Our Great Big Turkey

Check out this Thanksgiving turkey's hairdo!

Family Portraits

About this time of year I always like to have a our family portrait done so I can share it with our family and friends on our Christmas card. (I like to think someday the boys will enjoy looking back at them.) I'm lucky enough to have a photographer friend who comes to our home. This has always been super helpful in the past when the boys were younger. This year was supposed to be super easy since the boys were older and more willing to cooperate. The big problem this year was me. Brian and I went out for dinner with some friends of ours the night before. Big mistake – I was more hung over than I have been in years – probably pre-kids. Learned my lesson.

Here are a few that didn't make the Christmas card cut.

Ben's New Education Plan

As I mentioned a few weeks a ago, we had parent conferences with Ben's teacher from Montessori as well as his Speech Pathologist. Since then I've been making phone calls and basically pushing to get him more support for his speech. We're pretty excited about how things have worked out. Ben will now be back at the Early Childhood Center for a Language Plus class on Mondays and Wednesday. (Early Childhood is where he took his Phonological classes last year.) The great thing about this class is it will be more than doubling his time with a speech pathologist. Incidentally, this class was just formed back in October so it wasn't even available for Ben when we set up his plan back in May. But thankfully the school responded to other parents who were in a similar situation and they created this class. Because of this change in Ben's speech class, we've decided to remove Ben from the Montessori. Ultimately it's just way too expensive for a three day a week program. We're looking into some other options for two days a week for both Ben and Neil starting in January. I'll let you know what we decide on.

Neil is 3!

Neil's birthday was fun for all. The boys have been having a great time playing with all the new toys. And I'm quite pleased with how well they are both sharing. Truth be told Neil was typical Neil and was willing to skip the whole thing if he was going to have to eat dinner, despite our attempt to lob him a softball with grilled cheese sandwiches. Brian gave in and let him have his cupcake anyway. So much for that. He only took one lick of frosting and said he was done. If I could have put a candle in the gallon size box of Goldfish I'm sure it would have been a different story. Oh, and Ben is starting to sing Sto Lat.

Trick or Treat

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Grandma came out for a visit too. We took the boys to the dollar show to see Toy Story 3 in the afternoon. Movie was good, boys were good, theater was virtually empty. Then that evening the boys wore their costumes. Ben was a police officer, the costume grandma got him for his birthday. Neil decided to be a superhero. Neil has been changing his mind on a daily basis about what to wear so we let him pick from our dress-up box and finally he decided on Spiderman, but only after saying no to everything once. Brian took both the boys for a few blocks. Came back for warmer coats and then took Ben back out again for another block. The amount of candy we now have is about a plastic grocery bag full. Way more than two little boys need. But I'm doing my best to ensure no peanut candy is consumed by the boys. It's a rough job but I'll take it. Brian got the most comments on his costume, which was his Beer Delivery Guy shirt and of course a beer.

Slumber Party

Ben saw on a recent episode of Wow Wow Wubbzy that they had a slumber party and said he wanted to have one. (By they way, the boys now say "I want that," to almost everything on the television now. Ben does admonish Neil if he asks for something that is for girls.) So we set up the sleeping bags and pillows in the living room put on our jammies and snuggled in for a family slumber party while watching Ratatouille and eating popcorn. It was a fun night and we hope to repeat it next Friday.