Another Bandito Turns Three

Look! I found me a baby to hold. Sweet baby Wogan. Or Logan, if you can already pronounce L's. We went to Aunt Angela's so I can get a baby fix to celebrate Evan's third birthday. I should really be spending this time telling you about Grampie's birthday, but that old man is going to have to take backseat to one of his grandbabies for another day. I hope he can recover from the heartbreak as he sits bronzing under the sun at the warm and sunny beach. All day. 

Anywho, we got to their house, and within 5 minutes I snatched me a baby. 

And offered to feed him. Actually, I wouldnt say I offered, I just told Angela I was going to do it. She seemed ok with that. Or not, I didn't really bother to try to read her expression. This baby was mine for the next few hours. Dammit. Look how sweet he is. Here I'm telling him that I'm going to be his favorite aunt. The brainwashing starts early, I'm not ashamed to admit.

 At some point I remembered we were there for another reason and I bossed Keith asked him politely to please go take some pictures.

Party hats!

He knew I'd want a picture of the Three Banditos. It's hard, this coordination of three little spirits.

 And you might be thinking to yourself, but why didn't he just take more pictures? One is bound to turn out good. Above is the best. Below is the rest.

 People arrived, chatted, milled about, and I needed to powder my nose, so I let Keith borrow my toy. Look how Wogie is snuggling with uncle Keith. I bet someday he likes uncle Kief almost as much as he loves aunt Toodles. Almost.

 The boys entertained themselves with Evan's toys on the fridge.

 And cousin Evan and his balloons did some jumping. This jumping eventually led to the popping of one of the balloons, and that led to the end of running around and jumping with balloons, but man, it looked like fun while it lasted.

 And then Angela came and took her baby back from me to "go show him off to other people" who just arrived. Just a few minutes, she said. Uh-huh. I won't believe those words again. See, I just fed him and I knew he was going to want to sleep soon, and I'm pretty sure in my arms would be a good place to do that. So I agreed, but made it clear I wanted him back. See how smart she is so wear a shiny something for him to hold onto?

 Oh, let's not forget his dad Ken.

 Aunt Angela had a fun choochoo craft planned for this Thomas party, and we do love a good crafting session. Grady got to work on his train.

 Which looked like this. He really has an eye for abstract composition, no?

 If you're wondering what it could possibly look like...

 And here is another rendition. It's in the eye of the beholder, right? I did not get a picture of the birthday boy's creation since he came to the craft table as mine took off in another direction.

 And pretty soon after it was time for cake. I got aunt Angela to pose with the cake she slaved over. Seriously, she had to go back to Publix twice to make sure they had the right materials!

 I love how kids sense when it is cake time and they all line up...

 Our birthday boy looked on and waited as we sang.

 Which we did very well, and he blew out his candles. Grady helped, as you can see from this video clip.

And the birthday boy got the first piece, of course. Oooh, the cornerpiece=lots of icing!

The whole crowd at the sugar-intake station.

These two loved the cake, but also loved the ice cream cups. Hmmmmm.

We feasted on cake and then came the grand finale of all birthday parties...the presents. The first gift opened was the big hit, and naturally, it came from us ;-) Thankfully we saw Evan go gaga over Cole's fireman truck, so we knew what to get him. Here I'm pretty sure Angela is thinking damn, I wish we opened another gift first because now he won't leave that truck alone to open anything else. She managed to distract him and stick the truck under the table when he wasn't looking.

A great party, and we're so happy that we could celebrate with Evan. Happy birthday, little man! The party would have been perfect had someone not taken and held Logan for his entire nap. I even offered that lady some cake and said I'd be glad to hold the baby so she could eat cake. No dice. Arrrmmmphh. 

Me & The Girls

Truth be told, I have a lot of pictures and thoughts to share. I was going to, really, I was. But after I finished my yoga workout (damn, I'm really stiff), Keith declared he was going to bed and the first thing that crossed my mind was... I can watch Golden Girls! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. No one to hog the TV.

Then I felt a little bad for leaving you with nothing, so here's the first thing I found when I went digging in my file of stuff to share. A little throwback video clip of the boys, circa 18 months or so. Sorry for the boob action in the video.




Enjoy. I'll be on the couch with Dorothy, Blance, Rose and the fiesty old lady.

Toys, there were More.

A few weeks ago I pre-planned at least 10 blog entries, and this is the last of them. Lord knows what I'll write about after tonight, because I'm just not finding enough time to sort through pictures and upload and write. One of the three can happen in a night, but not all three. There are moms out there who post every day, and I just would love to know how they do it. Do they not sleep? 

I do sleep. So enjoy this post, people, no telling when we'll get back to this.

Toys are the subject today. We have a lot of these. A LOT. For realz. I thought I'd highlight a few of our favorites lately.

Musical books. You know the type. A book, with buttons that play music. Pure genius. GG got us some new ones that have keys like a piano, and boy are these awesome. 

We also got a bowling set. Another one, I should say. We love this set. 

We did have to review the rules of bowling, which, I'd like to point out, does NOT include throwing the ball at your mother, GRADY. Uh-huh, that means you, Mr. Long Lashes. Batting those does now make it OK. 

OK, maybe it does. Whatevs. 

As a sidenote, we got this really sweet birthday card with our new birthday toys. Is it not cute?

As another sidenote, I love when Keith vacuums while I distract the boys with the new toys. Ladies, that Dyson is worth the money! Grady, take note. Real men vacuum. Their wives play with the kids' new toys. It's all totally normal.

During any normal morning of new toy testing, it becomes necessary to take a snack break. 'nack time!

We're a family of trying new things, and at this particular point we were also a family of vacuuming the living room, so we had snack on Momma and Dada's bed. 

Click here for a little video of this event. 

My thoughts are a little over the place now, so stick with me for a minute. Don't my boys look so old here? One minute you have spit up stuck in your hair and a limp, drooling baby in your arms, and you desperately wish for a day when this mass of cells will just interact with you like a human, and the next minute your little babies are speaking in full sentences with thoughts and feelings that are way, way more mature and perceptive than you expect. This little man is of that type. He's a mess of emotions at time, the highs and lows are frequent and unpredictable, but he has an emotional intelligence that is pretty amazing for a little man. He's the kid that shows compassion when other kids are scared and embarrased to do so, and his love is fierce. Actually, all of him comes fiercely. And boy, does he love his Dada. And Stella at daycare, but we'll save that for another blog entry. 

And his brother is so detail oriented. This kid can focus on a task in a way that eludes his brother, and is sensitive to things that his brother seems oblivious to at times. He's not as quick to interact with just anyone, and he;s not as intense, but once he's into a task, he just doesn't quit. And he's a pleaser- but only for a few people. He shares without hesitation with these few chosen ones, and above all he loves his brother so very much that it makes me teary at times to see them interact. It''s magical, this twin/brother/sibling love. 

On a somewhat related note, there are times I daydream about having more sets of boy twins. I'd name the second set Grant Alexander and Arlo James, and the third set Dean Benjamin (Benji) and Reece Fenton. I'm sure Karen's uterus just retracted at least 2 inches when she read that, don't worry, we're done, this is just pretend fun. 

Back to our topic-I'm hesitant to point out these differences because we don't want to pigeonhole or typecast our kids, but at the same time its hard to ignore these very strong traits. They can change at any point, but for now, these truths are very evident. 

Hhhm. At one point I had a transition to these pictures planned... but now I can't remember it. Oh well. I'm slipping mentally, and have no excuse. Here we go, with more pictures. At some point during the last few weeks, toys invaded out home. Yes, the sleek lines of the side table you see are the mid-century lines of my beloved side tables from Grandma and Grandpa Ellerman's house. Yes, I love those too. 

How quickly do these gifts make a mess in the house? So worth it. 

We also finally gave them one of their birthday presents from us. They had to close their eyes first...

To see the prize! WHOA, Dada!

With all these toys, you'd expect them to play alone for hours right?

Right. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

More Putting the Kids to Work

Well, my post about Grampie hasn't happened yet due to some fun house related things we're working on, but he's been sitting at the beach, so it's hard to feel bad for him. Not like he's pining away in front of the computer, ya know?

Grampie would appreciate this post, though, because the boys loved sitting in Grampie G-M-C truck when he and GG watched the boys last May. These pictures were taken several weeks ago when we had our first nice weather weekend. Dada washed the car, and the boys climbed around inside. 

Cole found the ice scraper thing, and "washed" the inside of the car. 

Grady found some good tunes on the radio. I sind you a good song, Momma! 

I went outside to document all of this, but then returned inside to make cookies for my boys. I took one freshly baked cookie out for each of the three, and stressed that since dinner was soon they would only get one. Just one, they repeated. 

The picture below is from their 2nd trip back into the house to get another cookie. What can I say, big blue eyes, a mop of hair and plaid pants are hard to resist. 

Another birthday

Today we wish Grampie a happy birthday! More pics and words later.

St. Patty's

Two nights ago I looked at Keith and said, husband, get in the kitchen and make me some dinner!. And by some miracle, he did. 

Once I recovered from the shock, I watched him trash my utensil drawer (above), and decided it was a good time to make the St. Patty's day treatbags for the boys. 

A few days earlier I was on the prowl for coin candy, but found none. So i fashioned some out of cookie dough and yellow sprinkles. Look, gold!

I also got some of these. 

And made them into these little bags. See?

Gold at the end of the rainbow. I copied the idea from here, but cut the candies a little shorter since I just didn't think the kids needed that many long pieces of candy. 

As with all the projects I take on, I am much more enthusiastic at the beginning than at the end. By the last few bags I wondered if the kids would even realize that I have the colors in the right order, minus indigo. If you've forgotten the order, it's ROYGBIV, remember? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. 

I also wanted to copy this idea, but we're on a no-sugar kick. We=I, as I just saw Keith eat several parts of a rainbow. Maybe next year. 

The bags were a bit at school and the boys were very proud to take little gifts to their friends. Was St. Patty's Day good to you?

Check It

My boys are turning into wild, wild little men. Running, leaping off furniture, hitting each other, yelling, mocking me and each other. All those things other people's bad children did that I assumed my kids wouldn't do, quite frankly, because they come from such good stock.

Hehehe. Hard to keep a straight face sometimes. 

Anyways, some afternoons are wild. WILD. But you know what calms them down? Cleaning. I spray windex, and they wipe. Wook, Momma, I cweaning. I cweaning good. 

This cleaning is exhausting and as it does with their dad, it makes Grady very tired after a few minutes and he goes to find something quiet to do by himself. I pat myself on the back and then clean the window they "cleaned". If they're looking that is, otherwise they get pissy when I touch their handiwork. 

This one though will stick with the task and will clean anything I spray. So task oriented. I spray, he wipes. Then he says, I done, Momma. And I'll say let me check it to make sure you cleaned it good, and I pretend to inspect. I'll either point out another area or I'll tell him he did a good job. And then he'll move on to another spot, and I go back to my cooking/dinner prep/washing lunch boxes until I hear Check IT! CHECK IT! as he jumps excitedly.

This can go on for a good 20 minutes or so, until I stop hearing Check It, and I start hearing he a bad boy!, which means Grady is no longer content being apart from his brother and now I have to figure out another way to keep them from being wild things.