Is it a monster? Is it madness? Is it menopause? No it is Monty

(happy halloween)

Forget about the terrible two's, meet the ferocious fours... Good grief, the temper tantrums that that boy throws. I don't remember Stoney being this bad at four... but maybe i have a selective memory. It is just temper tantrum after temper tantrum. And all this yelling that he does! The "funny" thing is that he has some manners during his tantrums. Stamping his foot on the floor, yelling: "Alsjeblieft!!!" which means "please". Well honey, i am glad you are saying "please", but the answer is still no. He has clearly picked up some phrases that his teacher uses: "Onmiddelijk" which means immediately. So Mommy, you need to get me my cup with milk IMMEDIATELY! And it is the same everyday. I don't want to get dressed (temper tantrum), I want chocolate milk for breakfast (temper tantrum), i want to watch tv (temper tantrum), i don't want to brush my teeth (temper tantrum) And i want a chocolate chip cookie right now, immediately, IMMEDIATELY, IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!!!!
You'd think that by being consistent and making rules clear and establishing a set pattern of doing things, he'd settle down. After all, if you throw the same temper tantrum every day,and you never get what you want, then why spend the energy? But i guess he is not in full control of his temper tantrums, by which i mean, he hasn't learned to let logic dominate his immediate feelings (which is why i compare it to menopause).

Meanwhile, he still has his pooping problem. "I don't want to sit on the potty! EVER!"
We tried all forms of bribe, but he won't even do it for lollipops, which are his favorite. We tried threatening him. He always goes and hides somewhere to sit on the floor to suppress the natural process instead of going to the potty. So Leland said: "I am going to take a toy away when you do that." Monty hides under the desk to do his "suppressing" and yells: "you can take a toy from me." Then we said: "we are going to spank you if you do that instead of going to the potty." Monty hides behind the couch to suppress this nr 2 movement and yells : "You can spank me later." Deep, deep sigh.
Very, very slowly there seems to be a little improvement. Sometimes, when he is in the right mind set, he surprises us and goes to the bathroom all on his own and shouts: "Mommy i did kaka!" I am afraid he is just going to have to outgrow it.... Hopefully SOON.

Meanwhile some more, he is slowly getting a little better about staying in his bed at night. Not every night though. Most of the time he just wakes up very early in the morning lately. Last week he was on the 5.30 schedule. And then of course throwing a temper tantrum because he has decided that it is morning time and is highly ticked off that we won't get up yet.
Last night he pulled a new one: he started sleep walking. He has not done that before, but he did last night. He came marching down the stairs, having a complete conversation with someone who wasn't there, and then crawled in bed with us. He laughed and giggled, all while being sound asleep. It was strange. How do we get him to stay in his bed when he starts to sleep walk? It is hard enough to keep him in his own bed when he wakes up, let alone when he is sound asleep!!!

The child is going to do me in.
Luckily all is well with Stoney most of the time, he is starting to grow up some and to be a little less of a mommy's boy and a little more responsible. He got a really good report card right before their fall break ( i think they get 4 reports a year here) and i am very proud of him.

Below are some pictures of them by the pedestrian bridge just behind our house. Here we go and watch trains go by. The train track runs just behind our back yard, but there is a dirt wall with trees in between us and the tracks, so we can't see the trains from our house too well.
So we go here and watch trains, and then one more, and one more and then just one very last one, and just one very last one for Monty. Monty can sit there for hours....

Fall 2008

Well, it's been a long while... First we were super busy, then the computer broke, then my camera had no batteries so I couldn't transfer the pictures and suddenly we are in the end of October. For the record, our computer got fixed. The IT student services of the university did it for free, a week before Leland's one year membership ran out.

Some developments: Stoney is pretty much toothless now. He lost his first tooth a while ago and then lost three more in a period of ten days. He looks like this:




Fall has started here. It’s not super cold, but it is pretty chilly in the morning when we bring the boys to school. We already dug out the mittens just for the frosty mornings. What also comes with fall is the amount of spiders that uses our back yard as hunting ground. You can see one of us in the morning sticking a broom out in front of us like it is a jousting pole, to get rid of all the spider webs when we are making our way to the trash can. And then I haven’t even talked about the slugs yet. I mean, you are watching the broom stick, watching for spiderwebs the size of a small car… so you don’t look at the ground and then step on one of the hundred slugs that seem to reappear every night. Smash. And then you end up tracking slug guts all over the house. *headache*

Meanwhile we are getting settled into the school routine again. Monty and Stoney are both in a class of just 11 kids which means a lot of personal attention. Monty is enjoying kindergarten a lot more then he did last year. Stoney does enjoy going to school again, and is learning to read very quickly i think, but he is not to thrilled about the lack of play time in 1^st grade. They are learning cursive writing from first grade on (not sure how they do it in the US) and he thinks practicing letters is just the most boring thing to do. But other then that, he is excited. They go swimming once every two weeks and have PE every week and those are some of his favorite things.
In Stoney’s school –which is a non denominational school – they get religion education from 1^st grade on but they have a large choice of what religion education they want. Obviously, LDS is not one of them though. The choices were: Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Islam or non conventional (which means pretty much the philosophies of men – god is not supposed to be mentioned in those classes) So after a lot of agony, we decided to have Stoney take the Protestant classes, because we figured he might at least have some bible stories taught to him. Most of the kids in his class are either Islam (there are a good number of Muslims at his school, probably because they offer Islam) or Catholic (but we didn’t want him to be with a large group of kids who all will do their first communion next year). So anyway, we ended up with prostestant. Well, turns out, he is the entire kid in the entire school taking that class ! But they have a teacher especially for him. It is kind of strange. So far he has enjoyed it.

Here are some fall pictures of the boys.

From okt 2008

From okt 2008

From okt 2008

From okt 2008

I am also posting some pictures of the Abby close to our house. There are a lot of water birds living in the lakes right there as well and a group of cows. I have given them names: Virginia, Triangle, Horizon, Freckles, Gorbatsjov and the five white ladies. Naturally, Leland shakes his head at me and reminds me that they are just cows that will end up on someones plate some day.

A cow related question from Stoney: if cows make milk from grass, why can't we make milk from grass?