Party time

Well, we survived the party on Saturday. It was fun, but a little exhausting! We had 10 kids in the house- 1 girl and 9 boys!!! (The oldest boy being only 8.) That makes for a pretty loud and energetic house. But Scotty had fun and even shared all of his toys pretty well. After stuffing everyone with greasy burgers and fries we had Scotty open his presents to let the grease solidify in our arteries while we watched. Scotty was excited and happily opened presents for about 5 minutes and then said he was done and ran for the living room! I had to go get him and convince him that we could open the rest of the presents quickly. He obliged and was happy about the great gifts his loving family chose for him. Except for the much anticipated new big boy bed sheets and quilt that Mommy and Daddy gave him. As soon as he had a bit of wrapping paper off and saw that it wasn't a toy he disdainfully tossed the package to the side to search for something more exciting. Oh well. Surely he'll be excited about it when it's time to use the sheets, right?

So, aside from an anonymous guest that tried to use the tongue scraper in Scotty's bathroom as a toothbrush and then hid the slimy, toothpaste covered evidence in the corner, everything went really well. I love to have parties to celebrate my kids. I think they are so wonderful and great and I love to have family and friends take a moment to think about how great they are too. Hopefully Scotty knows how much he is loved. His dad and I tell him at least a thousand times a day, so he surely knows how much we love him! And hopefully all of his family realize just how wonderful of a kid he really is!

We thought this was so funny and he practiced blowing out his candles a couple times. Until later when I noticed something funny in the front of his hair and, upon closer inspection, realized that it was singed fragments of hair! I guess he leaned a little too close to practice!!

When I got out this tablecloth and put it on the table he got so excited and immediately ran to get his cars and trucks. It was so cute.

The famous forklift cake! Didn't Miles do a fantastic job??? And in case you can't tell, the load on the front is a roll of newsprint. In honor of the the forklift ride Scotty had recently at the Transcript with Grandpa Scott.

He loved his cake.

Before...

...and after!

We are singing - not drooling over the cake!

Scotty wanted to help do the honors.

With only a little coaching from Aunt Michelle, Scotty discovered what great fun it was to scoop your cake with your new tractor!

See what great fun he's having? :-)

To my kids: Seriously??

So, here are a couple little examples of times when I say to my kids "Seriously?"

1.  For a couple months now Grant has gone to sleep between 7-7:30pm, woken up somewhere between 3-6am quietly sucking his fingers and making soft hungry noises to eat, then back to sleep until 7:30-8:30am.  Then one night last week he slept all night long without getting up to eat.  Yeah!  We celebrated the end of early morning feedings and anxiously looked forward to the next night of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.  Well... the next night came and at 1:30am- 2 to 5 hours earlier than normal, frantically sucking his fingers and crying very loudly, we woke up to have to feed him as he ravenously sucked down the bottle.  And then he did that again the next night, then went back to his normal wake up time for a couple nights, and then slept through the night again.  I mean, seriously?  Make up your mind, boy!!

2.  After many weeks of having Daddy in nursery, then many months of crying hysterically when we left him at nursery, Scotty finally got to the point of wanting to go to nursery and would head in with barely a look back.  Then recently because of illness and being out of town we missed a whole month of church.  So our first Sunday back, Scotty screams in horror at the sight of the Nursery room and promptly clamps onto my leg with a death grip.  I have to pry him off and hand him apologetically over to the nursery worker and walk down the hall listening to his hysterical cries of "I want my Mommy!"  He is now the oldest child in Nursery crying harder than the newest 18 month old.  Seriously, Scotty?

Motherhood means that you can't depend upon any regularity!

Furniture mania

We decided to go to a "special, invitation only" sale at the local furniture store (I would guess almost everyone in Tooele got a "special customer invitation"!).  They had a few doorbusters- one which was a microfiber couch that we decided would be nice for our basement.  They had 12 couches available at this price.  We loaded up the kids (which we had to wake up the baby and tell Scotty that he was going with us whether he likes it or not!) and drove on down.  We were quite surprised to see the parking lot packed and a huge line outside waiting for the doors to open.  What??  A line??  At the furniture store in Tooele??  In March??  I immediately said that we should just go home because there  was no way we would get this couch- since I am pretty much a hermit anymore and don't like crowds!  Miles said we should go in anyway and at least take a look at carpet since we're in the market.  So Miles went to stand in the line and I got out the huge double stroller, bundled everyone up (it happened to go back to freezing temperatures just in time to stand outside in a big line) and we made it in.  I wandered around until I saw Miles following a salesman so I followed him right over to the exact microfiber couch in the ad.  Could it be?  Could Miles' early morning runs have helped him beat out all those crazy people?  YES!!  We got it!  I couldn't believe it.  Go Miles!  

After that we leisurely wandered around getting free pizza, letting Scotty jump on beds and couches, getting a balloon sword for Scotty which miraculously lasted until we were almost ready to leave, checking out carpet prices, feeding Grant and having his diaper leak on my lap and leaving a big wet circle on my leg, changing his diaper and having him pee all over the changing table (yes, you should always put something under your baby on those things!!) and waiting, waiting and waiting some more for Miles to finish talking and asking questions!  

All in all, we were very happy that we braved the crowd and forced Scotty to go.  We came out with a great buy and Scotty now wants to go back to the furniture store again soon.

Procrastination

I am the worst procrastinator.  I really hate that I do this, but so far I haven't made too many attempts to change it.  I have had the plan to do journal jars for an Activity Days activity for 2 months now.  Last month I ran to make the copies a half hour before the activity was to start and made it there just in time. I had good intentions to finish the rest of the jar preparation for the next activity.  Well, the next activity time came and I had nothing done- but Grant was sick and I had to cancel- whew!  I told myself that I now had two full weeks to get this done.  So two weeks have gone by, I wake up this morning and realize that the activity is tomorrow and I HAVEN'T DONE A THING TO PREPARE!!!  Argh.  Luckily I have a great mother-in-law who was able to help me out getting stuff together.  Tomorrow I'll have to run to get a few more things and hopefully be ready in time.  I could be doing stuff tonight to prepare, but I have lots of time tomorrow!

What can I do about this really bad habit?  Hmmm....I'll think about that some other time.

Scotty's 3rd Birthday

Today was Scotty's 3rd birthday- believe it or not!  It was a really fun day.  We started the day with me going to get him up from his bed and telling him happy birthday.  He got all excited that it was his birthday and ran out saying he wanted to go see his birthday.  He was a bit disappointed to get to the family room and not find any presents there waiting for him!  Luckily I had made a little sign and he thought that was pretty great.  We gave him a pair of roller skates made for little kids.  He was really excited and immediately started driving them around like trucks!  Then he put them on both hands and went zipping around.  But we were proud when he wanted to put them on his feet and try them.  He did pretty good until he got to the wood floor and started slipping and sliding.  So he decided that he would just stay on the carpet.  Can't wait until we get to try them outside!!

Urban came over and we went to lunch at McDonald's and he had lots of fun playing in the play place.  Then after naptime (a must even on his birthday!) they were able to play outside because the weather was beautiful.

We had his favorite foods for dinner: plain pasta, broccoli and oranges!  I made him some chocolate chocolate chip muffins, piled them up on a plate to resemble a cake and put the candles in.  He was so excited for us to sing to him and blow out his candles.  We had to sing about 5 times and he blew out the candles 3 times!

We will be having his party this Saturday and we're excited.  We'll be attempting to make a forklift cake so check back for the results!  We can't believe what a big boy he has grown up to be.  I told him how happy he makes us and how happy we were when he was born and joined our family.  He said "Yeah, I was a little baby."  We just feel so lucky to be his parents.  He's a great kid!

Now we will be on to the other big boy adventures:  a big boy bed, big boy underwear (please pray for me!!), a trip to the dentist and preschool this fall.  Turning 3 brings lots of changes!!

Being very patient to pose for a picture before opening his present.

This is how not creative I am:  I cut balloons and candles out of construction paper and glued them on this white paper and was so proud of how creative I was being!!  But he loved it and that is all that matters!

Pointing to his new roller skates.

He quickly ate the tops off of two muffins and probably would have eaten the tops off of all of them if we had let him!  Isn't he adorable???

He's not always happy to take a picture with Grant!

Grant gave him this automatic bubble blower thing.  Mommy hopes we will be able to do bubbles without so much slimy bubble solution all over!!

He loved the "bubble thing"!  

Easter Fun

I have to start this post by saying that I love being an adult.  Miles and I were discussing this fact last night as we were gorging ourselves on Easter candy after the kids were in bed!!

We had a great Easter.  We colored eggs, went to Grandma Kath's Easter party and hunted eggs and enjoyed the aforementioned traditional Easter candy.  I bought Scotty a chocolate bunny fully expecting him to not like it and to be able to eat it myself.  Well...I should have known better because he absolutely loved it!  There is now only the feet left and I have to demonstrate great self control to not eat it.

This was the first year we have colored eggs.  I had great visions of Scotty being amazed and excited about the eggs turning lots of pretty colors.  The reality was that he was only mildly impressed and wanted to dye all of the eggs green!  Oh well- there will be lots more opportunities for him to fulfill all of my preconceived plans!

Grant did react to Easter just the way I imagined though!

Scotty enjoying the coveted chocolate bunny

We began our festivities by making brownies for Grandma Kath's party.  Scotty helped me out by "cleaning" the beater and mixing bowl!

Here is Scotty showing me his great finds.

Here is Grant with his Easter present from Grandma Kath.  He LOVES this little thing!  He smiles whenever we hold it up for him to see.

Pretending to be interested in coloring eggs for Mommy's sake!

Until he couldn't take it anymore and decided playing with his new scissors would be lots more fun.

Do you speak toddler-ese?

I love the way little kids talk.  Here are a few of my favorite things that Scotty has said recently.

• He says my instead of I:  My wants a drink please. (He's very polite!)  My got my hair cut today.
• He mixes up the order of words:  Mommy, where my best friend Urban is?
• He mixes up letters in words:  Garbage is bargage.  Polka dots is dolka pots.  Popcorn is caporn.  Music is mucsic.

Growing up

This time last year we signed Scotty up for preschool for the 3yr old class in the fall of 2008.  At that time he was really shy and so we figured it would be good to get him started in preschool early to help him come out of his shell.  Well, yesterday I got the email with all the information about his class that will be starting in the fall.  I'm sitting there reading it and starting to doubt myself!  Do I really want him to start preschool already?  He isn't extremely shy anymore, so maybe he doesn't need the socializing.  What about the mean kids and bullies?  What if he won't have any friends?  Will he be potty trained by then????  (Oh, he better be!!)

I guess I'm just sad that he is growing up so fast.  His cousin Urban is going to be in the class with him, so he will have a familiar face.  (Which lately he has been calling Urban "my best friend Urban"!)  The socializing will be good for him and he'll have to deal with mean kids sometime, right?  I know that he will love going to preschool so I just need to put my fears aside and let him grow up.

Speaking of growing up fast: Grant is really growing fast!  He is almost 4 months old already and I can't believe it.  Time is going by so much faster with him than it did with Scotty.  We were realizing that he will be starting on rice cereal soon and that is just so crazy!  He is starting to laugh and it's so cute!  He's such a happy, smiley baby.  He's a pure joy!!

It's hard being almost 3

Sometimes it's just hard to be a little kid.  

• Scotty wanted to watch The Little Mermaid (which we're sure that he has a little crush on Ariel!) but when the scary part came on he dissolves into tears saying that he doesn't want to watch it anymore and instead of just turning it off he continues to watch, be scared and cry.
  
• He is having so much fun spinning around and around until he stops and is really dizzy and walks right into his dresser resulting in a bump on his forehead and lots of tears.  
  
• He really loves to play in the playplace at Carl's Jr but he's a little too short to climb up the platform and has to stand there and yell for help.  Then he has to listen to Mommy trying to explain how to climb up staring at her blankly because he has no idea what she is talking about!  Until Mommy finally finds some kind kid to help him up (because she has already done her time climbing in those things rescuing her nieces and nephew!).  
  
• He has to stop playing for 1 minute for Mommy to change his diaper.  But if you suggest using the potty you get a big no screamed at you!
• During daylight savings time he has to go to bed while it's still light outside!

But even with all this hard stuff he's still a happy, fun kid.

Giggles

Every once in a while I get the giggles.  You know- when you start laughing at something but you just can't stop!  Well, whenever this happens to me it annoys Miles.  And the fact that it annoys him makes me laugh even more!  It's a vicious cycle- I laugh, he gets annoyed, I laugh more because he is annoyed, he gets more and more annoyed the longer I laugh, and on and on it goes.  He gets really annoyed if he doesn't know what I'm laughing about.  Like recently I was reminded of the time my friend Ally fell down the stairs in front of a hot guy (sorry Ally, but this is the most recent example I have!!) and it made me laugh and I got the giggles.  Miles was asking what was so funny but I was laughing so hard I couldn't tell him.  So he just sat there being really annoyed asking every so often what was so funny while I rolled around wiping the tears from my eyes trying to stop laughing long enough to tell him!  It's just so funny when he is sitting there asking what is so funny!  I think he's just jealous that I get to have a huge whopping laugh fest once in a while!  Plus he's always worried that I'm laughing at him.  But he knows I would never laugh AT him- just WITH him!  

Scotty's mission

Scotty has numerous times grabbed a little notebook and announced that he was going on a mission.  He will invite us along too.  Today he had a photo album and said he was going on a mission, so I asked him what you do on a mission.  (I have explained this numerous times, but he has selective memory!)  His answer this time was "Go to the airport."  I told him that you teach people about Jesus and he says "At the airport?"  I laughed so hard!!  He remembers going to the airport to pick up Uncle Drew when he was a missionary, so to him airports and missionaries go hand in hand!  I explained that Daddy went to New York and Mommy went to Ohio to teach people about Jesus and he says that he wants to go to New York like Daddy to teach people about Jesus.  I told him that wherever he goes he can talk about Jesus.  Teaching moments pop up when you least expect them.