Brotherly "love"

Since having Nick and seeing how the younger child takes so much "abuse" from the older child I have apologized to my sister profusely. Being four years older than Kim I took every opportunity to terrorize her. And bless her heart, she rarely narked on me. Jay is no different than I was - only more physical! Jay is either so nice to his brother or so terrible to him - there is no in between. Nick's favorite animals in the world are penguins and giraffes. Just the other morning, while in the car (which are where most of our fiascos occur) he asked Nick if he was aware of the "fact" that giraffes eat penguins. Immediately, Nick started wailing which prompted Jay to start calling him a baby which makes Nick cry even more - Okay, so you get the picture. It's really just another typical drive to school in the Siebert van. But every so often I get a glimmer of what a sweet older brother Jay can be. The other day we were at the beach (in our subdivision) when a neighbor boy started calling Nick a baby. Jay came to Nick's defense and told this boy to knock it off, his brother wasn't a baby - which was interesting to me since Jay calls Nick a baby at least 10 times a day - but that aside it was good to see Jay sticking up for his little brother. It's that old truth that you can talk nasty about your family as much as you want but nobody else can!
Today Nick wasn't feeling well and was crying (I know I'm mentioning Nick crying a lot in his blog but really he doesn't cry too often) and Jay came up to him and got him to stop crying by telling him a hilarious story, which made all of us laugh. Nick stopped crying and broke out in gales of laughter from hearing his brother's story (which was about farting, of course). Then there was the time when Jay was four and Nick was a baby. I had taken Jay with me for Nick's shots. When Nick got his shots and started wailing Jay broke out in song, "You are my sunshine."
As I've aged I have realized there is nothing like a sibling. I tell Jay all the time that when he and Nick are grown and Mike and I are dead (I know, I know, terrible thought but it's true) there is no one who will know his history and where he came from more than Nick and no one who will laugh more with you over those crazy childhood stories!

Bedtime blahs

For about a month now Jay has had a really hard time settling down at bedtime. I really don't know what is going on with him. Both my kids have never had an issue at bedtime - I always joke that they zap every ounce of energy I have during the day that when bedtime rolls around, I've paid my dues and thankfully they both go to bed great. Jay has a really hard time with transitions and the start of school stresses him out so perhaps that is the problem but he's complained of his legs hurting a lot lately - Growing pains! Last night I put Jay to bed and when I went to check on him at 10:30 (which is way past my bedtime) he was in his closet, wrapped up in his sheets like a cacoon. But the real kicker is he had taken every last shirt in his closet off the hangers and made a "bed" with his clothes! It was like a bomb of clothing had exploded all over his closet and a big giant caterpillar had laid his home on them. Jay is really learning the definition of consequences these days so even though it was 10:30 I woke him up and he had to hang up all his shirts - and Yes, I did end up helping him as I didn't want to be up one second longer. By the time we finished it was 10:45 and his gerbils had kicked it into high gear. It was like they were building their own gerbil city, they were so loud. Jay was wide awake at that point and was complaining that his gerbils were preventing him from falling back to sleep. The problem solver that I am (I mean that sarcastically) I slid the cage out into the hallway. At 11:00 I finally got into bed. Mike and I laid our heads down on our pillows when we heard the gerbils in full force building their city. We listened to this nonsense for a few minutes - realzing we were never going to fall asleep. I trudged out of bed, headed back upstairs and moved the gerbils into Jay's room - where he was finally sleeping peacefully! Needless to say, it can only get better tonight.

Football

My 5 lbs. baby boy is playing football and seems to be loving it. Just this week they started practicing in full gear and that is when Jay discovered that football really can be fun. Any opportunity Jay gets to physically assault someone, he's all over it - and I mean that in the nicest way. The rougher you play with him, the better. The fact that he is given permission to run into people and try to knock them over truly gives him great joy!

Nick's first day of Pre-K

The title of this blog is a little incorrect. This is Nick on his first day of his last year of Pre-K. This will be his second year at the same school, with the same teachers. He loves it and so do I. He catches the bus with his brother every morning. The picture below is the group of kids at Nick's daycare (where he goes after school) waiting for the bus. I love waiting on the country road, chatting with all the kids before school. These years before Nick enters Kindergarten are truly the best years of my life - No pressure, just simple, fun preschool with a four year old boy who thinks Preschool is the best!

Cleaning with Nick

I had to get the house cleaned this morning. Mike and Jay left to run errands, Nick decided to stay behind and help me clean and trust me, I use that term loosely. Just to get started he decided to build himself an umbrella fort, right in the foyer. Clearly, cleaning was off to a good start.

Nick decided to use the vacuum tube as a bar-bell. As you can see he was really doing a "great" job helping me vacuum.

I sent Nick upstairs to retrieve the dirty laundry. He decided it would be a better idea to dump the laundry all over the floor and play in the basket instead.

Chick magnet

Tonight I was fixing Jay's hair which he hates (but it was sticking up, driving me nuts). This is how our conversation went:
Jay: "Mom, I don't like it when people mess with my hair."
Me: "Oh Jay you just wait until you meet some girl one day who wants to run her fingers through your hair - I promise you, you will like it then."
Jay: "I'm not a chick magnet, mom!"

I just had to laugh!

Oh how the tide turns

I often notice that when one of my children is driving me crazy, the other one isn't. The Lord really doesn't give you more than you can handle! It's completely random too. Currently Jay is driving me crazy and Nick is nothing but smooth sailing which makes me laugh because I thought I was going to lose my mind with Nick all last year (Yes, we all "loved" age 3 with Nick). And while I was going crazy with Nick, Jay was a dream. It just makes sense that now the tables have turned. For example: Jay and Lauren have been thick as thieves since she was born. Nick, on the other hand, not so much. Nick and Lauren haven't always gotten along but wha-la, suddenly Nick is all about Lauren and Lauren is really liking it! Last night Lauren came over and Nick didn't have a chance to give her a hug when she left. After she was long gone, he started crying. My other son (who was always Lauren't biggest fan) acts half annoyed with her now -What the??? Today Nick cuddled up next to me and wrapped his arms around me and kissed up all the way up my arm, told me I was the best mom ever and if he had a favorite giraffie I would be it. Once again, What the??? I'm completely baffled. For now I'll just suck the life out of Nick. Ha! The tide will turn, give it time, I'm sure I'll be blogging about something sweet Jay has said or done (although tonight, I got nothing) and something obnxious Nick has done.