Easter Bunny Love

Gavin really warmed up to the Easter bunny this year.........


Or maybe not.......

Poopmobile

I'll start out by saying that YES, I know that it's time to potty train Gavin and Emery. It is definitely on the agenda. Especially since they are now enrolled in preschool beginning in September and it is "strongly recommended" that they be potty trained. They will BARELY be three years old when preschool begins, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll be out of diapers for good by the end of summer.

This afternoon, Pete and I were in the master bedroom working on the computer when I realized that it had gotten REALLY quiet in the rest of the house. While Pete went to check things out, I picked up Ethan to feed him. Soon, I heard Pete yelling that I needed to come and help him. I was very very happy to be feeding Ethan and unavailable to help. :-) Apparently, Gavin had taken off his diaper yet again.

So, there he was........ standing there naked, driving his cars on the dining room table. There was a big poop track on the rug from his car and.......Let's just say the Hotwheels truck on the table was "hauling a load." SO gross. SOOOO gross. What goes through a little boy's head to make him do that?????

I do have a picture of the incident, but I won't post it here. Also, if you're coming for Easter dinner, you might not want to sit at the southwest corner of the dining room table.

Rain Boots

Best investment so far this year........

I should have bought them MUCH sooner!

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The Grandparent Hangover

I saw the phrase "Grandparent Hangover" on another blog a while back and it has stuck with me. No, this post isn't about the grandparents getting really really drunk, although that would make a good post too. :-)

My brother and sister-in-law came to visit on Sunday and Monday of this week. They are expecting their first baby, a little girl due in June, and we are all REALLY excited. While they were in town, both sets of grandparents also stopped by our house to see them. This means that the kids got LOTS of attention the last few days. Add the time change to the insanity and now that everyone is gone, we're faced with a HUGE Grandparent Hangover!

I'll spare you the play by play and just go to the highlights. The theme of the day has been "taking off your diaper". Taking off diapers and jumping on the bed, taking off diapers and chasing the dog (we're dog sitting my mom's dog for a while), taking off diapers and running around screaming "I'm naked, I'm naked". So far, Gavin has removed two poopy diapers and I've cleaned pee off the carpet once. My toast was stolen off the kitchen table before I could eat it, so I'm hungry, sore from a crash landing that Gavin and I took at the park yesterday*, and fed up. Oh, and there have also been two dog food incidents, a Cheerio disaster, and a bite on the hand (Emery's teeth, Gavin's hand).

As I was cleaning up the last batch of poop, Emery was running around with nothing on but a diaper and mittens saying "I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOO cold!". So, even though I'm losing it, I can't help but laugh. Now, lets just hope that Pete gets home early tonight because I'm counting down the hours........

*Crash landing explanation: You know those old, metal welded slides at some parks? They are much faster than the newer plastic slides. If you put your feet down too early at the end of the slide, the momentum will rocket you and the child in your lap forward, slamming your knees into the ground while you try not to crush your kid. Good times.


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Sick Animals

Before I move on to posts that aren't about breastfeeding, I thought I'd share a funny (disturbing?) story from last weekend........

While having lunch at a Chili's restaurant on Sunday before heading over to the brand new Ft. Worth Children's Museum, I was having a conversation with my mom and my Aunt Linda. I commented on how great I thought it was that there is a "nursing room" at the new museum. My mom's response was......... "Oh, for the sick animals??".

I laughed so hard that I was crying.

I didn't get to visit the nursing room while we were there, but you'll be happy to know that my "sick animals" are doing just fine.

I have no idea what my mom was thinking, what she thought she heard me say, or what her train of thought was at the moment, but it was funny. I'm sure she'll love me for posting this. :-)

And now for a few pictures of our visit........


Scanning her groceries.........


Gavin loving the trains......



Couldn't help but laugh at this one........


A basket full of canteloupe (I think that's what they are?)........

And finally........to prove that Ethan was there too! I just noticed that we have matching double chins! :-)

To each his (her) own

To me, the plastic object in the picture is part of my breast pump. To Emery, it's a megaphone!



If you think THIS is awkward, you should hear me fielding questions from two 2 1/2 year olds while I'm pumping.

Gavin: "What's that mommy?"
Me: "A pump."
Gavin: "Like a gas pump?"
Me: "Well, yes sort of I guess."

Emery: "What's that mommy?"
Me: "A pump."
Emery" "Pump, pump, pump, pump, pump" (said while she's waving her hands in the air, dancing around to the rhythm of the pump).

These were the tame questions. Trust me, they get much more detailed and I haven't come up with appropriate answers for most of them!

What's even better is when they twist knobs and push buttons on the pump before I can stop them........basically cranking it up to full power. Awesome.

I apologize if I've made anyone feel uncomfortable with this post, but hey.....this is my life and this is my blog, so I'm writing about it! :-)

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Sleep

My life has become a delicate balance of WHO'S going to wake up WHO first. An example of our house from dusk 'til dawn......

7:30 pm- Gavin and Emery go to bed. Gavin falls asleep right away (sometimes), but Emery sneaks into his room and wakes him up to play. ugh

10:30 pm- We carefully move Ethan from the living room to our bedroom without waking him, while Pete and I get ready for bed.

Various times throughout the night- I get up to feed and change Ethan, careful not to wake up Pete. Ok.....sometimes I'm not as careful as I SHOULD be, but at least he doesn't have to get up!

Other various times throughout the night- Older two kids wander into our room. We quickly shuffle them back to their rooms before they wake up Ethan. If they cry when we put them back in bed, then we also run the risk of waking up the other older kid.

5:00am- Emery almost always comes back to our room and climbs in bed. We know from experience that it's not even worth the battle to get her back in her own bed at this point of the night (morning).

5:30am- Pete's alarm goes off for work. Emery and Ethan are both startled, but usually (hopefully) go back to sleep.

6:00am- After sneaking around for 30 minutes, Pete leaves for work.

6:00am-ish- Ethan wakes up to eat. Emery wakes up to "help".

6:30am- Gavin climbs into bed. By this time, Emery and Ethan are back to sleep. Gavin yells (loudly) over and over "Emery's still sleeping! Ethan's still sleeping!". I convince him to go to the living room and lay on the couch while I get him some milk.

6:45am- Ethan wakes up. I move him out of the bedroom so that Emery can keep sleeping.

7:00am- We're ALL awake.

Confused? Yep, so am I.

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Snow!

Since I'm still complaining about the cold and rain, I guess it's not too late to post pictures of the awesome snowfall we had a couple of weeks ago. It snowed and snowed and snowed. We got close to 12 inches, a record snowfall for Texas.

We played in the snow all day.......

And played some more that night........

And then continued the fun several days later with some sledding. We used Pete's old snowboard. It worked great and was the perfect size!

One trip down the hill was enough for Gavin, but Emery couldn't get enough! She was fearless!

Soon, Pete and Emery headed over to the "big hill" on the other side of the yard. Still fearless and having the time of her life!

And in case your wondering where Gavin was during all of this.......

My Dad (Vandaddy) was watching and taking video of Gavin while he ran back and forth in the water. Occasionally he would say "You probably shouldn't be doing that. Your mom wouldn't like it", and then he'd just take more video and laugh. Thanks Dad.

Children's Museum

On Saturday, we loaded up the kids and headed to the Dallas Children's Museum in Fair Park (next to the Texas State Fair grounds). The weather was great (finally), the kids were glad to be out of the house, and we had a really good time.

Gavin is my museum loving kid. He could stay there all day, soaking it all in. Emery is more of a trampoline and extreme sport type of girl, but she found some things to entertain her too.




Gavin LOVED these hissing cockroaches. So gross.




And then there was this lovely tarantula........


After checking out the exhibits, we had a picnic and took a walk around the lake (pond) just outside the museum. Gavin and Emery were SO happy to be outside!

Now let's keep our fingers crossed for some more good weather!