Wedding bells

Griffin had his picture day at school today and was pretty excited about his outfit. He got ready, and at one point, said, "Look Mom, now I am ready to marry Kaleigh". He has been talking about this a lot lately- how he is going to marry Kaleigh and they will live close to us but not in the same house. So tonight on the way home from church, the plan got a little more specific. Apparently they will get married and then God will put a baby in Kaleigh's tummy. When I asked him what they would name the baby, he said, "Griffin". So I brought up the concept of having a "junior" which he didn't get at all. After a minute, he said, "well if she doesn't like that name, we should call him, Isaac".

Be gentle

Gray has been a little bit of a roughneck lately and loves to run and just tackle my legs. Sometimes it nearly knocks me off balance, so I have been working with him on being more gentle. This morning he did it and really hit my stomach, so I yelled at him a bit more. Griffin came in and was pretty funny. He was being very protective of me. First he wanted to give me a big hug to make sure I was feeling better. Then he looked at me and said, "Mom, why don't you leave the room while I have a little talk with Gray for a minute?". I left the room, and it was funny to hear him scold Gray and talk to him about being gentle.

I love you

One of Gray's latest tricks is to say, "I love you" and he kind of sings it to you. I finally got him to do it on camera.

Pajama Day

Today was Pajama Day at Griffin's preschool. He was very excited about it. Since Daddy was out of town, he wanted me to take his picture in his pjs. They even made pancakes at school for the snack today.

Flurries

We didn't get much snow yesterday, but we did leave the house in the morning with some huge snowflakes coming down. You take what you can get in Richmond. The boys were very excited about it even though it did not last long.

Girl

so today we found out that we are having a baby girl this summer. I am still a bit skeptical of the ultrasound results because it was much harder to "see" things than when we had the boys. The nurse and the doctor both agreed, so I guess I should let them do their job. As we were meeting with the doctor, he wanted to double check the baby's kidney measurements. When the tech did the measurements, one of the them was a little higher than normal which could indicate extra fluid on the kidneys. The doctor said when he measured it again that the measurement was normal. So I feel pretty good about things. He still wants to do a follow-up u/s at 34 weeks just to make sure things are going in the right direction. I left feeling a little worried because it is considered a 'soft sign" for Downs and could be put the baby at risk for kidney infections after birth. The doctor seemed pretty calm so I am hoping for the best:) When Brent came home from work tonight, he thought the nurse and doctor were confident in their "girl" identification so that made me feel better too.

Griffin was pretty excited to say the least. He did gently remind me that we don't have a room for her yet (yep, that is one reason we are trying to move this Spring). So he came up with the perfect solution...the baby can sleep in a basket in his room. If only he would get up in the middle of the night and take care of her for the first few months...Wishful thinking:)

Creativity

Griffin really loves his Sunday School class and has a great time learning songs in there. Today they must have taught him, "I have decided to follow Jesus". I have heard several rendition of this song as he is playing. My favorite so far is "I have decided to camp with Jesus".

Scrapbook pages

I did some online scrapbooking the other day to get some pages done quickly. It is pricey but much faster and less stuff to drag out. Anyway I was asked if they could post some of my pages on their website gallery. If you want to check them out, they are on www.howfasttheygrow.com and you can look in the gallery.

Alls Well That Ends Well

What a crazy day we have had. When I posted this morning, I never thought it would get this wild. We had someone coming to look at our house at 2:30 this afternoon and our neighbors offered to watch the dog for us. In the past he has done very well and there has been no problem. We were headed back to their house to pick him up when we got the call. In our house, "the call" when referring to Elvis means "he has left the building" yet again and bolted. This set in motion another 2 hour manhunt of chasing the elusive Italian Greyhound through the neighborhood and praying he doesn't run into traffic. After an hour of driving around, I headed back home with the boys to see our 2:30 showing appointment arrive 2 hours late (gotta love it) and want to see the house. So we left again. Needless to say we have WONDERFUL neighbors who were all looking for our dog. We finally got a call that someone had captured him (no easy feat) about 5 MILES away. He had just kept running and I guess ran out of steam. I am so glad that someone found him because I never would have thought to look for him where he ended up. So alls well that ended well. Our fondue dinner got off to a late start, but the boys had fun with it. And Gray also enjoyed modeling his new sunglasses and saying, "cool" a lot. Griffin's favorite gift was his new wallet and umbrella. He even bought us ice cream earlier today:)

Happy Valentine's Day

While it was a bit on the early side (6 AM) and I wasn't ready to wake up yet, I did have the sweetest little Valentine ever come for a snuggle. Griffin came in with a card an Ghiradelli chocolates and a big hug. Then he even waited until 7 to go downstairs to check out his presents so that he wouldn't ruin his surprise. But he heard Gray making some noise, so he decided to sit outside his door and serenade him with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Gray soon joined in and we had quite the duet very early this morning. Tonight we are making cheese and chocolate fondue for our Valetine's Day dinner. Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm just being helpful

Last night I was helping Griffin get ready to brush his teeth (meaning that I was holding all of toothbrush, paste, mouthwash, and whatever toy he was needing me to watch), when he said, "Mom, thanks. You're such a helpful woman. Do you know what I give helpful women? A notebook". Kind of random but sweet anyway.

Kindergarten?

So Brent and I have tentatively been planning on keeping Griffin in preschool one more year and sending him to kindergarten when he turns 6. He is a late summer birthday so he would barely be 5 if he went this year. When we had our parent teacher conference in October, his teacher really recommended giving him another year of preschool. For kicks I applied to a local private school to get some testing done and see what they recommended. He went in last Saturday morning and loved it. He kept talking about the fun games they played and how he loved kindergarten. Today we went in for the conference where we learn how he did on the tests. He did pretty well. He was dead average for the concepts portion and at a 5-6 year old age level for language (no surprise to anyone who comes across my child). His weakest area was motor skills mainly fine motor and he was slightly lower than average. Overall they said he was "wiggly", "talked constantly", and needed repetition of directions at times. Then he recommended him to start kindergarten next year and offered him placement in the school. It is all kind of overwhelming. This school has a pre-K program so I was sure they would recommend that. Especially when they started off the conference by saying he was the youngest kid that they tested that day. We still are thinking we will wait for kindergarten, but I am interested in seeing what his current teacher thinks at the conference in March.

Communion

Griffin has been wanting to read his Children's Bible a lot lately. The other night we read about the Last Supper and I was trying to relate it to Communion at our church service. Today at church we had Communion. So I pointed out the Communion table to him and reminded him of what we read in the Bible. At the start of the service, the choir started singing and Griffin got upset and said, "I thought we were going to communicate today".