More Scenes From Easter

The Easter party at church:

Decorating cookies...

Egg hunt...

Spunky babe:

This is Bosco (age 11 or so?), whom Lucas adores. He talks about him and his brother Alvaro and their cousin Mateo and friend Matthew ALL THE TIME. And, the boys humor him! When Lucas says, "Hey guys, let's sing [this] song," they oblige him! When he asks to play ball, they're game! They hold his hand and tell him they love him and give big hugs before saying good-bye. Yesterday Bosco drew Lucas a beautiful picture to take home...

Lucas had decided to sit in this room and draw on a bible (whoops!) when the boys found him and didn't want him to be alone! Here are Lucas and Alvaro singing together.

And everyone else who eventually joined in...

Here they all are. I had another picture of all of them looking at the camera but Lucas's eyes were closed so I went with the day-dreamy look on his face instead. Such loving, fun boys!

Easter morning...

Mema and Mempa sent books and crayons and coloring books for the boys' easter baskets. Lucas is showing us how he colored Mickey's tongue to match Lucas's red tongue (covered by the nuts he's chewing with breakfast).

Jesse with Tio Maquin and cousin Liam. Jesse lunges forward and out of the arms of whoever is holding him to have Maquin hold him instead, and of course Liam gets a bit jealous and wants to be held as well. The three of them together like this is a very common scene...

That's it! Now we're packing up for a big trip to Florida this week! Is there ever a time for things to feel normal?!

Sugar High

What do you do when you have some graham crackers in the pantry, an overabundance of chocolate candy, and some Peeps from the Easter basket?

Make S'meeps, of course!


Make sure you wear the S'meeps, too!

Happy Easter!

We took these pictures after church and fellowship hour. It was a windy 43 degrees and during lunch/nap time. Lucas was in la-la land from all the sugary candy and Jesse just wanted to get down and explore!

Thank you, Abuelo and Abuela, for the matching outfits!

Holy Week

It's a pastor's spouse's favorite time of year! (Grumble.) But the boys and I have been keeping busy too. Here's what we did on Wednesday:

First thing Lucas did after he woke from his nap and saw the cups of dye was to rearrange them in order of the rainbow spectrum! (You know, ROY G. BIV...) Nothing gets past Lucas!

You can sort of see how the tablecloth gets progressively messy from all the dunking and re-dunking.

"Two colors together make another color, like yellow mixed with blue turns to green!"


Guess who had a blue mouth afterwards?

And now, two videos that I couldn't choose between because he's way too cute and fun to watch:



Don't you love the way he says 'purple?'

Later today is the annual Easter party and egg hunt at church. Lucas has been very excited, so we've been practicing at hiding and finding eggs in our living and dining room all week. He gets confused about "how many more days until...?" and often asks if we'll go to such-and-such event after he wakes up from his nap or after breakfast, etc. when it's days and days away. So I decided to help give him a visual to help him count off the number of days until the Easter party. We've been using these chains from election day that he and I made (he's becoming skilled at using the tape dispenser!) by removing a link each morning.

Now you know that you can count on more Easter pictures tomorrow!

Colander

Some of these are blurry but cute nonetheless...

Primos

The boys adore their Tata and Maquin, but they go wild for their cousin Liam! Here they are together this past Tuesday after we picked up Liam from daycare located just two blocks away:

Later at home Jesse smothers Maquin and Liam, just like he does most visitors. He insists on sitting in Maquin's lap practically the entire time (which sometimes makes Liam jealous). He's also smitten by Liam and makes countless sweet noises that sound like the Gerber Baby -- "Hiiiiii" and "A-gaaaa" and "huuuuu" and "A-ti" -- while giving him bear hugs.

For a moment it seems Liam doesn't like it, but then he moves in towards Jesse in anticipation of the next hug. So cute!

From The Fluff Jar

Every now and then we go through the jar of quotables by Lucas to see how far he's come and to get a good chuckle. Here are a few cute stories from the past month:

One day Lucas was sitting on the couch daydreaming and running his hands through his blankie in an unusual way. I asked him what he was doing, and he replied, "Oh, I'm knitting. Just like you, Mama!"

While planting seeds the other day, Lucas and I talked about how plants need dirt plus water and sun to properly grow. Several days later it was (another) gray and cloudy day, and Lucas turned to the pots sitting on the windowsill and wondered aloud, "There's no sun today, so how will our seeds grow?" (Wow! He's a smart one, although my attempt at explaining photosynthesis that followed made him understandably bored...)

While out on a walk the other day to pick up cousin Liam from daycare, Lucas asked me when he could have some holes in his ears for earrings!

One breezy morning we were walking along an avenue where the subway also runs below ground when I noticed to myself that distinctive subway smell coming from the vents across the street. A split second later Lucas also caught a whiff, then remarked, "Hey, I smell the subway!"

That's our observant boy!

Food Face

Beets:

Blueberries:

The title should also say 'Food Nose' because Jesse likes to pick his right nostril in particular, especially during meal times. :)

I'm Growing!

A couple of weeks ago Lucas got up on his tippy toes as usual to attempt to ring our top doorbell... and he did it! Normally he tries to reach but falls just an inch or so short, and then he asks one of us to pick him up so that he can push the button. But this time when he finally reached the doorbell, he was so surprised with himself! He yelled, "I did it! Mama, I'm growing!"

And then came the most flattering words a short person like me can ever hear, "I'm growing up, up, up, and I'm going to be so, so tall, just like you and Papi!"

Well, Spring is in the air (although the forecast for this week looks iffy), and our pots are ready to be filled with herbs that will arrive this next weekend at our local plant/gardening shop. I thought that Lucas would have some fun planting and tending some seeds and slowly watching them grow in the meantime.

He planted wheat berries in a glass jar (to be able to see the roots later)...

...while I planted rye berries in a terra cotta pot.

We watered, covered, and placed them on top of our fridge and watched them every morning during Jesse's nap for sprouts.

The rye berries sprouted within a few days but the wheat berries took a few days longer. (I should have later removed some of Lucas's wheat berries because the ones on the bottom remain a bit moldy.) "It worked!" he yelled when he first saw the shoots!

Giving the rye grass its first "haircut." He took his sweet time snipping away. I had to encourage him to cut more than just the tips.

He didn't need reminding that the grass clippings go in the compost bin!

Finally, the wheat berry shoots!

He's pointing out the seeds and the growing grass, though it's tricky to see the roots this early.

Hurray for Spring! Hurray for the promise of new growth!

Papi and Jesse

Sometimes it's a fine line between cuddling and tickling.

Thanks, Mamie and Richard!

When Lucas opened up his Christmas present from our friends Mamie and Richard and saw this red vest he's wearing below, he exclaimed "Ooh! A special shirt for going to church!" I didn't realize he was aware that we tend to get a bit more dressed up on Sundays.

So when Lucas is moving a little slow on a Sunday morning, I now tell him that he gets to wear his special church clothes, and he quickly and happily obliges! On this morning sometime last month he was so proud to wear his red llama vest that he begged me to take his picture! He's just growing out of it, but the vest will be perfect for Jesse next fall/winter.