a common sight

Wesley and keys

quick camping trip

Ryan took the boys camping a while ago. I think it was early February. They went to Leo Carillo while Wesley and I stayed home. Wesley isn't quite ready for tent camping, plus it was a chance for me to get some uninterrupted studying time.

Ben caught a live moth in mid-flight.

smores

Parent Trap photo-op

I guess Charlie spent a lot of time biting his sleeping pad.

Ryan taught the boys how to use a compass

They found some military friends on their hike

Charlie

Charlie recently finished a little tumbling class. I've signed each one of the boys up for this so far when they are three. It's kind of their first experience being in a class and following directions, and it's always interesting to see how they do. Charlie did pretty well listening to the teacher, but he had to warm up to some of his classmates. (One day he told me he didn't like one of them because she had dark skin. Great.) He seemed to be particularly good at bouncing and hopping, and he finally mastered his somersault. When he got his medal on the final day, he gave me the biggest smile I've ever seen from him.

Being a tiger.

Some things he's said/done in the last couple months:

Charlie recently graduated from Nursery into Primary. He had to say goodbye to Sister "Owl" and Sister "Frisbee" (in our last ward it was Sister "Ellie" and Sister "Aber"), and again I was curious to see how he'd do. So far so good. He has had a couple of Sundays when he didn't want to go to his class, but he can usually be persuaded. I don't think he pays much attention to the songs or lessons, but he hasn't been disruptive. The first week in January he was visiting a different ward and came home with a big sign around his neck that said, "Welcome to Primary, Boston!" Boston must have been absent that day.

He went through a phase when his favorite thing to say was, "Mom, it's not a big deal."

He makes up little songs all the time, sometimes with nonsense words and sometimes with real words like "What the heck is going on" or this one to the tune of Old McDonald- "Limpett is a cabaret, He is forty-five".

Once I heard him exclaim from the bathroom, "This is so serious!"

choo-choo-choose me

We had our traditional Valentine's dinner of homemade lasagna. Actually I'm pretty sure I haven't always made it from scratch. Sometimes we do the frozen kind. But this year I served it in courses and we made the whole thing kind of a learning experience about what it's like to dine in a fancy restaurant. The hardest thing for the boys was waiting in between courses. And we definitely need to work on suppressing burps and other bodily noises at the table. (Even Wesley will fake burp and laugh at himself.) They did a good job of chewing with their mouths closed, though, and of keeping their voices down a bit more than usual. It turned out to be a nice evening. Alex even remembered why we have lasagna every year.

this guy

I haven't said anything about Mr. Wesley for a while, so I guess it's about time.

Within a day or two after returning home from Christmas in Idaho, he finally mastered going down the stairs on his own (intentionally).

His vocabulary is growing, too. He has been our latest talker, and was stuck on four or five words for months. (Uh-oh, dada, nana (banana), mo! (more), whoa).

Some of his newer words are juice, shoes, cheese, car, bubble, diaper, and noodle. He makes a "ssssss" sound for a snake and for all other animals he makes his horse snort noise. He can also sense when we're getting ready to go somewhere and will head toward the garage door saying, "Deh-do!" (meaning, "let's go!"). He can understand a lot more than he can say; he can point to his belly when asked, for example, and if anyone mentions the word "bath" he'll head upstairs to the bathroom.

He is a pro at going down the slide at the park by himself, and loves playing outside in general. He loves trying on shoes and will go through our closets putting on different pairs and marching around the house. He likes to hum to himself and the two songs we hear him humming the most sound remarkably like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old McDonald Had a Farm. He's been doing this for months, so we weren't sure at first if his songs were intentional. Maybe he just plagiarized them.

He has his favorite books now- one being Blue Hat Green Hat. He can "read" that one ("Duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, Ooooo!").

He can be quite charming when he's in a good mood, but still wakes up once a night most of the time. He's very attached to a pacifier now (he didn't take one until he was close to 1), but we try to only let him have it for naps and bed. He's teething- getting some back molars on the bottom, so we've been letting him have it more often. We'll crack down soon. It does come in handy for keeping him quiet at church, too.

Other than that he's the typical toddler- getting into anything and everything. He still likes toilets, and yesterday he pulled my purse down from the table and managed to eat half a pack of gum before I caught him. He kept cocking his head to the side and saying, "Mmmmmmm!".

EAFB

Alex and Ryan got to go on a special field trip to Edwards Air Force Base. I don't know a lot of details since I didn't go, but they both enjoyed it and Alex even brought back some surprises from the gift shop for his brothers.

He didn't get to see one in person, but he learned about the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and was pretty impressed.

progress

The wallpaper has been gone for a while now but last month we (meaning Ryan) painted the entryway. It's a neutral yellow, and we like it.