The Spawn Of College Roommates

Sheena flew up for a girls weekend and we got all the kids together for a play date so she could see everyone.  We had my boys (2), Katie's boys (3), Meika's kids (2) and Allison's kids (2) so nine children all together.  You can see what 9 kids ages 1 through 5 looks and sounds like.  Next time we need to add Sheena's girls.  The count is up to 11 with one more arriving in December!

Now that I think about it...there isn't much difference between these kids now and our house when we all lived together when we were 18.  We were just taller.

Little Bam

For those of you who are familiar with the PBS documentary (ok, MTV reality television show) "Jackass," you would also be familiar with one of the main characters, Bam Margera.  I *might* have had a small crush on Bam (for no reason other than that we enjoyed the show and he seemed like the most attractive of the bunch) which Steve loves to tease me about.

Anyway, the whole concept of the show is that there are a group of men (boys) who just like to jump off of high things, smash their head into hard things, break lots of bones, and basically have no fear when others might raise at least an eyebrow.  Bam is one of the more "physical" guys in the bunch apparently, according to the Wiki article, received his nickname because he used to run into walls when he was 3 years old.

We call Adam, "Little Bam."  He will be getting stitches before Owen.  Mark my words.

Mom and Bub Errand Day

Next week, my good friend and old college roommate Sheena is coming to town!  We are doing a girls weekend and I'm SO excited to see her.  I needed to do some errands this weekend in order to get the house ready for her...just the usual errands...Costco, Target and the Grocery Store.  Owen asked to come with me and I hesitated for about a minute and then said, "Sure, Bubs...But we have to do a LOT of shopping so I need you to be a good boy!"  He promised he would so we went off together.  Ok, sure...these errands would have taken me about 1.5 to 2 hours to do if I went by myself.  With Owen, it took about 3 hours.  But he was GREAT the whole time.  Sometimes I need to remind myself that even errands can be quality time with your kids - if you make it fun.

The couple of highlights:  Owen REALLY wanted flip flops "like dad."  So I said we'd pick some out at Target.  He looked at the wall hanging with dozens of flip flops and picked out the most rainbow, sparkly and girly pair they sold.  I am not above letting my kid wear sparkly flip flops, but I did want to try and steer him toward a more gender appropriate pair.  So I explained to him that the ones he liked were supposed to be for girls and I showed him all the boy ones.  We found a cool pair of Shaun White brand black ones and he was satisfied (he doesn't know what a snowboard half pipe is, but someday he'll read this and know that his mom was "cool" for getting him the Shaun White ones.)  But as we were leaving the shoe area he spotted another pair of sparkly pink bedazzled flip flops for adults and he stops me and goes, "Mom!  LOOK!  I have an idea...we should get YOU a pair of flip flops too and YOU can wear pink ones because you're a girl!"  I said, "You're right!"  and he pointed to the ones he wanted me to buy and we walked out of there in our brand new cool shoes and did the rest of our grocery shopping in them.  My first present that Owen picked out just for me.

Later as we were cruising down the aisles at Target (because please tell me who can go into a Target and not go down every single aisle?  It's like shopping crack for me) Owen somehow realized if he stood on the side of the shopping cart he could pretend to be a garbage truck guy.  I protested at first because I thought he was going to pick up things off the aisle displays and throw them in the cart, but he said "No, Mom.  I'm just going to PRETEND."  So I said, ok and let him direct me in his garbage truck reenactment.  He said, "Stop!" at the end of every aisle...stepped off the cart...grabbed a pretend garbage can...pretended to dump it in the cart...put the pretend garbage can back on the pretend curb...and then climbed back on the cart where I drove to the next "stop."  You see why the errand took an extra hour now, right?  But I have to say...I'm pretty proud of this kid's imagination.  And we had fun and still finished everything we had to do before dinner.  Success!

Bonding Cousins

Owen and Audrey are starting to get to the age where they enjoy being around each other!  Not that they didn't before, but until age 3 or so, kids are just parallel players and who is with them is not quite as important as what they are doing.  Now, Owen asks about whether or not Audrey is coming to some of the events we do and when we say yes, he gets excited and looks forward to seeing her.  Some of the conversations they have are just too cute.

Here are some recent pics from a couple outings.  The one on top is at the Woodland Park Zoo where they spontaneously started holding hands after the merry go round ride.  The two below are from the Puyallup Spring Fair where they rode the rides together.  Ador. Able.

Owen Keeps Stealing My Phone

Big Boy Bike - Take 2

As you can see, it only took a few days for Owen to go from pedaling at a brisk pace around the park to hauling arse around the neighborhood and fighting dad for the bumps.

We received this bike from my dad and Ian as a hand me down, but Steve being the awesome dad that he is, took Owen to the store to pick out his very own bell that he added on as an "upgrade."  I won't mention here that the bells are located adjacent to the toys at the store and Owen was all gung ho about the bell until he saw a toy street sweeper and literally threw the bell down the aisle because he decided he'd rather have a street sweeper than a bell.  But once we told him that there was no trade deal on the table, he (reluctantly) left the store with the bell.  After dad installed the bell on the bike, it's probably his favorite feature.

A Couple Minutes In The Life

Here is pretty much an average evening with my kids right before bed.  This is the nightly, after dinner - after bath - run around the living room in our undies/diapers ritual.  I don't know why my kids are such night owls (oh wait, maybe it's because Steve and I are both night owls?) but their "on" time is right before bed.

If you get tired watching this, keep in mind this is only 2.5 minutes of my 720 minute day with these hyper hypos.

Nothing To Be Concerned About

A Traintastic Day

Bubba is so excited to teach his brother about all the things he loves.  Like trains!  Or, trains.  Or maybe, trains?  This is just another day on the rails for the Santokis.  Adam is starting to dig it.

Owen's First Big Boy Bike

The sun is starting to come out and the boys are about 6 months older than they were the last time we spent any real quality time outside.  I had assumed Adam would be surprising us with his new abilities - and he is!  He's sliding down slides by himself, climbing up stairs, walking over bridges and picking up every piece of trash he can find.

Owen decided today that he wanted to try out the big boy bike we've had stored in the garage for the past year (he was too little for it when we received it as a hand me down from Ian and Grandpa Steffen.)  He is a speed demon on his big wheels, but has never tried a real upright bike before.

We took it out and were prepared to give him an involved bike riding lesson and as usual, Owen needed much less direction and guidance than we expected.  He basically took to it like a fish to water and did about 5 laps around the park at breakneck speed -- even learning how to stop by pedaling backwards.

I have a feeling his first snowboard is right around the corner...

Owen Reading at 3 1/2