Our little boy, is such a boy

It is certainly clear that Will is a boy. Will has started growling all the time. He clenches his fists, holds them out like Tarzan would, and lets out his growl, that follows with a manly shake of the head and shoulders. Grandpa and Grandma Pack were visiting for dinner and Grandpa and Will had a little growling match. It was almost like communication of cave men. Will has to be moving all the time. I am counting my blessings that he can't walk yet. I know when that happens, my life will have come to the point of no return, in terms of any relaxation that I had left. If I still had any? Will loves his sister so much. They are like a barrel of monkeys. The laughing is constant and the playing just never ends. Will eats a lot. Rice cereal is his favorite, followed by sweet potatoes or squash. Will has started to dance and try to sing whenever he hears music. He still always has a smile on his face, unless he can't play with the keys, because I have to start the car to drive. In which case he gets very upset. My baby crush,( as Kevin calls it) has lead me to carrying one key around so he can't hear the clanking of many keys together, and not be able to play with them. He is too smart for the baby toys keys. He is 9 months old, and he brightens everyday with his smile and laughs.

Our family has little lessons once a week when we can remember to do it. We try to keep it short and pretty casual. This week Brooke would have nothing to do with a casual lesson. She insisted that I stand in front of the table while the rest of the family attentively sat on the couch to listen to me. I followed her request because I am glad she is into the lessons. We had our lesson about being an example. We read the scripture in Mathew 5:16 : " Let your light so shine, before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven. " Then we read a short story about two sisters. The older sister disobeyed her parents and lied about it. When the younger sister obeyed, and was honest with her Mother, it made the older sister want to be honest about what she had done. After the story, we played a game about naming if an action was right or wrong. After we finished the game, Brooke wanted to be the teacher and she was very serious about it. She stood behind the table, with all certainty that she had a lesson to teach us. And we did learn. It let us into her little mind about what she was sure about might be right or wrong, and a few things that she may think about, but is just not sure what to think about them. Here is a list of her questions:

What if you wanted to make your cat clean up your mess, instead of you cleaning it up?
What if you splattered cake batter on the floor?
What if you read a book about Jesus?
What if you didn't take off your shoes when you came in the house?
What if you saw a mermaid in the pool and it started talking to you, and then it got legs? ( She had a totally serious face in this question. It was hard for Kevin and I to keep a straight face. Kevin answered that the right thing to do, would be put it in the bathtub. )
What if you already know what the weather is going to be, but you keep watching the news all day? ( This came from our snow storms we had, and Kevin watched the weather all day, and I think I made her think it was bad, because I said to Kevin, " All you are doing it watching the weather."

One thing is for certain; we learned that Brooke knows that messes are bad. Maybe I need to lighten up on that, otherwise I may be emphasizing too much of something that really doesn't matter that much (in perspective of things that she will really need to recognize are wrong).
I love how Brooke loves to lead and teach. I think she is great at it, even as a five year old.

Texas hoe down

It was fourteen years ago that both Kevin and I came to Texas. Kevin came from Kansas City, Missouri and I came from Salt Lake City, Utah. Neither of us knew to what kind of an amazing place that we were moving too. It is true, that everything is bigger and better in Texas. Although, we'd like to claim we are Texans, we don't have the pleasure of doing so. Our children will, however. They will say they grew up in McKinney, Texas. Voted in the top 100 best places to live. CNN Money Magazine 2010. Voted number 5, out of those 100. We love living in such a family oriented place, with great shopping malls, die hard Christians and conservatives.

Brooke is learning already what it means to be a Texan. She got to dress up as a Cow Girl at the preschools Hoe Down. They had a little program singing about the pioneers that came to Texas. They ate Chili and cornbread, while they sang around their camp fire. We are trying to teach Brooke to have her Texas pride, but we always mention that Texas is the way it is, because of the way that people vote. We take her to vote with us, so she can see how it is done. We have talks about how women didn't have the chance to vote in the past, and how in other countries, even now, many people don't get to choose who will lead their country. Brooke is lucky that her Dad just works down the street from her preschool. Kevin got to run out of the office for a quick lunch, to watch her program about TEXAS.

Spring Break Festivities

Kevin started our spring break with a SILLY surprise! Daddy had come home from work to take Brooke on a special errand while Mommy and Will napped. Will had been sick and up all night. As soon as we woke up, Brooke ran into the room and said, " Daddy got you a surprise Mommy, and it's in the garage. " When I saw it I started picturing what uses this strange bike could have? I thought maybe someday we wont have a car and we could use it for grocery shopping? It shouldn't have been hard to figure out, since Kevin's most important request when we chose our new house was that it was close enough to the pool. I guess five houses away isn't close enough, because Kevin still doesn't want to walk! He bought this old Schwinn bike with a basket big enough that he can put me, Brooke and the baby in it at once. His plan is ride us down to the pool in it, all summer.

Believe it or not, we have got hours of fun out of this bike already! We had Angie, her Mother Lori, Dominic, Brittany, and Cameron stop in for an overnight stop on Sat and it just made our weekend awesome! Brooke and Brittany got rides around the block in our new bike. I don't know who was more tired of pulling them, Kevin or Dominic? Domonic as always, was the MVP with Brooke and Brittany following him everywhere. Meanwhile, the Ladies played with the babies in the house. Kevin rescued Dominic with some time on the go-peds and building a fire in the backyard for awhile, when finally the little princesses started getting tired. Another highlight of the weekend was when " Mama Lori " got Will to take a bottle and fall fast asleep in her arms! I was ecstatic to imagine all the new possibilities. In the morning we went to Story Book Ranch and rode some ponies ( Will loved to pet the ponies. He was laughing ), bounced on the bounce house and finished our visit with burgers from Mooyahs. But, actually that wasn't quiet the end. It ended with Brooke in tears that her sweet cousin Brittany had to go. On her own accord Brooke, even ran back to the van to tell Brittany that she loves her, for one more goodbye.

Ice skating

Six years ago when Brooke was just the size of a bean inside of me, Kevin and I had extensive conversations about what kind of parents we would be to this little girl that we would soon have. We even made bets about what color her eyes and hair would be, and the things she would like. We wrote all these things down in a book just for Brooke. One of the things Kevin said was that he thought that Brooke would like was ice skating, and that he wanted her to to take lessons. We both agreed that she would never do any sport as competitively as I did gymnastics, since dedicating that much time to one thing as a child was not our preference. After five years of parenting we now realize as a parent, you don't really get to choose the sport your children will like. Brooke and I did however make a trip to the mall for about an hour last week and she asked to watch the ice skating lessons that were taking place in the mall. Since Will was asleep in the stroller we watched for about 30 min. She was very impressed and was super excited when I told her that we could take her that weekend and teach her to ice skate. Kevin took her on the ice first. It was very fun to watch them and their huge smiles on their faces, stumbling around on the ice. Brooke did very well, and after some practice, she could actually skate backwards holding his hands. Kevin held Will after awhile, and Brooke did even better with me. Probably thinking that if she did fall, I wouldn't be as good as Daddy at catching her. It was a great time! The Nestle Toll House cookies couldn't be passed up either ;)

Melody's Birthday Party

Brooke has a whole herd of unicorns. She loves all and any stuffed, or plastic unicorns there ever were. However, there is one unicorn in particular that Brooke adores more than any of her other toys. She got Melody at Nordstroms on a shopping trip at the mall, as a gift from Grandma Pack last year after behaving nicely on a shopping trip. Last Tuesday was especially special because I picked Brooke up from school and she had a few things to tell me. First, she told me that one of her most favorite friends wouldn't let her play with her that day, and she was sad about it. This happens on occasion, and we have a little talk about it every time. I explain that I understand that this little girl makes her sad when she wont play with her, but that we can't always have everything, the way that we would like it all the time, in our lives, and that the most important thing that we need to learn when things like that happen, is to make the choice to be happy anyways. Then I explain what that means. I tell her to allow herself to feel sad for a min. but then think of all the happy things in her life like, how much Mommy and Daddy love her always and no matter what, and think about how she is so smart and fun, and how she has so many friends to play with, not just that one, and then after she thinks of it she needs to go play happy, with a smile on her face, because then others will want to play with her because she is having fun. The second thing she told me was, that it was Melody the unicorn's birthday today, and we were going to have to have a party for her that night. While I was getting dinner ready later that night, Brooke was preparing the party in her room. She was decorating it, making goody bags, and of course inviting every toy that she had to the party. After dinner she invited Daddy and I to her room for the party. The floor was covered with toys, you could hardly step into the room. I didn't even comment knowing how excited Brooke was. We made space on the floor to play with all the ponies, barbies, stuffed animals of every kind, and suddenly after singing happy birthday to Melody, the party had a villain that had come to wreck the party. But don't worry Melody had a magic crystal to protect everyone. Soon after, it was bedtime and there was a huge mess to clean up. While I had been putting Will to bed, Kevin explained to Brooke that she had to clean the whole mess up by herself. This mess was very overwhelming, and Brooke was tired. She was crying and whining . I begged Kevin privately to let me help her clean up and he said no. Brooke even got in timeout for a min. then went back to cleaning. I asked again for him to let me help, and he said it would ruin everything. Well, he was right because Brooke cleaned up the whole mess by herself, putting each toy in the appropriate bin. She even suddenly seemed super happy while cleaning up. When she was done, she ran to me and said, " Look how good of a job I did Mommy! " with a big smile on her face. I said, " What a good job Brooke, I am so proud of you! " She then said, " Mommy, I just made the choice to be happy and clean up, because you don't always get what you want. " I was so glad that Kevin didn't let me help her clean up!

Inventions

There is always a lot of creativity in our house. Our free time seems to be dedicated to projects lately. In fact, if you ask Brooke what she would like to be when she gets older, she will tell you three things: An inventor, an artist, or a Mom. Some of the things that Brooke has been talking about inventing is a "Tornado catcher". Her idea is that when someone sees the tornado they can use her machine, that is like a big vacuum and suck it up. She also wants to invent a " Dream Machine " , that will build anything that you want. When I ask what she would have it make she says, " A castle, a real unicorn, a playground, and a toothless toy dragon. " She talks about inventing a " Snack tent " Where people can buy them, and put them in the backyard. Her idea is that the tent will have a slot that will shoot out any snack that a person could want. This Wednesday we got to use our creativity at Brooke's school, for the day was declared " Wacky Wednesday " . Here are some pictures of our future inventor.

First word

So Will has been saying " Da, da " for a few weeks in the middle of his babbling. But last night when I said " Where is Daddy? " Then Kevin came over to us, and Will said " Da, da, " to him and then was complete silence. So we played this little game of every time Kevin would come over, " Where is Da, da, " and he continued to say " Da, da. " After this morning of doing it again, I would say we have officially reached another milestone with Will!