so short, in fact, that I'm not actually sure anything is on it. Our boy loves to eat, and he will eat pretty much anything (seriously--whenever we make pizza dough he has to clean the raw dough out of my mixing bowl). I can honestly say that he has tried more vegetables than I had tried by the time I was a teenager; I don't know too many other three-year olds who can identify (and get excited about!) asparagus, radishes, lima beans, and beets (among others). We do have to be a little careful with spices sometimes (especially because Garrett is now eating everything we eat as well), but otherwise we cook one meal and everyone eats it, no substitutions (although occasionally I'll give the boys more veggies than I eat myself--and then I'll sneak a cookie later when they aren't looking #momconfessions). Of course, he is still a typical moody toddler in that he will barely touch something at dinner and then inhale the leftovers the next day (or vice versa), but suffice to say we really don't have any complaints when it comes to him and food.

At his two-year well-visit (and pretty much every previous visit), William had scored right at or just below the "normal" range for communication, to the point where our pediatrician had warned us that if his scores weren't up by three then we'd need to consider speech therapy. Suffice to say we won't be needing that. Once William started to talk (probably just shy of two and a half), he didn't stop--his sentences just kept getting longer and longer and he kept stringing more and more sentences together. He has become quite the storyteller, and he proves that he really does listen to pretty much everything we say by repeating it (sometimes when we least expect it--like when Garrett is doing something that we have reprimanded him for and all of the sudden William starts reprimanding him).

It's so fun to watch him grow and see what kind of person he is turning into. I definitely see a lot of myself in him, particularly in some of his introverted qualities. In familiar places and with familiar people he is a wild, loud, and super energetic little boy. But if someone he doesn't know starts talking to him, he gets really quiet. If we go somewhere that is too new and unfamiliar to him, he'll just sit quietly and watch the other kids until he warms up to the environment. I tried to push him at first ("C'mon, stand up and sing with all the other kids, you know this song!"), but I've learned just to let him be and he'll come out of his shell on his own. Sometimes he gets a little overwhelmed around super outgoing kids as well (which I'm thinking is what his brother is going to end up being), but the other day he actually responded when a boy ran up to him and said "Hi, I'm Sam, what's your name?" Granted, his response was a little delayed and barely audible, but it was something.

And, just for the sake of having them documented, here are a few of the things William can do at three:

• Identify every letter of the alphabet--and write a handful of them too!
• Count to twenty with almost 100% accuracy, and can get close to thirty with only a few errors
• Tell you his full name as well as most--if not all--of the letters in his first name (although not always in the right order)
• Tell you what street we live on
• "Read" you multiple stories (obviously it's just from memory at this point, but there are seriously times where we wonder if he is going from memory or if he is actually identifying and reading some of the words)
• Name the majority of the engines from "Thomas and Friends" based on their pictures. Between any and all Thomas stories we can get our hands on and the occasional (at least at our house--I know Grandma and Grandpa spoil him a little more with Thomas shows) TV show this kid has a pretty impressive knowledge of the trains and what they do. Case in point: he randomly started using the word "shunting"--correctly, I might add--because he learned it from Thomas 

I know there is so much I'm forgetting, but I said from the start that it was going to be impossible to capture William in a blog post so I just have to accept the imperfections of this post and publish it anyway. Truthfully, I feel like I could dedicate a post to him every week and it still wouldn't be sufficient because he grows and changes so much every day, but I guess that is a good problem to have, right?

#reallife

Last Thursday a package was delivered to our house. Here it is now:

This is what happens when you order something before you need it (in this case, a bike helmet and curtains for the basement, which we currently don't have rods for). And what happens when you rarely--if ever--use your whole couch. Miraculously, the boys have paid little to no attention to the box, which is a lot of the reason why it has been allowed to take up residence on our couch. Fingers crossed for some nice weather soon so we have an excuse to get the bike helmet out of the box... And at least move the curtains downstairs (given the rate with which we complete home improvement projects, I would be surprised if the curtains are hung before June).

Weekending: Circus Widow Edition

Okay, so that title may be a bit of an exaggeration, because Darrell only had to work four of the nine shows since the Shrine Circus came to town on Thursday... But three of those four were this weekend, which has meant a lot of solo parenting for me. Not exactly my favorite way to spend a weekend, but it's for a good cause (and, quite frankly, if we didn't have the boys I'd probably be out there working with him) so I guess it's okay.

Naturally, the circus was not the only thing we had going on this weekend, so Friday night was major prep mode. We got our menu figured out for the weekend, stuff pulled together for swim lessons, and tackled some cleaning. Not surprisingly, we closed out the evening with some NCIS on Netflix.

After swim lessons Saturday morning, Darrell entertained the boys at the house and fed them lunch while I ran to the grocery store. Then, after the boys were down for their naps, Darrell left to get his hair cut. Nothing like a little tag-team parenting. I made a batch of banana bread to get rid of some bananas that were getting a little overripe, and Garrett was very impatient while it was baking.

I just love how he is up on his tippy toes trying to see into the pan!

Before long it was time to head to one of the gymnastic studios in town for a birthday party. To say things were a little wild would be an understatement, but the boys had a ball, so that's the important thing.

Darrell had to head straight to the circus after the party, so I took the boys home, attempted to feed them dinner (a little tough after the cupcakes they inhaled at the party), and then worked on getting them ready for bed. Once they were asleep I did some cleaning (seriously, sometimes I feel like all I ever do is clean yet my house is never actually clean), made sure things were ready to go for Sunday, and worked on our menu plan for next week. Darrell got home a little before ten and we considered turning on an episode of NCIS, but decided that it would be smarter to call it an early night since Sunday promised to be busy.

Sunday morning we hit the ground running. Seriously. I think we did more before church than we ever used to do on a Sunday before we had kids. Since Darrell was going to be gone pretty much all day, we made a pizza crust and cooked the pizza so it was ready for lunch (church gets out at 11:30 so we don't have time to cook anything after church and we didn't have any leftovers like we usually have for Sunday lunch), prepped a tater tot casserole for supper, and I went for a run--all in addition to our normal morning routines of breakfast, getting the boys dressed, playing, etc.

My handsome boys on the way to church!

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. After lunch and naps, we hung out at the house and killed time until dinner--and we did more of the same after dinner until bedtime. The only excitement was the first thunderstorm of the season rolling through, but thankfully neither boy seemed terribly upset by the ordeal (and no water came into the house!). Darrell managed to get done working a little early, so he made it home in time to play with William for a little bit and then help get him ready for bed. After more cleaning and a little baking, we crashed on the couch for an episode of NCIS before calling it a night.

And, lest you are concerned that we deprived our boys and didn't take them to the circus, Grandma and Grandpa took them Friday afternoon. William had a great time, but apparently Garrett got pretty worked up by everything going on and they ended up having to leave at intermission (he couldn't even be calmed down by food, which pretty much never happens). Hopefully it goes better next year; the Shrine blood runs deep in this family and he has many years of circuses ahead of him!

One Heck of Weekend

If you had looked at our weekend schedule on Tuesday, you probably would have thought we were in for a nice, relaxing weekend. But by the time the weekend actually rolled around, that couldn't have been farther from the truth. Don't get me wrong, it was certainly enjoyable and filled with plenty of fun stuff, but it was still filled.

After swim lessons on Saturday, Darrell and I dropped the littlest one at Grandma and Grandpa's house so we could take William to a model train show. Even though it was almost a week after his birthday, we thought this would be the perfect birthday outing for our train-loving three year old. And oh boy, were we right.

We brought the boys home for a quick lunch and naps, and then shipped them back to Grandma and Grandpa's house so we could head out for a much needed date. And, like true parents, our date night started at Hy-Vee and Target--nothing like knocking out some errands sans kiddos. But then we headed out to enjoy some delicious sushi, stopped to pick up a growler of beer, and brought it home to enjoy while playing Scrabble. We're wild, I tell you--but it was just perfect for us.

Sunday started a little rough. William always wakes up super early when he spends the night at Grandma and Grandpa's, and it was very evident in church that morning. Thankfully we managed to get out of there without any major meltdowns, and after a quick lunch, it was naptime for both boys. I then headed out to Costco with my mom to do some price checking; initial impression is that I doubt we'd consider getting a membership for ourselves as I wasn't that blown away by the prices, but I could see myself going out there with my parents a few times to stock up on a few things. After the boys were up from their naps, we took advantage of the nice (albeit slightly windy) day and went for a walk--a walk which started with two boys in a wagon and ended with two boys walking/running and Darrell pulling an empty wagon. Whatever works, right? We ended the night with a family dinner at our place to go over some preliminary blueprints for my parent's new lake cabin, and it is looking pretty awesome. Although as long as it has more than the two bedrooms and one bath that their current cabin I'll be happy. Eight adults and two (for now!) kids do not fit very comfortably in that amount of space. We lounged away the last few hours of the weekend after everyone left, and--not too surprisingly--Monday came a bit too early. But hey--it's pretty much over now, so welcome Tuesday and being one day closer to the next weekend!

Weekending, Birthday Party Style

If it hadn't been for the fact that we celebrated a special boy's third birthday this weekend, I would have a very boring weekend to report. Friday and Saturday were pretty run-of-the-mill, with the small exception that I spent any and all free time I had working on William's cake for his party. Sunday Darrell started the day with pancakes, and we let the birthday boy put some sprinkles in his to make them extra special. Our birthday boy then decided that he didn't need to take a nap after church (despite the fact that he was acting exhausted at church and threw two pretty substantial tantrums before lunch), so we made it over to my parent's house a little early for the party. It was a little hard to explain to him that he had to wait for everyone else to get there before he could open gifts, but thankfully it was nothing that a little Thomas the Train distraction couldn't solve. Once the whole family arrived (no big celebration this year; just my family) we broke out the cake and presents. And let me tell you, William was pretty thrilled to see this in front of him:

It was definitely a labor of love, but I am so glad I did it and am pretty proud of how it turned out. Gift opening was a bit of a slow process because he wanted to play with every toy he opened instead of opening more gifts--but I suppose there are worse problems to have. We then stayed at my parent's house to eat; my sister and her husband were providing dinner because they came in third in our little March Madness bet. Darrell, myself, and William took second (so we had to provide drinks), although the results from this year will forever have a little asterisk by it. You see, Darrell and I have won the past two years, so we decided this year that William's bracket would count toward our family average. Well, as it turns out, Darrell and I would have won if it hadn't been for William's bracket (although the boy deserves some credit--he really didn't drag us down that much and he actually beat my mom. Not bad for a kid who knows nothing about basketball and picked teams solely based on images of the school's logo). So Mike and Macy got to enjoy a victory, even though Darrell and I had brackets that were better than both of theirs. We'll see if we are feeling generous enough next year to let the brackets the boys fill out count toward our team average or not... I'll probably wait to decide that until after they've filled their brackets out ;-)  We put the boys to sleep there so we could stay up and play cards--which resulted in us staying up way later than we probably needed too--but it was a lot of fun and definitely something we don't do often enough any more.

I promise that an updated William post is coming soon--Darrell and I are seriously blown away when we think of how much he has changed in the past year and even though I know I'll never be able to do him justice in a blog post I'm sure going to try!

C25K

In (what seems like) a few short weeks, Darrell and I are signed up to run a 5K. One of the last "competitive" road races that I ran was actually this same one, back in 2012 when I ran in the 10K. Since running that race, though, road races have almost completely fallen off my radar thanks to the boys (and, well, my general lack of interest in running). However, while participating in the family walk at this event last year (which apparently I didn't blog about! Shame on me, I'll have to share a picture in this post), Darrell and I decided that we would do the 5K this year--with the boys. And since I will probably need all the help I can get to attempt to keep up with Darrell (even while he's pushing the boys!), I decided to try out the Couch to 5K program. I'm about halfway though it, and while it's been good for getting me in my running shoes and out the door, I can't decide if I would ever do it again. Here are a few thoughts on it:

•  I really enjoy that the workouts are time-based. Since I don't have access to a treadmill, all my runs are outside, and unless I want to drive to the bike trails or carry my phone with me while I run, I don't have an easy way to track the distance I've covered--but all I need is a handy watch to give me the time. However, I have found that this does not inspire me to run harder or faster--a ten-minute run will take the same amount of time now matter how quickly I do it, so I tend to jog pretty leisurely.
• I don't love that every workout/run is longer than the previous one. Because every run is longer/harder than the previous one, I never feel like I'm improving and the runs are not getting easier. I'm having a hard time finding my rhythm, and it is a little discouraging, even though rationally I know I'm getting better and more comfortable running longer distances.  
• Above all, I've realized that there is time in my day to work out--I just need to be willing to look for it. The timing isn't always ideal, and there are usually a handful of other things that I could come up with to do to justify not working out, but never once have I had any regrets once I've started my run. And no matter how much I dragged my heels to get started, I always end up being glad that I went.  

Bottom line? I'm glad that I'm doing the program, but I don't have too high of expectations for my results in the actual road race. Which I'm fine with--I know that this program wasn't designed for people to set records in the 5K--it was just meant to get people to run a 5K. And who knows--I just might have my sights set on a few other 5Ks this summer, now that I know it actually is possible to find time to go running with two boys.

Oh, and if you are wondering how Darrell is preparing for the road race, here is your answer:

I've managed to get him out with me on all of one of my training runs, and he has gone on exactly one run on his own. And sadly, he'll probably still be faster than me come May. Sigh.

And because I promised, here is a picture of us participating in the family walk at the event last year:

A group of people in Darrell's office put together a team for the event, and if the team reached a certain fundraising goal, they got to provide Darrell's outfit for race day (which was initially supposed to be just a tutu, but go big or go home, right?). He certainly turned a few heads, and I'm proud of him for being a good sport about the whole thing--and of course, proud of the money his office raised to support the Avera Race Against Breast Cancer!

Monday Already?

Did a weekend seriously just happen? Pretty sure I missed it--and pretty sure I need another one. One where Darrell is home more so it doesn't feel like just another day of the week. Friday night Darrell volunteered at a basketball tournament hosted by the local YMCA, so after grabbing a quick bite for dinner he was gone until well after the boys were in bed. And Saturday he was up and out the door before eight to do more of the same--and he barely made it home in time for dinner. Thankfully my mom was around to help me with the boys; our Saturday swim lessons are parent/child, and since both boys are in the class I needed another adult to go with me. And even though the water was a little cold (like always!), I'm pretty sure she still had a good time. Plus one of my friends was there with her son, and since her husband was in the water she took some pictures! Yay for friends who do a better job than I do of taking pictures of their kids.

After swim lessons I sweet-talked my mom in to joining us at a local second-hand store that was having a weekend sale--and she ended up spending more money than I did! Whoops :-)  After naps we went grocery shopping, then had dinner (with Daddy-yay!), and then it was time for baths and bed for the boys, although we weren't too far behind them (we live a thrilling life, I tell ya).

Our excitement for the weekend came on Sunday when we went out to dinner with my family, and even that was really only exciting because it meant we got out of the house and didn't have to cook dinner ourselves. Thankfully the boys do pretty well at restaurants (even though we really don't go out all that much), so dining out experiences tend to go smoothly. Plus it always helps when Grandma and Grandpa, in addition to two sets of aunts and uncles, are there.

The weather is just on the verge of getting (and staying!) nice, although I'd really appreciate if the wind would dial back 10mph or so. I'm ready for weekends (and evenings) spent outside!