Recovering & Getting Ready

It's taken over two weeks, but I think we're all finally on the mend from the illness that invaded our house. Phew! That was a rough little stretch. Not we're very busy cleaning and getting ready for some special visitors from Tennessee and the UK. The boys are helping out with the preparations.

Cole is a mean Swiffer-er.

Grady took to the broom rather quickly. It's not child labor if you feed them after they work, right?

Oh! And here, below, is Grady helping with....ooooooh, wait. He's not helping. Not helping at all. He's still playing with the #^&* door. Leave the doors alone, Grady! See how he's pointing? He just told me to go away, and said "no, no, no!" before I could say it to him. 19 months and already sassy.I'd be more irritated, but I'm pretty sure I was a stubborn child, so I guess this is just karma. See how his eyebrows are raised in the second picture? That look means "if you try to stop me from shutting this door, I will scream. LOUDLY. Do it, I dare you."

Where's the other half of Team Ellerman during all this? In the pantry, frantically shoveling Nilla wafers into his mouth.


When I said "no, no. We're not eating SnackSnack right now," Cole gently took the container from my hand and loudly said "NACK-NACK", then giggled and ran off with said container. Was it funny? Yes. Did I laugh? Definitely. Was it the best way to teach him how not to eat contraband snacks right before dinner? Probably not, but at least he wasn't getting into the Miller Lite.

Rhett goes to school!

Aunt Karen's baby is all grown up! Little man Rhett is off to pre-school, and look how excited he is about it. I love how his little face is all lit up and he's excitedly holding his backpack. Greg and Sara, having been to school for a while now, look fairly unexcited. Hahaha.

I wonder what Aunt Karen is up to now that the house is empty for several hours a day. Karen?

I forgot something

The NyQuil must have been kicking in the other night when I posted about our weekend, because I forgot a few things.

Like...we also visited Nanny and Papa [Keith's maternal grandparents, if you're new here] in Canton. It was just a quick visit since we didn't want to leave too many cooties behind, but it was a good one! Here is Nanny with Cole. He warmed right up to her and together they looked at Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat. Cole likes to repeat words over and over as he points at them. Loooook! Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat.

Grady is going through a Momma and Dada-liking phase, and that means they like most other people less right away. So he first preferred to sit on my lap...

...but when he looked over and realized Nanny was holding some Nack-Nacks [snacks], he was all too willing to move over to Nanny's lap for a bit. Well, heeelllooooooo, Nanny. Whatcha got there for me?

Meanwhile, Cole found a fish, and pointed them out to Uncle Ronnie. Loook! Shish. Shish. Shish. Shish. Shish.

That's it for now, I'm off to take my shot of NyQuil. Hopefully it will stop my lungs from trying to thrust their way out of my throat when I cough. Damn PMO.

Cooties

Yep, we got cooties. Presumably from PMO, since we all know little kids are germ factories. We had grand plans for this weekend, but most were cut short to stay home and lay low while all 4 of us recover from PMO Cooties. We did squeeze in a visit at Piedmont Park with our friends the Wistricks. We had not seen them in a while so we all caught up while Cole and Grady ran around and played. We also watched some very disappointing football, and played, played, played! Here we are, at Piedmont Park. Check out our mad frisbee skills, dude!

Bonus points to whomever can tell me what is different in the picture below. This is Keith before we started watching the Tivo'd UGA game.


See how nicely we play alongside each other? This peace lasts maybe 5 minutes, then we're back to smacking each other and stealing toys.

And birthday shoutout to Rhett, little man turned 4 this past Friday! Happy birthday, Rhett! Aunt Trudi is sorry she didn't post this on Friday, but at least she called and mailed you a million dollars, so hopefully you can find it in your heart to forgive.

And yes, he wrote his name all by himself! Nice job!

Parents Morning Out

Today was our boys' first day at Parent's Morning Out at a local church. If you're not familiar, Parents Morning Out is a program (usually called Mother's Morning Out, but we live in a fairly liberal community that prefers to give names that could apply to moms or dads. Or both moms in a family, or both dads in a family. You get the idea, families come in every shape and size, etc.etc). The program is meant to let kids who are at home (vs. a daycare) get some socializing time in, and moms can run errands/clean the house/go to work/do nothing. Anyways, so last night I packed the bag of required snacks, diapers, change of clothes, and drinks, and this morning Keith and I went to drop them off. Drop-off was not a problem at all! Cole was excited to play with new toys and Grady went and hugged teacher Ms. Jessica's leg, so we snuck out. Easy peasy!

I can't say that I was sad to leave them behind, but I certainly was very distracted and absentminded for the next 2 hours. I went to Kroger for a few items-2 to be exact, and $40 later came out with a cart full of items, and I really can't remember being in the store. I do remember thinking "I hope Grady doesn't hug-tackle any kids" and "ooooh, I hope Cole doesn't bulldoze kids with his head." Can't remember what else I did, but I did look at my phone every 5 minutes to see if they were calling me to tell me the kids are having meltdowns and needed to be picked up early.

For the first day of Parents Morning Out kids can only stay 2 hours, so at 11am I picked up two little boys. When they saw me they burst into tears, which I am interpreting to mean I am SO fabulous that their love for me overcame them and caused them to cry. Ms. Jessica said they had a good morning overall, and they mostly played well. A few tears were shed, but it was nothing some cuddling and book reading didn't fix. Grady made the rounds with all the teachers, I was told. I knew he's was going to be the ladies man. Cole made a new friend, Robert. Robert was very friendly and almost tried to leave with us, but I had to tell Robert that two kids at home was enough for now. Sorry Robert, maybe playdates some other time.

I didn't get any pics of the boys at PMO, but here is a picture of them relaxing once they got home. Grady is talking and telling me ALL about his day and how the teachers at PMO thinks he's one of the two cutest kids there. Cole was really into his sippy cup. Actually, he's into Grady's sippy cup, they think it's fun to trade off.