Future Hoarders Anonymous Member:

Whenever he wants to put his tent up, this is how I find it!  He gathers up a whole mess of toys and stashes them all inside.   Maybe I'll look up the closest Hoarders Anonymous meeting for him!

"I'll Spank Your Coral"!

Okay, so that title probably makes no sense to most of you.  Let me explain:  Grandma Gail and I were reading Zac his bedtime stories one night last week and one of the books that he chose was a board book called "Look and Learn Nature."  Basically it's a picture book and each page has a different theme.  We get to the page called  "Ocean" and he starts pointing to each image and tells us what it is.  So he goes through weird things like sea urchin, sponge and so on and then he points to the picture above and says something that I couldn't believe so I asked him again to be sure I was hearing him correctly.  I pointed to the picture and said "What is that"? and he replied "Fanny"!  I busted up and Grandma was laughing and of course he kept repeating it at that point because he was making us laugh.  I thought maybe Tom had taught him to say that but when I told him the story the next day, he said he'd never told him that!  I guess I find it so funny because it really looks nothing like coral and it looks exactly like an animals "fanny"!  Leave it to a 2 1/2 year old to point that out!  Tom didn't think it was all that funny either until he got home and came across the picture in the book one night while reading to Zac.

So now the joke between Tom and I is that any vulgar word referring to that body part has been replaced by the word coral.  Hence, "I'll spank your coral"!

Something to think about...

This is pretty gross!  I wonder how many other things that we eat in restaurants are this dirty???

Good Boys!

Well, things seem to be going along pretty well lately although I'm always afraid to say that!  Zac is FINALLY potty training!  He used to love to go pee pee on the potty back when he was about 18 months old but he lost interest somewhere along the way.  He's had NO interest recently until Grandma Gail came to town to help out while Tom was traveling.  She got him wearing underwear and peeing on the potty pretty routinely!  He even woke up one morning and asked if he could wear his underwear to school!  I was a little nervous but figured we'd come to it sooner or later anyway.  He has since kept his pants dry through three days of school!!!  He's had about three accidents over the last 3 weeks and I think that's pretty good!  We're headed in the right direction!  Poop is another story however - he saves that and poops in his diaper every day during nap.  One step at a time!

Tyler is doing great.  All smiles and coos and he just LOVES to "talk" to people!  He ate cereal for the first time last week and LOVED it!  I don't know if the two are related but he's slept through the night for about the last week straight!  Sometimes for as long as 11 hours!  That kind of freaked me out at first.  I know this is always subject to change with a little one but for now, we're enjoying it!

Happy Valentine's Day

Our Little Cherubs!

Wishing everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are the flowers that I got as a surprise when Tom was out of town for Valentine's Day!

Baby On The Move

Grandma arrived on Tuesday evening to help us out! Tom is at a confrence all weekend and traveling on business next weekend so his mom flew down to give me a much needed hand! Here's a clip of her and Tyler having fun!
Tyler is growing up a little quicker than we'd like right now! He began rolling over both ways about 2 weeks ago when he was having play time on the floor. Now he's gotten good enough at it however that he flips himself over while he's sleeping and wakes up all sorts of pissed off! I remember hating this stage with Zac and I don't remember it being this early either! We've tried leaving him crying to rectify the situation on his own but he just cries and cries and we end up going in to flip him back over. So much for getting a little more sleep finally!

Pea in your ear...

Zac was sick with a high fever last week and as a result, he didn't eat very well which is quite uncharactieristic for him. We've been struggling ever since his fever broke to get him to eat well again. Not an unusual thing for a 2 year old except that Zac also has problems with his blood sugar and when it gets low, as it does when he doesn't eat, he gets GRUMPY!
At dinner last night he ate relatively well except for his peas which he usually really likes but didn't touch. I told him a whole bunch of different things to get him to eat them but he'd eat like one and be done again. Jokingly I told him that I was going to shove them in his ear if he didn't eat them. I looked away for a minute and when I looked back at him, he had this very guilty expression on his face. I asked him what he did and he just smiled at me. Something told me what he had done and sure enough, when I got up and looked in his ear, this is what I found...

















If you can't make it out, that is in fact a pea in his ear!

Mommy's Day "Out"???

My good friend Jackie and I try to get together once a week for some adult converstation. We each have an almost 3 year old and babies that are six weeks apart. Zac and her daughter Tori have been friends for a year and a half now and go to preschool together. Jackie and I have a lot in common and we find ourselves going crazy alone with the kids all week so it's been our routine for a while now to go to the mall once a week. We let the kiddos play in the play area and try to catch up on the craziness of each others lives and commiserate about the insanities of being stay at home moms (although neither of us would trade it, it's not always easy!).

Today was our mall day and things just didn't quite go the way we had planned! Tori and Zac were done playing and Tyler decided to have a meltdown. I couldn't figure out what was wrong and nothing that I did to calm him was working. I carried him to Barnes and Noble where Jackie wanted to look for a book. Tori and Zac played in the kids area with a Thomas the Train table while Jackie searched and Tyler continued to scream (yes, in the middle of a book store!) All the while, her baby Kati has slept for a total of 30 minutes all day and just refuses to miss anything and nod off and Zac is always a handful!

All of sudden I looked up and Tori was naked from the waist down! She had had an accident and took her clothes off because they were wet! Jackie ran over and did what she could to clean it up and we got the four little terrors out of there! Tyler is still screaming at this point and Tori and Zac are wanting to ride the carrousel so we head for the main elevator. We get to it and find out that it's stuck - of course! So we have to walk halfway down the mall with Tyler cranking and Tori a little damp to get to another elevator because we've both upgraded to the double stroller and can't possibly get them on an escalator! All things that we took for granted with just one kiddo! We managed to get the kids a horsey ride and some lunch!

We definitely made the best of it and had a good time anyway! It's always nice to talk with another mom in a similar situation and comforting somehow to know that you're not alone. There are crazy days like this one but what on earth would we do without the kids? And it's funny to think of the friends I never would have met if I didn't have kids. They open up a whole new universe of amazing people!