Not now, not tomorrow, not ever!

See this cute little boy? Well, he has a new saying: "not now, not tomorrow, not ever." And you can be sure he doesn't say this with a smile on his face. Pretty much converstations go as such:
"Monty, put your shoes on please."
"Not now, not tomorrow, not ever!"
So when exactly are the terrible two's supposed to be over and done with?

All in all Monty is doing well in school. There have been no more poop-incidents in the new school year (fingers crossed) and he is adapting fairly well. His best friend from the last two years moved and is no longer at this school. We were afraid Monty would be devastated, but he is doing okay. He has a found new best friend and seems happy. He also loves his new teacher and said he wants to invite her to his birthday - never mind that it's not till May.

the fair

The fair came to Leuven, and Oma and Opa gave the boys some money to go, so.... we had a blast!

Pack-rat!!

Stoney has always had a tendency to collect things and a tendency to sort things. I remember him being three and sorting out this box with different colored blocks or something like that at preschool and his teacher was so impressed. I was not surprised, he always has done things like that.

He is still really good at sorting things, but is becoming more and more of a ‘collector’ if I put it nicely, a pack-rat some others would call it.

Last year he started collecting rocks –anything from one inch to five inches. The result: we have a large box with rocks in the back yard. Can’t tell you how many times we have found rocks in the washer, because he had forgotten to empty out his pockets.

Both boys have a habit of bring all kinds of sticks home – they are just like dogs. And we are never allowed to throw them away, because this stick looks like a boat, or this one like a sword and on and on…

In the fall we collect chestnuts and acorns (which we are not allowed to through away till they get moldy). Over the last year Stoney also started collecting feathers – okay, I may have gotten him started on that one – and we now have a large collection of all kinds of feathers: pigeon feathers, duck feathers, swan feathers, chicken feathers, seagull feathers and some special ones that we are not quite sure of which bird they came. We can’t quite fill a pillow case with them, but we are getting there.

And now, this summer he has started a new collection:

That is right: (beer) bottle caps.

a Saturday in September

On Saturday me and the boys spend some quality time together and went for a walk (while Leland was singing a Book of Mormon song at a Catholic funeral, but that is an entirely different story).
We went to feed the swans,


studied the little frogs living in the gutter by the road,



and found lots of chesnuts...




At one point Monty and I didn't see Stoney anywhere and found him, not surprisingly, in a tree.

Back to school

School started again here on September 1st, so life is sort of back to normal. Appropriately enough it was still a gorgeous summer day the day before on 31st of august, but September 1st was dreary and drizzily.
Wait a minute, you may say. September 1st was a Tuesday, why did school start on a Tuesday? Well... Because in Belgium the summer vacation last exactly two months. The first day of vacation is July 1st and the last day is August 31st. So regardless of the day of the week September 1st falls, that's the day they start back up again. (unless of course it falls in the weekend). When in Belgium, do as the Belgians.
Stoney started 2nd grade and Monty is now in 3rd kindergarten (they have three years of kindergarten here, starting at age three).
Monty came home the first day saying that the teacher locked him up... When applying the always necessary "Monty filter" on the story, we finally realized that he was put in time-out in an empty classroom because he wouldn't stop shouting. (Go figure, this kid has only one volume: extra loud). A story which we confirmed with the teacher the next day.
But other then that, no hiccups on the first day. Fingers crossed for the rest of the week (i am not holding my breath for the entire rest of the year).