These Boys.

photo/illustration credit here

These boys of ours (Benjamin, 3 yrs.) and Grant (19 months) are absolutely hilarious. Yes, crazy at times too....but most of the time they're very funny. Here's a couple of what we like to call Benjamisms....

We're totally guilty of skipping over Thanksgiving and going straight to Christmas. I've still yet to pull out any of our fall décor (other than one Halloween figurine for our doorstep), but have already considered putting out things for Christmas. I say it's because of all of the fun songs and books that go along with Christmas. My children LOOOOOOVVEEE Christmas songs and books. Benjamin even has a few songs memorized....although he may not have all of the words exactly right.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

"He sees you when you're drinking.
He knows when you're awake....
He knows if you stay out too long,
so come in for goodness sake!"

bold: indicates Benjamin's version

So you all better be on your best behavior....Santa's really got his eye on you this year!


More and more we're catching our boys happily playing well together. I can't express how much I love walking into a room and seeing that. After what felt like a verrrrrry long time of monitoring them playing safely, breaking up fights (one of my favorite quotes that I often use is from the movie ICE AGE: "I don't care who started it, I'm ending it!"), and encouraging them to share, my husband and I dare say that we've recently reached a breakthrough! This my friends is now when the 20 months age difference really starts to work in ones' favor. ;) And while on this note, I must say that I'm quite thankful that our boys are learning all of these play-nicely lessons from each other. As tiring and monotonous as teaching the correct play behavior can be, I'd much rather catch and correct inappropriate behavior here at home than with it involving somebody else's child (not to say that those times will never happen too- but at least I can have the peace of mind that I did my best to teach them right, right from the get go).

Benjamin's also learning some older brother tricks...just the other day they wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so I layed out the stuff for me to make Grant's and put Benjamin's in front of him (this is one of many things that Benjamin likes to do ALL BY HIMSELF). Then Grant came up, took Benjamin's knife, and started spreading on the jelly just like he had been watching us do on Benjamin's bread. Surprisingly, Benjamin had no problem with this. He actually looked over and casually said to Grant: "Let me know when it's ready." Ha! Something tells me Grant won't put up with this for long though...

We still often hit the 4:00 blah around here. One day last week I went to YouTube and typed in French songs (random side note: I know very, very little French but can sing around 3 full songs in French...goes to show the power of mnemonic devices!). Turns out my children LOVED them! They sang and sang in French until my husband came home and it sounded so sweet. I'm fully convinced everything sounds lovelier in French....even whining. So, after talking to my mom and leaning that she still has her French teaching material for children (I'll be sure to post more details later!), I decided to start teaching (with the help from an official French speaker on a cassette tape) French to our children twice a week from 4:00-4:45. I also hope to book lessons with their Tante Jenna and Oncle Chris whenever possible ;) Au revior!