Kids Have Feelings Too

So Will told me a sweet story about Preston this morning.

Yesterday (while I was at the store with Riley), Will asked Preston what he wanted for lunch...and the conversation went like this:

Will: Preston, it's time for lunch. What do you want?

Preston:  Cereal!

Will: Nope, you can't have cereal for lunch. Pick something else.

Preston thinks for a second, and says "A jelly sandwich!" (meaning just jelly and bread).

Will:  No, Momma says you have to have peanut butter with your jelly so you can get some protein.

Preston leaves the room and a few minutes later comes back and says:  "Ok, I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut into the shape of a train!"

Will:  *sigh* "Preston no I'm not going to make you a train shaped sandwich, I will make you a regular sandwich cut into squares or triangles."

Preston runs gets teary eyed and runs out of the room upset.

Several minutes later, as Will is standing in the kitchen, a small paper airplane comes flying into the room and lands on the floor.  He looks at it and it says "Please open" (spelled PLESE OPN)

Will opens it up and it said "Papa, you make me sad." and there was a picture of Preston with tears. Then there was another person next to him with a big smiley face.

Will feels SOOOOOOO bad and goes to look for Preston, who is hiding underneath the piano crying.  (Yes at this point he is feeling like father of the year (sarcasm)).  Will just feels terrible and wants to tell Preston he can have a train shaped sandwich and that he is so sorry, and so he coaxes Preston out from underneath the piano.  Preston comes out and Will tells him he read his note and he is sorry.

He asks Preston "So is that you sad?" and Preston nodds.

"And then is this you happy?" Asks Will.

Preston answers, "No, this is me and I am sad because you didn't like any of my lunch choices, and this is you because you are so happy."

Ugh, talk about drive the guilt a little deeper into Will's heart.

Will apologized and made Preston feel better with the sandwich of his choice and they made up.  But I just had to record the story. Just goes to show that even though we are the parents and they are the children and they need to obey us - it doesn't mean they don't have feelings too.  Preston is such a sweet kid.

April Update

Well gosh, it's already been a few weeks since our last family update here.  The time seems to fly so quickly these days! 

As I type this, I have Riley strapped into the Baby Bjorn sleeping on my chest, while the older 2 boys are watching some squirrel movie in the other room. Will is in downtown Seattle this evening at a book trailer premiere for his friend Eric who is an author.

With that said, I don't really feel like putting 3 kids down for bed all by myself and so instead I'm blogging.  You're welcome. 

Riley Update

As of today, Riley is now 5 weeks old!  I feel like he has been part of our family forever now, but it really hasn't been that long.

We are still all adjusting to having a baby in the house.  Will has been taking the month of April off from work to help out, and I honestly don't know what I would do without him.  He has definitely been making the transition easier and I feel a bit spoiled - as I know not every mom is this lucky.

It seems to be that I pretty much do the night time baby shift alone, so that I can sleep in in the mornings while Will gets up and takes care of Taylor and Preston.  He gets them breakfast, and helps Preston get off to school on the bus.  

Riley seems to not want to go to bed until 11pm or 12am, and so my whole daily schedule has been shifted forward 3 hours to accomodate for this.  He usually wakes up twice to nurse - usually 2:30 a.m., and then at 5 or 6 a.m.  Some nights I average 3-4 hours of sleep and others about 5 or 6.  This is why Will is kind to me and lets me sleep in. :)  Thanks babe.

Riley is a very sweet natured baby I have to say.  He loves to snuggle and to be held, and usually sleeps pretty good.  We do struggle to get his tummy calm in the evenings so he can go to bed (which is why I'm usually up to midnight), but it's not bad. 

I mean, I can remember Preston having colic and screaming for a couple of hours every evening. Riley is not like that - he does fuss and he wants to be held and it is hard to put him down to go to sleep, but he is not screaming constantly for hours on end.  

Right now he weighs about 9.5 pounds.  So he is still pretty little...

Oh, and one thing Riley LOVES is to stare at the blinds on the window. Any window. If it has blinds he stares and coos at them. Haha!

Taylor Update

Taylor was lucky and got to spend an entire week with Grandma and Grandpa the 2nd week after Riley was born. He was having a hard time adjusting to the new baby and just needed some one-on-one attention.   

During the week, Grandma worked on potty-training too, which was a nice surprise.  He started learning to go #1 and #2 in the toilet, and earned prizes for doing so.

Taylor is very tenacious, smart, and creative.  He does really well on his own, but the dynamics of when he is with Preston is....well...he gets pretty feisty and bossy sometimes.  It was just nice to see him get some one on one time where he was the complete center of attention.  Preston really missed him while he was gone though. He would ask to call and talk to Taylor on the phone. 

One night Preston asked to call Taylor and the phone conversation went like this:

Grandma: Hello?
Preston: Hi this is Preston. Can I talk to Taylor?
Grandma: Hi Preston! Okay just a second...
Taylor: Hi Pweschon!
Preston: Hi Taylor. I miss you.
Taylor: Pweschon I got a jet!
Preston: Have you been having fun?
Taylor: Yes, and Gwampa bought me a jet!
Preston: I miss you a lot!

It was so sweet. Oh my. After 10 minutes of them talking about the details of their model airplanes from Grandpa they hung up, and Preston was all teary eyed. He is such a sweet boy. Such a gentle spirit for only being 5.

Taylor has been loving Halloween costumes lately too.  He has enjoyed dressing up in the fireman costume, and especially the pirate costume!

Taylor has also been catching on from big brother about counting and spelling and letters. For only being 3 and 1/2, he is very good at counting and the alphabet.

He also has taken an interest in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which he calles "Tinja Nurdles" hahaha.

Taylor LOVES to be a helper, and I can always count on him to help me do dishes, mop the floor, bake cookies, or if persuaded with "smarshmallows" he will even clean up his toys :)

Preston Update

Preston continues to be the good boy that he always is.  SUCH a little angel.  He is obedient, and very caring about other people.

Preston is doing well in Kindergarten - learning lots!  He can count up to 150 I believe, and is learning to read and write and spell.  He loves to learn and is always coming up to us asking questions, how to spell things, help with reading things.  If the UPS man drops off a package at our house, he wants to be the first one to get it so that he can read the label and figure out who it is for.

He is also a great big brother to Taylor. Even though they sometimes fight over toys, Preston is usually the one to give something up in order to make Taylor happy.  

Right now Preston still loves cars, trains, airplanes, and legos.  I let him order a stack of Lego reading books from the Scholastic Club from his school and he was pretty excited about that. He had to do some chores to earn the money for them, and of course he did a great job.

Will Update

Will has been enjoying the entire month of April off from work for paternity leave.  This is a huge deal.  I would say his job is a tad bit on the stressful side and so he is really enjoying this downtime.

The first week of April, he took Taylor and Preston on a camping trip - which I thought was only going to be 2 days - but it turned into 5 days. They went all around the state of Washington.  These are the photos he took and posted on FB, which he entitled "Boys Gone Wild" Hahahaha...

Aside from going camping with his boys, Will also ran a 25K race in Ellensburg last weekend...

These photos were taken by Glenn Tachiyama

Mostly Will has just been a HUGE help to me in taking care of the boys so I can get some rest and recover some more.  

Ok..and sometimes he helps out with the night shift too when I am too tired to do it alone.

Will also finished our downstairs bathroom!!! Woohoo! Now we don't have to go upstairs every time we need to use the bathroom.  This was super helpful as I was recovering from the Csection too.

Just so you know this is what it used to look like...

Jenni Update

I have been doing good!  Enjoying lots of snuggles with Riley still.  I feel stronger every day, but am still trying to figure out how much I can do. Sometimes I feel awesome and so I will clean the house and go for stroller walks....but then later that night feel tons of pain around my Csection incision. Ugh.  So I still have to take it a bit easy.

Next Monday I have my 6 week post-op appointment with my OB and am hoping she will give me the green light to go back to the gym.  Even so, I will just take it easy and work my way back up.  

I met with my trainer, Monica, yesterday.  (this was her and I last summer)...

Monica has been a HUGE help to me with my health over the last year. I know it isn't the most frugal thing to hire a personal trainer, but if you can do it and find the right person to work with - I highly recommend it. 

I did a radio interview for KITCFM in OR yesterday and that was fun.  I have a lot of fans who listen to their Classical Crossover radio program on Wednesdays and so they wanted to interview me as they always feature my music on a weekly basis.

I have fortunate to be able to play the piano again - and so I have been practicing a little here and there.  But I definitely have a LONG ways to go to get back my skills back up. I really didn't play much from October until March, with the exception of a few concerts.  I'm really out of practice. 

Easter

Here are some pics from our Easter...the boys got up at 6:30 a.m. to hunt for Easter eggs around the house!

And now, because this hasn't already been the LONGEST blog post of all time....more pictures from the past few weeks - haha!

My first time going "out" since baby was born....to a baby shower no less! LOL  Time to try to fit into some normal clothes and out of the yoga pants.

Somewhere in this towel is a clean baby!

Finally enjoying the Baby Bjorn...

SUPER baby! (Thanks to Kristi for the outfit)

 I did this for Will...

Family Home Evening at the Outlet Mall to ride the merry-go-rounds and then ice cream at McD's afterwards.

We need to take Taylor to an ear-nose-throat specialist to see if his tonsils and lymphnods are enlarged because he snores and sometimes has apnea in his sleep....

Oh, and...