The Palmer Rambler: Time is flying

This month was an absolute whirlwind. Lots going on keeping up with the boys, some fun news about our baby, Easter, and some unexpected events as well. So, here I am writing this a month late again...

Drew has kept us busy with Blastball practice and games this month. They are all usually during the week vs. the weekends which makes for some more than normal hectic evenings (and lots of eating out), but keeps the weekends open for other things, so that's nice at least. He is mostly enjoying it, though it's hard to keep his attention during all the down time. But I'm glad he's had this chance to learn some of the basics of the game and try something different. The season will be over mid-May.

This is the result of 'quiet time'...quite the mess!

Mommy was able to join Drew on his Safari Adventure at the nearby Putt-Putt with his class at the beginning of the month, and that was sure fun! It was funny to see the class interact and play and see all of their personalities! Some of the kids have been together for several years, so it's neat to see how they've grown. Hard to believe they'll all be splitting up after this year.

Drew is now wearing 5T or some 4-5 boys sized clothes, and size 12 shoes! He's working on letters and sounds more and more, though sometimes he just guesses instead of thinking about it...we are hoping to use the summer to work on that quite a bit with him.

Easter party at school

We also had some fun trips to the zoo this month - taking advantage of our zoo membership before it expires and before the weather just gets too blazing hot! There's a Gigantabugs 'event' going on right now that we all enjoyed. There are very large mechanical bugs spread out all over the zoo to spot, some that move, make noise, one even squirts water! So that has been a fun and different thing to enjoy. We even got to go with Daddy once this month - a very rare chance that we were home on Daddy's Friday off, so we took advantage of that! They boys had fun showing him around the zoo! And another time Grandma was there with her class, but she was able to spend the day with us - a true treat!

We had a fun visit from Uncle Kevin, Grandpa and Nana at the beginning of the month - it was a short visit, but good times were had by all. The boys keep asking when they are going to come back!

The boys keep taking advantage of any 'almost warm enough' days to get in the pool. still too cold for Mommy, but the 3 boys have been in several times. Drew loves playing with all the water toys we have and Noah is getting more and more comfortable/dare-devilish with jumping in, so we have to keep a close eye on him! He just can't help but want to jump off the diving board. And even when it's too cold, he'll get back in, with purple lips quivering, just not able to get enough!

Toys and games that keep the boys entertained these days: super heroes! Hot Wheels, castle toys, trains, legos, random games from our game closet and general going back and forth boy/brother play! It feels like we play "I Spy" every time we are in the car and at the dinner table...it's getting a little old for us, but the boys love it!

Bedtime continues to be an adventure - some nights they quiet down pretty quickly, other nights they talk for an hour at least, and other nights are just wild and we are intervening a ton and they are jumping from one bed to the other, turning the lights on, playing with flashlights...you get the picture.

We ended the month with a week of the worst stomach bug ever! Noah started showing signs the last Saturday of the month, and didn't fully recover and able to return to school until a full 8 days later - the next Monday. Which was right about the time Mommy and Daddy started feeling sick as well! I have never done so much laundry in one week without getting any clothes washed...one night Mommy and the boys slept out in the living room because I was so concerned about them and we had about 3.5-4 days of literally just lying around the house, watching back to back movies...they were absolutely pitiful! They had NO energy, no desire to DO anything. Poor Noah wanted to eat, but couldn't keep ANYTHING in his tummy for days...but he just kept asking for pizza! Poor thing! Drew handled most of it well, but had some fits about some of the symptoms that were a bit unfamiliar to him...I won't go into the details, but it was surprising what bothered him! Drew was VERY cautious about his eating - we really had to talk him into continuing to try and drink and eat a few things - he did NOT like what happened, so he didn't want to ingest anything that would make it happen again...understandable, but the amount of anxiety was also surprising! So we got them healthy after a week and then we got it! Ugh! Matthew recovered pretty quickly and was able to try normal foods pretty soon, but I couldn't tolerate more than chicken broth and bland mashed potatoes for several days and just felt awful. I tried to go back to work, but ended up leaving early one day, had to cancel more days (had already cancelled so many when the boys were sick) and couldn't eat hardly anything for several days. Man, it was a MESS! I felt like we needed to be in quarantine for weeks - I just didn't want to share that horrible virus with anyone - NO ONE deserves that! Drew still is anxious about it happening again and will every now and then work himself up into a tizzy that his belly is sick and will refuse to eat...sigh!

Started with beanbags as sufficient

Then went to full floor mode with nap mats

Just pitiful...:(

Took too much energy to sit and eat...:(

Now to Noah...what a trip he is! A few random things that come up a lot with Noah these days...his favorite number is 5, so he always asks for 5 of anything - food, toys, whatever. He has started going up and down the stairs by himself/with Drew in the mornings or to get toys and so far, no accidents! He figured out how to climb UP slides and does it pretty well as long as he has shoes on and it's not too big/steep. And when we are out in public particularly, he asks lots of questions about people: "that a boy/gwirl?"..."who that boy?", etc., things along those lines. My response is either to answer the gender and then say I don't know who they are, but you can ask them, so we are working on introductions: "what you name?" - pretty cute stuff!

Some Major Bed-Head!

Drew's baseball games are at a large park that has a huge playground, so anytime we talk about baseball, Noah talks about "I go to my park!" One parent is on the field with Drew and the other is on the playground with Noah - he will not sit and watch the game, so we take turns and the boys are happy! We've certainly enjoyed being outside more and more and it's been warm enough to enjoy not only the pool every now and then, but also the "sprinkles" - what Noah calls the sprinklers. He LOVES running through the sprinklers and just gets absolutely soaked! It is hilarious! Drew loves it too, but there's something about Noah's approach to the whole thing...he just cracks us up!

Oh, Noah can be quite content at times playing by himself...when he's in the right mood/mind for it, he can play with puzzles, trains, or books for seemingly forever and we won't hear a peep from him! He's getting really good at puzzles, which we love! He has started to build his own train track (yay!) and can really get into books when he's in the right mind for it. It's so funny to see this side of him, knowing he's such a wild and crazy boy...he's really quite the little instigator and never seems to stop moving, but every now and then...so funny how God created these boys!

A funny Noah and Daddy story...he can be a bit picky at meal times sometimes, but still overall a pretty average eater. Well, one night, you didn't want to eat your rice. So Daddy told you "No Noah, don't eat your rice, it will give you super powers....no, don't eat it!" Well, I've never seen Noah open his mouth so big for a bite of anything! It was hilarious! So then he wanted Daddy to keep doing it, so Daddy had to say "No, no, no, don't eat it" or some version of that for Noah to take another bite! It was quite amusing and still comes up every now and then at dinner, usually prompted by Noah to get us to play the game!