When we’re not chasing her around the house, we’re doing everything we can do make her laugh…

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Please let the teenage years go well. Please.

Tyler is about 1/2 way through his soccer season.  We’ve had a lot of fun watching him and his teammates during their practices and games.  Surprisingly, Tyler has really taken a liking to the position of goalie.  His coaches taught the goalies a lot of fun tricks which is what we think drew Tyler’s attention.  He loves to go for the ball especially because, as he put it, “I get to use my hands.”  The coaches also taught Tyler that when he recovers a ball, he is to yell “move it out” to his teammates who then run down the sidelines and Tyler throws the ball in their direction.  So every time he dives on a ball, he runs it back to the center of the goal box, counts out his steps to the line, yells “move it out” while throwing the ball, and then quickly returns to the middle of the goal box.

Right before Brooklyn’s birth, we expedited Kaitlyn’s potty training. Since then, she’s done tremendously well and we are proud of her.  It took her awhile to feel comfortable doing it by herself but it’s been a relief only having 1 kid in diapers instead of 2.  She’s still our baby doll but she really is an independent little thing.

We’ve been working hard with the kids on reading.  They both have a few books memorized which is a a great start, but are still unable to pickup any book and begin reading and understanding the words.  But it’s fun helping them be able to recognize and pronounce letters, words, and shapes.  Tyler is very good and recognizing and reciting letters and numbers in a word so we’re now working on sounding out these letters when together in the words.  Kaitlyn loves to tell us what color clothes or shoes she has on which is a great start.  We are still doing flashcards with her which consist of shapes and animals which begin with letters of the alphabet.

Lindsey and I have both began running again.  We have registered for a 10k on thanksgiving day as well as a 1/2 marathon in December.  We are following a run, gym, run, run, gym,long-run schedule each week and we help keep each other motivated.  We have ordered a running stroller because we don’t always have an opportunity to train together as someone needs to watch the kids.  Hopefully on Saturdays we’ll be able to do the long runs together with the stroller.  I plan on pushing Tyler and Kaitlyn on the 10k and perhaps on the 1/2 which will be really cool.

Brooklyn is 2 months old now and doing well.  She still has the dark hair and we are anxious to see which color it will change, if any.

Highlights of Tyler’s game include a sideline thrown in he made.  The grass and ball ere wet and so when he through it into play, he lost control and it slipped up and back out of his hands and landed about 2 feet behind him.  It reminded me of a punt I made back when I was not only the fullback but also the punter and on a particularly windy day, I punted the ball as hard as I could only to have the wind throw it about 10 yards behind me.  There were a few times where Tyler ran to the sideline and insisted on coming out of the game so he could go play at the park.  We originally started out with a bribe of giving him a slurpee if he would return which eventually turned into $10 and then my dad promised him he’d buy him a corvette if he scored a goal.  Upon hearing this he raced back into the game and when it was the other teams turn to kick off, he did the kicking off and dribbled the ball all the way to the goal and just before he was going to earn the corvette the referees and coaches had caught up and stopped him.  He was so embarrassed that he trotted back off the field and we found ourselves back to the bribing.We heard other parents bribe their kids with ice cream, toys, and other fun stuff but no Corvettes.

Brooklyn has been congested these past few days which upsets her and therefore ultimately keeps Lindsey and me awake at night.  But she’s too cute to be frustrated at 3 in the morning when I’m holding her in the rocking chair.  I love it actually but I do look forward to when she’ll be sleeping more at night.

We signed Tyler up for soccer.  He has practice on Mondays and Wednesdays which I surprisingly love!  It’s fun to know that immediately after work I can remain busy and still spend time with the kids by going to soccer practice.  I’m sure this will get old when all 3 kids are older and enrolled in way too many extra curricular activities that we will have to shuttle them back and forth to.  Kaitlyn comes with us and we sit on the grass and watch the kids struggle to remain attentive to their coaches.  Tyler usually just stands still and stares at everyone.  When they have drills, he walks through them.  The only time he runs is to and from water breaks.  This is something we are working on.

Before Brooklyn was born, Lindsey expedited Kaitlyn’s potty training.  The first few days were different for me because she obviously couldn’t use the bathroom alone like Tyler and therefore we always had to get the stool out and help her on and off.  Tyler played a big role in her potty training as he was incentivized – everytime Kaitlyn used the bathroom, he would earn a nickel as would she.  So he’d always ask her if she needed to use the bathroom and then encourage her to do so when she didn’t want to.  She’s been doing great and can use it herself without our help, although she still is still hesitant to go #2 and insists we use a diaper.  I completely understand as going #2 in a diaper must be the funniest thing on earth.