Soccer, Baby Bellies, and The Plague

James' fall soccer season has officially started! He had his first practice last Tuesday and he had fun with his coach from spring. There were a few familiar faces on his team, but a lot of new kids too.

 Standing to the side and observing. He definitely likes to hang back when he is getting used to a new environment or group of people.

 They practiced stopping the ball and putting their foot on top of it. James refused to do this last season, but he gave it a try this time. He has a really hard time keeping his balance, so he resorted to just sitting on it last time. This time he didn't do that once! Progress!

 Trying to put his foot on the ball:

 He finally got it on there and kept his balance! His coach is putting his foot on his imaginary ball :)

While watching him practice we realized that he gets so distracted that he doesn't listen to his coach unless his coach says, "James" before giving an instruction. His poor coach is going to be repeating himself a lot over the next few months.

Unfortunately, after coming home from practice and getting ready for bed, he came down with a high fever. A day or so later he developed a rash and we realized he had hand, foot, mouth disease (Rett had it first, but we didn't make the connection until James caught it). He missed his Thursday practice because we have been quarantined in the house since then. Definitely don't want to pass this thing around!

Rett loves to lounge around right before bed and cuddle with us after drinking his bottle. He usually has his baby belly hanging out of his shirt because nothing can contain it! :)

He has definitely found his voice! He babbles and laughs and coos all day long! He says "Dada" and "Mama" pretty frequently now and if you smile at him, he ducks his head and grins like he is happy and shy at the same time. I swear this is the happiest baby ever made. He is working on his third tooth, one of the front top ones and chews on everything in sight. He has also started pulling up to standing and then letting go for a few seconds! He is on the brink of walking, but I'm not sure I want to encourage that kind of mobility :)

James is still the boy of 1 million questions. He has started asking us questions about the songs on the radio, like "Why they say that word Mommy?, or "Why they say_____(he repeats the phrase he heard)". The funniest one yet was when the song, "All about that bass" came on. The lyrics go, "I'm all about that bass, no treble." James piped up from the back seat and asked, "Why they say "All about the best, no juggle? Why they don't juggle mommy?" Anthony and I died laughing! We had to make up a story about how they aren't good at juggling just to satisfy him (otherwise the questions wouldn't stop). Now he gets all excited when the "juggling" song comes on the radio.

Another night I was snuggling with James in his bed and he was petting my hair and checking it for hair ties (don't ask me why, but he likes to check). My hair was on top of his teddy bear and he started to feel his fur. He looked shocked and asked, "Mommy! Is that your brains???". So I had a 10 minute discussion with him about what brains are, how they work, and how they are inside our skulls. Then he told me that he wanted to look in the "hole in my eye" so that he can see my brains. I got him to compromise and agree to looking at pictures of brains in the morning. He didn't forget! The next morning he asked to look on the computer to see what brains look like.

I'm not sure which kid did this. It could have been either one of them, but for some reason James' rain boots became the new home to Captain hook and a broken compass.

I saw the movie "Mom's Night Out" recently and I loved it! All the parts about being a stay at home mom and what it feels like were sooooo true. Plus, it was really funny! In the beginning of the movie she had a really rough day and her husband found her hiding in a closet after the kids were in bed, eating chocolate and watching something on the computer. She said she was hiding from how messy the house was. I paused the movie and looked around. I had had a really trying day, I was eating candy and watching a movie while my house looked like this. Can we say deja vu?

We did a clean out of all the old primary boxes and closets at church and I found an old Gospel Art Kit that nobody wanted, so I got to take it home! I have been looking for one ever since James was little but the church doesn't make them any more. It has been great for our family home evenings and scripture reading and James loves flipping through the pictures and talking about them. For family home evening we talked about the story of the 10 lepers and being thankful. Since James has a gross rash, I think he was able to relate to the story of the men with leprosy a little more :)

 After we talked about the story, we played a thankful game where we laid out a bunch of pictures of things we are thankful for. Then we took turns closing our eyes while James took one away. Then we opened our eyes and tried to remember which one was missing. James loved this game! (We played it for sharing time, so I just reuse my materials). Although James did insist that we didn't need to be thankful for houses because "the house is brown and our house is not brown". He also really liked the picture of food and tried to lick the picture.

 Then we acted out the story and used scarfs as bandages for our sores and "booboos" on our skin. James did not want to participate when I said we were doing this and he ran to the opposite side of the room and said he would just watch. I pretended I didn't know how to wrap Anthony up and I needed his help. After showing him how horrible I was at it, James sighed dramatically and said, "Ooooohhh kay Mommy. I guess I will help you." :)

Wrapping Daddy's arm:

 Anthony with his face, neck, and arm bandaged.

 James thought it was funny, but it was also kind of creepy...

 Once Anthony was healed, we asked James what he should do. James turned around and said, "He should say thank you to Jesus!"

My turn to get wrapped up:

These boys sure do make our life interesting!