What I Made for Lewis' Birthday Gift

I'm trying to make something for Lewis each year for his birthday (we'll see how long that lasts...). The 1st year I made a growth chart and last year was his play kitchen. This year I decided to make a portable race car mat that he could take along on road trips. I used this tutorial--there were a few things I wish would have been different (like having to sew the velcro smack dab in the middle of the figure 8 track...), but overall it was a quick, easy project.

I found a couple of Lego-type building sets on clearance as his other gifts (though he's still a bit young for them), so I should have gone ahead with this project (a Lego tray). Maybe I'll go ahead and make one and count it as a 4th birthday gift while I have some post-birthday party momentum going. Hmmm...we'll see. Kevin and I just spent the past few hours putting them together for Lewis, and the pieces are so small!

Anyway, here is the car mat I made:

 Folded up, without cars

 Garage space for 5 cars

Vroom, vroom!

He received so many wonderful presents from family and friends! As soon as we woke up today, he wanted to read his new books, and then he asked to go downstairs to play with his new toys. More pictures and party details to come later! 

Lewis the Truest, Vol. 5

One evening, Kevin and Lewis were playing Hide and Seek in the basement. Kevin had covered his eyes, and when he uncovered them, Lewis said:

Lewis: THERE ME ARE!

Along the same lines as HERE MY COME! :) He's not very successful at hiding yet, either. Kevin and Lewis will hide in the teepee sometimes (in the basement), and Kevin will text me to come find them. As soon as I round the corner, Lewis will jump out or start laughing.

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We are definitely still working on counting. He's had some pretty funny patterns we've noticed. The most common is:

Lewis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 5, 6

or

Lewis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
Kevin: What comes after 6?
Lewis: 40!

He throws in a 30 or a 40 (as we work on 1-10) every once in a while. :)

And while reading a counting book the other day (counting birds on this particular page):

Lewis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, those are OWLS! (without skipping a beat)

Note: Now he counts to 12, but still follows it up with 40! :)

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In the car, on the way home from dinner:

Lewis: WHERE'S THE MOON, MOMMY? or WHAT'S THAT? and/or WHAT'S THAT, MOMMY? [Repeated over and over. :)]

Me (to Kevin): Is it bad that I sometimes get frustrated and just want some time away, some peace and quiet, etc.? [Insert short discussion about how it's only that way a small percentage of the time...] 

Me, again: So is it just part of the job?

Lewis: IT'S JUST PART OF THE JOB, MOMMY!

Kevin and I both cracked up at his timing and perfect delivery on that one. :)

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At lunch today:

Lewis: Bow in your hair?
Mama: What? Do I have something in my hair?
(As I felt around my head to see if I had a wilder-than-normal hair and/or rat's nest that might resemble a bow...found nothing.)
Lewis: Get one?
Mama: Get a bow? For my hair?
Lewis: Yeah! Go to store to get one? Like Daisy!
Mama: OH! Buy a bow and wear it in my hair like Daisy?
Lewis: Yeah!

I was cracking up inside because anyone who knows me knows that wearing a bow in my hair is probably the last thing I would do. But maybe sweet Lew will help bring out some feminine fashion sense in me. :)
And right now, he loves his girls, Daisy and Minnie.

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A little bit of backstory, first. I was cleaning out and organizing our storage room one day last week, and Lewis and I had a particularly stressful interaction. As I put things into a box, he was taking them out. After x number of times telling him to stop, I snapped and yelled, 'Stop it, Lewis!' and felt horrible about it the rest of the day. End of backstory.

Later at lunch today...he was eating, so I ran down to get his bedding out of the dryer. Then I pressed my luck by running to his room to make his bed so it would be ready for nap after lunch. When I came back to the dining room, he was spraying water ALL OVER the dining room floor and table. He had grabbed a squirt bottle of water that was in my pile of things to go to the basement and had almost emptied the whole thing. He said:

Lewis: It's raining!
Mama: Oh, Lewis... (as I grabbed a towel and took a deep breath...and didn't yell!)
Lewis: Mama's mad.
Mama: Well, buddy, you made a mess (as I'm wiping the floor).
Lewis (in the scariest/funniest monster voice ever): STOP IT, LEWIS!

I laughed so hard for a minute.

Mama: Is that what Mama says?
Lewis: Yeah.
Mama: STOP IT, LEWIS! (In a funny tone)
Lewis: (laughs)

It was funny today for both of us, but it also hurt my heart a little that he remembered what I'd yelled at him. I'm working on it...

Around the House and In the Snow

Since it's been so cold and/or snowy and/or icy these past few weeks, we've spent more time at home. It did warm up enough on Monday of this week to actually go outside and enjoy some snow without instantly being too cold. Lewis had another snow day that day, so I was glad for him to be able to get outside to play (and for me to do some preliminary shoveling that Kevin later finished). 

So here are some pictures from our time at home:

FIRST OF ALL, this sweetness that I captured last week when I woke up:

 Kevin and Peter, spooning :)

Hattie is back there behind Kevin, too--she's been sleeping in between my feet. I should take more of these because I've been waking up to some pretty funny sleeping positions on Peter's part.

Lewis brings home arts/crafts projects from school each week, and last week it was a pair of binoculars:

 

 I see you!

A new thing that Kevin started last week, I think, is the Dada Train. Lewis rides on Kevin's back (see below) as they travel around to pick up passengers and head to certain stations (i.e. Bathroom Station when it's time to brush his teeth at bedtime). After they pick up passengers, Lewis yells out, 'All aboarrrrd!' It's pretty adorable. :)

:)

 And Lewis loves it.

These are from Monday, our play-in-the-snow day:

 Rocking his new snow pants from Gramma Pat (in the proper size) :)

As I shoveled, he got out his wagon, his car, his basketball goal, and bubbles from the garage. I think he is ready for springtime! I wasn't sure what he was doing with his car at first: 

He would push it right up to the fence and started trying to stand on the seat (but kept slipping). I soon realized he was trying to see over the fence, into the neighbors' yard. Why? He saw that they have a 4-wheeler, and he wanted to see it! And probably wanted to ride it, too, if given the opportunity.

 I told him to try looking through the cracks in the fence, but that wasn't good enough for him. 

 The tears. Oh, the tears.

He asked me to pick him up so that he could see it for real, full-on, in all its glory, so I finally went over and gave him a lift. In the course of all of this, his boots came off, too, so he was walking around in the snow with just socks (very snowy socks) on. I think he made it 5 more minutes before we retreated inside.

Hattie, part polar bear :) Just hanging out, in the snow.

And finally, for Auntie Schwee (and family)...these are what Lewis' new figurines have been up to. He's been pushing his tractor/trailer around like this, with Mr. Grizzly at the wheel. :)

:)

Makes me smile.

To the Science Center

Here are my pictures from last week at the Science Center (with a few of Tonya's added at the end)--it had been awhile since we visited:

 Carlton (the bus driver) and Lewis (the passenger)

I should say, Lewis, the passenger who kept blasting Wheels on the Bus, on repeat. There's a button you can push to play that (blessed) song, so we listened to a good 7-8 times. :)

Onto the construction site. Lewis got kind of riled up a few times about Carlton being 'in his way.' He was trying to drive his backhoe around the ramps, as Carlton was rightfully driving his dump truck in the oncoming direction. :) They worked it out, in the end.

Lewis got into more of the mechanics of things this time, specifically the pulley and conveyor belt:  

 I showed him how to raise and lower buckets of blocks, and he mostly grasped the concept. He got frustrated a few times and seemed to not have quite enough arm strength other times.

 As for the conveyor belt, he loaded it up and just turned the wheel about 90 degrees, back and forth (as if he was pretending to drive a car). The blocks barely shifted, but he stayed entertained by it for a while.

Science in Play has returned with some tweaks, so we went to check that out:

 The build-your-own-roller-coaster was a bit hit.

Someone had already set up a pretty awesome track, so he just had to launch a ball down it and watch it fly!

 Dinosaurrrrs!

 This was a fun little challenge. You clip a short rope onto this maze of ropes, and the goal is to make it from Point A to Point B without letting go of the short rope. Lewis really liked it and was surprisingly patient with it.

And then, finally, the boys holding hands as we were getting ready to go:

 :)

It was a fun visit. And we didn't get soaked at the water table! We thought at first that it was turned off because of the bitter cold weather, but it was just still off from the previous day. They turned it on later in the morning, but we successfully stayed away from it!

Fun Times with Lewis and Carlton

Tonya has sent me some pictures from her camera that I keep meaning to post, so here they are, from the past few weeks:

 The roller coaster was a big hit with all of the kids at open gym that day. Here Lewis was giving Carlton a boost back up to the start. :)

I think I mentioned that Lewis went to a train event with Grandma and Grandpa Thompson a few weekends ago--they ran into Carlton, Tonya, and Bo there:

 

 

The boy (boys?) could play trains all day. :)

Some thrilling air hockey action at KaZoing:

 

 I don't think either one of them hit the puck far enough for the other to be able to reach it, so we spent a lot of time helping it back towards one of them. Then Lewis figured out how the goal/end zone worked, so he would put the puck in his own goal, watch it fall through and feed back out, and then repeat, over and over.

And finally, some Science Center fun from last week:

 Construction Fun

 

And buddies, ready to go. :)

Snow Dogs of Early 2014

Well, well, here I thought we might just get that ONE snow a month or so ago. HA! Little did I know. Holy polar vortex, Batman--this winter has been something else (so far!), huh. When we got back from GattiLand on Saturday, it was snowing very steadily and the dogs were going crazy bananas for it: 

Hattie's loving it.

 :)

I'm not certain, but she might have been watching crazy Peter (see below).

 There he goooooes!

 Hattie got into the action a little bit with Peter and then decided to lay down and wait for him to come near again. It cracks me up how she shimmies herself down into the snow.

 Get him, girl! :)

 She chased him back to his hiding spot, behind the compost pile. He squeezes between the pile and the fence and waits it out back there--during the spring/summer/fall, he anxiously digs holes, but, over the winter, he just hangs out.

 Peter's typical pose

And then a pretty good pose! Good boy!

The secret for him is to say 'kitty cat.' He tilts his head, like, 'Say WHAT?!' :)

They love the snow so much. Ours is mostly melted now--there are still some spots in the yard, and we still have some nasty ice on the driveway. We tried to shovel on Sunday when it warmed up into the 40s, but we couldn't get it all to loosen up. One of these days it will warm up again. :)

First Trip to GattiLand

Over the weekend, we headed up to GattiLand for the first time. I think it's comparable to Chuck E. Cheese, but it's a local chain (though I remember there being one up near Bloomington, on the way to Bradford Woods...maybe in Martinsville?) Regardless, we have one right up the street and have never been until now--we had a good time! We went for lunch on Saturday, I believe--you have to buy the buffet (salad, soup, pizza, pasta, etc.), and there's an arcade attached for play.

First stop, the fire truck:

Business from the side...

Party from the front! :)

Shootin' Hoops with Dad 

Shooting Aliens with Mama 

 Carousel with Dad

He could see the carousel from where we were seated for lunch and got excited to ride it. 

 Strong Man!

Trying to hit the milk jug!

We only had a little bit of money left on our card, so we chose this game, thinking, 'He knows how to throw! This is great!' He rolled almost all of the balls into the gutter area, rather than throw them. :) Oh well.

After the money ran out, he was happy to hop on these car, motorcycle, Batmobile, etc. games and pretend to drive them:

 

  

 

The boy loves cars!

We had a nice time--I told Kevin I'd like to go back without any kids (or teenagers) there, and he reminded me that there is a place like that also near us (Incredible Dave's) that has food, beer, and arcade games for adults only after certain times. Maybe we'll have to check that out sometime, too.