Cookie Thursday

We have done a Cookie Thursday for two weeks now. We make cookies and invite friends over. I feel that this is a good way to be social and have something fun to look forward to right before the weekend.

Eerika loves helping out with cooking and baking. And she sure loves licking the beaters and taste testing the dough. Just like her äiti.

Once Aleksi sees chocolate chips, he is completely focused on them and keeps making noise until I give him some. And yes, without a fail, I give him some. 

Snack Time

We have not been much of a snacking family. We eat three meals a day unless I have the munchies, but my kids barely ask for snacks. However, this year we seem to do an afternoon snack. Saku is hungry after school, which means that everyone gets a snack.

This week Aleksi and I went to Sprouts and came home with a huge selection of good produce. We bought some grapes and they were absolutely delicious. The kids, especially Aleksi, ate them like they were candy.

Saku is still wearing his jacket as we only had half an hour between coming home from school and going to Eerika's gymnastics lesson.

Aleksi feeds himself most of the time. It is messy and Saku seems very concerned about how gross and messy he is.  Aleksi liked putting his grapes into his yogurt cup.

Yogurt covered little fingers on a toy car. 

Aleksi at 16 months

This kid is sixteen months old. No words. But zero worry from us. 

Aleksi loves balls. He will keep pointing to the basketball hoop during sacrament meeting. He will bring you balls and expect you to play catch with him.  He will use spoons or spatulas as hockey sticks to hit balls with. He also loves when Eerika plays with him with the popper and when Eerika pretends to get hurt.

He will freak out when we leave him with a baby sitter or at child watch (at the Y), but recovers within a minute or two and happily plays until we get back. Once we are back and he sees us, he runs to us so quickly just in case we would have plans to leave him again. 

He got another tooth last week. I have no idea how many he has in total. 

He learned to sign "stinky" this week. He will even tell us that he is stinky if he has been sitting in his poop for a while. 

He loves being outside as long as it is not too windy. 

We make it through about 30-45 minutes of sacrament meeting each week and then one of us in the hallway with him. Though he doesn't get to play there, but sit on our lap. He will fold his arms (two hands together in a fist) for a prayer. 

If I am using my phone while he feels I should be paying attention to him, he will keep swatting at the phone. He has started to watch shows on PBS kids on my phone. He will push the buttons a lot which drives the older kids crazy if they are trying to watch the show as well. He will sometimes sit down and watch a show on the TV on his own. He prefers to sit on my lap while doing it which defeats the purpose. 

He loves it when someone is chasing him and he loves running in circles through the kitchen.

He still gets sad when I leave him with Troy. Or sometimes even when I go upstairs without him. 

We continue to read books and he can point out a frog, a dog, a fish and a bird. Also airplane, garbage truck, school bus and a helicopter. 

He has been sleeping well for the past week-no cough and no teething. It has been amazing. 

He is more attached to his tutti than the other were or maybe I should say that I let him walk around with it more. I need to restrict tutti to stay in the crib and I need to wean him off his bottle. Some things just make my life a bit easier.

I Think They Like Each Other

I love miss E

Miss Eerika's words tonight

"I will miss you when I'm a missionary"

"Do you think Saku and I can have babies?" 

Me: you mean if your bodies will be able to have babies

E: "yeah because some people are too sick"

Me: I hope so

E: when you are a mummi, if i dont want my kids to have candy, you need to ask me first before giving it to them.

"I can't wait to grow up"

She was also extremely kind to Saku today. When Saku was trying to pull the recycling can inside with one hand while holding his lunch box, Eerika offered to help him.

Eerika's Spy Party

Eerika wanted a spy party for her 5th birthday. I don't know where the idea came from except that she "likes being sneaky".

We went all out with the invitations and delivering the invitation.  We drove up to each friend's house, Eerika climbed out of the car in all black and delivered the invitation on to their door step. She rang the doorbell and ran back to the car. She was so excited to do it that at the first house she actually ran back with the invitation in her hand.

The friends were invited to come and use their spy skills to solve the mystery of the stolen royal jewels. So our party bags had ring pops for each kid. Eerika decorated the bags.

This is the face of the girl few hours before the party. She did get whacked by a hockey stick that morning which left a bit of a mark on her cheek.

This sign was at the front door to welcome friends in. It was cute to hear the gentle, quiet knocks from most of the kids. Eerika obviously dashed to the door each time.

We started the party by having each kid finger printed.

And the kids got to choose a spy name. Eerika was chose "pink pony" and Saku "lightning bolt".

  We had sunglasses for the kids as sunglasses seem to be a classic spy prop. We only got silly pictures with Clara as she showed up early.

  

Our games included Simon Says, a laser maze made with streamers and hide and seek. 

Since the party was from 2-4 pm, we only had a little snack for them and we ended up putting a table cloth on the living room floor since there was no way to seat nine kids. It actually worked really well. Juice boxes, string cheese, apple sauce pouches, red vines and oreos made up their snack.

Between snack and cake,  we did our scavenger hunt for the royal jewels. I hid a clue for each child and they first had to find their clues and then we read them all and the kids raced upstairs to find them.

We made a bomb cake. I baked it and Troy decorated it. Though we decided that this will be the last cake to be made since no one really seems to like cake. 

I loved that Eerika's party consisted of kids that are truly her friends. What a serious blessing since we have only been here for six months. 

Luke and Eerika go to pre-K together.

Cheney was the first play date for Eerika.

Grace is another pre-K friend.

Norah is year older, but they play well together.

Clara is one of the sweetest girls and a good friend for Eerika.

Adria is in Eerika's sunbeam class and the girls seem to really enjoy each other's company.

The party was loud and crazy and Eerika loved it. 

God's Hand in Our Lives

Today I was preparing for my lesson for Sunday school and the topic really spoke to me about seeing God's hand in our lives. 

While I truly love living here in Colorado Springs, and I honestly don't wish to be back in Tucson, there are growing pains and some degree of loneliness when it comes to establishing your life in a new place. Or maybe there is a certain degree of loneliness just in adult life. I had few days of texting back and forth with old friends and I was almost scared to put myself out there with new people. One Thursday morning, I prayed for a friend. Within an hour, Jess texted me about going to body pump class with her. It was such a clear answer to my prayer. 

This weekend was a social weekend for our family. On Friday Jess and her kids came over after school for a play date and all the kids, including Aleksi, happily played together. It felt effortless to chat with her which was a huge blessing. On Saturday, the Sidwell family came over for dessert and again, we really enjoyed ourselves. It was nice to see Troy chatting away as he doesn't get the same social opportunities as I do with play dates and the gym. The kids were crazy but happy together. 

On Sunday we went over to the Brinton family for dinner. It was nice to be invited into someone's house and have a relaxing night.

I am writing this down so I can remember that when I put the effort in and when I reach out for people, good things take place and I need to be more willing to swallow my pride and get out of my comfort zone and just ask people to spend time with me and our family. 

Other note worthy things around here:

Saku is currently reading the 4th Harry Potter book. He can read so quickly. But I think he reads much like I do, he doesn't get quite all the details due to his high speed and desire to know what happens next. And to make things even more fun, he has a piano homework of learning a Harry Potter theme song. There were some tears tonight as Troy was trying to have Saku count the appropriate rhythm and notes and Saku felt like Troy was pushing too hard. I am writing this down because I feel like this is the first time that this has occurred. It could have been me just as well. How to push them to reach their potential but not make them feel like a failure for not getting it perfect right away.

Eerika has started gymnastics and she is such a perfectionist so she has struggled with the fact that Saku's bridges and handstands are better than hers and that she can't do everything perfectly yet. Today we practiced many handstands during the day and she actually improved already quite a bit. It is good to have this growing experience and learning to not give up. Gymnastics is very hard and it requires a lot, so this will give her a good foundation of trying hard things. Eerika has made progress with her reading and can sound out words such as "me" and "see". Or she has them memorized, but either way she feels better about he reading. She has also started to show interest in playing the piano. She has figured out few simple songs and does an impressive song trying to figure them out. 

Aleksi loves to walk around saying "mamamamama". He is constantly trying to get on the computer and bang on the keyboard. He likes to sit on the piano and play music just like Saku and Eerika.