Blogging is Like Laundry

Yes, you read that right.  Blogging is like laundry.  If I don't keep up, I get overwhelmed, and the thought of doing it becomes more and more daunting.  Well, today is my catch up day.  I'm going to write as many posts as I can bang out.  Get ready for an influx of posts!  :-)

Today's post is dedicated to all of the little things in our life over the past month.  In this month we have...

Enjoyed Brennan's soccer games:

(Brennan is number 3)

Introduced solids to Seth:

(this was our first breakfast with all three kids at the table!)

Improved Cora's cooking skills with the help of Grandma and Daddy:

Spent some time on the phone with Nana:

Read lots and lots of books:

And taken our annual apple-picking trip:

Okay, with my first "load" done, I am going to go have some lunch!  :-)

Busy and Fun

Life has been busy and fun this past two weeks.  Here are a few highlights:

Brennan is playing outdoor soccer this season, and Jim is his assistant coach.  Their team is undefeated with only a couple of games left, but there is really no emphasis on scores at this age.  They are playing hard and having a great time.

Seth turned one month old on Friday.  He is getting so big!

We are constantly amazed at how much Seth looks like Brennan.  Check out these pictures below of the two boys at 3 - 4 weeks of age (isn't it crazy how strong their necks are?!  It makes them look six months old!!):

(Use your thumbs to cover up their hair...  Isn't it wild?)

I went to a Mexican mustache baby shower for my friend Janna last week, and it was a lot of fun.  Everyone got in on the action, including the youngest partygoers.

We are getting into a groove around here schedule-wise, and I have even lost four pounds in the last eight days.  I totally changed the way I was eating, and obviously it has helped.  Things are looking up.

Busy Weekend

Saturday was a big day for the Riggs kids.  In the morning Jim and Brennan went to their bi-weekly Lowe's workshop, in the early afternoon we had Brennan's birthday party, and at dinnertime we went to a potluck and Eggstravaganza with our church.

I don't have any photos of Brennan hammering nails with Daddy at Lowe's because I am never invited to this exclusive boys' event, but I do have a few pics of Brennan's bowling party.  There were 17 kids there, and everyone seemed to have a really great time.

I made Brennan's bowling shirt to match his invitations and favors.  I thought everything came out really cute.

Our annual egg hunt with our church was almost canceled due to rain, but we just pushed the time back, grabbed some rubber boots, and ended up having a lot of fun.

Cora was a pro at grabbing eggs.  She just kept shaking the eggs and saying, "There's candy in there!  There's candy in there!"

Brennan didn't get quite as many eggs as Cora, but that's because he wanted to get as many blue eggs as he could find.  (Blue is his favorite color.)  I told my neighbor Leslie about this, and she said, "That's so Brennan."  :-)

It was hard enough to get pictures of two kiddos hunting for eggs this year, but soon I am going to have to figure out how to get shots of three!  Just crazy.

This week is Brennan's actual birthday, and I'm also helping to throw a baby shower for my sweet friend, Kelly.  As soon as we get through the weekend, I'll be ready for baby boy to make his appearance.  He currently has his head on some kind of nerve that runs down my back and into my right leg, and I'm ready to reclaim my body.  15 days and counting...

Kindergarten Homework

I knew Brennan would have a little homework in kindergarten, but I figured it would be an occasional worksheet and lots of reading logs.  I did not expect to get bombarded with projects right from the beginning!  Kindergarten is a lot of work for a parent!

First, Brennan brought home the class gingerbread man.  Each child in Brennan's class brings home the gingerbread man for one night, and then the parents document in a class journal what the gingerbread man did while at home with that child.  Since Brennan was the third child in his class to bring it home and he had been sick (thereby postponing his back-to-school celebration dinner), the lucky gingerbread man got to go to the Olive Garden!  Here he is, enjoying chocolate cake with Brennan:

Brennan cracked me up.  He treated that little guy like a real, visiting friend.  He even strapped him in a seatbelt on the way to the restaurant!

You wouldn't think it would be a big deal to write a quick journal entry, but by the time we had the kids in bed and I had packed lunches for the next day and done a few other things, I didn't get the journal entry done until almost 10:00 at night.  Late night for kindergarten homework!

Another project the kids had to do at school was make a shoebox business to go in Wee Willy Winkie's imaginary town.  We were to use alliteration, and it was an easy decision for Brennan to make Brennan's Bookstore.  We were expressly told not to do the project for the child, but to work together, so that is just what we did.

When I saw some of the final projects at the school, I was amused and amazed.  There are some very creative and ambitious parents out there!  Even still, I have no regrets about Brennan's project, as it is a perfect representation of him.  It is precise, detailed, accurate, represents something he loves, he did most of the work, and it makes perfect sense.  It is sooo Brennan.

Notice that three of Brennan's cars have disappeared.  :-(  I don't think he noticed because I brought the project home for him and put the stuff away.

To celebrate the end of their nursery rhyme unit, the whole kindergarten at Nolensville (well over a hundred kids) participated in a nursery rhyme parade.  Brennan was a spider, either from The Itsy Bitsy Spider, which I guess was a nursery rhyme before it was a song (also both Brennan and Cora's favorite song at Cora's age), or the spider from Little Miss Muffet.

Again, the creativity at the parade blew me out of the water!!  Some of the costumes were just amazing!!  We were told to make the costumes using items from around the house (I think the idea was to avoid canned, pre-made costumes), and that made the parade so much fun!  I honestly thought it would be lame, but I enjoyed it tremendously.

Brennan's costume was just black pants and a black shirt and two pairs of girls tights, cut apart and stuffed with poly-fill, then safety pinned to his shirt.  He wore black socks on his hands and feet and we took the waistband from one of the pairs of tights and made a headpiece, which Brennan decorated with paper eyes.  Pretty easy.

There is one more project I created for myself that is kind of silly.  I made Brennan a fun first-day-of-school lunch.  It consisted of tunafish sandwich on fish-shaped bread, "water" (blue jello), "fish food" (strawberries), and goldfish.  He loved it, but I learned an important lesson as a new kindergarten mom:  Teach your child to put the lid back on containers of unfinished food before putting them back in the lunch box!  (Imagine a lunch box full of watery, blue jello!)

I'm sure there are many, many things we will both learn this year!  :-)