Mr. Boy is a Busy Busy Bee

Mr. Boy loves to read books with animals and some of his favorites have animals by letter. Books for kids commonly use bumblebees for the letter B and Mr. Boy likes to say: "Busy Busy Bee" every time he identifies the little stingers.

Which brings me to another new plan Mama is instituting. Mama likes plans!

In our new house, the kids' toys, DVD's, books, and DVR full of Diegos, Doras, Sesames, and Wonderpets are all upstairs. But when Princess Baby is napping, Mr. Boy cannot be upstairs with her. Because he is a door opening champ and he hates that his playmate is napping and not playing with him. So Mr. Boy is relegated to the living room every afternoon from 2-4. Big J and Mama have both had some REALLY boring afternoons trying to keep Mr. Boy off the stairs and entertained already in the past week in the new house. So far reading cookbooks and singing karaoke have worked, but they are not practical solutions in the long term.

Plus we have a babysitter here 3 afternoons a week and so Mama came up with a plan!!

Mama found an old backpack that is bright yellow and black with a bee on it in the course of unpacking. Perfect! Now we have a place to keep Mr. Boy's special Big Boy activities! Today I stocked the Busy Bee Backpack with preschool worksheets printed from the internet, 2 winnie the pooh puzzles, 2 boxes of word flashcards, crayons, 2 Sesame Street preschool workbooks, and some playdoh with alphabet cookie cutters. Now Mr. Boy has things to keep him busy and learning new things while his sister naps.

Sure beats singing "Tiny Dancer" and "Folsom Prison Blues" repeatedly while Mr. Boy reads us the Sandra Lee cookbook!

New House, New Routine

Mr. Boy and Princess Baby are growing up a little but they still need a lot of supervision for their daily activities. Because Mama is home alone with them 3 nights a week, We have established a new routine for them.

Mama does it 7 nights a week, but Big J helps us on the nights he is home to give Mama a bit of a break.

5:30-Supper time. This is important because Mr Boy has some issues with eating good food, eating meat, and eating anything some days. But now that we sit up at the table at the same time every night and put small portions of balanced food out--he's been doing super. We sometimes have to reward Mr. Boy with his milk cup or a juice box if he's having an especially hard time finishing his meal, but it is going very well--tonight he ate 2 whole fish sticks!

6:00-Bubble Bath!! Whoo-hoo! Big fun to take a bubble bath in the big new bathtub. We have lots of fun bath toys and Mr. Boy and Princess Baby like to help Mama put them away when the water is all gone. We bought a mesh laundry bag at the dollar store and we just drop those soggy wet toys and animal sponges right in the bag and hang the bag on the shower head--voila! They're dry by the next bath time.

6:20-one last show. Mr. Boy and Princess Baby go into her room and settle into their little chairs and watch Word World, SuperWhy, or Sesame for about 20 minutes. This gives Mama time to put away laundry, check her email, turn on night lights, straighted up rooms, hang up towels, or just breathe for a couple minutes and relax--Mama is TIRED at this time of night because she works till 5:10 or 5:15 and launched right into kid-time and fixing supper time.

6:45-Special Mama time. We go into Mama and Daddy's room and start with a game of Mama Says--it's just like Simon Says and it helps us get our wiggles out. Then we sing! We sing all the favorites, right in the proper order according to Mr. Boy--Old Donald, ABC's, She'll be Coming Round the Mountain (favorite verse? the one about sleeping with Grandma), Row Row Row Your Boat, and B-I-N-G-O. Then Mama Says--come hear the story! And both kids sit with her on the bed and read 2 story books. After the stories are done, we hold hands in a circle and sing Jesus Loves Me and say our prayers. Right now we are particularly praying for Papa because he's been feeling yucky from radiation treatments.

7:00-Into bed! Princess Baby heads to her bed right after the last Amen and gets tucked in with her blankie and her babies. Then Mr. Boy gets to go downstairs with Mama or Big J and sit and drink a little more milk. Then he gets tucked into his bed for the night.

After only 7 days of this new, specific routine, it is going very well. Everybody goes to bed calmly and stays there till morning time. When Big J is home, he fixes Mama and Big J's dinner while Mama does the baths and special time, and relaxes while the grill heats up or the oven cooks food as well. It's Big J's first chance to be by himself all day, so it's a good down time for him, too!

New House Part 1: Mr. Boy's New Room

Here are a couple photos of Mr. Boy's new bedroom! He has his special Redskins blanket he got for a shower gift before he was even born on his wall--just like in every bedroom he's ever had, his (messy) Elmo bed, and you can see he's got the Little Tyke Slide, too! He's excited that he gets the slide in his room. There is an un-pictured corner of the room that still holds a few boxes, but when that's done he gets to have the play school in his room, too! The walls are a little bare because he is going to be earning some special Go Diego Go stickers for decoration when he fills his next potty chart with stickers. So for now, he's got a few random pieces of sports equipment and his name!

The Stair Safety Gate

We love our new stair safety gate!!

We got this one, and we love it! It's a Carleson Extra Wide. We bought it from CSN Stores.

Through my friend The Cotton Wife, I was given a contact at CSN Stores and they offered me a gift certificate in order to try ordering one of their products and reviewing it here at the Bowling Team Blog. Since we were moving to the new house with stairs, it was a great time to order our gate through the CSN site. When I clicked there I found they sell nearly every type of item for the home and family you could possibly imagine so I was able to have a choice between many different safety gates when I chose this Carleson one. And the CSN store has free shipping on many items!

I ordered this on a Friday and got it on a Thursday--not too bad when you take into account I put the wrong address with my billing info because I forgot we already had changed our address at the bank!

As you can see in the photo, the extra wide size fit our top of the stairs area really well. It comes as wide as 44 inches and our entry there was 42.5. I believe Carelson also offers additions for larger spaces you might need to gate off. The opening is one that takes 2 hands most of the time--which is a very good thing for keeping the children from opening it up and tumbling down. The little red thing pulls back and then the handle lifts up and you ease on through. (Or you painstakingly help a little person like Mr. Boy or Princess Baby through it and hold your breath as they carefully navigate down the stairs holding the railing!)

The speedy free delivery couldn't have come fast enough, since Princess Baby managed to tumble down those steps on the first day of our living in the house--Papa had the gate installed but didn't get here in time to do it before she had her first spill. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt badly and just got scared mostly, but it sure re-enforced our enthusiasm for it!! The picture of the door with the butterfly on it is Princess Baby's room--you can see how super close the doorway is to the top of the stairs--so even if she wasn't trying to play on the stairs, her enthusiasm for hopping and prancing as she walks could lead to big time trouble if not for the trusty new gate from CSN stores!

8 Thumbs Up from the entire Bowling Team!

We love our new house!!!

Oh my goodness! Although the month of July was insanely stressful and busy with packing and finding a new house it was SO WORTH IT. Take it from Mama, this is a great house.

We are super happy in it, and life is grand.

Things we each love:

Big J: He loves, not necessarily in this order: our garage with nice shelves and hooks for hanging things; the lawn service included in our rent; our super big bedroom so that Mama's office space is not intrusive, our gigantic closet, and that Mama is happy.

Mr. Boy loves: The stairs, even though he is NOT allowed to play on them; his new room with lots of bright sunshine and his slipper slide right near his bed; the big new bathtub in the big new bathroom--he and Princess Baby can hold a swim meet in there; and the big vanity mirror and sink in the new bathroom--he likes to crouch down below the counter and then watch himself pop up in the mirror.

Princess Baby loves: her new room with her name on the wall by her bed; running and zooming between her room and Mr. Boy's room in the nice wide hallway upstairs; the fact that the play kitchen is now in her bedroom--this morning she microwaved a duck in celebration!

Mama loves: that all the bedrooms and bathrooms (2 of them!!) are soo big and brightly lit by sunshine from big windows (not in the bathrooms), the big open floor plan on the first floor--we have our living/dining/and even an open sided kitchen so the whole family can be together; a pretty fireplace to hang stockings from come December, a garage so it easier to load everyone into the car in all weather; and the gate at the top of the stairs. (More on that in the next post this weekend!)

The move was super hard work, Big J did all the packing and Papa A. and his good friends moved all our boxes and furniture in 3 short hours on Wednesday afternoon. Pastor L. loaned us a van to help with transportation. Grammy and Mrs. H. and M. watched Princess Baby and Mr. Boy for a very long day while everybody else moved and cleaned and got the new house ready for them to see it.

The Bowling Team is very blessed to live in a lovely new house and have such kind and generous friends and family to help us and make our settling in so much easier.

We can't wait to post pictures of our pretty new home but we gotta get all these boxes out of the way first!

Product Reviewing Coming Soon!

As I said in my last post, we are moving to a new house in now, about 10 days? Whew! Big J has been doing great with the packing and we got about 30 more boxes today so we're moving along nicely now as we get this show on the road.

Another feature of our new house new to the Bowling Team will be stairs. Our kids have been on Grammy and Papa's stairs but that's about it. So we are going to be ordering this gate and putting it at the top of the stairs.

I am ordering it from CSN stores and we're super excited because that's a website with free shipping! CSN stores have everything from furniture to rugs and kitchen things--even Corelle dishes! Very useful when you figure it is heavy-ish. It's funny because the gate has a little cat door in it. We don't have a cat, but we do have little kids who are mechanically inclined and the main gate fastener looks a lot like the ones on the church nursery gates that Princess Baby and Mr. Boy cannot open.

I'm going to post pictures and write a review of our new gate from CSN Stores as soon as we are moved and have it installed!

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere

The Bowling Team is relocating! Not far, just about 1 mile.

We are thrilled to be getting a new house! Our current little home served us nicely for our first place in the Sunflower State but we are blessed to be able to upgrade this year.

Our new house was built fairly recently and has the following features we do not enjoy in our current place:
a garage
2 full bathrooms
bigger bedrooms
electric fireplace
lawn care provided by management company (Big J LOVES this one)
free use of a private community swimming pool

That's quite a change for the positive!

We will be experimenting with sleeping arrangements. Our new house has an open floor plan on the ground floor, so even though it is bigger than our current living space, there is not a separate playroom space to house Princess Baby and Mr. Boy's TV, their kitchen, table and chairs, and mountains of toys. So the current plan will be for the tykes to share a bedroom and use our 3rd room as a playroom. I think it will work, since they're the best of friends. It's not an arrangement that is impossible to change if it is too big of a challenge for sleeping, but the idea is worth a shot! Late night giggling will probably happen, but that is OK by Mama--they might sleep later the next morning!

Princess Baby

Our pretty little Princess Baby is a big 2 year old girl now! (No I'm not changing her name.)

PB celebrated her 2nd birthday in May with a fantastic Princess Party with all her little Sunday school friends and some grown up family and friends, too.

Her favorite person in the entire world is Mr. Boy and they play together all day long, running and giggling and talking all throughout the house. It is a wonder she doesn't conk out on the couch more often as much as those two play!

She is quite the little girly girl. Princess Baby loves to have her hair fixed, wear pretty skirts and dresses, play with her babies, and look in the mirror. Big J has a big affection for looking in the mirror, too, so Mama thinks that PB is a chip off the old block where that is concerned!

PB also loves to sing--just yesterday Mama caught her standing in front of a full length mirror spinning and singing her favorite songs "Old Donald" and her ABC's. She wakes up chatting and goes to sleep grinning and saying "See you later, Mommy!"

Mr. Boy

Mr. Boy is now a happy, healthy 3 1/2 years old. He's a ray of sunshine as bright as the curls on his head and he has been busy growing and changing the past 6 months. We have learned that Mr. Boy may be a member of the Asperger's Syndrome club, and we've got a super nice Miss Teacher who comes to our house once a week to play games and help Mr. Boy get ready for preschool in the fall. He has some doctors and special helpers to visit with in August and September to help us learn more about how to help Mr. Boy use his Great Brain and enthusiasm to his best advantages.

Things Mr. Boy is currently loving:

swimming! He took swimming lessons with Papa at the pool for 2 weeks and graduated with a certificate full of stickers and a coupon for a free pizza.

cookbooks! Mr. Boy loves to find a type of book he likes and indulge--he is currently obsessed with looking at Mama's Sandra Lee and Pampered Chef cookbooks and has all the pictures memorized by the recipe titles. His favorite picture is of the Tamale Pie in the Sandra Lee book.

Presidents! We have a book with pictures of the presidents and Mr. Boy loves to read through it and tell us who each picture represents. Millard Fillmore is a favorite but with his little guy way of talking, it sounds more like Miwward Fiwwmowe. But we know who he's talking about!

Tigers! Mr. Boy loves books that have pictures of tigers, a DVD we have about Swamp Tigers and the tigers in the movie 'Kung Fu Panda'.

Mr. Boy is planning to join a pre-school class 2 mornings a week in September and it is going to be a whole new world of making friends and learning in a new environment.

Update on the Team Captains

Mama and Big J have been busy helming the Bowling Team lately but we've had some time to get more settled, too.

Big J had a nice break from his job for a few months during the slow business months and we all got spoiled rotten having him home--could be why Mama let the blog get ignored?

Now Big J is back to work and we are enjoying the return to our 'real routine.'

Mama has joined the DAR and the missions committee at church to give her some outside projects that aren't career or kid related. The two groups meet often enough to make friends, but not so much that it is a stress to be involved--perfect!

Now that the kids are bigger and older, Mama has had a little more time in the kitchen, rediscovering the love of entertaining she had before Mr. Boy-related morning sickness kicked in about 4 years ago. We had an Asian-themed Father's Day dinner for Papa and Big J in June and last weekend Mama channeled her inner Martha and hosted a tea party for Grammy and her friends. Check out the yummy goods!

what have we missed?

Gonna try to hit a few highlights of the past un-blogged months here.

So here we go!

Christmas 2009 was our first Kansas Christmas and it was super. We had about 2 feet of snow and it was bitter cold, but Aunt Haley and Uncle Mike came from North Carolina, Uncle Raymond from Seattle, and we had a really fun week of celebrations.

The kids got a new kitchen! It was a big hit, and Princess Baby got a new dolly which was a favorite surprise, too.

We didn't do much by way of vacation this year but we did spend a fantastic day in Wichita on Good Friday with our cousins there. Princess Baby and Mr. Boy especially loved the Children's Exploration Place museum where everything was touchable and there was a special Mr. Potato head exhibit the kids loved.


We also celebrated a very happy Easter here for the 2nd year in a row! Easter is such a wonderful time of year both as it relates to our faith in God and as the earth wakes up from a winter nap! Easter egg hunts at church and at Grammy and Papa's back yard were conducted in full sunshine!

Time for a Revival of the Team Blog!

Whew, I last posted around Thanksgiving. That's certainly lame, isn't it?

What has happened since then? About 11 billion things, give or take.

But the team is doing excellent, as a group and individually.

We passed our Sunflower State 1 year residency anniversary back in April. That first year flew by super quick. But moving here was a really great decision and we're so happy it has worked out so well.

A great blessing, to be sure.

The blog needs a revival so that I can get my act together and share more of the day to day cuteness, hilarity, and joys we as a team experience together!

I think it would be a self-set up for failure to promise a post a day but 3 a week is my minimum goal.