School Update

AJ has been doing fall preschool for a couple of weeks now and is getting into the routine. So far it has been difficult to get much out of him about school other than the random comment here and there. When asked directly about his day at school, he says "I remember what I did at school today but I am not going to tell you." Three going on thirteen.

He had show and tell on week 2 and elected to bring a copy of his Cars DVD so that he could tell the other kids about "the cars that go fast and make smoke out of their smokers (tailpipes)" and how Doc Hudson and Lightning McQueen are his favorites because they go really fast. Apparently he has some kindred spirits in his class because the preschool teacher sent an e-mail last week saying several boys in the class are very interested in cars and soliciting donations of cars for them to play with.

You're Too Old

The other day AJ and I were having a conversation about what tv show to watch.

Me: "Today it is mama's turn to choose the tv show, and I choose Sesame Street."
AJ: "No! Mamas don't get to choose! Only little boys get to choose! I want Roary the Racing Car."
Me: "That's not fair. Why don't mama's get to choose? It's my turn. You chose yesterday."
AJ: "Because 33 is too old for Sesame Street."

Think Pink

With 10 days to go until the baby's arrival, we have been working on getting our act together over here. It is much more laid back the third time around, to say the least. We figure we have everything that we need for baby gear or will have plenty of time to go out and get it later. I asked Joe to pick up newborn diapers at the store last week, but he said "nah, I can just get them when the baby is born."

One area that has been getting a lot of effort is turning the nursery into a little girl's nursery. We are going with my friend Kaitlyn's advice to just go ahead and embrace pink. She said she initally tried to come up with a color scheme that was something other than pink when she was planning for the arrival of her twin girls but realized it was much easier in the end just to drink the kool-aid and do pink. She ended up painting her nursery walls Paris Pink, if I am remembering the color name correctly. And her girls' nursery is gorgeous.

This turned out to be good advice, and we are thinking pink over here. I made a trip to the local fabric store with my mother-in-law, who is a champion sewer and excited to be able to use pink after years of sewing and shopping for her own four boys. The results are pink infused curtains, rocker pillows and bed skirt, which I will post a photo of shortly. If you are wondering whether it looks like a Pepto Bismol bottle exploded in there, we tried to show some restraint and incorporated some yellow and green as well. We are well outside the territory of Shelby's wedding from the movie Steel Magnolias where her colors were blush and bashful, or for those who don't speak interior decorating, dark pink and light pink. Now I just have to convince Joe to help me hang some pink, yellow and green butterflies from the ceiling.

Even AJ is thinking pink. The other day when I asked him if he wanted to get his baby sister a gift, he came up with "I'll get her a pink toothbrush so that I can brush her teeth for her!" I started to explain that she won't have any teeth when she is born but the sentiment was so sweet that I just said "good idea!" And so this baby has a pink toothbrush waiting and ready for that first tooth.

I have also been picking up a few little girl clothes here and there. The funny thing is that when I had baby boys, I always thought the baby girl clothes were so much cuter (and they are), but while shopping I keep noticing how much more stylish all the little boy things seem to have gotten since I was shopping for baby clothes for AJ and Davey. As Joe will tell you, I managed to find enough cute baby girl clothes to do a little damage on that front as well.

Noah's Ark

With all the focus on potty training around here, AJ's humor has a taken a turn toward bathroom related jokes. I was recently reading him a book about Noah's Ark that has the following lines:

"For forty days and forty nights
the rain fell around the clock.
The great flood covered all the land---
there was nowhere in sight to dock.

The ark was really crowded
and had begun to stink.
Noah prayed the rain would stop
and the ark would not sink."

No sooner had I read the line "and had begun to stink" when AJ demanded to know why it was stinky. I told him the first thing that came to my mind--"Well, all those animals had been pooping on the boat for 40 days." He stared at me, contemplating the awesomeness of all that animal poop and then began laughing uproarously. He loved reading that book just so he could supply the explanation as to why it was stinky--"Mama! It was stinky because all those animals were POOPING everywhere!!!" Potty humor. Giggle giggle giggle. Universal human fun in any culture.

Here is a photo of the book, which came with a cool little build your own ark. It is Snappy Builder Noah's Ark by Derek Matthews. I am pretty sure AJ's Grandma and Papa found it at Costco.

Apple Picking

Last weekend both my mom and my college roommate and her husband were in town and very nicely agreed to accompany me and the boys on an apple picking outing. We tried an orchard that describes itself as "no-frills" which means no apple cider donuts, hayrides, petting zoos, haunted cornfield mazes or any of the other fall moneymakers that many orchards have cranked out in the past few years to cash in on their version of the holiday shopping season. It also means if you are 8 months pregnant and have to use the bathroom, the farmer tells you to drive down the road to his house, which he leaves unlocked, and use the one next to his kitchen! I grew up in a rural area, so using someone's bathroom in their unlocked house would not have surprised me at all back in my own childhood, but I guess I have been living in Chicago long enough now that I got a kick out of this.

This orchard proved to be just our speed. We pulled up and parked literally 20 feet from the apple trees, paid to pick two bags and cruised straight into the orchard where the boys were delighted that the trees were low enough for both of them to reach up and pick half a bag full each. I was surprised by this myself and hadn't realized before that apple trees have branches growing so close to the ground. The boys seemed to enjoy themselves. AJ said excitedly to Grandma Julie "Grandma, if people want apples, they can just go pick them off the tree!" My little city slicker.

The woman with the ponytail in the photos giving the good demo of the "picker stick" for reaching apples up high is my college roommate, A. And I swear that my mom and I did not try to coordinate clothing for this outing--I guess we think alike.

More Davey Bear Talk

Here are a few more of my recent favorites that have been added to Davey's vocab: up, beep beep, tain (train), ding ding, ice, cap, deese (keys), and cheese! which he says every time a camera comes near him.

Where the Heck Have We Been?

I see that my last post was in August. Where the heck have we been these past two weeks you ask? Just here in Chicago, but our neighbor hired someone to cut down a tree in their backyard and the tree cutter managed to also cut our cable line leaving us without Internet for nearly a week. My favorite part of the dozen or so calls to our Internet provider to try to get it fixed was the time when the customer service rep from India tried to convince us that the reason we had no Internet service in Chicago was due to the hurricane that was hitting the U.S. Joe tried to explain that we live in Chicago hundreds of miles from the coast and that we were pretty sure the outage was actually due to the cut cable line that was dangling in our back alley, but the conversation went nowhere. Not a shining moment for outsourcing customer service.

In addition to the Internet being out, the same line also ran our cable, which meant no t.v. for the boys for a week. This little unintentional experiment highlighted for us what boob tube addicts our boys are. They are limited to an hour of t.v. a day that they watch first thing in the morning when they wake up. It is usually an hour of cartoons--the Bernstain Bears for AJ, Thomas the Tank Engine for Davey, Caillou for both. On the weekends they can choose a movie instead of cartoons and have been favoring Pinocchio lately. When the t.v. comes on, they are little zombies. Davey literally stares at the screen with his mouth hanging open, and they both do not respond to questions unless the show is paused or turned off to get their attention. They have both started to laugh out loud at what they find to be the funny parts of shows, and AJ's laugh is a particularly boisterous three year-old's shouting laugh that sounds fake but is actually sincere (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!) It makes me jump almost every time and then laugh to myself. So when they did not get their morning fix, they were cranky and out of sorts, like an adult without coffee. When I explained to AJ that we couldn't watch t.v. because it was broken, he said "Mama, I'm big! I will get out my tools and fix that t.v. so that I can watch my shows again!" He was determined to correct this problem. I am looking forward to the day when he is 16 (or 8) and can actually fix the cable for us.

Here is a picture of my two little couch potatoes in their favorite spot for morning cartoons.