Bath with the boys and their new way to make a mess

Eli is two!!!

The nights that followed the big-boy-bed

We moved Eli out of his crib and into the big boy bed the beginning of Sept. He did pretty well. I think it only took three or four nights of having to go in and put him in his own bed. It was actually really fun to go in and see where he ended up. My favorite of course is when we found Eli in bed with Miles. When these two boys aren't fighting, they are best friends. I asked Miles not to long ago who his best friend was and he said Eli.

Eli's new big boy bed

Miles doing push-ups

Funny Things From Miles

As I said in my earlier post, Miles says some really funny and creative things. Here are a couple:

Yesterday in pre-school we talked about weather, mostly about wind. I bought the boys a little wind chime (They were 50 cents at Michael's, I couldn't pass them up). Miles started ringing his wind chime and said, "Mom, every time you are not paying attention to me, I am going to ring this wind chime and that will let you know you need to pay attention to me." Although this was initially funny coming out of his mouth, it's really not so funny because he is REALLY demanding. I guess I should be grateful that he can at least verbalize it with words instead of just screaming and doing bad things all the time. Oh wait, he does that too. (OK, maybe I should have passed up the wind chimes:)

Miles also like to change his clothes....a lot... 3 times a day or more. Laundry is killing me. I've really been trying to crack down on him when it comes to changing his clothes all the time. A couple days ago I went into his room after his quiet time and he had changed his clothes. He was wearing his Superman outfit and there were clothes all over the floor. "Miles, what have you done?" I asked. His reply, "Mom I'm playing Superman and I have to change my clothes because when Superman is in Chicago he wears one thing, and then when he's in Japan he has to change into something else. He can't wear the same thing in Chicago as he wears in Japan." How could I argue with that??

Miles

A while ago I did an update on Eli. Now I want to do an update on Miles.

Miles is my buddy. Other than the 45-50 mins he's in quiet time every day and the 3 hours every other week that he goes to "pre-school" ( a little mommy co-op I'm doing)....oh and two hours of primary on Sunday and an occasional 30 min walk after dinner he is by my side talk-talk-talkin'. I remember my brother said once he was so excited when his oldest son Jackson started to talk but the excitement wore off when he realized that now he won't stop talking. I'm not going to lie, sometimes it wears on me. But mostly it fascinates me, the things he says. He is so thoughtful about things, and creative. I'll have to jot them down on the blog on a regular basis so I can remember what he says and document it for when he gets older.

He is such a good big brother to Eli. Other than the occasional push, shove, hit, take his toy (which I'm sure is normal) he is so caring and concerned about it. Eli is usually a good eater but he is going through a phase right now where we practically have to force vegetables in his mouth etc. Well, the other night at dinner Eli was not eating and we said that he couldn't have ice cream if he didn't eat his dinner. Miles chimed in and said, "Please Eli, Please eat your dinner. Try your broccoli so you can have some ice cream." He really didn't want Eli to miss out on that yummy treat.

Every night we ask the boys what their favorite part of their day was. With Eli we usually just re cap all the things we did and then ask him, "Did you like that part?" Eli says, "Yes." Sometimes Eli will say more like, "play, or book store or Ferrari" (The boys saw one on an outing and Eli was so excited to tell me about it) and I'll say, "Oh, your favorite part of the day was going to the book store or seeing the Ferrari." and he'll say "Yes". With Miles it's a whole different story. This is my absolute favorite 5 min of the day because Miles is laying in his bed and I'm kneeling beside him and we're talking. I mean we're having a real conversation. He's telling me details about his day that I may have missed because I was busy cleaning or doing something else. He's telling me about how he felt when this or that happened. And he's really insightful. Sometimes it's not just the big things like going to the Everglades to look for alligators, or the beach, or the train museum. Sometimes like tonight, it was playing with Eli, and we did some fun things today. Sometimes he says, "My favorite part of the day was cuddling with you mom." Or, " My favorite part of the day was when dad came home and we went swimming, the whole family and we were all together." And then there are those days when we've had a REALLY rough time . I still kneel down by his bed and ask him what his favorite part was, to which he'll reply, "No favorite part." Believe me kid, I'm right there with you. But then I'll say to him that we should get a good night sleep and try to have a better day tomorrow and kiss him on his head. And no matter what he always says, "I sure love you and I'll sure miss you mom." and I say it back to him. It really is magic having that 5 min conversation with Miles.

Miles loves books. All kinds of books. We read superhero books, books from the library, moms books like "The Giving Tree" and "I wish I were a Butterfly." (books I don't want ripped) Oh, so many. Last night he and dad were taking turns reading. Miles would "read" a page in his book (really tell about the picture or tell the story from memory) and dad would read a couple paragraphs in one of his law books. John said Miles really listened while he read, and waited patiently for his turn to read again. And Every night we read the Book of Mormon. It's a big heavy family edition with lost of pictures. He'll pick a picture and we'll talk about it. Then I'll read a couple verses. I never know if he's listening or not, but the other day I said to Miles, "Let's read the Book of Mormon. And he said, "OK, and it came to pass." Which made me laugh a little because now I know he's listening.

I am so glad I have Miles for my buddy. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll take him just as he is. Besides, he has to take me just as I am and that's pretty imperfect.

I'm so grateful for my two wonderful boys.

Next I'll do an update about John, my oh so wonderful husband. Don't hold your breath, it may be a month or more.

Family home evening roasted marshmallow & hanging around

Swimming

Fishing with the boys

We pulled the plug.....

...on the internet in our home. So... I don't get much time on the internet anymore. There are things I really like about that and things I don't like about that. I like that I'm reading again. I'm currently reading two books at the same time, The Red Tent and The Elegance of the Hedgehog, along with the May conference edition of the Ensign. I only have the Sunday afternoon session left. What I don't like is not being able to check blogs or do updates on our blog. I am in John's office at his school right now and he took the boys to the book store. After checking my email, paying bills on line and checking blogs, I'm guessing I only have maybe ten minutes before John pulls up and honks. So we will have to do this update in "chunks". I'll start with Eli.

Eli: Eli is growing up so fast. He talks all the time and can copy most of what you say. He'll say the last word of every sentence when we're kneeling for prayer. We'll say....."Thank you for our family" and he'll say "family" etc. His favorite movie is "Ghost Lights" from Cars. Every morning he says, "Hello mama, watch Ghost Lights." Eli can count to three and recognizes some of his letters. He also knows some of his shapes....star, heart and triangle are the ones he knows best. He also loves to put his own shoes on and always gets them on the right feet. Sometimes he'll put them on the wrong feet then come to me and say, "Mama look, wrong feet."

He loves Miles and loves to play with him. The two run around the house and jump on each other until they're out of breath or they're both crying. At which point they take a breather and start right back up again. our house is becoming consistently more noisy the older Eli gets and the more he understands. Miles and Eli just "feed" off each other. When one starts screaming (or making any noise for the matter) the other one has to be even louder, and then the first one has to beat that etc. It drives me nuts most of the time but I guess it's pay back from when I was a really loud kid. I can still hear the words "No noise" or "Wendy, not so loud" coming from my father. One time I called him, and after apologizing for my loudness as a child I asked if I was this loud, referring to the noise in the background from Miles and Eli. He said, "No!"

John just honked. That's all for now. No time to re-read and spell check. Hope it all makes sense.

The bite, The orgin of "Miles did-it."

Ouch, this was Miles way of working out a fight with Eli :( When asked what happened Eli said for the first time "Miles did-it." This phrase has become a favorite of Eli and is used often.

A quick dip on the other side of Florida

We drove to Ft. Lauderdale one afternoon and it was hot! I guess that is no surprise. The boys were able to take off their shirts and go for a swim. Good thing dad had his water polo days of training. Doing the egg beater with two boys in the ocean was no small feat.

Our boys

One of Miles favorite things to do is listen to what dad has on i-tunes and watch our family pictures cycle through the computer.

The second photo is Miles doing his spontaneous version of a cool pose.

In the next two photos Eli found Miles old helmet and wanted it on and then found a box and sat down. I would guess he was pretending he was driving a fast race car.

The last two speak for themselves.


















Notice Lightning McQueen in Eli's hand. IT NEVER LEAVES IT! He swims with it, travels with it, takes it to the park, library, everywhere. He takes baths with it, reads books with it and at the end of each night it goes to bed with him. He's getting really good at doing things one handed.

A few more fishing photos

Lady fish









This is a small stingray without a stinger. Not sure why. Maybe its to young or its a different breed.

I'm not sure what this is in the last photo. I put it in a gallon zip lock bag to examine it. I stepped on it and it felt squishy. Its about the size and overall shape of a flat baseball. This is a view from the top those flaps fanned to slowly propel it in the water. As I touched it or moved it around it inked. Anyone have an ideas what it is?

Rhino boy

Our little Rhino

Creatures of Florida

Photo 1 & 2; last week we were coming home from a late night with the kids. we got home, piled out of the car. Miles said "but mom I don't have any shoes." You see Wendy always, I mean always, makes sure that the boys have shoes on when they go out side. Well this time on her on volition Wendy said "its OK just don't step on any cockroaches." You see there are lots of those around here. Well Miles missed all of the cockroaches that I'm sure were scurrying out of the way but he ended up stepping on this snake that I grabbed after some delicate wrestling on our garage floor.




3 & 4 are from my last late night shark fishing adventures. How it works is I walk up and down the beach in knee deep water with a head lamp on and spear any glowing eyes I see. The hope is to get some big fish and or stingrays for shark bait. This night I got a sting ray within the first 3o minutes and put that on the shark rig. I walked it out to waist deep water and chucked the ray with two big hooks and about a pound worth of weight in the ocean. I then go back to spearing, until 2ish. This night I tagged a Lady fish about 10 inches long that we ended up using for bait. Then I got a 4 inch white fish that I used for bait to catch the beautiful Snook that you see below. I understand that they are great eating. They also put on a BIG fight. Alas though, they are out of season so after the attempted great photo with my frozen camera due to the frozen chum sitting next to the camera on the way to the beach I let it go. The last thing I speared that night was this cat fish It was grunting as it forced air through its gills. They can breath out of water for some time I am told. As I was looking at it I noticed it had a mouth full of fish. On closer review, they were its babies. There is one that fell out and is on the top of the cooler you can see. I felt bad. I'm OK killing fish to eat or use for bait that other fish will eat but this poor momma fish was just trying to raise a family. I pulled her of the spear and let her go. Who knows if she was gobbled up by the next shark or big fish? I just know I felt a little better about trying to let her go back to her mommy life.

Here are a few last photos of our trip to ride the train. Thank you so much Grammy and Grandpa. The two boys loved it and Wendy and I had a blast.
From the top; Miles checking out the tracks before the train came, A quick stop before we turned around to go back to the old logging town, Miles on the way to ride the train.

Before the big ride

Miles, Grandpa, and Dad went exploring while we all waited for the train. We found the remnants of an old logging mill. It was so cool for Dad to figure out how they would bring the logs in from the train and process them in the old steam run machines. There we cut logs, belts, blades, gears, chains, and small trolleys it was so cool!