An amphibian, a truck, and an icy beverage

For the record, Halloween and Hand, foot and mouth disease do not mix. While Jacob looked adorable dressed as a tall iced mocha (with whip), he wasn't much up for trick or treating. Consequently, we only have a few pictures of him in his adorable costume, and he's pretty miserable in most of them. But the stress of being dressed as a felt beverage did result in a great night's sleep for our sick little guy.

Abby and Caleb, on the other hand, could not have been happier to be traipsing around in the dark with the neighborhood kids demanding candy from their neighbors. One of the big kids even told me Abby was being really good and telling everybody thank you (but only after she filled her plastic pumpkin and her frog hat with handfuls of candy). You can get away with a lot when you're cute and little and dressed as a giant frog in a tutu. She's all of the above, and we've got mounds of Halloween candy to prove it.

Caleb, by all accounts, was about the best Tow Mater ever. For about fifteen minutes. I failed to factor in how heavy that cardboard costume would be once it was completed. Halfway through the trick-or-treating, he was totally over being dressed as a giant tow truck and shed his costume on our front step. He continued to collect candy, and being the youngest in the group even earned him the right to demand specific types of candy at each house. (M&M's and those little foil wrapped chocolate discs, for the record, taste better if you take the wrapper off first. But try telling that to a sugar-crazed two year old.)

Now that the sugar's worn off, the kids are sound asleep in their beds, perhaps dreaming of the Halloween Fairy that I promised would come in the night and leave them a surprise if they left their pumpkins full of candy outside their doors. Less candy for them, more candy for me. I'm loving the Halloween Fairy already.

Boys are filthy

They played here for over an hour. They were perfectly content to sit in a pile of dirt, pine straw and leaves and do nothing but move lawn debris from one place to another.

Jacob crawled around, grabbing handfuls of leaves and tossing them as far as he could. Which was about four inches. He rubbed dirt on his pants and his face, and occasionally poked himself in the eye with the stem of a dead leaf.

Meanwhile, determined to make sure I have no pants to pass down to his younger brother, Caleb dragged his knees across rocks and through piles of mud and acorns until his jeans were worn threadbare. When he wasn't ruining his clothes, Caleb did his best to impart a little knowledge to his brother regarding everything a boy needs to know about trucks.

"This is a digger," he told Jacob, holding up the digger so he could get a good look. "It digs."

Jacob grunted, which to Caleb seemed to signal understanding. So he moved on.

"This is an excavator. It's excavating with its big toothy bucket."

"This is a dump truck. It dumps." Here Caleb paused, scraped up some earth with the excavator's big toothy bucket, and poured it into the back of the dump truck. Then he went on.

"It has a skip. When the skip tilts up, the contents slide to the ground."

The lesson went on for quite some time, until Jacob tired of his studies and crawled away to pull flowers off my bushes.

When I finally brought them in, they were in desperate need of a midday bath.

But after the display of male bonding I had just witnessed between my boys, the filth and the ruined clothes seemed a small price to pay.

Survival of the smartest

Some days, it gets a little nutty around here.

Okay, okay. Most days.

Most days, it gets a little nutty around here.

But some days, it gets so nutty that the chaos cannot be contained. Not within the four walls of our home, at least.

Some days, in the midst of the chaos, with just enough time left before bed to make it possible for the kids to actually drive us insane, my dear husband and I take a good hard look at our family and begin work on our game plan. We realize we're working with a zone coverage defense when we really need man-to-man coverage to make it through the next hour, so we go with our best option.

We strap them down and make run for the nearest Starbucks drive-through. Because a kid's hot chocolate is only $1.25, and that's a small price to pay for a little bit of peace and rest.

So much to learn

We came away from our homeschool group's field trip to a nearby family farm much wiser than when we arrived. Abby learned that a one ton bull named Sirloin is not an animal you want to mess with. Jacob learned that if you throw your lunch out of the stroller in the middle of a chicken coop, you're not getting it back. And Caleb learned that if a goat spits out the apple you're trying to feed him, you should not pick it up out of the dirt and eat it for him. (This lesson came a few hours later.)

It was not quite the agritainment that we've grown accustomed to with our farm visits. There were no hay slides, no buckets of animal feed for purchase, and no giant bouncy houses. It was just a big old family farm, and we got the private tour from the farmer and his wife.

They even took our rowdy bunch on a hay ride. Although Farmer Bray did spend a good deal of time looking over his shoulder for cops. Apparently they hate it when he drives a tractor full of kids down a main road.

Musically inclined

We have another music lover on our hands. Justin has yet to pull out his guitar and start playing without Jacob going absolutely crazy--giggling, dancing, and "blah-blah-blah-ing" along with the music while strumming mercilessly on the strings.

If you need someone to bang on the front of the guitar, try to eat your pick, or threaten to rip the strings off your instrument, Jacob's your man. He's also the guy to turn to if you need someone to sit and watch you play with a look of absolute wonder and awe on his face.

He's a real self-esteem booster, this little guy. And watching him flap his arms and dance along to his dad's music just upped his cuteness quotient quite a bit.

The easy one

Caleb could not be easier to please. Give the boy some dirt, and he's happy for hours. Give him a truck to drive, and it's the best toy he's ever played with.

Filthy? Who cares.

Clothes don't match? Doesn't matter.

Hair's too long or too short? He didn't even notice.

No mountain to drive your trucks over? He'll just build one.

No shovel to dig with? Hands make great diggers.

Maybe it's just his personality, or maybe this is typical of two-and-a-half-year-old boys. Whatever the case, I sure am glad God gave me this little guy.

Dressed for success

We have very strict uniform guidelines here at the School of Mommy. Firstly, in order to participate in any of our fun-filled and educational activities, you must actually be dressed. Secondly, participants over the age of 2 must dress themselves. Between me and the baby, I have enough pants to put on every morning. If you want clothes around here, you're on your own.

Abby has taken a liking to our dress code and spends a great deal of time each morning laying a foundation for her education by carefully searching her dress-up box for the proper attire. A princess dress will do in a pinch, but if she has time on her hands she can come up with some pretty outrageous ensembles. Like the day she practiced shapes dressed as an M&M ballerina. Or Texas cowgirl-airline pilot day.

Caleb, perhaps to drive home the point that I'm ignoring his formal preschool education until next year, prefers to take a more casual approach to learning. This means that on the days that I don't go to the great effort to help him decide between the dump truck or the dinosaur shirt, he typically spends the morning comfortably dressed in his pajamas. I'm pretty sure my freshman year of college had a similar dress code. It didn't seem to hinder my learning, so I think he's going to be just fine.

Some of our most productive mornings are Pirate-princess mornings. On these days, every activity is done with a little bit more enthusiasm. Perhaps that's because I taught them that pirates say "Argh!" Lacing activities are no longer simply lacing activities. Nope. We're "Lacing. Argh! With beads! Argh!" (This is really cute in a high-pitched 4-year-old girl voice. Or a high pitched 2-year-old boy voice, for that matter.)

Learning is serious business around here.

Spilt milk

Kids are good for helping you keep things in perspective. I'm glad I have this baby around to remind me of what's really important.

Because next time I'm tempted to get upset over something minor, I'm not going to waste my tears. I'm going to remember that there are bigger things in life to cry about.

Like when you run out of banana at lunch. Or when your chicken nugget falls to the floor.

You know. The stuff that really matters.

Accessorizing

She spent the morning playing dress up, and when lunchtime rolled around, she was in between costume changes.

"Go get dressed so we can eat lunch," I told her.

She hurried upstairs.

A few minutes later, I could still hear her shuffling around in her room.

"Did you get dressed like I asked, Abby?" I yelled upstairs.

"Yes Mommy!" she replied.

"Well then come downstairs so we can eat," I reminded her.

"I'm coming," she yelled back. "I just need some accessories."

Someone's been reading too many Fancy Nancy books.

The evolution of Cheese Face

I searched back through a couple thousand photos and found the earliest recorded instance of Cheese Face in January 2010. Caleb was a few weeks shy of his first birthday, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground, and when I pointed the camera at him and ordered him to "Say Cheese!" he took me seriously.

Cheese Face

January 2010 - October 2011

Today, he still has the same adorable chubby cheeks, and he still makes the same face every time we ask him to smile. My walk down memory lane revealed that my middle child has not only always smiled like this, but has also looked exactly the same since he was about six months old. (That was around the time I buzzed his hair for the first time, a haircut he's sported ever since.)

I have a feeling his pictures are going to look exactly like this until he's sixteen. Maybe by then his cheeks will have settled down a little, or he'll have a girlfriend that will convince him to smile with his eyes open.

But for now, I'm still madly in love with his cheeks, and his cheese face. And I hope they both stick around for a while.

Don't push

Abby (4 years old) and Caleb (2.75 years old)

October 2011

I'm pretty sure I asked them to stop doing this. We've already replaced this stroller once. I don't know how much more this one can take.

Caleb (22 months) and Jacob (3 weeks)

December 2010

Abby (18 months) and Caleb (7 weeks)

March 2009

Good eats

I took this picture to allay my husband's fears. I know my total aversion to vegetables and love for all things microwavable worries him. It's a respectable concern. He's genuinely worried about his family's future, about the nutritional values I'm instilling in our children meal after meal.

And while it's true that many days our lunches would not pass a USDA Food Guide inspection, there are still many days when I do have my act together, when the kids and I sit down together to a meal that consists of more than frozen chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.

Today we lunched on homemade baked ziti, green peas, fresh local strawberries and a big glass of milk. Friends that know me best wouldn't believe me if I told them. So here's proof: fruits, veggies, proteins, grains and dairy, all in one place.

And we even ate on plates.