Ah, Deaconland

It really must be a magical place since Deacon tends to spend a good part of every day there. I'm sure I've said it before, but this kid really does have quite the imagination. Whether he's in a room full of robots, fighting for his life or reenacting scenes from his favorite movies (I'm trying really hard to capture his maniacle laugh for you because it is fantastic), this kid is all over the place.

So often I watch him as he sits there daydreaming, and I wonder what goes on in his head. It makes me excited for when he starts school, to see the things he'll come up with for writing assignments and art projects. You know, assuming he ever potty trains so he can go to school (I am seriously running out of ideas on how to motivate this kid to want to use the toilet).

Happily, Deaconland doesn't just stay in his head, I guess you could say. Deacon loves to chat with his toys and act out what he's dreaming about, so sometimes I can get a good glimpse into the wonderful world of Deacon's imagination. Sometimes. Sometimes I'm at a loss to figure out what a safari hat and a dump truck have to do with each other. But he plays so nicely on his own, lost in his own little land.

One of Deacon's current favorite movies is "Snow and the Seven Dwarfs". This is fun because you just never know when he'll break out with his own version of "One Song", or when he'll ask me to sing the wishing well song with him (I sing as Snow White, he sings as her echo - it's a good time), or when he'll bust out something like this (my apologies for the sound being all over the place, he was singing loud then soft and I filmed it with my phone):

And in case you're still wondering, yes, he does still put random things on his head.

I seriously love this kid.

Eight

That's how many months old Finn is now. Eight. Eight months. Some days I still can't believe he's that "old" already. He's so stinkin' cute and so very, very sweet. Finn is my happy baby. Not that he never cries, but it's just not a frequent thing. Smiling is a frequent thing. So is crawling now. Every day he gets better at it, which means every day he gets faster. Now I put him down in the middle of the living room and find him 30 seconds later in places like this:

Or this:

This one is his favorite since we made a game of it. Now he crawls over there and I'll pull him away and roll around with him on the floor, tickling him. Once I let him go, he crawls back over, laughing the whole way, waiting for me to grab him again. If I don't grab him, he still likes to go over there because there are things he can grab and pull off the bottom shelf. So really, it's win-win for Finn.

Finn also loves to be tossed about and thrown around. He loves, loves, LOVES bathtime with his older brothers. He is so happy to just sit there in the water splashing and chewing on bath toys. He also likes to eat. Which you could probably guess pretty easily just looking at him, the little chunk. He gets excited when he sees his daddy, and likes to snuggle with his mommy (every once in a while anyway). He watches his older brothers with fascination and anticipation for the day he can join them. He has the best little laugh, and the most wonderful smile.

I think we'll keep him.

Gah! How Did This Happen?!

My baby, my boy, my oldest son turned 5 years old yesterday. FIVE!! I mentioned in Saturday's post how Zeke was excited to take down the Christmas stuff so we could focus on his birthday. And I have to say, I think it was a pretty good birthday.

Sunday night, while he was sleeping, I made and hung this banner for him, so it would be up, "decorating the house" when he woke up in the morning. He was thrilled, and spent a good 5 minutes just looking at it, naming all of the letters over and over. Okay, maybe it was more like 2 minutes because he needed to get ready for school.

That's right, not only was it Zeke's birthday yesterday, but it was also his first day back to school, truly making it an awesome day. I brought some cupcakes that I made to his school, a few minutes before his class was over. Since I had a bunch of cupcakes, we invited the other preschool class there to join Zeke's class for the special snack. (Every Monday they open the wall between the 2 classrooms and do big group activities, so they were all together and cleaning up anyway when I got there.)

Now, these cupcakes were somewhat special. See, there's this sweet girl in Zeke's class who has all sorts of physical delays and speech delays, and what's it, and my heart just melts whenever I see her because she is the happiest, sweetest girl in spite of it all. Whenever the bus brings Zeke home, this girl and I say hi to each other through the bus window a good 4-6 times. But to top everything off, the girl has food allergies and diet restrictions, so she hardly ever gets to have the same snacks as the other kids - especially at "parties" and things (like the kids will be eating cupcakes and she'll be eating veggie curls or something). So I asked what her allergies were so I could make something for the class that she could have too. Therefore, the cupcakes I made for Zeke's class were gluten free and dairy free. They were a little extra work (and a little extra money), but it was so worth it when this girl, with cupcake all over her face and hands, yelled, "I LOVE CUPCAKES!!" The other kids seemed to love them too, and couldn't even tell the difference.

After school it was lunch and naps (and some "Happy Birthday" phone calls from grandparents and aunts). While the birthday boy was napping I was whipping up some more cupcakes (regular ones this time). He originally wanted a Spider-man cake. But then he saw the chocolate frosting with the sprinkles in the lid at the store and changed his mind to that, on cupcakes. So I thought I could use the sprinkles on some and then draw Spidey's face on some, so he could have both (since the amount of sprinles they give you is no where near enough for 2 dozen cupcakes). That didn't really work out so well since cupcakes are a really small space to draw on, so I did half with sprinkles, then drew a spider on some of them, bats on others (yes, those black blobs are bats), and wrote his name on others since I was running out of time.

Daddy came home from work early, we had some dinner. Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, as the birthday boy requested, despite my trying to change his mind to something else. Then Zeke blew out the candles on his cupcakes, ate the yummy cupcakes, opened his presents, and watched "Toy Story 3" (it was one of his presents from us).

When it was all over, off to bed one tired, but very happy 5-year-old. Happy birthday sweet boy. I pray that 5 will be a wonderful age for you, that this will be a great year for you. We love you Ezekiel.

Happy New Year!

What an end to 2010. After the boys got up from their rest time, Josh took them outside to play in the snow. Whenever it snowed here, Josh would shovel all of the snow off of the back deck and into one giant pile in the yard. The other day when Josh and Zeke were out there, they dug a little slide into the giant pile of snow:

Yesterday though, yesterday the snow was nice and maleable so Josh helped them make this:

Which makes me think of this:

Josh said it was Zeke's idea to make the snowman with 2 heads. He claims he said he would make a head and the Zeke said he would make a head and so they wound up with 2 heads, which is what Zeke wanted. Hmm. Anyhoo, shortly after finishing the snowman they had to come in since it has started raining. Yes, it got warm enough here to rain yesterday. Of course, it all froze and turned into ice by the end of the day, but it was nice to have some warmer weather, and a little color in the sky.

The rest of the day went normally. After we put the boys in bed we decided to play World of Warcraft while we waited to ring in the new year (yeah, we are super exciting people). Around 9:00pm or so people in our neighborhood started setting off fireworks. We thought it would be cool for the boys to see so we went downstairs, woke them up (because of course last night was the only night in weeks that they both fell asleep right away instead of staying up playing until 9 or so), and carried them upstairs to see some of the fireworks.

Zeke and Deacon were super excited (once they woke up and realized what was going on). At one point, another house started setting off some and even though we couldn't see most of them we could hear them. Deacon looked up at Josh and said, "Do you hear that? It sounds like fireworks!" Eventually Zeke decided he had had enough and wanted to go back to bed, so we put them both back downstairs and sat back down at our computers. Midnight came, midnight went, and so we did we, off to bed.

Today we took down and put away all of our Christmas. Josh suggested it, and Zeke jumped on the chance to put Christmas away so we can turn our focus to what comes next - his birthday on Monday. Oh yes, this year he definitely understands what's going on. Five really is going to be a fun age.