Wyatt's Big 3

Wyatt turned 3 last week.  Here are a few notes about our adorable 3 year old:

Wyatt is very considerate of people.  If someone is sad, he wants to know why and try to make them feel better.  He is very perceptive and can read people well.  If he’s fooling around instead of getting dressed and I’m holding his pants up for him to hop into them, he notices my face (even if I’m not intentionally making a face) and says, Mamma, are you sad? Then realizes it’s because he’s not doing as I asked him to do 5 times and hops to it!

He LOVES giving hugs and kisses especially to cheer someone up.  The other night, he could tell I was very tired as we were getting ready for bed, he gave me an unexpected kiss, and with a smile, said, does that make you feel better, Mommy?  I, of course said, yes, it makes it 1000 times better!

He is very funny.  The other day we were all getting ready to run an errand and I had to wake him up from nap (he had been sleeping for 3 hrs).  I told him we were going to a toy store to return a broken toy and see if they had something else to replace it.  You would think this would excite him but he wanted to sleep more!  I left him for a couple minutes thinking he would get up but I had to return to urge him to get up.  Then I used, “OK, I can call a babysitter to come over to watch you while Daddy, Mommy and Willy go to the toy store…” Thinking this would totally get him out of bed and out the door, I couldn’t hold in my laughter when he turned to me, GOT UP, and excitedly asked, “Which one?”

When he wakes in the morning or from his nap, he has a silly ritual to very quietly put his blanket over his head and tiptoe into our room to scare us in his "ghost" costume.  Or, he will rummage through his costume bin and put on a silly red clown wig and a superman costume.  He enters the room we are in with a charge and a loud "Ahhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrr!"  He is very spirited!

He sings ALL the time!  I love hearing him sing and hearing some of the lyrics he makes up to popular tunes.  We sing together in the car a lot, and lately, he’ll ask me to sing with him, and a little ways into the song, he will switch to a different song and sing “against” me.  He thinks this is so funny!

Although he speaks wonderfully and we understand everything he says, he does break out this secret language and thinks it’s funny.  He will say a normal sentence and then replace a word with his “silly” word, such as Dudicock or Numilop, or something.  And when we get him laughing, he has the most wonderful belly laugh ever.

He is total boy and loves to climb, jump, and run.  He will do projects and color, but not for very long.  He prefers active pretend play.  Currently, he loves to pile the cushions up to make a pirate ship, pretend he’s in Star Wars with Will, pretend Mommy is the bad guy and put me in jail, pretend mommy is a gingerbread man (woman) and bake me in an oven, frost me, and then try to catch me when I “pop” out of the oven.  He LOVES to play Hide and Seek and is quite good at it.  In fact, I would say he’s the best hider in the house.  He finds very good spots and keeps very still and quiet until we find him.

He’s very good at sharing special things.  If it’s a treat, he usually always offers me some or saves some for Will and Daddy.

He’s not a big fan of meat, but loves veggies and fruit. 

His best friends are his brother, and his friend Chase at Miss Jo’s.  And he's really taken a liking to his cousin, Maddie who's 3 weeks younger than him!  The last few times they've gotten together, they are attached at the hip!

For Wyatt’s birthday, we celebrated all weekend long.  He loves the Rainforest Café, so we went there on his actual birthday to celebrate with just our family.  He loves watching the fish and all the fake animals come to life.  And of course, we had to splurge on the sparkling volcano dessert for his birthday!

The next day was his little birthday party.  We were excited to have Uncle Ed and his family down for a sleepover which was the highlight.  The boys LOVE having people over for a sleepover.

We went to Monkey Joe’s with some neighbors, and his cousins, EJ, Maddie, Sophie, Sawyer and Caroline.  Then we came back for a spaghetti n meatball dinner at our house.  We had some snowman crafts and a piñata.  The next day, we woke up to 2 in of snow and feeling lucky, grabbed our sleds while Ed and his family was still in town and took to some of our favorite sledding hills.  It was a very fun weekend!

Rainforest Cafe Sparkling Volcano Dessert

Wyatt, Will and Sawyer loved sliding down the big slides together

Wyatt's Snowman Cake

Happy Birthday to Wyatt!

The next two to turn three, Maddie and Caroline loved the all boy Tool Bench!

Give it a good whack, Wyatt!

Sledding with Uncle Ed!

25 Rules for Mothers of Sons

Got this from a friend – Love all of them – but my favorite is #20. 

http://studerteam.blogspot.com/2011/11/25-rules-for-mothers-of-sons.html

We've Got a Leaner!

Ahhh, Christmas time…It has so much potential for magic, or stress and disaster!

Jeff and I have our annual disagreement about the number of gifts the children should get from Santa.  I pleaded more than ever with him this year.  I think that if we can make the switch to Santa only bringing a few gifts, this year is the year to do it because it will most likely be the last year that the kids (at least Wyatt) won’t really remember the quantity that he brings.  Plus, Christmas shouldn’t be about how many presents are under the tree.  Jeff’s reasoning is that we probably only have a few Christmas’s left of Will believing in Santa so we should do it up now.  And so it goes…we’ll see what happens on Christmas morning.

We love setting up the Christmas tree.  But even more, we love the adventure of finding our Christmas tree.  Usually it’s very cold and blizzard like.  This year, it was unseasonably warm and my parents’ tree farm was a muddy mess!  Not thinking, we didn’t have the kids’ boots out of storage yet, and they ruined both pairs of their shoes, everyone was a muddy mess, and the car looked like it had gone to the cabin 5 times in one day as it was CAKED in mud.  Not to mention, a new game farm appears to have popped up on the other side of the tracks of my parent’s property and we felt like we would hear a stray bullet whiz by our heads at any moment.  No, we didn’t have any blaze orange on.  My dad would be very disappointed in how unprepared we were.

It was an interesting day.  We found our tree and again, it was way too tall.  Yes, we could cut it down to 15 feet so it would just barely fit under the vaulted ceiling, but really, we don’t need to push the limits.  I’d rather not spend another year tip toeing around the house and fearing that I will come home after work to a disaster of evergreen and broken ornaments all over our living room floor.  Jeff loves the big trees and I do too, but I think a 12 footer is a big enough tree.  Jeff, always having a good argument to his reason, mentions that 1) our next house might not have high ceilings so we need to get the biggest trees we can now, 2) who knows how long my parents will have the tree farm and if they sell it, we’ll be paying $200 for these trees, and 3) (going for the heart strings here…) he wants to create memories for our kids so they can say, “Remember those HUGE trees we used to get?”  Yeah – the minute he said that, something in my mind said, I think we’ll be saying “Remember that huge tree that was way too big for our house, fell down, broke all our memorable ornaments, and caused a few grand in damage?”

Jeff is usually right about a lot of things so I’ve started to listen to him ;)  Plus, he’s like a little kid with this stuff, so I let him have his big tree.  I did plea with him to cut a couple more feet off the bottom but he insisted he wanted the “memory” of the biggest tree ever.  He assured me it would be fine.

OK, Love.  Consider this one of your Christmas presents.

We got it into the stand, and then Jeff started in with his perfect Christmas Light application that took over 4 HOURS and a trip into town for 900 more lights.  When he was done, it looked beautiful, and Jeff informed me that our tree had an estimated 2500-3000 lights on it.  Hmmm, I wonder what that does to our utility bill or our electrical circuits?  But, I didn’t ruin his moment and just said it looks awesome!

Since the light application took 4 hrs, it was too late for us to trim the tree with the ornaments, so we waited a couple days until we had a free night to dedicate a couple hrs to trimming the tree with the kids.  Two nights later, we had a lot of fun as a family trimming the tree.  Will was seeking out his favorite ornaments that he remembered and Wyatt was discovering his favorites for the first time showing us all of them.  

This is the only "before" pic that shows most of the tree

When we were done, we noticed the tree was leaning to the left quite a bit.  Hmmm…we’ll have to fix that once the kids are in bed.  After they were sleeping, we looked at it again and the top of the tree was actually leaning on the part where the ceiling starts to slope down.  Jeff and I unscrew the tree, lift, turn, re-center and screw it back in again.  Ok, problem solved.  Jeff contemplates tying the tree up with eyehooks in the wall but couldn’t find a stud in the area of wall he wanted.  He mentioned putting large eyehooks in the window trim (yes, our new front windows that cost us around $7K a couple years ago and now he wants to drill big holes in the trim to support our extra large tree).  I dismissed that idea.

The next morning, we wake up to a tree leaning to the left again.  We both have to go to work and hold our breath until we are home.  We get home and luckily it is still standing.  We go through the same routine that night – put kids to bed, and work on the tree for an hour.  This time, there isn’t a fresh spot on the trunk to screw new holes in and it looks like a woodpecker had pecked a ring around and through the bottom of the trunk.  This really isn’t good.  We did the best we could and I asked Jeff again to cut a couple feet off, making the tree lighter and giving us fresh, stronger wood to screw into.  We discussed the time it would take to remove all the ornaments, lights and take the tree down, saw a couple feet off, and put it back up, retrim, etc.  I really didn’t want to see Jeff go through 4 hrs of stringing lights again.  We decided we would stop and get some eye hooks the next day while we were Christmas shopping. 

The next night, Jeff found an alternate spot to put the eyehooks so they weren’t in our window trim and everything appeared to be good.  The next morning, our tree was resting on the windows.  That’s it!  That night, we removed all the ornaments after the kids were in bed, and tried to keep the lights on.  Carefully, we lowered the tree, and sawed 2 ft off.  Can you believe Jeff still begged to saw off only a foot?  We cleaned up all the needles and extra boughs and stood up the tree again.  Screwed it into new wood and plugged in the lights – they all worked!  I think we had to remove 2 strands since we chopped quite a bit off the bottom.  Jeff secured the tree to the wall with wire and eyehooks and we re-trimmed the tree.  And that is the last we’ve had to mess with the tree.  

Surprisingly, cutting the bottom 2.5 feet off didn't look much different!

Ready for Christmas Morning!

Jeff has promised that 12 foot trees are tall enough for future years (had to get that in writing).  Even though he still strategizes about how we can handle a 15-16 footer again…

So, yes, this tree will definitely be memorable and one we talk about for years to come, but at least we did not have a disaster in the house! 

Lastly, Jeff was sad that our we could not send our Christmas cards out this year with the message “Our tree is bigger than yours…”

November 16, 2011 = Joyous Adoption Day

Last February, I started writing this entry and could never finish it because of the overwhelming emotions and fear of one of the biggest heartbreaks imaginable:

Helpless

This past weekend, I was incredibly fortunate to meet my potential niece and nephew, Jazmine and Jackson. 

For years my brother John and Noreen have been trying to conceive their own children.  They’ve drained themselves financially and emotionally.  It takes a strong marriage to withstand what they’ve been through and are going through and I admire them for their strength and commitment to each other.

I’ve had to stop and restart writing this due to the tears that run down my face…I am heartbroken that I might never get to see these babies again, but mostly because I fear the babies could be taken from John and Noreen after they have loved them with all their hearts. 

And that’s as far as I ever got.  I started writing it on the plane ride home from Arizona and the lady next to me probably wondered what the heck was wrong with me!  After I returned home, I tried to go back to the file, but never could. 

Now, nine months later, I’m overwhelmed with joy and today can retitle the entry to “Happiness” or a word I am very fond of since having my own children, “JOY.”

Joy is the feeling I had when I held my babies for the first time in my arms, and what I feel every day when I wake up to them.

Today, John and Noreen, are feeling the ultimate JOY as they officially become mom and dad to Jackson and Jazmine Schnaubelt.  Today, is adoption day.  And tomorrow and every day after, they will wake up to Jackson and Jazmine’s joy and find peace knowing they are theirs forever. 

I’m very proud of my brother.  He has given this adoption everything he has to give.  When they were introduced to the birth mom, they helped her through her pregnancy and were there for support during prenatal appts and during the birth.  When the babies were released from the hospital, they came home with John and Noreen and have been there for 95% of their lives.

However, it was never guaranteed that an official adoption would take place.  In fact, John said there was only a 30% chance of keeping the babies.

 

He took that 30% chance and turned it into 100% when they closed the deal today.  He never gave up and always had ideas of how it would all work out.  He kept telling everyone to keep the faith.  We prayed and kept the faith, and God answered everyone’s prayers today.

November 16, 2011 Adoption Day!

I’m so happy for them, and for the babies.  These kids will have a wonderful life, with two loving and caring parents and an army full of extended family to keep them entertained!

To Ashley, their birth mom:  Thank you for choosing LIFE, and thank you for choosing my brother and sister in law to be the best parents for the twins.

Will turns FIVE!

Willy B turned 5 on Sept 26.  He has been anticipating his birthday since his cowboy birthday party last year.   He has been confirming with us several times this year that on his birthday, he gets to do whatever he wants…as long as it isn’t harmful to anyone! 

I’ve had a bit of guilt between Will and Wyatt’s birthdays.  Will has a nice warm, festive fall birthday, while Wyatt’s is in the bitter cold of January when all grandparents have headed south and everyone else has hibernated for the winter.  So when it comes to birthday parties, Will has a tremendous response (plus, now he has his own school friends and neighborhood friends to invite) while Wyatt’s response is marginal.  When we were deciding on what celebration we should have for Will’s big 5, we decided we shouldn’t have a big party again because we know we can’t do that for Wyatt.  We gave Will 3 choices and with each choice, he could choose 2-3 friends to invite along.  We could either 1) Go to a Brewer Game 2) Blast off model rockets and go for an airplane ride at Popper’s house or 3) Go to the movie theater and mini golf, go carts, etc.

It wasn’t even a question in Will’s mind.  He wanted to go to Popper and Grandma’s house!  So we bought a few extra model rockets to assemble, paper airplane templates, airplane themed gifts, planned the airplane cake and favors, and handed out the invites folded into paper airplanes.

We knew the party depended on the weather and had a secret indoor backup plan that had nothing to do with airplanes or rockets!  And sure enough, it started to rain and the wind began to blow about 3 days before the party.  Although it stopped raining by the morning of the party, it was too wet and still too windy to continue with launching rockets and airplane rides, so we were off to LEGOLAND in Schaumburg!  

Since Will fell in love with Legos on his 4^th birthday and soon after found out there is a “legoland,” he has been begging to go so it was perfect.  He was super excited.  We loaded up Will, Wyatt, EJ and Charlotte, and headed for the Land of Legos.  We spent a great deal of time there breaking once for lunch, presents and cake and came back.  

On Will’s actual birthday, he went to school, then we picked him up and went out for lunch at his choice – McDonald’s Playland.  Had some naps, then met Jeff after work at the theater to watch The Lion King.  Followed up with a trip to the toy store and home to eat a snack for dinner (after all that popcorn!) and open his presents from Wyatt and us.  Whew!  Birthdays sure are exhausting but FUN!

Things we find in our yard

One of the things I love about our house is that we have a decent size yard with a wooded perimeter.  This invites lots of nature to live with us outdoors.  Every summer, we find new friends hanging out with us.  Here are a few from this summer:

Tree frog - usually we have one each summer that likes to hang out on our patio door and watch us eat dinner

He was a jumper!!  Jumped right onto Jeff's leg and then onto his arm!

This turtle was found alongside our deck.  I think it's a "painted" turtle but may be a box turtle

Jeff found this salamander under a rock behind our flower garden - CREEPY!

I was plucking the dead flowers out of my hanging basket and almost plucked this guy because he blends right in!

With the flash on and a little more zoom, you can see this is the biggest brown moth I've ever seen! It was about 3 inches long. Reminds me of mothman prophecies!

First Day of School!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 was Will’s first day of school.  He is in 4K Monday through Friday during the morning session.  It’s really very much like the old fashioned half day kindergarten.  He takes the bus in the morning at 8:10.  We pick him up when school is done because the return bus trip would be over an hour long.  He loves feeling like a big kid, loves his teacher, and REALLY loves getting chocolate milk every day at snack time!

I could tell Wyatt was pretty sad the first week without his brother all day (except on Mondays and Thursdays when they are together in the afternoon) but I think they actually play a lot better now when they are together.  There are less wrestling/pushing/shoving/yelling matches and a lot more invitations to play with each other and even some acts of kindness!

Tuesday can also be considered Jeff and my first days of school since a LOT has changed since we were in school.  We are getting a crash course of how everything works, what to do and what NOT to do, like packing graham crackers with peanut butter for Will’s snack on his first day.  A few days later, the teacher sent home her weekly newsletter about what the kids are doing in class.  She stated that kids can bring a snack to eat with their milk but due to severe peanut allergies in the class, refrain from anything with peanuts or peanut butter…OOPS!  But at least I read her newsletter before I sent Will to school with peanut and raisin trail mix the next day! 

I’m also the room parent for Mrs. Fisher’s 4K class – which is something I’m still learning as well.  Somehow, like coaching his Tball team this summer, I got roped into volunteering.  I mentioned I was interested and would like to know more, the next thing I know, I’m officially assigned!  Oh well!

 

When the bus came, Will didn't even give us a second glance or hug, just hopped on the bus!

Will and his bus driver

Bye Will! See you in a few hours!