March
2007
The Boys
Playing Games
A few weeks ago Drew would say “Ahm” (his word for Amen) at the end of our prayers before dinner. He doesn’t do it anymore, but now he and Brandon hold hands. We never encouraged this, but Mike and I hold hands, so I guess they decided they should too! This led to a bright idea…I was looking for something to do with them the other day, so since they’ve been holding hands I decided to see if they would play “Ring Around the Rosy…” And they did it great! We all held hands and at the end fell to the floor. Drew kept asking to play more and more. After awhile I had them play by themselves while I sang the song for them. They kept it up and were having lots of fun! It’s always a good day when I find something new to do that doesn’t lead to fighting over something! 
The boys have been learning the game “duck duck goose.” Only their version goes something like this…Drew walks around tapping (read: hitting) everyone on the head saying duck, duck, duck… In the mean time, Bran is tapping his own head saying duck, duck, duck. And then Drew yells Duck! and runs away, Brandon follows after and we have to chase them both. When it’s our turn, when we get to goose, instead of chasing us, they both run away so we can chase them again!
It’s apparent, though, that I spend too much time on my knees, playing, and mostly cleaning up, because our rousing games of “Ring around the Rosy” ripped the knee right out of my jeans. I’m terribly annoyed because I only have two pair of jeans and I spent extra money on these ones because I was hoping they would last longer. 
Words
My friend Theresa was writing about her girls learning to read and asking lots of questions about how you pronounce words and what they mean. We’ve recently hit the stage of “what’s this?” I actually don’t mind it and enjoy helping them learn. (It’s a whole lot better than yelling at them for getting into trouble, again). But I’ve discovered that my vocabulary has dwindled over the past two years and I forget what some of the words are for the things they are asking. And it’s stupid things like a traffic light verses a street light, or what’s that thing that water comes out of in the bath tub, oh yeah, a faucet. When was the last time I had to use the word faucet! The worst thing is trying to remember what I called that thing earlier in the day so I say the same thing again!
Drew says “bless you” when he sneezes!
Bran has started saying “mine” when he’s playing with his toys.
Getting In Trouble
I’ve been starting to introduce a few things back into the living room at their height. The most recent was a vase of flowers. The first time they did great. The second time they seemed to be doing good so I went on with my vacuuming. When I turned around I saw them splashing in water on the end table. The table was covered in water as was the floor. The vase, which was completely empty of water, and the flowers were exactly where I had left them…I really wish I could have seen what had happened and the looks on their faces as they tried to put everything back.
Yesterday, Bran tackled Drew and stole a pretzel out of his mouth.
The Zoo
We took the boys to the zoo yesterday and they really enjoyed it. We took the stroller, but they walked most of it. They were so excited to finally see a real elephant (their favorite animal). We also got a good close up of a tiger which was both awesome and frightening even to Mike and I (the fear was mostly caused by the fact that the tiger liked to swipe the glass with his paws!). They even hooted with the owls. The funniest part of the day was the little indoor petting zoo they had set up (it is still cold here). They had rabbits, a ferret, a rat, some chickens, a tiny armadillo that was super cool and super fast, and some baby chickens in a cage. They boys squeeled with delight chasing the armadillo and Drew thought it was really fun to put his fingers in the chick cage and get a little peck from them!
