Everything is coming up Engle this week!  On Monday I booked my first school with WonderLove School Photography (taking all the class photos for the year).  On Wednesday Matt received a long awaited, much deserved promotion.  On Wednesday and Thursday we had a little family vacation at Great Wolf Lodge, where fun was had by all!  On Thursday I booked my second school.  And today I booked my third school!

This is such a fun, exciting time for our family, and I am so happy about all of these wonderful, positive things that are happening for us right now!  As I do every night I thank God for all that He has given me.  This week I have so much more to thank Him for!!

Go Team Engle!

At our mall there is an ice skating rink.  And every time we go to the mall, which is often, Nate wants to stop and watch the ice skaters.  He loves it.  Here he is on his birthday a few months ago watching them:

So when I saw that the city was offering beginning ice skating lessons for Nate’s age group through their parks and recreation department, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for him to try it out. When I first put the skates on him and he was walking around the carpeted area outside the rink, he was doing great. He was walking on the blades perfectly, so I had high hopes for him once he got out onto the ice. Well…ice is not carpet, and he had a much more difficult time once he was on the ice skating rink. He couldn’t stand on the skates without assistance, so he spent the majority of the lesson holding on to the side wall practicing the moves.

I was kind of worried when he came off the ice, wondering what he thought of it, as he was very intense during his whole lesson and seemed like maybe it was way harder than he had anticipated. But as soon as he was finished he told me he had fun and the he wanted to do it again.

So last week he had his second lesson, and his improvement was amazing! He actually spent about half the lesson on his skates, skating around, as opposed to holding onto the wall. (I think it helped a TON that he had a different instructor. She was much more encouraging, it seemed like, and was having more fun with the kids. He was smiling the entire lesson and obviously having a lot of fun. I think all of this definitely contributed to his having a much more successful lesson.)

These pictures are from the first lesson, but I want to try to get more these next two weeks since he’s now doing so much better. The problem is that Mr. William is kind of a terror during this time and wants to scream his head off or go running around like a wild man the entire time. These things make it kind of difficult to get pictures taken! But at least I have Lesson 1 documented!

Yesterday Will woke up crazy early, at 4:45am. So by 7:00 he was really fussy. I thought he might take a little nap, so I put him in his crib to lie down. He was in there for about 45 minutes when I heard him waking up and starting to kind of talk to himself. I was in the kitchen doing dishes, and I decided to leave him in there for a few minutes to see if he would go back to asleep. About one minute later I hear behind me, “I went and got Will out of his crib,” and there are Nate and Will just casually walking into the kitchen! I had the baby monitor on, and I didn’t hear any kind of grunting or crying or anything at all, so I asked him how he did it (since Will is a heavy, BIG kid!). He said that he just lifted him out and set him on the ground. Well, OK then.

Then, this morning Nate was up before Will, but I made him come lay back in our bed to try to go back to sleep (Matt is in Austin this week). Once I heard Will waking up, we got up and I went to brush my teeth. As I’m in the middle of brushing my teeth I hear Nate say, “I’ll go get him,” and sure enough, one minute later they both come running into the bathroom!

This time I had to see exactly how he did it. He makes it look so easy!

Last week I needed to clean the boys’ bathroom.  This is a tricky thing, since the bathroom is in between both of their bedrooms.  Normally I would do something like this when Nate is at school and Will is taking a nap, but it’s kind of hard to do that without waking him up.  So I always try to do it when they are both busy with something else, hoping I can sneak in there, clean it quickly, and get out before they notice what I’m up to and come in and try to “help”.  Last week my plan did not go off like this.

They were on to me before I even made it to their bathroom with my cleaning bucket full of supplies.  Nate, of course, wanted to help, and Will just wanted to get into everything that I thought I had put out of his reach.

As I’m working to clear off the counter, I kind of see Nate out of the corner of my eye going through my cleaning bucket and grabbing my latex dishwashing gloves, and then I hear him say, “I’m going to put on my gloves.  But first I need to brush my teeth.”  And he grabs an old, disgusting, filthy toothbrush from the bottom of the bucket, one I use for cleaning grout and toilets and who knows what else, and he brings it up to his mouth, and it is mere centimeters from crossing over into his  mouth before I scream, “NOOOOO!!!”  All toothbrushes were then promptly removed from the cleaning bucket.

I quickly go back to clearing off the counter, which has to be done  before any actual cleaning can take place, as it is covered with toys and books and 7 tubes of toothpaste and superheroes and clothes….yes, you now know how messy I let their bathrooms get before I get to cleaning it!  So I’m taking toys off the counter and taking them to Nate’s room, when I turn around, not 60 seconds after the filthy toothbrush incident, and Will has the bottle of Windex pointed at his mouth, his finger on the trigger, about to squirt (probably lethal if ingested) glass cleaner into his mouth.

“Alright.  We are done cleaning the bathroom.  Everybody out, we are done, no more cleaning,” I say as I grab the Windex from Will.  I still have toys in my hand to be taken to Nate’s room (which is literally 2 steps from the bathroom counter), so I turn around just to drop them on the floor in his room.  I turn back around in the bathroom, ready to get all my cleaning supplies out of there, when I see William sucking on the cleaning sponge.  The very same sponge I use to clean grout and toilets and who knows what else.

And that is why their bathroom is still dirty.  Because I gave up and decided to take some pictures instead:

 And it’s kind of a good thing that he grabbed this full cup of water off the counter, tried to take a drink, and spilled it all over his mouth and face, because his mouth really did need a good rinsing.

When I was pregnant with Nate and we picked out his name, we always knew that he would be called Nate, even though his real name is Nathaniel.  And since the day he was born he has always been Nate (except when he’s in trouble, and that’s when the “Nathaniel” comes out!).

When I was pregnant with Will and we picked out his name, we always knew that he would be called Will, even though his real name is William.  Except that has not been the case…at all.  We called him Will right from the very beginning, but pretty soon after he came home Nate occasionally started calling him William.  And then we did, too.

So now, 18 months later, Will is Will, but he’s just as frequently William.  I find it so funny and interesting, because when I was pregnant it never occurred to me that he would be anything but Will (just like it never occurred to me that Nate would be anything other than Nate).  But sometimes he’s Will, and sometimes he’s William, and both names fit him perfectly!

(Matt does this thing with Will where he kind of grits his teeth and makes a funny face, and Will copies him.  Here he is showing Daddy how he it’s done!)

I have been trying to write down some of the funny and cute things Nate has said over the last several months.  Here are a few that I remembered to write down!:

• He went through a period where, when he did something he wasn’t supposed to do and I got onto him, he would say, “My brain told me to do the wrong thing.”
• (It helps this little story to know that Will is allergic to peanuts.)  The boys were taking a bath together, just playing and splashing around, when Nate looked at me seriously and said, “I think I’m allergic to peanuts.  And poo-nuts.”
• Both boys had a doctors appointment, and while the doctor was checking out Will, Nate was acting very badly.  He was climbing on things, opening drawers, being loud, stuff like that.  I was trying to give him the “mean Mommy stare down” while also listening to the doctor.  After we left the doctor’s office I took him down the hall and talked to him about how disappointed I was and how badly he had behaved.  He seemed remorseful and apologetic, then he said, “I be’d a little bad today, but I be’d a lot good, too.”
• After bathtime one night, I let the boys run around naked for a little bit.  Nate ran around the house yelling, “Never fear!  Naked guy is here!
• I had taken the boys to the doctor, and Nate was walking behind me, just kind of messing around and walking kind of slow.  ”Nate, walk faster please,” I told him.  ”I can’t.  This is the only walk I have,” he said.
• Matt and I were both in the kitchen area (he was cooking dinner, I think, and I was sitting at the table), while Nate was playing by himself in the playroom, which is right beside the kitchen.  He was playing with some of his guys, making up little stories and talking to himself, when he said, “I love a woman with fire in her eyes.”  I’m not sure which of the superheroes was talking or to whom they were supposedly talking, but upon hearing this both Matt and I looked at each other like, “Did you hear that, too?!”  It was so hilarious!
• Nate got a new piggy bank for his birthday, and he was asking me for money to put in it.  I made him do some little chore before I gave him some change.  As I reached in the clear change jar, going around the few dollar bills that were in there to grab a quarter, he said, “No, I want the green money.”
• Matt, Nate, and I were standing around one day when Matt asked him, “Who’s taller, Mommy or Daddy?”  ”Mommy!” Nate smiled and said (it’s true…I really am!).  ”OK,” Matt said, “who’s better looking, Mommy or Daddy?”  Nate looked at me, then looked at Matt, then looked at me again, with a serious, pained sort of look on his face.  He knew it was trick, but he just couldn’t figure out what to say!

This boy…he’s pretty awesome!