First day of Sunday School

Round about the early months of Tam's life, Brian and I settled on a place of worship to call home. We became Methodists. .

Now, Sunday mornings are a bit chaotic in our house.
Usually, Brian works a closing shift the night before, so he roles into bed around 1:00 am. If we want to get to church for the 8:30 service, we all need to be out the door by 8:05...From 7am to 8am, everyone needs to be up, pottied, washed, fed, dressed, including finding dress shoes which Tam seems to lose every week, and buckled into the car. This also leaves us time for Brian to warm up his voice to help lead the singing during worship. We hit the early service not only for the singing, but because I like the more intimate setting of only having about 30 other worshipers compared to the 100-150ish people at the second service. And, the second service is too late in the morning for Brian to get home and changed and back out to work by 12:30pm.

This past Sunday, we actually made it out of bed and to church on time. During the service, Tam, as usual plays in the nursery. Often he is the only kid there and is dotted on by the three ladies in charge of the rooms. I'm still hesitant to drop off Jude, so he stays with me until he falls asleep in my arms...which is about mid-sermon :-) Then, I enjoy the last half of the service sands wee ones. However, Tam is old enough for Sunday School and he is potty trained, which is the big point for the transfer out of the nursery. This meant that after service, he got to go to another classroom and be with the older children for the education hour. He's in the pre-k room with other 3,4, 5 year olds.

So, after the first hour, we collected our Tamlin and toted him upstairs to his new classroom. He got to met his new teachers and get a name-tag. Then he spotted the huge train set and fell in love. He barely listened to us when we reminded him to mind his teachers and to give us goodbye hugs. Then, Brian and I left to sit through the adult ed class offered, which was a little boring this week.

Afterwards, Brian retrieved Tam I picked up Jude. Jude apparently slept up until a few minutes before I showed up and was great. Tam was a good boy too, except he had some hang ups when told to stop the random play and start the structured lessons. However, the teachers assured us that he did a good job for his first time :-)

In the end, Tam did tell us that he had fun and played with trains. Then, we went home and had egg and bacon sandwiches :-)

He's growing up so fast!

Where did you learn that?!

Every so often Tamlin does something or says something that totally surprises Brian and me. When this occurs, we look at each other with the "Where the hell did he learn that?" expression on our faces. Here are a few of the latest incidents:

I open the car door and tell Tam to crawl on into his car seat. Tam scrambles on up, sits down, and exclaims "Yee-Haw!" - Where did that come from?

Tam's looking out the window in the front room. He turns around and says, "Check it out, mom, check it out!" - Again, where did this come from?

Tam sits down at the top of the stairs. "Slide down on bum-bum, mom" he cries out and then proceeds to slide down the stairs on his butt. - Where did he learn to do this?

Exploiting my son talents

I've come home from a long day at work where I was on my feet in lab for 12hours straight. I've made it home just in time to Jude down to sleep and to then spend some quiet time with Tam before his bedtime. We usually spend this quality time playing a board game or watching part of a movie.

This night, Tam asks to watch a movie (Cars, of course!). We watch the movie upstairs in the spare bedroom. As a side note, Tam calls this spare bed "Aunt Shelly's bed"; apparently he really remembers the last time she was out to visit :-) Anyways, Jude's sleeping, I put the movie in, and Tam and I lay down on the bed to veg out a bit.

Moments later I am thouroughly enjoying being off my feet. Tam then gets the bright idea that he wants to climb on mama. "Please mama, climb on you?" says Tam. Oh, um, I know Brian lets him do this when they are rough-housing, so I say ok if he remembers to be careful.

OH_MY_AWESOMENESS. Tam immediately climbs up on my backs and steps all over, conveniently hitting all of the sore spots. It is like having a little masseuse working for me.
Go ahead Tam and walk over my shoulders one more time, please! In the end, Tam thought I was an awesome mom for letting me climb around and I thought he was an awesome son because he helped my back feel better :-)

Afterwards, it was time for stories and bed for Tamlin.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday - Killing Time with Picnik.com

I discovered the website Picnik.com. This is a free program that allows you to edit uploaded photos. And not just boring editing like crops and tints...but fun manipulation of photos. I spent a great evening playing with some recent photos of the kiddos. Ooohhh...I could easily become addicted to this :-)

Faded photo - to look like a film photo from the 1960s

Adding Text to explain Jude's antics

How Tam will look when he gets older:

How Jude will look when he's older too:



Kaleidoscope effect with so many happy Judes!

Print Painting

I spent quality time with both kiddos this week...which could be done because they napped opposite each other that day :-) We painted outside and here's a photo blog of it:

Me: Hey, Tam, you wanna paint outside with your feet?
Tam: Wanna go outside, mama. And Paint.

We made cool footprint butterflies

Me: Tam, go and find a leaf or something to paint with.
Tam: Okay, mama
He comes back with leaves and flowers...in his monster truck :-)

Tam: Truck in paint?

Our paintings with handprints, feetprints, flower and leaf prints, and truck track prints

Tam: Yuck. Truck's all dirty
Me: Not to mention your hands, feet, neck, arms, etc.

I got out a bucket of soapy water for clean-up.

Tam : All clean!

Tam: Let's do it again!

Mom Sale Score

Headed out to the local Mom Sale a few days ago. This is the first time the sale is running on two days instead of just one mad-house Saturday. I won't be able to make to the sale tomorrow because of a field trip with my Ecology class, so I ran over there from noon to 2pm on Friday. The plus side was that there were fewer people (read crazy moms) there on Friday, but the down-side was that there were only about 200 sellers compared to the usual 300+ present on Saturday.

I was on a mission to find winter clothes in the 6-12 month range for Jude, 4T clothes for Tam (for next year), games for a preschooler (UNO, Matching/counting games, anything with a spinner), books, anything that catches my eye.

The summary of the score:
2 Hours walking around looking at stuff
35 Dollars spent
25 Pieces of clothing bought for both boys - heavy on the winter play-suits for Jude and 4T shirts for the future
3 books for Tam
2 pairs of shoes - boots and slippers
1 gigantic floor puzzle with trucks for Tam's birthday
1 Chutes and Ladders game