In with the new

Happy New Year's!  Hey, maybe I'll write a blog this year.  Or maybe I'll just keep alternately snuggling and trying to keep up with this cutie -- and his three older clones (who are nonetheless all *quite* different... :)

Things Joseph says

I have to keep a record of these things, because I will never remember them all in the future ... or believe they came from a three-year-old!  Note: Most of these conversations happen in the car, at completely random times.

Joseph, in March (so just turned three): Mom, did you know it is women's history month?
Me: I guess you learned some things at school today!
Joseph: Yes. I learned about Maria Montessori.  Maria Montessori was a doctor.

Joseph [pointing to collar bone]: What's this bone?
Me: It's your collar bone.  It's above your ribs, and your ribs protect your lungs and heart.
Joseph: Yes.  And God is in my heart!

Joseph: [K] sits with me at lunch.  Sometimes she's my friend.  But sometimes she's not.
Me: It sounds like you and K have an interesting relationship.
Joseph [thinking for a minute]: Yes!  It's a sym-bi-otic relationship. Like a rhino and an oxpecker.

Mike, picking up the kids from school one day: So where do you think your mom is?
Michael and Malcolm: At work.
Joseph: At work.  But Oscar thinks she's at a restaurant.
Malcolm: You don't know that, Joseph.  Oscar can't talk.
Joseph: But that's what he's thinking.  He thinks thoughts in his brain.

Joseph: Mom, why are you sad?
Me: I don't know, that just happens sometimes.
Joseph: Yeah.  Like when Jesus died, that was a very sad thing. I don't know why the soldiers got him because he didn't do anything bad. 
Me: You're right, Joseph.  He was good, so that was sad.  But then he rose from the dead, and it was a miracle.
Joseph: So we are happy!  I feel better now.

So did I, sweet boy.  You sure do have an amazing mind.

Books we've been reading

Take Care, Good Knight by Shelley Moore Thomas - Oh my goodness, these stories are the cutest.  Featuring a knight who is a little exasperated by the three little dragons he keeps encountering, but who is a good knight, so keeps patiently helping the dragons.  In this case the three dragons promise to take care of the old, old wizard's cats, but they can't read his instructions, so they end up putting the poor felines in some ridiculous situations before the knight comes to help them read.  This story (and the related ones) has a nice repetitive story structure that particularly appealed to Joseph, who memorized a lot of it.

The Runaway Tortilla by Eric Kimmel - The illustrations are a little quirky on this one, but the storyline - a southwestern version of the gingerbread man - proved really popular here.  The boys were particularly fascinated by how the hungry coyote lied and the foolish tortilla trusted him and got eaten.  Joseph requested this one daily for weeks.

The Not-So-Quiet Library by Zachariah O'Hara - Malcolm wasn't so sure what to make of this book when he first got it for his birthday, but he soon came to love it.  Features a character named Oskar and his brother (who is also a bear) named Theodore, their dad who likes donuts, the library, and a five-headed monster that likes to eat books.

Anything Star Wars related (but not Rebels, which Mike and I pretty much reject out of hand), including this graphic novel version of the original trilogy.  I have never gotten into graphic novels, but read a good review of this one and it turned out to be a great find.  (For all my beefs with Disney, they keep knocking it out of the park on children's books lately.)  It keeps a lot of the movie dialogue while cutting out extraneous bits, and makes an effort to keep with the iconic images from the movies while still being styled and modern-seeming.  Michael and Malcolm pored over the words, while Joseph was able to notice the distinction between Darth Vader's black text boxes and ghost-Obi-Wan's blue text boxes.  Really nicely done.  We also really liked the audio book versions of the original trilogy, featuring the original radio broadcast voices and music from the movies. 

Episode IV

"You want to know what it's like to have a fourth...just imagine you're drowning and someone hands you a baby." ~ Jim Gaffigan

Auto show

The boys (Michael especially) have been fascinated by cars for quite awhile now.  They like to identify the make and model of every single car we pass on the road or that's parked in our neighborhood.  (If there's ever a crime committed in the neighborhood where solving it depends on noting unusual cars parked on the street at a given time, our kids would be outstanding witnesses.)  Michael's favorite car is currently the Nissan Titan XD, but he wants to get a Chevy Cruze in the future.  Or maybe a Lexus LC500, although I think he gets these are in slightly different price brackets.  Malcolm's favorite cars are stretch Cadillacs and Ford F-750s.  I actually doubted whether there were Ford F-750s, but we looked it up and they do indeed go up to that number for industrial trucks.  Joseph says his favorite car is a BMW.  Michael also likes to try to identify the model year for each car, but they don't list those on the cars anywhere (although he did correct me at one point that they do print the year on temporary plates from dealers), so mostly we settle for figuring out whether given cars are older or late-model versions.

Mike saw that the DFW Auto Show would be in Dallas in March, so we decided to take a family trip downtown to see it last weekend.  The boys were over the moon.

Joseph was just as interested in driving as his brothers

Sometimes I do miss my old Honda Accord

Michael wanted to figure out what all the knobs were for

Michael and Malcolm

The luxury cars were some of the coolest, but of course you can't climb in those!

Yesterday Michael was still poring over the visitor guide and brochures (as he has been doing every day) and told me one of the cars was $1.2 million.  I said, "Wow, that's amazing.  What do you think you would do if you had a million dollars?"  He thought for a minute and said, "I would probably buy a normal car, like $17,000 or so because that's okay, and save the rest."  Seriously proud momma moment :D

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Saturday, December 19th, 2015, at the Alamo Drafthouse, was over a year in the making - ever since Michael and Malcolm watched the Star Wars teaser trailer at the theater in front of Big Hero 6.

For Kim and I, this day meant more to us as parents than as fans of Star Wars. We were at different times in our lives too young and too old to experience Star Wars in the theater at the proper age. 

It really is the perfect movie for boys aged 5-7, so we were so excited that our boys were just the right age this year. 

Despite missing some of the movie due to bathroom breaks, they both seemed pretty enthralled by the spectacle. And we hope it creates a memory that will last a lifetime.

Puzzle time

Joseph surprised me this month by starting to do small puzzles on his own.  He likes to talk to himself while working on them (well, he talks pretty much constantly anyway!) and he was very pleased with himself.

Milestones

Joseph cut his last main two teeth - the bottom incisors - two weeks ago.  He was very grumpy and bothered about it, but once they made it through he seemed to be back to normal.  Relatedly I think, that weekend was also the weekend we weaned.  I nursed Michael for almost 14 months, Malcolm for about 16 months, and now Joseph for...26.  Because he really wanted to keep doing it and it was important to him, and I didn't mind and was (mostly) happy to keep it up.  It was down to nighttime and naptime on the weekends for the last few months but he still wanted to.  When I saw he was getting distracted, it was a very noticeable change within the space of a couple of days, so it was an easy call to make.  He was really sad about it for two days ("because I crying"), and then he moved on without a backwards glance.  (Except for some lingering grumpiness about precisely how it's acceptable for me to put him to sleep, as opposed to Dad.)  I was really sad, surprisingly so, for two days also.  Dr. Google told me it was because I was no longer producing oxytocin.  But La Leche League also said, unsurprisingly, it's because it just represents moving on from an important stage.  No more nursing my baby now.  It is bittersweet.

For all those who think I'm a crazy attachment mama in other various ways too, I finally turned Joseph around in the car seat at about 25 months.  (The others stayed rear facing until about 20 months.)  No regrets about doing that, either :)  But Joseph was quite happy to be able to climb in and out of his seat "all myself".  With getting in and out of the car, as well as most other things lately, including taking off his pants, Joseph's favorite phrase is "I do it!  Joseph do it!"  (He uses pronouns quite well, but in case we dim parents don't get it, he'll clarify for us by using his own name... :)  Getting to be quite an independent little toddler.  Sweet boy :)

Joseph birthday pictures

Obviously this is way late also, but here are a few pictures from Joseph's birthday this year.  He is a pretty awesome two-year-old :)

Washington trip, part 2

Didn't mean for the second part of this post to be so delayed!  Below are a few more pictures from our Washington trip in March.  Our home base for the week was the apartment in Cleveland Park, but we covered a lot of the metro area (and beyond).  At the beginning of the week we drove to up past Hagerstown for Noni's birthday.  Lots of extended family were there and it was the boys' first time at one of those big Ecuadorian parties that are so much fun (with so much good food) for everyone.

Trying out some of the yummy food.

When Nachi broke out the accordion, Malcolm said "This is weird, Mom."  But he later told me the music and dancing were his favorite part of the party :)

Another trip was to the zoo, naturally.  It was a very pleasant day to walk around since most of the snow had melted and it was nice and sunny.  Joseph and Michael liked the panda, and we all liked seeing the monkeys and playing at some of the exhibits.

One thing we took advantage of was the free museums!  We did a Capitol tour one morning - a first for me and Mike, even though I worked across the street from the Capitol for several years and Mike used to work downtown too.  It was legitimately new, though, since the Visitor Center opened right after we moved.  This was fun but not quite as engaging as the other museums for the kids - and I was worried about the parking meter expiring so we had to cut the trip a bit short.  Speaking of parking, though, it wasn't nearly as much of a problem as I'd feared during the week.  Amazingly (since I wouldn't usually expect the local government to make something actually easy for people), DC lets you use a parking app to pay the meters, so you don't have to worry about finding $4 in change every time you park.  We downloaded the app, paid online, and used the app each time we were driving downtown.  It wasn't too hard to find spaces off the Mall with just a little circling, too.  That certainly helped ease some of the stress of traveling with small children...

Thanks to Senator Cruz's office

Cool skeletons at the Museum of Natural History

A little blurry, but more cool fossils

Giant elephant

Our favorite was the Air and Space Museum.  This time we got to visit the main museum on the Mall, and also the satellite museum campus (Udvar-Hazy) in Reston, by Dulles Airport.  It was our first time at that museum, and it was so cool.  I don't if the boys could fully appreciate it (although they did like the space shuttle and seeing so many planes), but Mike and I really loved it.  I had a huge grin on my face seeing the SR-71 Blackbird -- seriously, I don't know why it was so amazing, but it really was.  So were the Tomcat, the Concorde, and the space shuttle.  Go America.

Cool exhibits on flight

Malcolm would be a heavy kid on Jupiter

Apollo lunar module

Picture of the moon

Joseph is done for the morning

Blackbird.  Amazing.

Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.

Mike and the boys in front of Discovery

Mom and the boys

Along with all our sight-seeing, our family enjoyed getting to spend lots of time with Grandma and Noni, go to Mass at the National Shrine, and visit some old friends and cousins on both sides of Mike's family. I also got to have lunch with one new friend from National Review.  It was funny taking the Metro down for a lunch on Capitol Hill - felt like something from another lifetime because my working life here is quite a bit different :)

Lunch with Grandma and Noni at Cactus Cantina = the best!

We are very thankful to have had such a wonderful trip and can't wait to go back someday!