My Boys

Last night I picked my parents up from the airport and spent almost 2 hours trying to get them back to our house in the most ridiculous traffic. Today, they're at the house with Mike and Dylan doing Thanksgiving prep and will be picking me up from my early release day of work for some holiday fun. I'm sure I'll post about what I know will be a fun afternoon soon. For now, I'd like to take a minute to talk about my boys.

Mike loves soccer. After his 2nd back surgery 2 years ago, he gave up playing it for a while but remained the coach for his Over the Hill (over 30) team. After feeling great and focusing on back physical therapy exercises for a year plus, he couldn't resist the call of the game anymore. Last Spring, not only was he still coaching the team, but he was back on the field. He spends a lot of time and effort on this team and he really enjoys it. I'm really glad he loves it so much but miss spending time with him on Sundays as his pre-game, game and post game activities take up the majority of those days. Well, last weekend all of his and his team's hard work paid off. They won the championship for their division. And, he gets to keep the pretty trophy they earned.

Dylan's pretty excited about the trophy too and likes to sit down with it and point out all of it's features - the "statue," soccer ball and star. I'm pretty excited that I've reclaimed having my husband around on the weekend.

The only upside to Mike not being around on Sundays is that Dylan and I get some rarely had one on one time together. Sometimes we'll go for a walk to a special breakfast, play at the park or run some errands. This past Sunday, with much to be done in preparation for my parents arrival and hosting Thanksgiving, we ran some errands. My car hadn't seen the inside of a car wash in sometime so we took it for a much needed bath. Dylan absolutely loved going through the car wash! I'm trying to convince Mike to take his car in soon so that the boys can enjoy that experience together too. We then did a couple of other shopping stops, one of which was at one of my favorite stores - the Container Store. This place is basically like a toy store for me. So many fun things to organize with! Yeah, totally brings out my type A personality. Anyway, one of the items I picked up there was a new laundry basket and Dylan thought it made a great place to hide. He was very amused by this for a while in the store and a lot of other shoppers were amused by it as well.

Where's Dylan?

He and I also stopped in at the library to pick up some books I had reserved. Well, I also thought it time to start teaching Dylan about checking out books so I picked out a few board books (ie indestructible) for him to borrow. I picked them out because he was only interested in the toys the children's area of the library had until we got back in the car. Then he picked up one of the books and was engrossed in it for a while.

My Library Jedi (My sweater fits him well, huh?)

Another stop on our excursion was Lowe's. We have both a Lowe's and a Home Depot close to our house so it just depends on what route we're on that determines at which one we stop. This day was Lowe's. Now, Dylan usually loves these places for the car shopping carts he gets to ride in. This time of year, though, they have a much bigger draw - Christmas decorations! He could sit and stare at all the inflatable characters and other moving\singing items they stock all day long. I think he's going to have a good time over the next month scouting out decorations in yards. And last night, when my parents arrived and he was "catching up" with them the only way he knows how - by spitting out all the words for things that interest him right now. He started listing all of the fun things he likes to see at Lowe's - Big Santa, Winnie the Pooh, Snoopy, M&M, Reindeer - exciting stuff! I'm very much looking forward to this holiday season with him. I'm probably just as (or more) anxious than him to pull out the Christmas decorations. That will be happening on Friday!

Kids always seems to have some catch phrase they're currently stuck on. Right now, Dylan's is "OK." He uses it a lot in situations where he used to answer yes. What really cracks me up about it though is the way he almost seems to be manipulating us with it. Very often, he'll say something and we'll repeat it to make sure we understood what he said. If we got it right, he used to say "yes" but now he answers "OK." So, for example, if he says something like "I want go outside" and we'll reply "Do you want to go outside?" he'll respond with "OK" and it almost feels like he's implying "why yes, what a nice idea you just proposed to me...I suppose I'm OK with going along with your plan." It just really gives me the giggles when he does that.

And that is what my boys are up to these days! I think they're pretty great...can you tell?