New word for Silas

Silas is talking a lot more these days. Not quite sentences, but 3-4 word combos are not too uncommon for him. Here's a funny little exchange I had with him this morning.

Me: Silas, is that a monkey?

Silas: No, Daddy, chimp!

And the other day he found some black crumbs on the floor in the living room. He picked a few up, brought them to show to Jorie, and said, "Mouse! Mouse poop!" He must have been paying attention when we first moved in. (for those who were not aware, yes, we had a mouse - I captured it in a garbage can and chucked it into the woods)

Meltdown Day

On Sunday we had temps in the 60's, so we had a good time in the afternoon getting out and enjoying the warm weather. The snow and ice was melting into rivers and streams flowing down our street. I chopped away the ice from around our driveway so that the river of melting ice could flow past our house and on into the storm drain. Silas loved splashing in the puddles and throwing leaves into the streams to watch them flow down the street. Joel loved throwing big ice chunks into the street, where'd they break up, and eventually melt.

However, this was NOT why I called this post "Meltdown Day". You see, Silas is taking this "terrible two's" thing quite seriously. We've been seeing this face a lot around here:

So this past Sunday, we headed off to New Covenant for church and as soon as Jorie walked in with Silas, he started screaming. He was completely inconsolable. This is very strange for him, as both he and Joel have always been very good about going and playing in church nursery, or at the gym, or preschool, or anywhere really. We've been blessed to have no real struggles with separation anxiety. But Silas had made up his mind, he was not going in there without a fight. Jorie had an idea - let's try putting him in Joel's class. The teachers were OK with this, so we decided to try it, and at first it seemed to work as Silas was happily playing with the 3-year-olds. But as soon as he looked over his shoulder and got the idea that we were leaving it was back to the screaming. So we didn't know what to do. We couldn't leave him in the nursery screaming (even if we'd wanted to, it was clear from the workers' attitude that it was not an option). So we admitted defeat, had to pull Joel out of his class, and headed home. Such a bummer. But Silas has good days, too, and we know this phase of temper tantrums will pass.

Here are some pics of the boys enjoying the nice weather.

It's snow fun in Iowa!

Hope you enjoyed that terrible pun, I couldn't resist. Just some more pics and vids of the boys enjoying the arctic state of Iowa. That reminds me, there was a day during the week last week when the sun was shining and it felt warm and pleasant. I was driving around town with my sunroof open and it felt so nice. When I got home, I checked the temperature - 20 degrees! I fear my internal thermostat has been irreparably damaged by this Iowa winter. It seriously felt nice and warm to me.

The shoveling discharge piles (well, what do YOU call 'em?) at the ends of our driveway have gotten so huge, we were able to make a mini sled run out of it.



I also had fun building this:



These next pictures are from this past Friday. See, told you I'd catch up!



Since the snow was packing better now, we decided to build a more respectable snowman. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate an eye and the hat, so we ended up with this.

Back in Grayslake

OK, so I'm falling behind in my blogging a bit, as what I'm about to post happened 3 weeks ago, but I promise I'll try to catch up. The weekend after Silas's birthday, we went back to Grayslake to visit our friends and the boys' friends too. James and Amy Tanner were very gracious hosts, letting us crash at their place and even letting Joel and Silas use Elizabeth's room. We even ended up staying a day longer than planned as Iowa got hit with a huge snow/ice storm and I-80 and I-380 were basically shut down on Sunday.

Here's Elizabeth, Joel, and Silas having fun building with KAPLA blocks. Check out Joel's outfit - Pajamas, tennis shoes, and a burger king crown. You gotta love it. Don't you wish you could still dress this way and get away with it?

Silas is hangin' with the ladies here, Elizabeth and Ella.

Jorie went to visit our friend Alissa, who had just given birth to identical twin girls. Silas loved the babies and he couldn't resist trying out the bouncer and sticking both fingers up his nose. Lovely pose, Silas!

We couldn't resist driving by the old homestead a few times while in town, but safe to say, we are very happy to be in our new Iowa home.





On the way home from our trip, Monday night, we were amazed to see how many cars were in the ditches and in the median along the highways in Iowa. We started trying to count, but quickly lost track when we started passing 10+ car pileups. It was seriously insane. We'd pass a slick spot and then a little hill and then we'd see a spot on the side of the road where tons of cars had gone off and just slammed into one another over and over. I'm very glad we made the decision to stay in Grayslake Sunday night.

As it turned out, we didn't make it all the way home Monday either. The roads were getting a little icy and Silas woke up near the I-80 truckstop and did NOT want to go back in his car seat. So our choices were either strap him in and try to drive through the icy conditions at midnight with a screaming 2-year-old, or we could stay in a hotel. Being of the masculine persuasion, of course I wanted to press on at first, but eventually I consented and decided it was worth it to leave in the morning. And HOLY COW the roads were still really bad on I-380 (between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids) so it's a good thing we waited. The ice was so thick and bumpy on the highway, we had to slow down to 20 mph for long stretches. That would have been tougher to do safely at night and with no other traffic on the roads. But in the morning, it was no problem. And there were STILL cars going off the road, even that Tuesday morning we saw people getting stuck in the median. But we made it, safe and sound! Hopefully spring will come soon, as I have had it with snow and ice and shoveling and cold and BLEH!