Zeke Turns Five

Zeke turned five on Monday.

To celebrate, we ate Snowman Cake with friends.

He asked for his very own Lego set, which he received. He also got a Tonka digger for playing outside in the swamp he and Victor have engineered.

Zeke's New Bed

In the past months, Zeke has been getting increasingly too big for his toddler bed. So I've been cruising Craigslist for a bed that that is similar in size, style and color to Victor's bed.

(Bunk beds were out after we test drove them at Thanksgiving. Too hard to make.)

Finally, late on Saturday afternoon, I saw the perfect bed on Craigslist. Right color, right style, right size. So I called the poster, discussed a price, and hopped into the big van to go and get it. I had to drive to a town I had never visited before, but everything went smoothly.

The bed was perfect. The seller loaded it up, I drove it home, and Jeremy and I set it up.

One thing I hadn't fully appreciated was how tall it is. It's easily the tallest bed in the house. Zeke loves having the tallest bed.

Poor Zeke was quite ill on Saturday, but he still mustered some real excitement about his new bed.

As he told me on Sunday morning, "Now you can come and snuggle with me!"

And here is Victor's bed (covered with displaced items from the closet, which had to absorb Zeke's clothing because Zeke's armoire is now in a different room.)

Zeke's Genes

Yesterday, as I was putting away some laundry, I noticed that Zeke's shirts were in the wrong order in his closet.

I figured they must have fallen off the bar and been haphazardly replaced, so I started to rearrange them.

But I suddenly stopped. Because I noticed something. They were, in fact, in order. The collared shirts were in rainbow order on the left and the uncollared shirts were in rainbow order on the right. (Except that orange was after green. But that's a minor detail.)



















ZEKE HAD REORGANIZED HIS CLOSET!

SPONTANEOUSLY!

JUST BECAUSE HE FELT LIKE IT!

He really is my child, after all.

Hand Me Downs

This week we got a great big collection of hand me downs.

We love hand me downs.  It is satisfying to really, truly use up clothing.

Here is Victor modeling some of his new clothes: a bow tie and "a little missionary . . . shirt."

To Do List

At breakfast this morning, I dictated to Victor a list of chores that needed to be done while I was at Relief Society.

To Do
[My dad has had a To Do list every day of his life. Each one says To Do across the top.]

0. Clean Kitchen [this is number "0" on the list because I added it after the other items were written.]

1. wash cichin floor.

     a. swep 2 tims
     b. reemof stuff
     c. fil mop plug in mop
     d. mop floor

2. cleen mom's bathroom

3. put rug in dryr

4. pack up things [Victor added this one himself. ]


When I arrived home after Relief Society, the work was done! I had a clean floor and a clean bathroom, yet I had done no cleaning.

It was magic.

Victor had also created a new list, of things to pack for Thanksgiving:

1. Birds book [he was inspired by a card sent to us by my aunt and uncle, which showed a sea bird]

2. Kloes

3. bag

4. food

Reading

The boys are finally old enough for us to read to them from non-picture books.

Hooray! (Although we still do plenty of picture books.)

We started with Half Magic, which was delightful, on a long car ride. Then we started on Harry Potter.

One of the most enjoyable things about this reading time is observing Victor's imagination and analysis. He loves to stop us mid-sentence to speculate about what will happen or what something means.

For example, when Harry goes into the Forbidden Forest in book 1, he meets some centaurs who observe that Mars is very bright tonight.

When we read this, Victor became excited. "Wait! There is a creature in the forest! If Mars is very bright, it means that Mars is closer to Earth than normal. So that means the creature is a Martian!"

Zeke's Question

Zeke: Mom, can I ask you a question?

Me: Sure. What would you like to ask?

Zeke: Why didn't you name me Shirley?