Family Fuller

Over 4th if July we finally went for it and had a rather pee-filled weekend attempting to get Holden potty trained.  He managed to do alright, had quite a few accidents but I am happy to say today he was accident free!  Yeah!  He is still wearing pull-ups at night, but that is just fine with me.

It is finally summer here in Seattle, starting about 4 PM on July 5th – right on schedule as the locals say.  Then all last week it was hot, over 90 degrees hot which was great.  The boys had swimming lessons outside and with Colin’s 2% body fat he definitely needs the heat.  The week before he was swimming in 55 degrees – no kidding – he could barely talk when he got out of the pool he was so cold.  Holden on the other hand doesn’t have that problem because he refuses to get in the pool.  Not that the water is an issue, he loves to swim, but he doesn’t like to swim with teachers.  I sit there fuming about spending so much money to have him sit pool side…ah well.

Here are a few pictures from the past couple weeks.  They are in reverse chronological order:

My garlic harvest – about 25 heads, just picked tonight.

Colin enjoying the slip n slide

Holden on the slip n slide

In the larger baby pool in our backyard.

Holden and our peas

Colin, Holden and Uncle Fletcher at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium

The boys and sharks.

Holden on the way to the baseball game with a large bag of kettle korn

The boys on the way to Safeco

I just had to write this quick post about Holden. He has known all his letters and how to write for awhile but the other day while we weren’t watching he got this coloring book and did this all by himself:

It is a code you have to figure out to find the answer to the question. So not only did he figure out how to do it, but he knew all the letters and wrote them in the right spots. I could not believe he did it, he just turned 3 in Feb.

I have somewhat high expectations because of Colin but Holden still manages to blow me away.

Here are two “Monster Bunnies” Holden drew today. I love the feet the most…

We have done a lot of Christmas decorating but each day the boys like to add a little more. Colin did a very nice Christmas tree at school complete with sequins. Then Holden made a bunch of drawings. He likes to “wrap” his which means rolling the paper up. Then he put his “wrapped” decorations up next to Colin’s on our front door:

This afternoon I attempted to build a Gingerbread house with the boys. It was from a kit but wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. The boys restrained themselves from eating candy for awhile but suddenly the house started to colapse and as I was strugging to hold the roof on they took advantage of the situation. The next thing I know, they are picking the pieces off the roof as it’s sliding and licking and eating everything. Turned into a madhouse and a pretty ugly gingerbread house – well, really it wasn’t very attractive from the get go, but that’s what I expected

Holden and I also made some cookies this afternoon:

P.S. I swear Holden wears something other than that orange stripped shirt…just glanced through the last few posts and he is wearing it in every picture.

I came out of the shower this morning to find Holden gluing his bare feet together with a glue stick – thank god he didn’t find the crazy glue on the counter

He is currently making lunch in the kitchen. He requested to use the real stove but I nixed that right away and made him his own set up:

The boys requested haircuts. Holden said “I be very happy if you cut my hair” specifically because now he looks like Dad. I didn’t want to do it but was overruled by the boys. Holden has never had his hair buzzed. He is still super cute but I think I prefer his hair longer .

Both boys wanted to be sharks for Halloween, specifically a bonnethead hammerhead for Colin, and you can’t buy those so I had to make them. Holden is a “ate ite ark – swimming in the ater” (Great White Shark, swiming in the water)  They turned out pretty well:

Side view

Back view

Sitting at Colin’s preschool:

Showing off their costumes at school:

Attended Holden’s first preschool event tonight – the pumpkin party, so called because everyone was supposed to bring in a pumpkin to decorate (with breaks for a little Mexican buffet and ‘circle time’).

Holden was a real champ when it came time to decorate – very careful and precise about how he slopped paint on the pumpkin – looked like a masterpiece to me:

Here are some of Colins drawings. He has a whole series of sea drawings all with sharks.

Here are his coloring skills:

A drawing of Holden:

Not to short change Holden, he has become quite the artist as well.

Uncle Fletcher came to visit last Thursday and the boys had a great time (us too).  Colin must have asked me every couple hours the entire week before how long it was going to be until Fletcher got to Seattle.  Colin had lots of plans, most of which involved getting to eat food in the living room while watching baseball.  He planned on putting out chips, Skittles, and either penne or bow tie pasta (he couldn’t decide).

On Friday while Chuck was at work we entertained Fletcher, or really I should say he entertained the boys.  We went to Colin’s swim lessons and then to get Fletcher his monster meatball sub.  That night we got a baby sitter and went out to Ray’s Cafe right on the water.  It wasn’t the nicest night, but the food was fantastic.  I can’t wait to go there again.

Saturday, we got a big breakfast and then Chuck and Fletcher took Colin and Holden over to the baseball field and ran them ragged, hitting and running the bases. At the same time I had to go register for my triathlon.  I expected it to take about 2 hours, but 4 hours and many, many long lines later I finally got home and decided I needed to carbo load a bit so we went out to eat at Snappy Dragon – yum, yum.

Since the upcoming Tuesday was also Fletcher’s birthday the boys wanted to make him a cake (with lots of sprinkles).  So after stuffing ourselves at Snappy we came home to have some cake.

Later Chuck and Fletcher went out to get some drinks and I turned in early since I had to be up at 5:30 the next morning to race. Then Holden decided to wake up at 11:30 and 12:30 (Chuck wasn’t home yet) so I got up with Holden – who wasn’t sick or anything, just woke up and cried.  At that point I was quite mad, at Holden and Chuck who got home shortly thereafter.  At this point it is 1:30 and by now I can’t sleep at all because I am so mad.  At 3 AM Holden woke up again (I was still awake) then he woke up again at 3:45 when I finally brought him into bed with me.  I finally fell asleep at 4:30 AM, only to have to get up an hour later to go and race in a triathlon.  Let’s just say I was not very happy with Chuck or anybody at 6 AM when I decided I was still going to go and do it.

I ended up getting to the start about 3 minutes before my wave started.  I was exhausted but I did it anyway and well by my own standards.  18 minute swim, 10 minute transition (I wasn’t trying very hard), 42 minute bike ride, 2 minute transition and then a 34 minute run (which is good for me because I had yet to actually run 3 miles in training – I am an awful runner). 1:48 minutes all in all.  Thankfully by then Chuck had apologized many times and I had worked out all my frustrations so I was happy.

We drove home, I slept for about an hour and then we took the bus down to the Mariners vs. Yankees game.  It was a beautiful day, we had great seats, cold beers and the boys were happy.  They both stayed in their seats from the 4th inning (we got there late) until the end of the game.  Then they went down and got to run the bases on the field.  The bus ride home was not so smooth, we waited well over an hour for a bus and we were all pretty tired by then.

The next day Chuck had to go back to work and Fletcher played his 25th game of Sequence with Colin.  The there was some Lego construction and other games when I finally convinced them we should go do something.  We went to the Ballard Locks to see the salmon fish ladder but there were hardly any fish in it.  Colin had swimming lessons right after that and then we took Fletcher to the airport.  Colin asked him right away when he was going to come back…they had a great time.