Portraits

Isaac has been taking A LOT of pictures lately. Most of them are close ups of his toys. It's been rather entertaining turning on my camera and seeing what he's been up to. In addition to his toys, he has captured a few fun pictures that I wanted to post.

He also got a Toys R Us catalog in the mail recently and took it upon himself to cut out all the toys he wanted, taped them to paper, and put them on the wall. (The school bus picture is what he colored on the first day of school and the puppet is a project we made out of a sponge.) I guess he wasn't sure if we would understand what all the pictures were, so he wanted to write a sign that said "Isaac's Christmas List". It's going to be an interesting few months until Christmas!

And one last one, because my kids are so darn cute!

Being Two

Being two must be hard. That's the conclusion I made recently, when thinking about how much time Piper spends crying. The tears come for a variety of reasons, some perfectly clear, and some leaving me scratching my head. There's the obvious "someone (cough*Isaac*cough) took my toy" and "I want my blanket" and "you're supposed to carry me (even though I have two perfectly good feet)". I remember what this fit was about; Piper was putting stickers all over her shirt and I wanted to take a picture. As you can see, she didn't want me to take a picture!

The reason for this fit eludes me. I do feel kinda bad for snapping pictures while she's crying, but it's just so cute. And for some crazy reason, I want to remember this time in her life, when she spent a good portion of time having fits.

First Week of PreK!

So, the day finally arrived: Isaac started PreK on Monday, September 12! And now week 1 is over...but to start at the beginning...Eddy and I realized that he had been acting a little different the two weeks leading up to school. We couldn't really put a finger on his behavior. He just wasn't himself. Then the night before school started, he was acting very strange at dinner. He looked at me and all the color drained from his face. Alligator tears came down his cheeks as he said, "I don't wanna go to school". Oh, it broke my heart. I sat with him on the couch and talked about it for awhile. He calmed down and the rest of the night was uneventful. Monday morning while getting dressed he told me, "I'm not brave enough to go to school" and a bit later said, "I'm not going to know anybody". So we talked about those two things. I wasn't sure if he would be ok with taking pictures, but he did great!

I brought him to school and about a minute in, he said "you can go now, mom". Here he is getting settled in:

Apparently I should have left immediately after he said that, but I didn't. He said, "I will miss you so much, mom" and he started rubbing his eyes, like he was trying to prevent tears. I told him I would miss him too and then I left. School gets out at 2:30 and Isaac will be taking a bus back to daycare. The bus consists of only preK and kindergarteners from St. Rose, so I feel ok with him riding the bus. I took the day off, so I told him that I would meet him at school and make sure he got on the bus ok. Here he is waiting to be let out of school and getting on the bus:

And then I drove to daycare to watch him get off the bus:

Isaac was teary-eyed at drop off time on the second and third days, too. He's not super-excited when he gets home and we have to work hard for him to tell us anything about his day, but I'm sure he has fun when he's there. There's a lot of change for him. We knew to expect a time of transition. But Eddy and I feel very fortunate to have found St. Rose's program and know that he will learn a lot and be surrounded by loving people.

Wednesday Night At The Races

Grandma's Marathon sponsors Wednesday Night At The Races, every Wednesday for 6 weeks in the Twin Ports area. Eddy was involved with a golf league on Wednesday evenings, so I decided to take the kids, to have something to do. I wasn't sure what to expect that first week, but it turned out to be great! They put the kids in age and sex categories and the distance of the race depends on their age. Kids 6 and under would run 1/2 of a lap on a track. Isaac seemed to really look forward to it every week and was so excited to get a ribbon at the end of his race. The couple weeks that Eddy was able to come with, we got Piper to be involved, too. It usually meant Eddy running and holding Piper, then putting her down part-way through to have her run. The last week the races were at Park Point and there was a picnic afterwards. Each kid got a t-shirt and a huge medal...bigger than my finisher medal for the 1/2 marathon! Oh, and all of this was free. It was a great community event and we're already looking forward to next summer's races! July 27, first race, didn't know what to expect, so only got one picture:

August 3, met up with friends Liam & Connor:

August 10, met up with friends Ben & Carly

August 17:

August 24, having a snack after the races:

August 31, with picnic afterwards: