Loose Tooth

It's loose! It's loose! My tooth is loose! Jens discovered his loose tooth on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We were very excited about it (picture me doing a lot of shrieking while he laughed and we even called Dad at work), and has been complaining about it ever since. I finally told him I couldn't do anything to help because I'm not a wizard. The next day he was complaining and I said "Honey, I'm sorry, but . . ." "I know, I know," he cut in, "you aren't a wizard.

Wiggling it

Grouchy about my picture taking

But he can't stay mad long!

Some Art

Jens has been keeping us well decorated for all the holidays. He took this one to his friend Cassie for her birthday, but I loved the little animals and all the details.

This was his draft for painting the window, which we never got around to doing. At first glance it is a cute turkey with a cornucopia, but on closer examination he is being shot by several arrows and guns. I told Jens I didn't really want a turkey being killed in our front window. He was very understanding.

And, we are ready for the next holiday already.

November 26th

Well, we have enjoyed a whole week of vacation, except for Mike, who has been working like crazy. We had a very pleasant time of it, although we have gotten on to a late schedule, which is going to make back-to-school on Monday difficult. I think Jens woke us up at 8:30 this morning.

A little rundown of our week:

Monday I did our Thanksgiving grocery shopping solo at 7:45. It was great--the store was empty, and although I had a lot of shopping to do, I was fast by myself. I took the kids on a bike ride/run/stroller ride and we stopped at the park to play. Mike came home and I went to a funeral, which was very nice, then rushed home to grab Jens and take him to his 6 year check up. He is sticking at the 50% for height and weight and is well in all ways. He and I stopped for frozen yogurt on the way home, just the two of us, which was fun. He is a cute little guy. He is currently getting us all decked out for Christmas. We are going to have a lot of pictures of candy canes and snowmen this year, it seems. Here he is, self posed, with a bug house he and his friend, Colby, made. The sign reads "Bugz Olny"

Jens also took this picture of me and Sylvie, at his insistance.

Tuesday I went out for lunch with some friends. I even got a babysitter and got to browse the Sutter Street shops afterwords--definitely not an activity to be done with children! Wednesday we had our piano tuned and received some bad news about it--it has a crack in one of the boards underneath, which means the pegs in one octave are shifting more than others. Boo. It is a $350 fix, which we aren't going to do since I bought the piano for $200. Oh well. Hopefully it won't fall out of tune too fast.

Thursday was rainy all day! I had been hoping to get out and do something active with the kids in the morning, but it wasn't to be. So we lazed around and did some cooking. When Sylvie went down for a nap, Jens and I snuck out for a bike ride/run in the mist. It was actually very peaceful and beautiful. We went to our friends, the Littles' for dinner and that is where we spent the rest of our evening, eating way too much and staying a little too late. It was very enjoyable, and I have been loving the leftovers, although I really need to resume regular eating soon.

Friday I didn't leave the house. We didn't get out of bed until after 10 (well, Jens did, and was working on Lexia on the computer) and some of us never changed out of our jammies. We cleaned and decorated and cleaned some more. We are feeling very festive, although we don't have our real tree yet. Hopefully this week sometime. Our fake tree is in the front window looking very sparkly and fake. Today I HAVE been out--Farmer's Market (the satsuma mandrins are on--yum!) and the gym. We are going to take the kids to the Muppet Movie this afternoon (I hope).

Sylvie has been building "forts" for her animals in her bed. It is serious business.

Other funny things: She likes "Munstered" on her sandwiches and loves our "snowflick" decorations. Yesterday during a Nerf war with her dad and brother she ran around yelling "Weiner weiner weiner!" instead of the more classic "Neiner."

I am Thankful for . . .

Kids who get along (sometimes).

(Sylvie shredded 5 pages of this book later that day. I taped it all back together--it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. But she swears she will never do that again.)

And who are healthy and strong

Plus a lot of other things--home, family, friends, church, job, beautiful leaves this fall, and the list goes on. Happy Thanksgiving. Can I start listening to Christmas music now?

November 9th

At the park.

Photo Dump

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been super faithful with daily blogging lately. So I am going to put up all the pictures I currently have and next week maybe I'll take some new ones to share. The weekend before last we were lucky enough to have Grammy come from Florida to visit. We fit her right into our regular routine, so she got to go to the Farmer's Market, Jens's soccer game, grocery shopping, story time at the library, daily walks/runs, etc. We all enjoyed having her around, and I think she enjoyed being here, too.

The weather turned cool just as Grammy got here, so Jens's game was a little chilly, but he got some good kicks in. His last game was this past Saturday, so we are done with soccer for the season. Jens seemed to enjoy it this year and definitely improved, although his game to game performance was pretty unpredictable. Some weeks he was totally into it, some weeks he wasn't. He is on a nice team with nice kids, though, and they all really enjoyed the end-of-season party.

We had to break out some warm weather gear for our walks. Sylvie adopted the ear warmers as a new fashion statement. She is a crack up these days--she is trying very hard to learn to dress herself, which means she practices every night when she goes to bed and every morning when she wakes up. Many nights I have to pull her arm out of the neck hole and put it where it belongs. This morning she had both legs in one leg hole. "I'm like Ariel!" she announced when I went in. I didn't think she could be more in to dressing up than she was, but she is.

This kid has been extra charming lately. He has been helpful and (mostly) kind, eager to do his homework and read. His reading has improved so drastically in the last month it is sort of hard to believe. He seems to be following in my footsteps--many nights we'll go up to find his light turned back on so he can read to himself in bed. He usually falls asleep with a book or two under the covers. He feels so big, especially when he can read to Sylvie, and he is realizing that he can read most of our kid books, not just the I Can Read books. I just went to Parent/Teacher Conference, which was delightful. He is at the top of his class academically, great at Math and Reading. As far as behavior goes, his teacher used the word "squirrelly" which I will leave up to your interpretation. We have been trying to get out for ride bikes and play at the park every afternoon, which seems to really help him harness his energy, which is plentiful. Tonight I suggested we have a pizza movie night tomorrow. His response: "Let's have something healthier, Mom." "Like what?" "That vegetable soup I like, and pears, and bread." How can I argue with that?

My other Jens funny has to do with painting our windows--we decorated the front window for Halloween, and he wants to decorate it for Thanksgiving, too. So he drew a mock up. It was a very cute, happy looking turkey with a beautiful tail. Being shot by arrows and bullets (because the Indians had guns, Mom). I told him I loved the turkey, but didn't really want a picture of a turkey being killed on our window. He agreeably headed back to the drawing board, but we haven't managed to get the actual painting done.

I have been pretty faithful about taking Sylvie to story time lately. She could listen to stories for hours. Sometimes before her nap we read 4 or 5.

After Mom's conference in SF I went to pick her up. We went to the De Young Art Museum, which I am still thinking about. I wish we'd had a little more time to look around. Then we ate dinner and drove home. She left on Monday, and we miss having her around!

My Big Girl

Sylvie is getting so big--it makes me very sad! I carried her up to her nap yesterday, cradling her and telling her "You're my little girl!" "No," she said, "I'm big."

Sigh.

Here she is at the zoo. She liked the bears this time!

Happy Halloween!

At last, the long awaited day arrived. Have I mentioned that Jens has been "decorating" for Halloween since early September? Both kids were very excited to dress up, but Sylvie was very afraid of the idea of Jens in his costume. In fact, she woke up from her nap crying that she didn't want to trick or treat or see Jens in his monster make-up. So to distract her, we dressed her up first. She wanted to be a princess this year and chose to wear her Barbie princess dress instead of her Rapunzel dress. It was fun to fancy her up and curl her hair. We used glitter and make up. In fact, she still has glitter on her head--it doesn't seem to want to wash out. This is a picture of her telling me that she doesn't want Jens to wear his monster make-up.

The other one is in full regalia. She used a little purse as her trick or treat bag, which prevented people from giving her too much candy. This one is also after she tried to eat a Snickers bar--peanuts and milk chocolate, a double whammy. You can see the lovely rash around her mouth.

To overcome the fear of Jens, she sat on my lap while I applied his make-up. We started with a few little spots on his face, which she though made him look funny. I also threatened him with bedtime if he tried to scare her, so he was cute and friendly the whole time. After each little step of putting on his make up I would stop and ask her if Jens looked scary. She would laugh and say, "No, he is just our brother Jensie!"

We went to visit our friend Wendie, so she was our first "trick or treat." The kids always love seeing her. Then the Littles had us for dinner and the kids went out together. They looked pretty great.

Trick or treating was fun, especially once Audrey and Sylvie figured out what it was. They were so excited about getting candy in their bags they would run from each house screaming in excitement about going to the next house. There were a few houses that were to scary for Sylv and she wouldn't approach them, and she did cry at a few houses where they gave her chocolate ("I can't eat chocolate!" she would wail). But over all a very fun time was had.

Afterwords they had to examine their haul. Sylvie would hide behind the couch every time trick-or-treaters would come to our door because she didn't want to be scared of their costumes. We had to work really hard to get her to put candy into the bag of a cowgirl (pink, sparkly hat and boots=awesome!).

The candy is long gone--I let Jens pig out to his heart's content and also bought some back (10 cents a piece) and also syphoned some of to sneak to work with Mike. They are already talking about next year.

Carving Pumpkins

It has come to my attention that I am totally slacking off. So without further ado, our pumpkin carving. We carved pumpkins on the 30th, without the Nielsens this year! We missed them. Much to Mike's joy, though, Jens scooped out, designed, and cut out his own pumpkin with no help. (Okay, a little help from me).

So Mike did not have to touch the pumpkins at all and instead just took pictures of the event.

Sylvie was not particularly helpful. She did not want to touch the pumpkins, but she did pick the pattern out and cheer me on while I cut it out. Luckily she picked a really easy one that only took me a couple minutes.

I especially like the vampire teeth on Jens's pumpkin.

Halloween Preparations

I am running a little behind around here. We had a lot of fun getting ready for Halloween. Jens in particular is a little spook-master. He loves writing about and drawing about Halloween. Inspired by Aunt Jessie, we did a fun little candle holder craft. The kids enjoyed it and it looked very cute lit up.

Jens wanted to be something scary this year--sad! I have enjoyed dressing him up as a little lion, chicken, monkey, and Batman. This year he wanted to be a zombie. He walked around moaning "Brains!" He drew a picture of how he wanted his costume to look which featured a bloody eye. Gross.

He was very pleased with his appearance. This was our test drive--Mike took him to the All Goblins Festival at school, where he got to hold a snake, play carnival games, see a magician, go through a haunted house, and get a head start on candy collection/consumption.

Sylvie was sleeping when he left, which means she missed his transformation. Right before they got home I realized she hadn't seen his "Monster Make-up" and tried to prepare her. She dissolved into hysterical tears, sobbing into my shoulder. She wanted to go get in her bed so she wouldn't have to see Jensie and be scared of him. As soon as Mike got home I shouted to him that Jens needed to hit the showers right away, so Sylvie hid her face on my shoulder while he hustled upstairs and got washed off. In an attempt to make monster make-up seem less scary, I gave Sylvie a little face paint.

It did not solve the problem, though, and she was very fearful of when Jens would dress up again!

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

We were so happy to have Grandma and Grandpa Helquist come to spend the weekend with us. We managed to have a lot of fun in one little weekend! On Saturday we spent a few hours (along with a thousand other people) at Apple Hill. We ate lunch at Boa Vista

The kids rode horses and picked pumpkins.

Sylvie loved feeding these little goats.

Jens liked helping Grandma with her knitting. She taught him to finger knit and he even tried out her needles, with hands on supervision. He was very confident in his abilities to pick it up no problem because Grandma makes it look so easy!

Of course we managed to squeeze in some story time.

On Sunday while everyone was napping, Jens and I painted the front window for Halloween. It looks very festive!

Thanks for coming, Grandma and Grandpa!