Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Thanksgiving week was a bit different than normal. Mostly, that’s because Gabe was it off school all week. I’m used to them being all off on Friday, but the Monday - Wednesday made life complicated. Since I was working from home and figured that he’d be bored, I set up a playdate with a school friend on Monday and then decided that it was easier to just keep Josy home with me too. Gabe got this lovely picture of me working from home.  Monday evening, Bella went to help out a friend and Pat had a meeting, so I took the boys to the store to do our massive Thanksgiving shopping. Pat had already gotten the turkey, so realistically, all we need was a huge pile of produce. I saw the sign that said I could get a discounted turkey for over $50, but I didn’t grab one because I didn’t think that I would go that high. When I got to the checkout, I went to self checkout. I don’t know why. I don’t like self checkout, particularly with the boys, but the other lanes were crazy busy. I rang up all of

The last week has been rough. Last Thursday Pat and Bella went to visit his parents. They got back late Sunday night, after the boys were already in bed. Then Pat had a work trip Monday morning and left the house at 3am. He got back Thursday night just as the boys were getting tucked into bed. Everyone was missing Daddy. Josy was a cranky mess and I’m guessing that was what was going on. Pat got a very long Josy snuggle on Friday morning when he got home. But we still had fun.  Gabe’s been watching art tutorials on YouTube and learning his to draw. Obviously most of them are pirate themed, but he also drew an ice cream cone with a face. I have some really good helpers who now fight over who gets to scrape my windows  in the morning. He came home from school with this pirate that he drew without following the tutorial.  We came home and discovered that the cats had knocked over a glass and it broke all over the floor. Gabe was excited to help clean up the mess, even though he insisted o

When we were fishing over the summer there was a copy of Treasure Island on the boat. We read several chapters and I was impressed that Gabe was so into it. Then Auntie Katilyn sent him his own copy of Treasure Island. Oh was he excited! This last weekend, Pat and Bella were gone visiting his parents, so Gabe and I had a lot of extra time while Josy was napping. So we started reading. We got through 110 pages in the first day. He wouldn’t let me stop reading. Eventually I told him that I needed a break to get some water, so he told me that he’d get me a glass of water and then we could keep reading. Every single spare minute he asks if we could read. Poor Josy was not interested in the book at all and would get through two sentences better getting down. But in six days, we got through the entire 400 page book. I was very impressed. And what 5-year-old can get through Robert Louis Stevenson??? Also, he now wants to read it again.

Josy is still going to speech therapy. He’s making so much progress with his taking that I’m no longer worried that he’ll never talk. He’s just behind and that’s okay. At this point, he’s missing a lot of the filler words, but he knows enough nouns and verbs to get his points across. But he’s definitely missing all the little words (in, the, to, etc).  He’s also getting quite the sense of humor. It’s really fun to watch. Every day Gabe announces that he wants oatmeal for breakfast. The other day I asked the boys what they wanted and Josy said “Beyo (Gabriel). Want. Oat. Meal.” Last night I asked the boys what they wanted for dinner, suggesting pizza or something else. Josy talked “o night oats!” (which happens to be his favorite breakfast…) It’s just fun to watch him actually have opinions and not just repeat stuff… Anyway, he’s still going to speech therapy. On Thursday we meet up with his therapist and we went to the park to play. (It was play outside or do zoom therapy. Easy decisio

Let’s catch up on all of the random pictures that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet… It took him awhile to get around to liking his Halloween costume. He just loves to help. We went grocery shopping and he jumped in the back of the car to help get the groceries in. Future Dr Josy? This one loves the garbage truck just as much as his brother did. Sometimes it’s not worth having the fight. So he wore his jacket like this. Silly kid. Daddy cut open a watermelon and everyone wanted a piece of it! Catfishing! It’s also the most that Gabe has giggled with Lucy since Freddy showed up. My little pirate. We took family pictures and this was the only picture that I took. Bella on the beach. He loves hanging out in the House chambers every morning before school. Thank you Amazon… He thinks he’s so big, trying to steal my car… Playing at school. Freddy really likes sleeping on the stairs. Nothing like sleeping where you know that people aren’t going to lose you (which happens a lot, actually.