At The Library

Ollie loves books, so he likes to stand up by the little carts that house the board books and pull them out and throw them on the ground. I'm pretty sure he prefers throwing books to actually looking at them.

Jonah always insists on collecting leaves outside while I get Oliver out of the car. He says they are for his leaf collection and he dutifully puts them right next to the front door of the library near the recycle bin in the entryway room for safekeeping until we leave. Then he picks them up, and takes them to the backyard when we get home. Therefore somewhere in our backyard is a massive pile of leaves.

Skyler loves finding books about things. He used to always ask the library to help him find a book about a certain topic (and normally he did this without me knowing - I was always surprised by his bravery!). Two times ago, I showed him how to look things up on the computer. Last time, he wanted to do it by himself. After a bit of coaxing, I convinced him to at least let me help him spell balloons correctly (I actually then typed in 'hot-air balloon' for him, since that yielded better results). He was able to find the book all by himself for the most part. The first time he didn't write down the entire call number down, so while he was in the correct spot, he didn't believe me when I pointed out the book to him since it didn't exactly match what he had written down.

Things Heard Around Our House

Last week we had the missionaries over for dinner. Skyler must have signed something at some point because one of the missionaries asked him if he knew sign language. Skyler told them that he is learning it at school. He then proceeded to tell us all that the sign for the letter 'p' is a crazy one because it's like two legs walking with a penis in the middle". The missionaries got a kick out of that one for sure and hopefully now have a super fab mission story to tell (preferably not in their homecoming talk). Not to be outdone, Jonah later announced, "why is the missionaries not going to their house yet?". They had apparently worn out their welcome.

This morning, we were making Halloween pictures and I decided to make the kids a Halloween countdown calendar. Skyler asked if it would be like our Christmas one that tells about the Christmas story (each day you add a new thing to the nativity scene, also we have one where each day Mary and Joseph go one step closer to Bethlehem). He wanted it to tell the story of the first Halloween. I told him that there really isn't a first Halloween. He told me he must have been thinking of Easter. Oh, yeah, I can see how he'd get those two holidays confused.

Oliver Gets Eaten By a Dinosaur

I pretty much love this picture. I tried hard to get only Oliver in focus, but by the time I had everything right, the photo op was gone.

This was from our trip to the "dinosaur museum" (not our trip back in time to when the T-Rex roamed the earth), which is actually a natural history and science museum, but they have dinosaurs, so it's the dinosaur museum.

And look, there was a snake!

I love how the kids who aren't touching the snake look the happiest.

There was an exhibit about the history of computers. At the end of it, visitors could film themselves using a webcam, and it would go up the big screen as part of a montage of recent visitors' movies. You were supposed to answer a specific question (but clearly you could do anything you wanted) and that question was something to the effect of "would you want a computer implanted in a part of your body?". Jonah's video went something like this:

Jordan: Jonah, would you want a computer implanted in a part of your body?
Jonah: Yes
Jordan: Why?
Jonah: Because I like that
Jordan: Where would you want it?
Jonah; In my bum

He elaborated on that a bit, but I don't remember exactly what he said.

Hey Look! Pictures!

We had one last summer hurrah in Pagosa Springs, CO over Labor Day weekend. It was great and fun and wonderful. The boys spent lots of time playing in the river, we hiked up to two different waterfalls, and we hung out at the house watching movies.

Look at the camera, Jonah!

We discovered that Oliver really loves potato chips. And he loves throwing rocks into the water. And he doesn't like to sleep on a couch cushion in the closet. Remember how I said it was a great and fun and wonderful trip? Well, we forgot Ollie's pack n play, which really wasn't so great and fun and wonderful. The closet was large, so we put a couch cushion in there for him to sleep on. He wasn't amused. The first night he was up for three hours in the middle of the night, the second night was much better, but he did end up in our bed for an hour or so in the morning.






I didn't take swimsuits for the kids because I was under the impression that it would be really cold. The place we stayed at is Jordan's boss's house and his brother was there the week before we were and informed us (via Jordan's boss) that the morning temps were right around 40 degrees. Turns out there's just a thermometer that appeared to be permanently stuck at 40 degrees and it wasn't nearly that cold! The lack of swimsuits didn't deter the kids at all - we just switched them into dry clothes as soon as they were done playing.

Our young mountain climber extraordinaire (there's new pictures on that post, by the way) can most definitely climb, but apparently has much trouble balancing once he gets to the top. He took a little tumble and for a while I thought his rock climbing days were over, but later that day, he seemed to be brave again (which is good and bad!)

Ollie at 15 Months

Here's what the little guy is up to lately:

He loves to climb. He's pretty much part mountain goat.

He likes to push buttons on remote controls, the TV, the computer and phones. He especially loves playing with Jordan's iPod. He is always pulling something up to his ear as if it were a phone.

He doesn't walk on his own yet, but he will walk while pushing something.

He says "da" a whole lot more than he says "mom". He has started using the sign for "more" as a sign for "I want".

He can climb up and down the stairs.

He can eat pretty well with a spoon or a fork.

He likes to play with balls, cars, dinosaurs, and books

He has finally started to gain weight and at 15 months old, he was 19.5 lbs.

He likes to play peek-a-boo.