Paul's Birthday Month

The weather has been changing, some days cooler, some days hot again. When it was raining, we stayed inside and got creative with the furniture:

Ephraim is very patient and loves playing with small toys, especially figures and animals. Can you see the tiny stormtrooper he balanced on top of the helicopter? He's about to lift the helicopter to make the trooper fly.

Fall means we can use the oven again. We decided to make sugar cookies--the first batch Ephraim has ever helped with. Gabriel is teaching him to eat the leftover cut-out dough.

Gabriel only has preschool three days a week for now (I think we'll do every day after Christmas). So sometimes we need something equally exciting to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I took the boys to the Children's Discovery Museum again. It never gets old. They still love the real fire truck!

They like the play house and tree corner with animal puppets. Here they are sitting on mushrooms. (Tried to get them to pose, but...this is what I got.)

This weekend we decided to buy a real fish tank. Even with no fish on Saturday night, the boys found the filtering water and lighting fascinating to watch! We have one white/yellow and orange Guppie now. We plan to get Tetra fish soon.

Mom watered the berries and trees, so we got mud monsters! I just let them get as muddy as they wanted (I feel like I restrict them too much) and I hosed them down and gave them baths afterward.

For Paul's birthday, he wanted to go to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Instead of paying $80 plus parking for all of us to go, we went on their Free Third Wednesday and had an adventure. The rainforest was hot and humid, but beautiful with butterflies going everywhere. We saw frogs and toads and snakes and the albino alligator. We walked through the aquarium and saw jelly fish and HUGE fish and colorful fish. Gabriel is looking at the anaconda snake in the corner here. (bleh!! Let me just say, I've seen my fill of snakes to last several years, thank you.)

The museum had a playroom for 5 years and under. It was just what we needed since we couldn't interact with anything else in the museum. Gabriel liked the pretend food and the bed aboard the ship, and the dinosaur blocks. Ephraim liked the chicken puppet. Once I showed him that it was a puppet, he practically wouldn't put it down. Can you see him steering the ship with a "brock-brock" here?

Ephraim is able to communicate surprisingly well with us. He has lots of "words," for example, his word for tail is "swish swish." He says "wa-wa" for water. He still shows so much comprehension by nodding his head and letting out a short cry for no.  He still follows and copies his brother. So when Gabriel gets into trouble, so does Ephraim. I can't help but laugh when he puts himself on time-out too, right next to Gabriel. I started counting for a hide-and-seek game the other day, and Ephraim hid right next to me whispering, "hide, hide."