Tuesday, September 29, 2009

a few of their favorite things...

raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.....

yeah right...not around here.

now that i've got you humming that classic, here are a few of our favorite things as of late:

swinging.


all things baseball. especially when it involves "real" baseball pants and cleats!


football is pretty important, too.


watching nascar in our underwear. (it's pretty funny to hear your 2 year old yelling at the tv, "der's da wace car! it goin' round and round! go wace car! cwash wace car!)


riding anything with wheels.


look...no training wheels! he can only make it about 20-30 yards, but it's definite progress!


sucking our thumb.


the bug house. he took a beetle he named "bubba" to school for show-and-tell. i'm sure they were all impressed!


the jumperoo. we're not quite big enough as evidenced by the feet not touching the floor, but it's still great fun!


play-dough. mama has enough experience to know to make this an outside event.


parking cars. he could do this for hours on end.


but if something doesn't go his way (like being too little to ride his brother's bike), he's not above lying down on the concrete and pouting. his head is about as hard as that concrete he's on!

brown paper packages tied up with string...

sorry, still singing in my head!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

oh, how i love a bubble...

i don't think there is a cuter kid outfit than a bubble! love them! chase doesn't think they are all that manly, though, so i have to get all the bubble wearing in while i have the opportunity!!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

what a weekend...

first of all, if anybody knows how to perform a STOP-the-rain dance, please come over here and teach me. i will gladly dance it up every hour on the hour with vigor in order for the little people to be able to go out of this house! off of the end tables! off of the kitchen table! out of my bed with sticky, jello encrusted faces! out of my closet! OUT OF THE HOUSE!! i'm half expecting noah to come floating by any minute and laugh at the two kids in their underwear with bits of playdough stuck in their hair slobbering on the window while mashing their faces up against it waiting on daddy to come home!

yes, the hubs has been working all weekend leaving me here (in the rain) to try and corral the pent up energy of a 4 and 2 year old who haven't been outside in i can't remember when! i don't know what you other people with boys do, but please help me out here. coloring is sooooo not appealing. i have a niece that will sit and color for hours (yes, ari...i'm talking about you. you are more than welcome to visit my house when it's raining.), but mine scribble about 2 lines before shouting "i'm done!" legos work really well, but not if the shorter one keeps destroying the masterpieces of the bigger one. that leads to wrestling. wrestling will keep them occupied for a while (i've given up on trying to stop it...i think it is just programmed in their DNA) until somebody gets headbutted, bitten, a busted lip, or i hear crying followed by "wes poked me in the eye with his toe!" toe-poking is apparently an illegal move. at other various times, i've found wes on top of a bookshelf, climbing the cubbies in my closet, strewing dirty clothes all over the house in order to flip the basket over and pretend he's a puppy dog in a cage (if there was a way to secure the thing, that would be golden) while william stands on the edge of the couch and "practices" his diving or takes every piece out of every puzzle in the house because "it will be more fun this way, mama." if i were a drinking girl, i'd be in trouble.

this wet weekend started on thursday. i took reed and william to the doctor for well check-ups. when you walk out of that place with information for this many shots...it's impossible to have happy children with you!

anyway, wes went along too because we needed to get flu shots. hey, if i'm taking two of them, i might as well take all three. no sense in having to go back to that place! so, i head in to the office with the crew, reach into my pocket to hit the lock button on the remote for the car and off we go. we don't have to wait too long in the waiting room before they called us back, and when they did, i was prepared. i stripped william and reed down to their underwear to await the weight check, and then i plopped william and wes on the exam table and gave them colors to color on the exam table paper. i told you coloring didn't last long around here. it's a little more fun there, but not nearly long enough. thankfully, the nurse came and got william about then for his weight check and hearing test. so he struts along behind her in his itty-bitty boxers and crocs to go do that. i sit wes down with some raisins and wait. reed has gone to sleep.

william comes back with stickers for the masses, and that keeps them occupied for a bit while reed is getting checked out. yeah, he's not asleep anymore. but he does great and doesn't complain a bit. then william finds out somehow that wes ate raisins, and now he wants some. smart mama has some. so he eats raisins. "i'm still hungry." so i pull out the animal crackers for the two of them. dr. I comes in and they discuss which animal tastes the best. i think they decided on the donkey. anyway, wes is getting restless so i pull out the playdough. they makes snakes and blobs and hair for mr. stick. (dr. I draws a man on a tongue depressor and calls it mr. stick. he does this every time, and my boys love it. they will carry mr. stick around for weeks after a doctor appointment. at christmas time, he makes a snowman on a stick. he's a hit too.) anyway, while dr. I and I discuss allergies, eating habits, and the tacos we had at church the night before, the boys are chasing each other in circles (the room is only 2 ft x 2 ft, so you wouldn't think this would be possible) and trying to stab each other with their mr. sticks. then wes "have to go to bafroom" so i take him while william discusses his stock options with dr. I. upon my return, i find that william says his throat feels funny "like i swallowed something i wasn't supposed to....like cotton balls," so dr. I gets the giant Q tip out to check for strep. as we are waiting on that result, wes thinks it would be a great idea to drop mr. stick into the air conditioning vent. when dr. I returns, wes is screaming "come back, mr. stick!!" dr. I graciously gives him another mr. stick while surely thinking that he should prescribe this poor mama some xanax. and william has strep. lovely.

then, the nurse comes in the room with enough needles to innoculate a small army. this is gonna be fun. ok, so 2 of them aren't needles. wes and william got flu-mist sprayed up their nose, and then reed got 4 shots. he didn't like them, and he let us know, but he was a trooper. only cried for a minute.


then she comes for william. he starts screaming like a banshee. they start explaining that MS passed some new law where kids have to get kindergarten shots at age 4 instead of age 5, but i couldn't really hear the specifics over all the screaming. so i put william on my lap and pinned his arms down. the nurse stood over us and pinned his legs between hers and got him 3 times. his crocs had flown across the room and wes is over in the corner screaming "i don't want one!!!!" over and over. all the commotion made reed mad. finally, i got to leave the joint with 3 crying kids.

as we walk to our car, i notice the back window of my car is down. ugh!!! the remote that has the lock button on it also has a button to roll down the back window. i don't know who thought that was a good idea, but they need to be strangled. anyway, of course it's been raining, so the back of my car is all wet along with the stroller. awesome. but there is no time to deal with it now. i get all of the wounded in the car, and we head to pick up william's antibiotic. and the victims all wanted a slush from sonic. fine by me. i needed an extra huge caffeinated beverage after that escapade anyway.

so over the next few days, we play the play with every toy we own and destroy the house game while looking at the radar every 5 minutes and saying silent prayers that the huge green blob would miss us. and so the house remains destroyed.

while we have encountered all this closeness during the monsoon, i have decided that boys are crazy. no, really. there is absolutely nothing that can be considered common knowledge. mama must tell them everything. they think there is nothing wrong with spitting on the kitchen floor until mama tells them that we don't do that. twisting the little knob off of lamps that turns it off and on and hiding it is a fun game. playdough tastes good. little cars make nice weapons. seeing how much toothpaste you can fit in your mouth is a totally normal thing to do. and just yesterday, during "nap-time" (term used loosely) william was found sitting on the floor beside the toilet with a puzzle. when asked what he was doing, "well....i was thinking about popping some popcorn." because, ya know, i like to sit on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night dreaming of orville redenbacher too.

but then....they go to sleep. and they look so sweet and non-crazy when they sleep. it makes me glad that i'm their mama. that i get to tell them not to lick the bottom of their crocs. and not to cry when their balloon gets wrapped up in the ceiling fan (we'll let daddy fix that one). and not to worry about the entire bowl of spaghettios that just got dumped on the floor RIGHT AFTER I MOPPED IT! i'm starting to realize that this house will never be clean like i like it. that it will always be loud. the pictures on the wall will not be straight...if there are any pictures left on the walls at all. but...


if it wanted to quit raining at some point, though, i'd be very, very grateful!!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

almost

i've been told i look tired.

i'd have to agree with that comment 110%.

but, when he smiles at me,

it almost makes up for all of the lost sleep.

almost.

Monday, September 14, 2009

visitors

last week, kathryn, my best friend from high school, came to visit for the day. she brought reed's girlfriend, mary laine, for their formal introduction.

and just so y'all know who kathryn is:

there are a few more recent pictures of us, but i found this one and had to laugh.
1) we are rockin' some bangs.
2) i think this is our senior year at a super bowl party. (no idea why i remember this?)
3) i don't care for the super bowl/nfl. why was i there? must have been the commercials. or some boy. maybe kathryn remembers.

and while i'm at it, i came across this picture while looking through some old ones:

1) still rockin' those bangs.
2) candace, please take a look at the color of those caps and gowns. i rest my case. go mustangs!

anyway, back to the point of this post because i think that i had one when i started.

oh yeah, kathryn came to visit.

it's so awesome how we don't really get to see each other that much, but it totally doesn't matter. we can pick up like i just saw her earlier that morning. so after all the little people decided that they didn't really want their picture taken...

...we put those suckers in the bed for naps and caught up on all the happenings of life since the last time we saw each other. and, we planned a trip to SSI that will be taken at some point in the near future....with or without husbands in tow! and as much as we love our kids, they aren't invited!

wes is still talking about "mary wayne." hopefully, he'll learn how to pronounce his sister-in-law's name before the wedding.

also, a few days later, we played the role of visitor and took the boys to visit chase's grandmother. reed liked all the lovin', and the other two just bounced off the walls while we tried to keep them from breaking everything within reach. (she said she was glad to see us, but i'm sure what she meant was that she was glad to see us go!)

william does own clothes other than his "florida gator" outfit, but this is what he puts on every day. i guess if i'd just stop washing it, he wouldn't be able to wear it every other day. but since i don't have to waste time dressing him myself, i don't mind too much! plus, i like using my handy, dandy new washing machine.

anyway, i'll try not to be so random next time. i blame it on the lack of sleep. but, if anyone else wants to come visit, y'all come on. i'll be glad to have 2 extra hands around here!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

bff

this is reed's best friend, griffin brashier.

they've done lots of chillin' together, and they've even worked out together on side-by-side elipticals. heck, we're already planning their dorm room in starkville. but, sleeping peacefully (side-by-side or not) is not something that they have mastered...yet.

so, please don't think that this moment lasted any longer than it took for me to snap this picture... because you'd be fooling yourself. but, we'll take the peacefulness whenever they decide to give it to us. even if it's not in the middle of the night. which would be oh-so-nice!

Monday, September 7, 2009

undefeated


who cares if we've only played one game? we won it...and if you're a bulldog, that's a big deal!!

we headed to starkville this past weekend to take reed to his first msu football experience. he didn't really seem to care too much.


but the other two found plenty to do!


every person in maroon that day may deny it, but this was a major reason (if not the major reason) we were pumped about playing jackson state! and the sonic boom didn't let us down! they juked and shimmied their way into the stadium with a pre-game march and kept it up at half time! (and now i have a 4 year old who likes to walk around like the "tonic boom.")


reed still not interested in taking part of tailgating...


da boyz...

this was just before the bottom fell out and we all got "sucking wet" as william says. mama was smart and brought a change of clothes for everybody. except herself.

so, maybe i'm not that smart.

but it's ok because we put one in the W column.

and did i mention that really cool band?

just those two things alone make me hope we schedule them again next year!!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

if they could only drive

first of all, i have absolutely no idea how i managed to get these people fed, dressed and to school on time while feeding an infant, changing an infant, calming an infant AND getting a first day of school picture...

...but somehow, we managed to show up right on time!

and that nonchalantness (is this a word?) in the picture carried right on over to drop-off. we went through the carpool line, and they both hopped out of the car like i didn't exist. i didn't even get a "bye, mama." so much for the difficult first day of school! (i'm fully expecting reed to have a major meltdown on his first day since the first 2 haven't cared a lick!) now, if they could only drive themselves to school, we'd be good!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

the best part of bathtime

is the post-bath snuggle.

(and if anybody can tell me how to make the camera take pictures without red eyes, please do!! i can fix it in the editing part of the software, but it makes them have silver eyes sometimes. i hate it. reed has silver eyes in almost all of his pictures!)