This bed ain't big enough for the two of us

One crib
One baby
Two cats
That math is too hard for me to figure out...but it sure was cute!

More of Zachary's beloved car circles

Zach has not made car circles in months and months. One morning b/f breakfast, that was THE thing to do.

And no car circle game would be complete without jumping (more like prancing) through the circles

ZMC Photography - Series 3

The 3rd Installment of Photography by Zachary

Zach is really into taking pictures and then looking at the screen to see how he did.  Here are some samples of his "best work"

DaU bangs w. fan

Bald DaU w. Wyatt

Books and hallway

ZMC: A self portrait

Foyer: a messy place

Beloved car circles

So should we start signing him up for scholarships to art schools yet?? :)  I know what we are going to get him for his 4th birthday though!

Dexter loves small spaces

One night, or shall I start "It was a dark and stormy night...the heroine knew, by the hair standing up on the nape of her slender neck, that something was amiss...but where??  DUNH DUNH DUNH  In the bedroom the knight was there, glistening with sweat, as the stared down the chest of drawers.  Her hero bellowed at the evil drawers 'I shall prevail...I WILL rid you of excess tshirts and socks"

As Art had the drawers pulled out to downsize his tshirt collection, Dexter made himself at home.  He must have some 6th sense of when peculiar space is available for sleeping.

Dexter won that round, and the drawer stayed on the floor for the night, only be replaced in the morning.

Snowman with Nana

Nana wonderfully offered to come stay with me for the week while Art had a conference in Seattle.  We did many things, and had lots and lots of fun while she was here.

Here is the day that the boys made a snowman with Nana while I fixed lunch.

Nana carrying the head of the snowman

Zachary and Nana with snowman

Zachary putting finishing touches on

It was fun that the snowman stayed put after most of the snow had melted on the ground.

Two Proud Boys

It generally amuses me when the boys do something *I* think is silly and they are SO VERY proud of it.  It is a fun parent moment.  Here are two of those moments.

Wyatt hiding behind shelves

Here, Wyatt has discovered how to crawl behind the shelves in his and Zach's room.  He is sitting on the "old electronics" box (WHY do we have this box anyway??), and peering out.  This is where I found him after looking for him b/c things were "just too quiet".  He is VERY proud of this moment!

Zachary's "everything touching" parking lot

Zach was pretty pleased that he made a parking lot where every car was touching.  He did let me know that it was not a "real" parking lot, b/c cars can't really do that.  He was quite proud to have come up with a new and different parking lot.  This picture actually made me a proud Mom, b/c I think it's a great picture!

Poor Baby!

Other than being in the hospital for 17 days after he was born, I don't think Wyatt has ever been as sick as this. Well, he did have Bronchitis just a few weeks ago, and that was pretty awful. Luckily, he was a trooper and was in a pretty good mood most of the time.  Here is Wyatt with Bacterial Conjunctivitis ('pinkeye').  No fever, so really not so sick, but hands down looked TERRIBLE.  I hope we don't have to deal with green goop coming out of a kid's eye for a long long time.  The eyedrops alone (which cost us $60 out of pocket, after the insurance paid $40) were a trauma for everyone.  Bloodshot eyes draining pink were a trauma for Mom and DaU.  Ick. 

Wyatt first thing in the morning (we didn't actually let him go around like this!!)

Who wants to kiss this guy??  Poor little guy - look at how red those eyes are!

7 days of drops and he was good as new!  Love modern medicine!

Feb 6: Snowflake Festival

The Christian Heritage Academy (a private Christian school about 25 min away) gave out flyers for their annual Snowflake Festival.  We got a flyer from Zach's cubbies class.  We were not going to miss this - face painting, cookie decoration, storytime, crafts, etc - all for FREE (our favorite admission!).  We piled into the car and headed out there.  Aptly, it began snowing, and snowing and snowing.  We made it there safely and parked our little Honda Fit in among the sea of minivans.  We felt like the tiny calf among the herd of elephants.  Zach asked "do ALL of these people have 3 kids??" (I had told him that we don't have a minivan b/c you need to have 3 kids to have a minivan, and he is ready for us to get another kid!).  It was a fun outing!  First, we stopped off at the Kindermusik class for a short interlude.  Before the class started, the teachers dumped out a box of instruments. Both Zachary and Wyatt clamored for the drums.

If the class had been just drums, our boys would have been totally happy.  However, they did more organized things like playing with scarfs, and dancing, and walking to the beat of the music, etc.  An enjoyable time.

Next off to winter sports.  Cute.  My favorite thing was snowball basketball.  They had 3 toddler basketball hoops set up and the kids used white shower poofs as snowballs.  Some ice fishing w/ poles and magnetic fish.  And a big school bus which kept Wyatt busy for awhile.

It was difficult to get a good picture of this b/c he kept moving around, so it's basically here for posterity

Then Art and Zachary went off to work on a snowman for the wall mural.  I kept Wyatt in the winter sports room so he would not be a bother to the artists.  Here is a series of pictures from the mural time.

Art and Zach working on the Mural

Me saying "smile" and Zach doing his eye squint thing

Me saying "open your eyes" and Zach opening his eyes AND mouth

Finally a good smile.  Zach's snowman has the 2 feathers on it

Later, Wyatt thought he should get a chance to help a bit

Next stop: library for winter storytime.  The librarian read several books.  Wyatt got bored and Art had to take him outside to play in the hallway until storytime was over.  But Zach enjoyed it.

Next stop: COOKIE DECORATING  Fun fun fun.  We ran into the Scaleros, a family from church, whose kids attend CHA.  The cookies were huge, and the kids did a good job spreading the white frosting and sprinking the white and blue snowflakes.  Art ate all of Wyatt's cookie, but Zach was unwilling to share. Hruumph.

Final stop: face painting.  Zach had really been looking forward to this all morning.  When time came, he decided he'd rather have a tatoo on his hand.  Well, unfortunately, there were no car tatoos, just winter things like snowmen and penguins.  Devastated.  In swoops one of the volunteers to the rescue.  She takes Zach over to a (young!!) facepainting artist who can be commissioned to paint a car on Zach's arm.  Happy happy boy!  Luckily, it even stayed on mostly, after we went swimming later that evening!

Very happy with the outcome of his (turtle?) car!

Into the car, and back on the road, back home for lunch and naps!  Later that evening - swimming at the Y and pizza!  What a great day!

Dexter's random sleep spots

As has been mentioned before, Dexter likes to sleep in crazy places.  Here are a few:

Dexter sliding off the ottoman

Dexter inside the boys' play tunnel which is for some reason inside the cardboard box we've been using as a "canoe".

Art and Dexter trying to catch some ZZZZZs

Wyatt trying to wake up a snoozing Art and Dexter

That cat is just making due where he can.

Boys as far at the eyes can see

On Feb 1, we had the W family over for dinner.  The boys, ages 4, 4, 2, and their mom came early to play before the dads joined for dinner.  It was a fun time.  As the time for dinner neared, we calmed the boys down a bit w/ some stories.  Steph and I took turns reading to the gaggle of boys.  So cute!

Zach, Max, Jack, Wyatt, Caden

100% attention to the book

Troops getting restless

Steph was a trooper for sitting on our tiny turtle to read stories - made it feel just like a "real" storytime!

It was a fun evening!  We had soft tacos for dinner, which everyone was fine with.  The big hit was the chips and guacamole.  I don't even mean a big hit with the adults, I mean with the guac monster who stole the entire bowl:

Digging away w/ his chip for the last little bit

Young Wyatt refused to leave the table, even though the 4 other boys were off playing and romping around.  The boy loves his guacamole!