Weekend Pony (Nate Style)

This is the first year that Nate has had one of Scott’s teachers and it is so weird! I love how two little people can be raised in the same home with the same parents and be their own. Weekend pony is awesome. He gets to come home for the weekend and you write down everything you did in the Weekend Pony journal and share it with the class on Monday. Scott was obsessed with taking Weekend Pony everywhere. Nate didn’t want him to get hurt so he let him take naps in his room all weekend. I think his caregiver fear was brought on by an emergency fur cut we had to give Weekend Pony after he magically got gum stuck in his mane with in hours of being in the Lyon home. It was SHOCKING and is still mystery as to how it happened in the car…in Nate’s lap….while Nate was chewing gum. A mystery.

PS Weekend Pony’s actual name is Lightening. Nate’s class renamed him Lightening Thunder. Nate later renamed him Fire Thunder. I just stuck with Weekend Pony to try and bring some consistency to the poor pony’s life.

We love you Weekend Pony!

Reasons I cry during yoga

Have a great year little love bugs that aren’t little anymore. You are destined for greatness.
P.S. I miss you already.
P.P.S. If you could work on being in a better mood when you get home from school this year, that would be great. Thanks in advance.

Girls have Virginias

Soooo… It was an interesting night….

So far, my stance on sex ed has been on a need-to-know basis. If a question is asked, I answer it honestly. I have been asked, “Where do babies come out of your belly?” And I have answered. So far, no one has asked how a baby gets IN your belly. Last night, the boys were being boys and hiding a bouncy ball spasticly from each other while the other one guessed where it was, of course the it soon ended up hiding in underwear. They started yelling something about PP’s (our short cut for penis) then they just started full on yelling PENIS! PENIS! My mistake was intervening…

Me: Guys, penis isn’t a bad word, but it is a private word. It isn’t something that I want you to run around yelling because you are talking about your super private areas and we don’t talk about our private bodies with people that aren’t the 4 of us. Got it?

Boys: GOT IT!

Nate: Girls don’t have pp’s.

Me: Nope they don’t.

Scott: What do girls call their private areas?

Me: (deep breath, stay natural, deep breath) Girls call their private area vagina.

Silence

Nate: Girls have a VIRGINIA! That is so funny! It is like a VIRGINIA!

Scott: (cracking up) Oh man, virginia! VIRGINIA!!!!

Me: (having a deep internal battle, do I let it go? Because how hilarious is this?!) Guys, chill out. The word is vagina and it is also a private word, so please QUIT SCREAMING ABOUT IT!

I am sure this will be repeated in public sometime soon so put earmuffs on your kids if you frequent Target and Whole Foods.

Speaking of Virginias

Nate decided to turn into a 14 yr old girl for about 30 minutes. Some how in the bath tub, Scott’s eye got scratched and he was “going blind” so I quickly got both the kids out to ease the drama. To set the scene, No one was in trouble. I didn’t yell. I just said, “Time to get out.”

Nate: (laying on the ground with his head in his hands fake crying) I need a new family! No one in this family loves me. I am going to live with a family that likes me.

Me: Umm, Nate, what just happened here? No one is upset at you.

Nate: I want to live with a new mom and a new family. None of you love me. Everyone is mean to me. 

Me: I am so confused right now. What is going on? 

Nate: (fake whimpering)

Me: (time to change tactics) Nate, if you had a new mom, she wouldn’t know your secret handshake… I would be so sad if I didn’t have you.

Nate: (looking up with dramatic eyes) I can teach it to her (and I am not kidding he really said this…) DUH!

Me: Okay, well, I would love to read to you before you go to bed, but if you want to lay in my closet and be sad, that is up to you. PS, I hope you don’t go to a new family, we would be super sad.

Nate: Ughhhhhhh….. (comes out 10 minutes later and acted like nothing happened)

RANDOM.

I really hope he doesn’t start turning into a 14 yr old girl very often, because I was really excited to have boys and skip all that drama. 

PS Vagina is a super creepy word and so are all the other words to use instead of vagina so feel free to just start saying Virginia because I definitely will be. 

Never a dull moment. Ever.

4 yrs and 7 days

Nate is 4!

(and 7 days)

Nate-

Everyday you make us laugh out loud. You are kind and you are fast runner. You love knights and pretending and Scott. You amaze me with how smart you are. You went off the diving board, the slide, and the high dive for the first time all within two days. You decided you were going to do it and you did. You are brave and strong and your smile lights up a room. Thank you for being ours. I’m glad I don’t have to share you for a long time (although, you do already have your wife picked out, but you promised me that you won’t get married until after college). I love you Nate Keener. I love you higher than the heavens and deeper than the seas.

Thanks Mimi and Poppy!

 

All about Nate.

Every time we have gone to Target in the last year you have looked at the GI Joe cake and said, “I want that on my birthday!”

 

For Nate’s birthday, he let me off easy. He wanted to go to Big Daddy’s for dinner and wanted a store bought cake, I felt bad for about 30 seconds. We had a super healthy day of donuts for breakfast, a hot dog and slushy for lunch, and dessert at the pool. He went down the slide over 30 times at the pool! You got a castle and knights, a knight costume, and a new board game. Happy Birthday Nate, we love celebrating you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh geez

Any bets on how this is going to end?!

I have found this summer, by about 3pm… We are ALL done playing nice. Including me. We are all three pretty tired of each other.

I finally got tired of yelling “Quit fighting!!” and changed it to a super compassionate… “Someone is going to get hurt and when it happens, I’m not going to care. You have been warned…. Carry on crazy people, carry on.”

And the first one to cry??? Nate takes the prize! I actually had my money on Scott.

Speaking of Changas

I have been in blog avoidance because the thought of catching up on the last 6 mths stresses me out. And then I thought, “Hey Cori, just pretend like the last 6 mths didn’t happen!” And then I thought, “Wow Cori, you are super smart! I am going with your plan!”

I have memories in my head and heart and iphone. That will do for now.

Soooo…. Nate has been on this big kick of randomly saying… “Speaking of ____” and it is usually just followed by a normal sentence. IE “Speaking of grapes, can we go jump on the trampoline?”

On Sunday in the car he said, “Speaking of chimi-chaaaang-as… What is a Changa?” It has been cracking me up all week.

That gem of a story has nothing to do with the rest of this blog.

Sunday was Father’s Day! I decided to actually do a Pinterest project (my first one out of my 5 million pins).

I mean is there anything cuter than asking kids questions you know they will say funny things to? I think not. Although, Scott is reaching the kids-don’t-say-the-darndest-things age. As you will note from his page (that I didn’t let him fill out on his own because it would take to long, bad mom), we have a height correction. He was very stressed out that he was going to get a question wrong. I told him do not under any circumstances ask your dad the questions to check your answers. IT IS A SURPRISE. Scott walk up to Mike:

S: Dad, how tall are you?

M: 6 ft. 

S: turns to look at me with big crazy eyes, walks over and whispers….. I’m going to need my paper back.

Scott also made sure his picture included such details as “those red dots on dad’s arms”. Nate decided to draw a picture of a botser (monster robot) being destroyed.

Nate loves turtles?

 

 

Nate’s teacher interviewed all the kiddos and compiled a book and each child gets to take the book home for a weekend and read about the class with their family. I love this kind of stuff it is always adorably hilarious.

PS Nate HATES rest time. His favorite food is pizza. I have never ever seen him pretend to be a tiger. I will give him the zebra because I don’t actually know his favorite animal and we have never talked about turtles.

Artsy

Kindergarten has brought us many hilarious dinner time stories and interesting projects. I really hope Scott’s teacher thinks we are some what capable parents because the stories he tells us makes me personally question my parenting abilities. We have our first parent teacher conference on Monday… I CAN’T WAIT. I have a feeling it will be quite insightful. This is one of the awesome projects that have come home…

Yes. That says hot tub. And the picture depicts a “tank car” with full on guns, missiles, and bomb launchers. Fully equipped with a hot tub to soothe your achy battle muscles.

And Nate… Sweet Nate. I am sure I should double his teachers salary. He somehow gets pee on his clothes EVERY day. At home, totally fine. At school, pee clothes. Not accidents, just always gets pee every where while using the restroom. I hope Henry really is his friend. Nate seems to be the complete opposite of how I would have predicted “school Nate” to be.

Nate Cleaner

The kids were hilarious tonight. But the winner of the funniest convo was Nate.

(Nate’s full name is Nate Keener, you will understand in a minute why you need to know this.)

Scott: How did I get my name?
Me: We decided what to name you and gave you a name.
Scott: But Why?
Me: Blah Blah Blah (long explanation about why we chose his name)
Nate: But my name is not good.
Me: What do you mean?!
Nate: It goes…. “Hey are you a cleaner?” “Why do I have to be a cleaner always?”
Me: What are you talking about?
Nate: YOU named me Nate CLEANER. Now I have to be a cleaner.
Me: Your name is Nate KEENER! Are you being serious right now? Did you really think your name was Cleaner?
Nate: (dead serious face) Yes.
Me and Scott and Nate: (laughing so hard I thought I was going to have a waffle come out my nose)

OH Nate Cleaner... I love you.

PS I don’t randomly think about waffles coming out of my nose. We were having breakfast for dinner.

Rest Time

As I am typing this, we are watching the Justin Bieber movie. So cute. So So Cute. The best part is watching the parents in the audience dancing. Actually, the really best part was the one little girl that was basically panting, “Justin and I will be husband and wife. We will.”

Okay…. So the Mongolian Beef recipe from last week was DELISH. Everyone in the family gave it a thumbs up AND it was super easy. I proved once again with the fish tacos that I have no clue how to fry food. No clue. I think I put the fish in before the oil was ready and it turned out greasy and soggy, BUT if you do know how to fry stuff, the batter tasted good before I greased it out so I think it would be a winner!

The Chick Fil A knock off recipe is going to be carried over to this week…. Why you ask? OH, we had Nate’s back to school spaghetti dinner. NATE IS STARTING PRESCHOOL! He is really excited except for rest time, “Do you think the teacher will let me play on her phone during rest time?” “Ummm, no, I am pretty sure you just have to lay there Nate.” “Mom, I don’t like that idea.” Oh, Nate…. Please do okay, I really need to clean the house.

Let’s Eat

Monday-Homemade Chick Fil A (carried over from last week)

Tuesday- Slow Cooker Char Siu Pork Roast with Rice and Veggies

Wednesday- Breakfast Burritos and Fruit Salad

Thursday- Leftovers

Friday, Saturday, Sunday- HAPPY HOLIDAY WEEKEND!