Conversations With Alexander

A: Mommy, when I grow big like you I'm still going to call you Mom.
Me: That's good. Are you still going to give me hugs and kisses?
A: Um, okay. When I'm big I'm going to wear Daddy's clothes 'cause I will be that big.
Me: You will?
A: Yeah, but when you turn 1,000 you are going to die.
Me: (sad face)
A: But that is okay because we will be able to take care of ourselves.


I love my boy!

Somebody Loves Steel Cut Oats

So much so that he has to try to get every last drop out of the bowl.

Not snotty nose above, just the milk that was in the bowl, also doesn't it look like he is holding an imaginary spoon? I know the photos are overexposed, way to bright, but I wanted to get him holding the bowl up so I didn't have time to think about lighting.

Catching Up

I realized that I have not really posted much about the kiddos lately so I thought I better give some updates on them. I really need to do an Easter post, but that will have to come later! For now here is a picture of us all dressed up.
Tater is doing great. Not much "changing" going on with her. She continues to get smarter by the day and I am constantly bombarded with questions throughout the day. Most of which I have no idea how to answer! I usually stumble along to the best of my ability, which is usually followed by a long list of whys! She keeps me on my toes, that is for sure. She is quite the fashion diva...only the fashion makes sense to only her. I have long ago decided not to fight her on what she wears. She gets to decided what to wear even if it evokes quite a few stares when we are out and about. This past weekend when it was 80+ degrees outside, she thought for sure that she needed to wear her hat and gloves.

Zander is also growing and changing so much everyday. One of my favorite things that he does right now is to tell me secrets. He comes up and makes the whispering noise and at the end whispers secret. It is so cute. He just loves to play outside and is all boy, let me tell you.

Unfortunately he is cutting his two year molars right now and it has really changed his disposition. I couldn't remember Hannah being so fussy, so I looked through my archives to see if I had written anything. Sure enough I had. Turns out she was fussy, I just must have blocked out that part! I am also a little concerned with how he turns his right foot in when he walks. When we originally asked the pediatrician about it she said they usually don't do anything about it until the child is 3 or 4. However, it has gotten much worse since then so I think we will be bringing it up at our next visit.

I Might Have Gotten a Little Carried Away

Recently I have been looking at pictures from last summer and thinking how handsome Zander looked with shorter hair. I have been debating getting his hair cut, but I just hate paying so much for a boys haircut or trim. I had a great girl up north that would cut the kids hair for a very reasonable price, but just haven't found anyone down here yet.

Today, I thought to myself, was a great day to "trim" Zander's hair. The back was starting to look like a mullet and his bangs were in his eyes. It started off simple enough and then as I went on I decided it would look better shorter. Clippers. That was the logical solution. I used to cut Bologna's hair back in his Corps day when he had to have a fresh haircut every week. We usually used a 3 on top and then blended the bottom with a 2, 1 and no shield.

I thought that surely a 5 on top would be plenty long. Maybe, it is the blond hair or maybe I just got carried away but his hair is so short!
Oh, well. He is still adorable. At least in my humble opinion!

Football Game

How can Zander go from being so sweet and angelic:

to throwing a huge tantrum?

Easy take away his football game.


Since we watch a lot of football in this house, it as no surprise when Alex started calling everything to do with football "football game." A helmet is a football game, a football is a football game. Everything is a football game. Since we moved he has become really attached to a particular blanket. More specifically the tag on the blanket. He drags this thing around everywhere. When he is holding onto it and looking for his tag he sings "mytag, mytag, mytag!" He calls it his football game well, because it has a football on it. Obviously since he drags it around it gets pretty dirty so I have to wash it a lot. Hence the problem. Last week when I washed he he threw the biggest fit. Crying and screaming "I. WANT. MY. FOOTBALL GAME!" I tried giving him a different blanket, but he just threw it down and said "NO! I DON'T LIKE IT!" Fun times!

The next time I tried a different approach. I told him that I needed a big helper to help me with the laundry. Could he please help me? He was so excited that he didn't even realize we were washing his beloved football game. Crisis averted this week.

On a different but somewhat related subject I need help! Since before Christmas Zander has been waking up at night. Sometimes it is just once a night and other times it is multiple times! Usually, he wakes up and walks into our room. He (usually) doesn't cry, just comes to our room. I pick him up and lay him back down and that is that. However, sometimes he cries and screams and won't lay back down. It is a constant I lay him down, he gets up and repeat 20 times. I try not to talk to him, or give in when he asks for chocolate milk. Although, sometimes I am soooo tired that I feel like it is easier to just give him the milk rather then fighting it.

I do not know where this is coming from or how to stop it. Please give me your best advice. We are pretty tired over here because even though he is waking up multiple times that doesn't mean he is sleeping in. Nope, not my boy. He is usually up about the time Daddy gets up.

Mean is My Middle Name

A few weeks ago we had a light dusting of snow. Hannah begged me to let her go out and play. Being new to the city life, I was a little nervous about letting her go out by herself and I really did not want to go out. However, I agreed and watched her from the doors. Alex soon figured out what was going on and REALLY wanted to go out with Sissy. That is where I drew the line. There was no way that I could trust him to be out there without an adult. He however found this unreasonable. He soon found his hat and an old pair of gloves and put them on.

He stood at the door, alternating between watching Sissy and crying. Soon, he had enough and went upstairs to play. At least I thought that was what he was doing.

Not long after he went up, he came down with his pants. I'm sure he was thinking seriously Mommy! I got my hat, gloves and now my pants just let me go outside already!! (Side note, I am amazed that he managed to go upstairs, open his drawer, get out some pants and come back downstairs all the while leaving his mittens ON.)

PLEASE oh PLEASE can I go outside? See here are my pants!

Really, enough of this picture taking. Please just let me go outside and play with Sissy. Finally Daddy felt bad and took him out to play, in a t-shirt because he is cool like that.

All the while, I stayed nice and toasty warm in the house.

Just One of Those Days

This past weekend was kind of a "relaxing" weekend. I decided that I was going to take the day off on Saturday and not do any housework. Which was great, for the day, but come Sunday the house was disastrous. Which caused me more stress then what my "day off" was worth.

Anyway, back to Saturday. My day of rest ended up turning into a day of stress. On Friday night my nieces and nephew spent the night. The kids had so much fun, but got little sleep. They stayed up way past bedtime and got up extremely early. Which is what a sleepover is all about. However, that makes for a very cranky two year old. It messed up his entire schedule. Nap-time came too early, so by late afternoon he was Mr. Cranky. He was crying and whining about everything! I was at my wits end. I was counting down the hours until bedtime. I had planned on putting them to bed extra early and playing some Wii picking up a bit. However, my plan was foiled.
I found this pile of bodies at 7:00 P.M. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew that if I let them nap they would not go to bed...but. But, it was quiet! There was no crying or whining or complaining. It had just been one of those days where I could not take it any longer. So I let them sleep.

Of course, when it was time for bed neither one of them were tired. That is why I was still putting a mad Zander back into his bed every two minutes and rubbing Tater's back in between at 11:00. Three hours past bedtime. Oh, what one little nap at the wrong time can do.

Are You Sick of This Yet?

If not, then I'm sure you will be after this post! I am a bit excited about this room because it is Zander's first REAL room. So, I took a lot of pictures. Mainly all of the pictures are for the grandparents so that they can see all of the details of Zander's room.

First, I want to give you the back story. When Zander was born we were living in NC in a smaller house. At the time I wanted itty-bitty Zander to be in our room, so he slept in a cradle in our room. Then Tony left for Iraq and we moved up to OH where the kids and I shared a room at my Mom's house (crazy I know). When Tony got home and we moved back to NC Zander got into his "own room." However his room was also the office and by this time we knew we would be moving soon so we did not decorate his room at all. However, for Christmas, his grandparents bought him a bunch of jungle decor for his room. Then we moved to OH and again we knew where we were staying was not a permanent place so we did not decorate. Finally, we moved and my two year old "baby" gets his first room! So, even though I kind of wanted to do something a little more grown-up, we already had all of the stuff for a jungle room. It doesn't matter because he really loves his animals.

Without further ado, here is his room:
The brown is not showing up as the actual color. It is more of a chocolate brown and not so much orange. Here is a close-up shot of his giraffe:

Close-up of elephant:

Close-up of zebra and dresser with the vine that hubs hung. (I'm not sure how I feel about it yet):

Monkey and window:

His toy box:

View from other side of the room:

From the other corner:

Hey, wait a minute! Who snuck into the shot. We better take a closer look:

What a ham!

60 YEARS!!!

Today is my Grandparent's anniversary, they have been married for sixty years. Can you believe that? Sixty years and they make it look so easy. This past weekend we had a surprise party for them. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I did not get any pictures of the grand event. I will have to steal my Mom's memory card so I can put up some pictures of them....they are so cute! Anyway, we had a great meal, went on a hayride and had a bunch of crafts for the kids to do. One of the crafts was to color and decorate pumpkins.
Here's Zander, cheesily showing off his pumpkin creation:
And Missy with hers. She spent a long time just coloring her pumpkin, the other side is also colored.

We decided that we also wanted to carve the pumpkins with the kids. So Sunday evening before Bologna left we carved them. Alex jumped right into the goo.

Hannah on the other hand was a little more timid. Tony finally put some in her hand and let her feel it so she would be brave enough to stick her hand inside.

I caught her face mid-yuck. She actually got better after a few times of sticking her hands in.

I will have to post the finished product later because I do not have a good picture of them yet. Tony is so creative, he made Tater a clown face and Zander a pirate. I think that he actually enjoys carving the pumpkins more than the kids do and in a few years we will have to get an extra pumpkin so that he still gets to carve one;)

WE MET LIZZIE!!!

Very photo heavy post...however there are about a thousand pictures I could post so really you are getting off easy!

Tonya had a party on Saturday and I was soooo excited not only to see everybody, but because the Hedger's were going to be there. That meant that not only was there going to be somebody Hannah's age, but there was going to be a GIRL that was Hannah's age! However, what I did not expect was how much I would enjoy talking with Lisa. Not that I don't enjoy talking with Tonya, Sarah, Sue and Cat, but this was different. This was a mommy of a girl my girl's age. (Are you following me here?) That meant that we got to talk about things that applied to our girls. Things that the other parents are not facing either a. because they have male children, or b. because they are younger than Hannah. Anyway, what I am trying to convey here is just how nice it was to be able to talk to somebody at the same point that I am. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, moving on. The kids had such a great time. As always, Tonya was such a great hostess and had so much for the kids to do. They were buys most of the time which gave all of us mommas a chance to chit-chat. There was a cardboard box house, that had a bunch of shredded paper in the middle that hid the candy. Hannah and Liz actually sat in there forever picking out that candy. It was quite funny.

I think it is so cute how Alex is just peaking in!
There was bobbing for apples, and really what more can a bunch of almost two year olds want than a big bucket full of water and apples?

Hannah and Liz really enjoyed the bobbing.

They each got to make their own bag to collect the candy in. Tonya, so crafty had foam stickers, stamps and puffy paint for them to use.

There was even a bouncy house for them to jump in and boy did they love that.

When they weren't occupied with all of that, Will gave them a box of rocks to throw into the little fish pond. I think that was on of the highlights of the night. However, it was not until much later that Hannah discovered the fish.

Hannah and Liz were just so cute together! They played so well and at one point were upstairs playing by themselves. Every now and then somebody would go check on them to find that they were playing "Princess of the year!" Not sure what that is but okay. The one bummer is that they live so far away:( I did google it and if I have the right city then currently we are only roughly two hours away. Once I move though we will be almost four hours away!

Hannah and Liz saying goodbye:

I will leave you with some of the other cuties at the party. Unfortunately I am so bad about getting pictures of the older kids, mainly because they are so busy running around!

Dude, is this party over yet? 'Cause I am wicked tired!