Monday, November 16, 2009

Future Artist, Future Photographer

Alice has taken an interest in the arts. She IS the granddaughter of Mary Jo O'Hearn, who is an incredible artist, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I think it was surprising that it happened so early in her life. She started coloring before I even thought to introduce crayons to her. She was probably 11 months old and while Jack was coloring she took a marker and tried to draw something on a piece of paper all on her own. So, at 16 months old, I figured she's ready to paint! She was very excited. I didn't even have to show her much more than how to dip the paintbrush in the paint. Then she got right to work.
She spent a good 20 minutes painting with her brush, and then I showed her how to finger paint (kinda wish I didn't, because after that she just painted her hand and got paint everywhere!) It was fun. Who knows, she may be following her grandma's footsteps. Here's one of her first paintings
And then there's Jack, my little photographer. He got his hands on my camera one day (Gee, I wonder where he picked up THIS hobby? ;), and walked around the house taking pictures. I was quite impressed with his interest in capturing specific and often obscure things, like....the inside of a toilet paper roll, flowers on a table,
antiques,
, and feet!
. He's also tried a few self photos , but I think his arms need to grow a little longer for those to work!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Picture Perfect Day

We have been a family of four for 17 months but we've never had a formal (or informal for that matter) picture taken, which is unheard of for me! Well, that all changed last Saturday when we met this awesome photographer, Amy Tripple, in the forest preserves of Downers Grove. She was amazing and in no time had the kids relaxed and laughing. It was so much more my style of a photo shoot as opposed to the usual sitting in a Sears Studio trying to get the kids to NOT move from a pose. Needless to say, I'm overjoyed with our first series of family photos....


Coming soon to a Christmas card near you! ;)
And since we were down that way, we decided to check out the Morton Arboretum. I'd never been there and had heard great things about it. This place is enormous and has so much to see. We only touched upon it, spending most of our time in the Children's Garden, but that was all we needed. It was so fun. We will definitely return. It is a great hands-on, climb on, look-at experience for both kids and adults. I have more pictures that I wanted to post, but blogger is acting funny lately. I am not pleased. At least these made it on here though:




Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Lesson #235

Don't put a pop-up book in your daughter's crib to keep her happy for a little longer, otherwise you'll get THIS:

Now, I of course I know better than to do something like that, but here's what happened: On Saturday morning, Jack crawled in our bed at 6am and I was really hoping we could get another hour of sleep in. Not 2 minutes later, Alice starts calling me from her crib (Her new thing is to say Mama over and over again until I answer-Cute at first...not so much anymore!), so Jack whispers, "Mom, Alice is calling her you have to go get her!" So I say half-jokingly, "Why don't YOU go get her." And I thought he'd say no, and that he's not big enough or whatever, but he jumped out up and said, "SURE!" Yes! I scored at least a FEW more minutes in my bed! So, I listened as Jack went into her room, and he started talking to her the same way that I do, with the exact same intonations and everything. "Good morrrning, Alice! Did you have a nice sleep? Do you want to get up?" She squealed when she saw him, and then they played peek-a-boo and giggled together for a few minutes. It was really sweet. At some point he must have offered her a book, but I never looked in her crib when I came in the room to get her out. It wasn't until the next morning when I discovered that SHE discovered this book in her bed at some point and decided to totally disassemble it. I swear, of all the pop-up books we own, Jack NEVER tore one of them. It's this 2nd child thing! They don't get as closely supervised, therefore they should NOT get POP-UP books. Because now, most of our pop-up books are books of animals and insects missing heads, tails, wings, and legs. Lesson learned.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Vrooom, Arrrggggg, and Grrrr!

I love that Halloween fell on a Saturday this year. It made us be able to spread out all the things we had planned over a few days, rather than try to cram it all into one. So, first it began at school. Jack participated in his first school Halloween parade. He was dressed as one of his favorite racecars, Lightning MCQueen (And it was perfect since he Vrooms all over the place). All of the preschool and kindergarten students walked the halls as they were applauded by the older kids (to which one of my students exclaimed, "They LOVE us!" It was priceless). Since I'm the kindergarten teacher at the school, this is something I always am a part of, so it was kind of surreal for me to see Jack parading along with us! But there he was....Proud and as happy as can be. When he saw me, I was holding a student who was having a hard time. Jack waved at me and then walked up to me and rubbed my arm with a big grin on his face and then continued on his way with his class- It just melted my heart and broke it at the same time because I couldn't hug him and he was ok with that. It is so hard sometimes to have to devote more of myself to other people's children when my very own son is right there. But in the end, he knows that he's always going to be my #1 guy.Then the fun shifted to the adults! Friday night was our night. Jamie was invited to an exclusive party through work at the Alhambra Palace downtown. So we got dressed up and headed out in full pirate gear:The party was really something to see. Hundreds of his fellow employees all dressed in ridiculous costumes drinking and dancing in a huge room with vaulted ceilings, velvet curtains and a gorgeous Moroccon decor (I wish I had brought my camera, but I left it in the car! Believe me, it was awesome). We decided to try Moroccan food since we were there. We found a table and had a very delicious and savory meal (I think mine was called Chicken Tangine? Yum). And, while it was fun to people-watch and enjoy the atmosphere, we weren't there to get wasted like most of the party-goers there were and we had another party to hit. So, we headed off to Kerry and Matt's house. This was a much smaller gathering of mostly my siblings and a few other friends of theirs. But it was Bert and Ernie--I mean, Kerry and Matt's first official party at their new house! This is Erin as Kiera, from Xanadu...A movie I loved to watch with my sisters as kids. We had a really fun time.
But then it was back to the kids. I mean, I guess it REALLY is more about THEM, right? Saturday was really great. Alice was a polar bear. Why, you may ask? Well, a couple of months ago, she started doing this hilarious and adorable little growl whenever she saw a bear. Then Jamie showed her a video clip of a polar bear, and she wouldn't stop growling! (Here is a little sample of it)
videoHence, the costume We met up with Staci, Bob and Tom (who was an adorable James)at Jamie's parents'house to do some serious trick-or-treating. It wasn't that we went to a million houses,
but it was the million DOLLAR houses that we went to!! Check out their decorations! Alice was terrified of the ginormous pirate ship that had sound effects and smoke... Incredible. And now, check out Jack's bucket of candy--Yeah, those are FULL-SIZED candy bars. I couldn't believe it. It was crazy! And I'm pretty sure I loved it more than Jack did!
So, we finished up, even managed to go out to dinner with Gram-O and Bumpa, and then just when we thought we couldn't fit anymore excitement into our day, we stopped in at our neighbors' little party before the kids crashed.
Here are some more pictures from our day:








Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Little Jack Stories

A few funny things have happened over the past several weeks-All involving 3-year-old conversations, which is always entertaining!

- Jack met a little girl at the park the other day name Lucy. She was probably 4 or 5, and as sweet and outgoing as can be. Jack joined her and they ran around and played for about 10 minutes. Then Jack walked over by me and Alice, and Lucy followed him. You could tell that he was done with her and wanted to just be with his mom and sister at that point. So, Lucy went and played on her own. But about a minute later, she came running over and said, "Jack.....what if some other kids ask you who your girlfriend is??" And Jack took no more than 3 seconds to say, "Maddy and Hannah are my girlfriends. They're my only girlfriends." Poor Lucy. =(


- Jack had left a toy in the car and when we went back into the car later that day, it wasn't there. Both of us were baffled, because we couldn't find it. So I said, "WHERE IS that toy?? This is a mystery!" There was a pause from the backseat, and then Jack said in a "DUH" sort of way, "Uhh, no, it's not a mystery...It's just lost."

- A while back, Jack unbuckled his seatbelt when I was driving on the expressway in the middle of traffic. I freaked out on him and started to panic (despite the fact that I know we never were strapped into any kind of safety devices as kids and we were just fine). While I was desperately waiting to find a place to pull over, I began to lecture Jack about how serious it is to take your seatbelt off. He was not at all phased by my scare-tactic of saying if we got hit by a car he would fly out of the front window. He said, "Don't worry, Mom, I'll just hold on to the seatbelt if that happens. I won't fly out." But when I told him that it was against the law and if a policeman sees him he would go to jail, well THAT stuck with him. He said, "BUT I'M not a bad guy!!" And then he teared up and said urgently, "Can you get my seatbelt on?!" Needless to say, it all worked out, but then the next day my mom was taking him to school and when he got in his booster seat, my mom said, "Now you're not going to take your seatbelt off, right?" And he said, "NO! Yesterday I took it off. I broke the log."

- At school, there's a little boy named Joshua and I guess he goes by JT but his mom wanted him to be called Joshua at school. Well, he just wan't talking or responding at all when the teachers called him Joshua. So finally, they asked him during circle time, "Joshua, do you have another name that you are called?" Hoping to get some kind of response from him. And I guess all of the kids were silent, sitting at the rug waiting for Joshua to respond, when all of a sudden, they hear Jack's voice chime in, "Ummm, maybe it's Bobby."

I sometimes wish I could just bottle him up and keep him just like this forever..

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Pumpkins revisited

2007 2009
We had a fantastic day at Didier farms today. It's funny, I didn't think we'd ever been there before, but we soon realized that we had taken Jack here when he was 1. It is such a great farm with so much to do.
When I was uploading my pictures from today, I thought it would be fun to look back at the pictures from the first time we were there. So, here are some from both today and 2007.
First, 2007, when Jack was just a little dude and Alice was a mere consideration.


And now today, 2009: Jack has grown into such a cute little boy with such character. And Alice is a wonderful addition to our family, making outings like these that much more enjoyable.



{Allie's favorite part...the animals} {Jack's favorite part...washing his "perfect" pumpkin}
I love days like these.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me

I celebrated my 32nd birthday last weekend, and it was really a great one. I was able to see many of my friends and family throughout the week. It kicked off on Thursday night with a little dinner at Emilio's tapas restaurant with my "old school" friends (The handful of girls whom I've known since I was 5). It was really nice and low key--MUCH different than how we used to celebrate! We laughed about how nice and quiet the restaurant was and how we were happy that we would be home before 11 (In our defense, it WAS a weeknight!).
Then on Friday, Kerry hosted her first dinner at her gorgeous new house. It was so wonderful, because our ENTIRE family of 18 fit comfortably, and it was not a madhouse! The kids played downstairs, the adults had adult conversations with no interruptions, and I had my favorite dinner of all time: German dumplings and roast chicken. The dumplings are from an old recipe that my grandma's grandma used to make when they had extra dried out bread that they didn't want to waste. I loved it as a kid, so I always asked for it as my birthday dinner. It became the one time a year we got to eat it. Now, if I dare request anything else, everyone in my family would be really upset, because they all expect it and can't wait to have it. It's a little German bond that my Grandma and I have! =)
Saturday was my actual birthday. It began with Jamie and Alice sneaking off before I got out of bed to bring me a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks! A very awesome treat for me. All week Jack kept telling everyone that he was going to get me a "blower," like the one in the bathroom at school! I didn't know I wanted an electic hand dryer, and luckily neither did Jamie, because I got a beautiful green coat instead! While the thought was so sweet, I am relieved!
I also got to spend some of the morning with my best friend Meghan, doing what we do best--shopping! And then I was off to a wedding for one of Erin's best friends,Claire. A great time was had by ALL. My parents were there as well as many people I've known for years. Erin was a bridesmaid, and she looked beautiful. And Claire looked like a porcelain doll, she was so pretty and perfect. {I think I love her dress more than I did my own! }
Then on Sunday, Jamie's mom had a delicious pot roast dinner for the family and to celebrate my birthday one last time.
I feel so very blessed to have had so many moments with all of the people who mean the most to me. And to top it all off, Jamie took Monday off since I didn't have to work and Jack didn't have school. So I got a bonus day! Since the weather was not good for pumpkin farms, we decided to take the kids to the Field Museum. I'm not a big fan of this particular museum, but it IS Jamie's favorite and Jack is into dinosaurs lately. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. They had more for the kids than I thought, and we saw the Pirate exhibit which was pretty cool. We bought Jack a little pirate telescope, and he was so excited about it. He spent the rest of the day riding his stroller "ship" looking for pirate ships. It was a real nice family day.
Here we are enjoying a perfect Chicago-style hotdog before going into the museum.
Jack spent a lot of time being a bat in the Family Play Lab.

This last year will be a hard one to beat, but having so many wonderful people in my life is something that I appreciate more and more with each passing year. So, as long as I have all of them by my side and in my life, this year will be the BEST.