Brothers

Thanks to my wonderufully talented Emily for editing this photo and giving me some tips so that I could do the others below. I love how my boys are learning to love each other. Eirik looks out for Joren and helps him all the time. He loves to teach Joren new words one syllable at a time. Joren's vocabulary is expolding. He has trouble with a few sounds like L and R. Consequently he says Flag, Fork, and Frog and they all come out exactly the same.... and not the word you want your kid repeating over and over again! Joren is so physical. He LOVES to climb and nothing intimidates him. He's so brave and if he falls of something very high, he cries and then wants to immediately try it again until he gets it. He loves to get on the highest thing he can and straddle it and say horse. In fact "high" is one of his first words. He's really cute when he dances. He's a very confident runner. He's very independant. He calls his binkie "ma mank" who knows why. He loves dinosaurs and shoes and books. He's always bringing me my shoes, and guests are surprised when he brings them their shoes when it's time for them to go home. He throws himself in my lap the minute I sit down and insists that I read to him. He'll hit me over the head with a book until I read. He loves to wrestle and he will just clobber me. He tries to eat my face and I'm telling you, the kid is all slobber! He has a cute sense of humor. He says the cutest prayers. Thank you is EE OO. I should get it on video.

"Mom, you called me Eirik again! I'm not Eirik, I'm Luke!" (or any other superhero at any given moment...but never Eirik.)

He may be dressed to kill, but he is also dressed to "go out" in his words. What does a mother do when this is what he insists he must wear to the grocery store. I can't tell you how many people have commented on how I need to just put the moon boots away for the summer. What they don't know is that without his Spiderman boots, he can't eat, sleep, walk, talk, play, or even live. All he can do is cry reeealy reeeally loud about it.
Although I hate the Spider man boots, at least they fit. I have been planning this photo for a long time. I bought these boots when Eirik was 18m for his cowboy halloween costume. I got them for $1 at a thrift store. They were black and for girls, but I spray painted them brown which I thought made them look pretty manly and Eirik loved them so much, he wore them until he was 3 and 2 months, which was the point when I insisted that they had to be put away. The zippers won't zip, you can see the spray paint is almost completely worn off, and they were way too small. So it's not just women that put their feet through pain for fashion. These treasured boots are still the subject of frequent mini break-downs, but luckily we replaced them with big, hot, winter moon boots that have velcro and SPIDERMAN!! (hideous and gracious hand-me down from our cousins)
To the blessed cowboy boots of yesteryear: we miss you, and will hold you dear in our hearts forever.

I do love Eirik's never ending creativity and imagination. Lately I have been wishing that we didn't eat sleep and breath Star Wars at our house. {Luke} tells me 18 times a day about how he fought the emperor and he cut off his arm and he lost his light saber. I asked him today how often he thinks about the movie Star Wars. He said, "28 minutes, 28 out of 28 minutes, actually 38 minutes!" (What he really meant by that was every minute of the day.)
Eirik needs to be in the middle of every conversation. He needs to understand 100% of the things going on around him. If Paul and I are having a private conversation, or just one that doesn't involve him, he will come right between us and say, "I agree! I agree! intermittently just so he isn't left out.
We have been reading these chapter books from the library called Dinosaur Cove books about two boys who discover a land of real dinosaurs. Their names are Jamie and Tom. If I'm not being princess Leah, I am definitely being Jamie or Tom and we are on some extravagant adventure. I usually have to wear the backpack with the fossil finder in it. This morning Eirik said : "My mom loves and loves to spit." I said, "hmmmm. I must not know her." He said, "Her name starts with an L. It's Allard. We live in a dark cave by dinosaur cove. My name is Jamie Morgan."
And, that's how our days go.. pretend all day long.

I rewarded Eirik with a trip to ride some ponies if he could go 5 days without a tantrum. He did it and the ponies were a lot of fun. It was a big challenge for him, but he did very well.

Thanks to Ashley for these awesome photos of our trip to the Ann Arbor Arts Festival last weekend! It was so fun, and Ash's post about it cracked me up!

And, although this is totally unrelated, I just found this awesome kids table and chairs from peanutgallerygifts.com!