Boys Night

You know all about Boys Night. Five boys, four hours and one house. Luckily we learned early on that it's safer for everyone (house included) if you can get the boys outside for most of the time. But winter came early this year, so in October we decided to change it up for winter...we'd all gather (parents and boys) somewhere for an outing (movies, bowling, ice skating...) instead of watching each of our homes getting destroyed after a Sunday night. Bowling was our first outing. The boys lasted about 35 minutes before the draw of video games lured them away. But we did get some fun photos from the photo booth. My favorite (and the reason we had to take 3 more, so other kids could be seen)...

Dead

I've told you about Nick and his love of the camera. Apparently he had a photo session with Chris. Chris can't remember the back story now, but it was something about an alien trying to get him and killing him. I think we might let Nick watch too much TV.

"Oh, hey Nick!"
"Ugh, why'd you use that stun gun on me Nick? Wait, are you an alien?"


"Oh, I'm feeling weak..."


Chris, you are such a good sport.

Parenting

Every now and then (almost always), Chris and I question if we know what the heck we're doing raising two kids. We cheered on Nick's first birthday. Not only to celebrate him growing older, but because we'd kept him alive that long. Yeah!!!! Some days it feels like we're the only ones feeling this way. But then we got this note from C's mom the other day and it sadly made me feel better...

"Chris - when you were two the water meter man left our side gate open and you walked out. Rev. Wilson saw you in the next block east and brought you home. Thank you Wilson"

Have to mention this was written on Rev. Wilson's obituary on the paper-thanks Wilson!

Gobble Gobble!

Live and learn...That's my motto. Or at least one of them. Finally I did learn something. When a baby keeps watching you eat and drooling, she wants something to eat too! So I bought her some rice cereal the other night. We tried it Wednesday night, and she got a few spoonfuls in, but most of it came back out. We tried in Thursday night. Same thing. We weren't going to try it Friday night, but she got herself all worked up while we were eating. So we brought it out and our little girl gobbled it up! Guess what comes with food? Longer nights of sleep! Come on baby!!!!

Tats

Auntie Shannon brought Nick some rock n roll tattoos last month. Nick usually rocks a few, but he went all out this time. Rock on!

Skating...Still

Nick is still taking ice skating lessons. Every Wednesday, Grammy picks him up from school early and takes him to the rink. Wish I'd remembered that this last Wednesday when I bolted out of work, fought traffic, ran through the parking lot in a dress/heels and made it all the way up to his classroom only to be left wondering "Where is his jacket? And why is Grammy's name on the sign out sheet? That's right! Tonight was your "easy" night where you only had one kid to pick up and you picked up the wrong one and now you're going to be late getting her...sigh."

Here's some footage of our ice skater. More talking than skating, but still cute. Before you laugh too hard, remember the first few classes focused solely on learning to stand up on skates.

Screaming baby

So last week was my first week having to add Peri to my nightly school pick-up routine. I ran in and grabbed Nick from his school. Then we raced over to another school to get Peri. Walked in to find her crying. When she heard my voice, she started screaming. For the next half hour. Peri isn’t a screaming baby, so I knew something was up. Totally think she was screaming at me, “I can’t believe you left me here! Where do you think you’re going each day? Did you know they gave me formula?! I do NOT appreciate being dropped off at “school” and I’m going to tell you all about it on the way home!” Of course this was the first time I met her teachers too. Felt like the worst mom ever. Couldn’t calm my screaming kid as I tried to talk pleasantries over her. The next day I slunk in to pick her up and there she was. As happy as a clam. I knelt down to say "hi" and before I could get a word out, she started laughing at me. BIG laughs. Couldn’t tell if these were “OMG! Mom, I’m so happy you’re here that I’m going to laugh at whatever you say!” or “Ha ha! Look kids, my mom is here. Isn’t she the funniest looking thing you’ve ever seen? Check out the faces she does!” or "Ha! Don't try to figure me out!"

Hair

What, you thought this was going to be a posting about Peri's awesome mohawk hair? Ha! No, but I will get more photos of that up. Can't control it! When she was born she had these adorable pin waves like she was straight out of the 40s. Or was that the 20s?

Anyway, this one is about my hair. I firmly believe that dry shampoo was invented for moms. I wash my hair every other day. It’s thick and naturally has some curl in it, so it does better with a day in between. This icks Chris out to no end. So last Wednesday was a “wash” day. Except the alarm went off and I fell back asleep. This NEVER happens to me. Seriously. So 20 minutes later I woke up in a panic, realized I didn’t have time to give love to two kids and wash my hair. A bit of dry shampoo and dry conditioner (they make that now too!) and I was on my way. No one the wiser (at least I hope not). The sacrifices we make.

Apparently it wasn’t the best idea to let Nick have a Ben 10 DVD marathon a few weeks ago. He memorized a few lines. Below are a few snippets that have come back to haunt us (and make us smirk while trying not to laugh):

Chris turned Nick onto the joy of throwing things at the ceiling fan to see what you can hit. Soft things like socks and t-shirts. Chris has a scary talent for being able to toss things at the fan and determine where they’ll land. Mostly in the vicinity of my head. But the one time he missed, Nick yelled out “Nice throw Grandpa!”.

Here’s a photo of Nick in our room a few weeks back. Please notice the binoculars around his neck and his “gun” (that would be a mini goalie stick). He was pretending to hunt a tiger (me) and asked “You wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?” Who is this kid?!

Ghostbusters!

Chris and Nick have been taking advantage of the Netflix instant downloads. Problem is, the pickings are kinda slim. After he exhausted Scoobie-Doo, Nick moved onto Ghost Busters. He was scared and fascinated at the same time. I kept telling him that it wasn’t real and that I didn’t want him to watch if it was too scary. But he insisted he wasn’t scared…until bedtime. Sigh. He and Lewis watched Ghost Busters 2 (or 3?) this past weekend and proceeded to go around the house to see who had ghosts inside of them. They would then "remove" the ghosts. Cute, until Nick starting blaming his bad manners on “the ghost inside of me. He’s making me do bad stuff.” I had a stern talking to the ghost and told him he couldn’t hang around our house anymore. Jeesh.

Mouse

After Nick went through his “stomping on bugs” phase, we tried to teach him that bugs and animals are our friends and we shouldn’t hurt them. He changed his ways and would get so excited to go on the front porch to see his “spider friends” (clue to us to clear the cobwebs). He made a bug jar at school that resulted in several bugs dying from lack of fresh air and food. Guess they didn’t teach him that part. Anyway, Mom-mom was visiting last week and saw a mouse run across our carpet. AGGHH! I hate creatures in our house. I sit on that floor, Nick’s toys are on that floor, Peri lays on that floor, and we occasionally eat off of that floor (5 second rule). Nick got so excited! “That’s my mouse friend that lives under the dishwasher! He’s just looking for a warm house and some food”. Yes, we’d had a mouse last year, but he went away. Seems he’s back. I was in the den last night and heard some squeaking. Icked me out so I ran upstairs to tell Chris. Nick again got so excited! “Mom-help him! He might be stuck. Will you bring him up to me?” Poor Nick. I won’t tell him what that mouse has in store for itself. I still remember the time we had a mommy mouse and her babies under our green/burgundy plaid couch when I was little. My dad came home, scooped them up and flushed them down the toilet (don’t ask) as my sisters and I screamed and cried, begging him to leave our new friends alone.

Mom-Mom

M0m-mom's in town and got some cute video of a chatty baby. Apparently Peri was too busy entertaining Mom-mom to take a nap the first day. We got her back on track pretty quickly. But it left an exhausted Mom-mom and Peri.

Baby School

So baby started school last week. She went for a few hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. They give us little charts showing her feeding schedule, diaperings, naps and activities. What does a baby do for activities? "Made silly faces and tickled", "Rocked and cuddled", "Kisses, peek-a-boo, danced and read stories", "Met her new friends" and "Sang songs". How cute is that?

I told Nick that Peri was going to school and Nick said, in disbelief, "No way! She can't even walk or talk!" I explained that baby school teaches them how to roll over and crawl. When we all got home that first night, Nick asked "So, did she learn how to crawl yet?" Jeesh.

Daycare

So Peri has been on a waiting list for the past six-plus months for daycare. We finally got the call last week that she got in for 3 days a week. Thank God Mary wants some Peri time and is taking over the other two days until we get them. We were so excited! She's in! Then it hit us - our baby is going to daycare :( It's the same school Nick went when he was her age. And they're wonderful there. But my baby going off to school. Sigh.

Sleep

The family that sleeps together sleeps in together.

Our friends live about 2 blocks away on a really fun street. They use any excuse to have a block party. We're trying to get adopted onto this street. So Saturday night after the trick or treaters were done for the night, we headed to their block. Nick was wired, baby was still awake (she must have known something was up because she's never up past 7pm) and we were up for some cocktails. Nick (Snake Eyes) and his friend Cooper (Black Spider Man) immediately joined at the hip and ran into the backyard. We commented on all the decorated houses. About an hour or so later, baby decided she was too tired, so I took her home. This was around 9:30pm. Nick and Chris wandered home from the party around 11:40pm. Apparently Nick was too tired to walk home, so Chris tossed him over his shoulder and carried him like a sack of potatoes.

Nick woke up around 6am and tried to get us to wake up. Not happening. He must have climbed into our bed and fell back asleep because when we all finally stirred, the clock read 9:45am! All four of us were somehow squished in a queen size bed. Chris and I can't remember the last time we slept past 9am. Much less 8am. Wow! And we hadn't even set our clocks back.

I asked Chris how the rest of the night was. Nick and his friend C had gone inside C's house to watch a movie. His grandparents were visiting and happy to stay inside with them. Chris and a few neighbors ended up at the "Columbian's house" doing shots and eating chicken soup. Think they may have stayed longer if C's grandma hadn't called to say "Nick is tired and ready to go home." One of the neighbor's is from Columbia and was having their own separate party on the block. Chris is always the party animal when I'm not around!

Boo!

Happy Halloween! It was fun having Halloween on a Saturday this year, because we could actually spend the day enjoying it rather than the work night Halloweens where you race home, enhale dinner and run outside to get candy before everyone closes up shop for the night. Nick and Chris made the rounds on our street.



I handed out candy with Peri. Nick gave out some candy when he got home. I noticed cute girls got extra candy from him. hmmm. He also ate about half of his bag when he got home. We had to explain it would still be around the next day.

I got one photo of the two of them. Peri is in mid-fall because Nick refused to let go of his sword. We caught her.