Free Range on Fairview

Lincoln has decided he wants to learn nothing from me. Unless I trick him and he doesn't realize he is learning. I hit an after Valentine's day sale at good old Fred Meyer and picked up some candy hearts and knew I could find something to do with them. Enter candy heart sorting in an old egg carton. The little cups are the perfect size for just about any sorting activity. And it is light  and has a lid that somewhat closes so Lincoln can carry it around (or it can go on top of the refrigerator to save for another day). I tried to start with patterns but Lincoln did not want to bother himself with that. Eating them was way better! Then we tried matching colors. He still can't identify many colors but we are slowly working on it. He is pretty proficient at matching colors though, so I know something is getting through to him. 

We love Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer in our house! Dylan checks them out from his school library and we own a few too. Little critter is always learning life lessons and in this specific book, Just Big Enough , Little Critter learned that you don't have to be big to be big enough. Lincoln had it read to him like 25 times. He also liked to look through the book on his own. So when we got a giant box from Amazon after we ordered wipes and diapers for the month, I knew exactly what we were going to do with it. Make a growing machine. Dylan, Lincoln, and the neighbor boy Jarod all took turns drawing and adding interesting things to the growing machine (disregard the greasy hand prints all over the cardboard, the boys were all eating popcorn as they were working). Here is Lincoln demonstrating how it works.   Our inspiration: What is your kids favorite book to reenact?

When we ordered a large piece of furniture and it came in a tiny box I knew we were in trouble. 3 1/2 hours later, Shane and I had put together our new tv stand, but we had all of this thick styrofoam all over the house. The boys used them as swords and fought each other. We taped a few together to make a balance beam for them to walk on. I even thought about letting Dylan keep a piece to "carve" with his pocket knife, but knew Linc would get jealous so I scrapped that idea. One thing the boys thought was so awesome was to get out their hammers and hammer in a bunch of nails.  Dylan, being the almost 8 year old that he is, could smash one in with a hefty blow. Lincoln, who is now 2 1/2 had a much more trying time. It was so sweet watching Dylan try to teach him. To watch Lincoln's still somewhat chubby fingers hold the nail while his other hand brought down the hammer (breath, remember to breath in and out mama!) and to watch them do something more mature. 

Great, another Sadler I am not going to keep up with much longer! Warner is on the move and not looking back. He's also quite the chatter box. He screeches but he also has a deep voice. He's so fun!

Whew. Sorry guys I just needed a mini-break from blogging there. I got really ambitious and thought I could do all these great things with blogging but then I realized after hours and failed attempts at changing my background template and adding a facebook like button and all sorts of awesome things that I got burnt out on anything tech savvy. The the battery in the computer stopped taking a charge so I couldn't have blogged if I wanted to. Then when we got it back I just couldn't drag myself to write anything. I can't do it all. So I'm just going to do what I originally set out to do which was a blog about our normal, boring life. Plus the unexpected adventures that come along. I've been taking pictures even if I haven't been blogging so here is the biggest one of February.  Warner is now 9 months old! He is all sorts of active now. Crawling, climbing, pulling up on furniture, opening cabinets, cruising along anything stable. Eating table foods cut up