Cowpoke Round-up

Today was an exciting day for Will's class; they put on their annual rodeo. It was so cute. His class is the Cowpokes and his teacher, Mrs. Schneider, takes the theme very seriously. She puts on the rodeo every year and the kids spend months practicing. They performed many feats: lasso tricks, galloping, barrel racing (of which I got video, not pictures and will try to post), roping Buddy the Bull, hog tying a stuffed animal, and rescuing another Cowpoke in trouble. Will had a great time and I really enjoyed watching him ride his horse "Ninja". We may have a cowboy in the making here. For some reason he kept saluting the crowd. Patriotic cowboy?

Nesting Instinct

Archer is in full nesting mode lately. Every day for nap, I have to build him a "nest" to sleep in. Some days he even pretends to be the baby bird who sleeps in the nest. I never know where he'll end up; sometimes the nest, complete with 10 blankets and 25 stuffed animals, migrates during nap time. I wonder how he can sleep in such odd positions...behind the rocking chair, under the train table, in the laundry basket. Strange kid.

Spring Rewind

A lot has happened since my last post so I'm going to give a very condensed version here. We celebrated Easter with Uncle Matt and Aunt Jill...fun all around. We're still doing t-ball and Will has a few more games before the season is over. Keith left on deployment and Allyson has begun figuring out how to keep her sanity for the foreseeable future. We're also counting down til summer, which means Archer can start preschool and Will can do a bunch of camps. Perfect!

Play Ball

Will began his journey into t-ball this month and so far things are going really well. He's on the Coronado Reds team and his two coaches are wonderful! They herd cats while manage to instill some fundamentals in them at the same time. Impressive! Will is doing really well. He and Keith are enjoying practicing t-ball together, although Will is much more interested in batting than catching and throwing. We'll have to work on that. So far he's had 3 games and he did well in all. It's a bit of a mixed bag on the teams so we have everything from serious 5 year old players to flower pickers in the outfield. It's a lot of fun for everyone. Here are some pics. Go #10!

Enough about Will

...that's what Archer says. Enough about Will and his accomplishments! What about me? The second kid? Long forgotten? Little brother who doesn't get to do anything cool? (All said in a super whiny voice, of course.):) But really, it's time to give a fun little update on Mr. Archer Dean himself. AKA: Batman, Rookie, Spider Web Man, Puppy, Kitty, Fireman and sometimes Fire Batman. He's 2 1/2 and has fully, completely embraced the terrible twos. Communication is getting better (words! glorious words!) but I'm afraid I've ruined him with my "he's my baby!" mentality. Paybacks!

As you can see, he's a big fan of dressing up. Yesterday he wore Will's footed pajamas all day over his regular clothes. Tonight he went to bed in pajamas with Will's Halloween costume on top. Whatever. As long as get make it out the door, I figure we're good. Plus you never know when you'll be at the grocery store and need a super hero to save you. I feel safe knowing I've usually brought one with me.

Archer is getting rather dramatic as well as sassy. Today the boys were discussing whose turn it was to pick the tv show to watch and when I told them it was Will's turn, Archer says, in a most wounded voice, "My heart is ripping!" while simultaneously grabbing his chest. Exit stage left, Mr. Drama. When he's posed with a question (anything ranging from do you want carrots or apples? to do you need to go potty?) and he stops whatever he's doing, looks thoughtfully up at the ceiling, rubs his chin and/or wags his finger in the air and seems to ponder his choices for a while. Then he announces his choice with gusto! He's a character, that's for sure.

A recent exchange between the boys while playing telephone went like this: Will: Hello? Who is this? Archer: Archer Will: Archer who? Archer: me! hahaha

Somehow he's picked up an interest in punching and kicking things. I don't know where he got this but it's turned into quite an embarrassing subject. We went to Mount Laguna a few weeks ago to play in the snow. While we were sledding on the mountain, a family hiked up with their little chihuahua in a coat (that's a whole other issue!) Archer didn't understand what it was and kept asking if it was a baby. I said no, it's a puppy. Quite loudly he asks, "Can I kick it?" :0 The dog owner snatched up her dog and took off. Where did he get that? Awful! He's also recently asked if he could punch Keith and me. Maybe he'll be an ultimate fighter? Two of my favorite Archerisms of the moment: "Alrighty!" and "Ready, Steady, Goey!" :) He's a laugh a minute. I can't even do him justice in his post. He keeps us on our toes, that's for sure. Fingers crossed he gets into the 3 day/week preschool program for next school year. It's time!!!

Artist in Residence

It seems that Will has recently caught the art bug and spends a lot of his free time drawing pictures. And he's come a long way. We can now tell what he's drawing and he even adds expressions and details. This must be a 5 year old thing. I used to have to encourage him to draw/color and now he's all about it. Young Rembrandt, perhaps? Jackson Pollock? Only time will tell. Until then, here are some of my favs. He went through a house drawing phase:

This is the world with asteroids and rocketships going around:

Ghosts and otherworldly things:

He was in a map drawing phase for a while. X marks the spot!

Then he got big into drawing people so we have some fun depictions of "us". Archer added the balloon stickers below. He drew the parachute guys after Keith got to skydive with the Navy Leap Frog team. Very cool.

He also went through (is still in?) a big patriotic/ethnocentric phase and he draws lots of pics showing how America is the best and every other country isn't. Oh boy. Please note the American and China missiles heading toward one another. You can't make this stuff up. Great lesson, World Atlas!

I like the detail on the skeletons below:

And my favorite...I've been sick so he drew me a cup of tea to make me feel better. :)

Belated Christmas

Somehow it's already January 23rd (yikes!) and I have yet to post about Christmas. I'm anything but punctual these days it would seem. So I'll give the short and sweet roundup. We stayed local, Aunt Jill and Uncle Matt joined us, we had a snowball fight on the beach, built a "snowman" on the beach (out of some funky sure-to-be toxic pellet things), and ate, drank and were merry. The San Diego weather was wonderful and although Will really wanted snow, we were happy to substitute with snow from a can this year. The boys must have been good because Santa brought too many toys, as usual. Silly Santa! So after donating old toys to make room for the new, we are back in the swing of things. For now.

Boys with freshly decorated cookies for Santa

Making our toxic, bird killing "snowman" on the beach

Snowball fight on the beach

Presents! Star Wars, construction trucks and an aircraft carrier, oh my!

The boys got Just Dance Kids for Wii and it was a BIG hit. Not sure if the adults or kids enjoyed it more.