Prodigal Kitty

Anyone who was reading our blog about a year ago knows the pains we've gone through with our firstborn, Amminadab. We adopted him and his (now) sister Scooter just after we got married. When we moved into our current house almost two years ago, he didn't handle the change well. He tore up our couch like crazy (this started in the old house, but here he did it with an added vigor!). So about 15 months ago, we had him declawed. Right afterwards, we noticed that he had been spraying in a few places (yes, he is neutered). So after some efforts to get him to stop, we had no choice but to make this recently-declawed kitty an outside cat.

For the most part, he seems to really enjoy being outside. But he's gotten more and more brave, and he'll venture over to other yards every day. Well, a few weeks ago, he went missing for a few days. We had almost written him off when one night he appeared on the back porch!

Then.....last Sunday when we went to Bryan, we came home and didn't see him outside. All week, no sign of him. This time, I was pretty much convinced that we would never see him again. But.....this morning (after an entire week), Dean and Grant went downstairs, and here comes Amminadab, walking up to the back door! He ate a whole cup of food in about five minutes, and then meowed for more!

I'm glad to have him home.....even with all the angst he's caused, it was still so wonderful to see him again. I'm trying to be extra nice to him, to hopefully encourage him not to wander off so far again! Mainly, I just want to know where the heck he went! It would be so interesting to have some kind of tracking device on him, to see where his travels have taken him!

Recipe Link

We've had a fun past few days....Drew had pictures taken at JC Penney on Thursday, then I took the boys up to town for a few hours on Friday. And today Grant and I got much-needed haircuts. We had Grant's hair cut pretty short.....we figured he'd be more comfortable in the summer without shaggy hair. It looks so cute....he looks like a big boy now!

Dean and I are trying to tear down wallpaper in our bathroom right now, so I can't make this long. I mentioned a pepperoni ring that we made for dinner a few nights ago. I get these emails from Pillsbury, and this one I happened to print out because Dean loves things like this. We made it on Thursday.....it was so tasty! It's as close to Double Dave's pepperoni rolls as you're going to get. I don't even love pepperoni, and I usually don't like making recipes requiring two cans of biscuits (I don't even want to know how bad they are for you). But Dean and I ate half of the entire thing on the first night (yes, this means we ate one whole can of biscuits that night. And Grant only ate a couple of bites!). Anyway, it's so yummy so I wanted to share the link. A couple of things we changed: we used a bag of shredded mozzarella, instead of whole mozzarella, and I didn't pour the leftover butter on top at the end. It's a butter thing.....I just don't like it much, and they still came out great!

http://www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=14499

A good reminder

This was sent to me in an email a couple of days ago. I read it when Grant was a baby, but it didn't mean quite as much to me back then. It's a good reminder for those of us with little kids to make the most of these years, and to remember the most important things.....

To My Grown-Up Son

by Alice E. Chase

My hands were busy through the day,
I didn't have much time to play
The little games you asked me to,
I didn't have much time for you.

I'd wash your clothes; I'd sew and cook,
But when you'd bring your picture book
And ask me, please, to share your fun,
I'd say, "A little later, son."

I'd tuck you in all safe at night,
And hear your prayers, turn out the light,
Then tiptoe softly to the door,
I wish I'd stayed a minute more.

For life is short, and years rush past,
A little boy grows up so fast,
No longer is he at your side,
His precious secrets to confide.

The picture books are put away,
There are no children's games to play,
No goodnight kiss, no prayers to hear,
That all belongs to yesteryear.

My hands once busy, now lie still,
The days are long and hard to fill,
I wish I might go back and do,
The little things you asked me to.

Trip to Bryan and a happy story

Like I mentioned a few days ago, we went to Bryan for the day on Sunday to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Rob, Leah and Evan came too.....Grant and Evan haven't seen each other since Christmas, and they were best buddies! At Christmas (when Grant was just over two), he and Evan played together a little, but nothing like this. They were following each other around everywhere, asking each other questions and having conversations, and laughing at each other. One of them would come into the room asking, "where's Evan?" or "where's Grant?" when they lost each other. They also had a lot of fun with Grandma.....she took them in the pool (notice how both of their diapers are about to explode!).

Stealing cookies is something Grant has become very good at lately.....at home, he always finds the desserts and figures out a way to make himself a stool (out of his shopping cart, diaper boxes, etc.) to reach them! Stinker! This is the only halfway decent picture of the boys with both of their faces showing....

Here's Drew with our friend Jennifer's little girl Khloe. She's 12 days older than Drew, and she weighs about a pound more than him! She is so adorable.....Drew thinks so too. :)

Then.....after Rob, Leah and Evan left, Grant was playing in the living room as we were getting ready to leave. All of a sudden Grant said, "look!" and pointed out the french doors. There was a baby deer standing right there on my parents' porch! My dad had seen it the day before, but only for a short time (and assumed it had escaped somehow from the backyard). It was just standing there staring at us. When Grant first saw it, he said, "it's a kangaroo!" He kept calling it a kangaroo until we finally convinced him that it was actually a deer. So we went outside and my dad picked it up. It made these cute little bleating sounds.....it was so sweet, but I was really worried about what would happen to it. We took it to the front yard and left it there, hoping its mom would come back to get it.

Well, my mom emailed me the next day saying that they had gone back out to check on it a while after we left. They saw it laying in some taller grass in their yard. So they went inside to get some milk and water for it.....and when they came out, the mommy deer was there! She had found her baby and they were running off together. Yay! I'm so happy to know that it ended up safe and sound with its mommy....I can sleep better at night now!

Daddy saves the day!

I was having one of those mornings today.....it started off okay, but went downhill fast when I put Drew down for a nap at 8:40am. He'll rub his eyes and act exhausted, but then the second I lay him down, he sits up and perks up, ready to play! So it breaks my heart to walk out the door and hear him wailing, even though I know it's what's best for him.

So then I went to shower while I left Grant in our room to watch TV. I came out of the shower to find an old sentimental video of mine laying on the floor. Grant had pulled back the black covering, then yanked as much of the tape out as he could. Meanwhile, Drew was still crying in his room. I exploded at Grant and took him to his room (probably not the best thing to do, but I was so mad and that's the first thing that came to mind!).

Then I came into the study, figuring that I might as well work on our property tax protest for a few minutes. Excel would not open! It kept asking me to enter a Product Key, as if we'd never had it installed on our computer! I still have no idea why this happened. I looked for our Microsoft CDs for a minute, and couldn't find them. Then I just broke down crying. Why is my life like this on so many days!? Nothing ever seems to just work out the way it's supposed to!!

So....I called Dean to ask if he knew where the CDs might be. He didn't. And he could tell that I was really upset. So I hung up after a couple of minutes. To make a long story short, Drew finally went to sleep (and slept for almost an hour, which is good these days!). After he woke up, I was feeding him oatmeal when I saw someone walking up to the door (this was about 11am). It was Dean! By this point (1.5 hours after I'd talked to him), I was doing much better. But it was still a wonderful surprise and we had so much fun with him this afternoon. He helped me do some things around the house, and we cooked a yummy pepperoni roll for dinner (I will add the link at some point.....it was SO good!). Then we took a walk tonight, and we watched a little bit of Wipeout before coming up for baths. Grant loved watching the people fall into the water. I figured he would!

So now I feel a little bit less like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown! :) I'm so thankful for my sweet husband.

Humble Pie

If you've read the past two posts, you'll see that last night I made fun of a child's design on a paper grocery bag. Well, it turns out that most of the things I was complaining about were actually correct! Kristen pointed out today in her comment that honey bees ARE actually disappearing quickly. If you're interested, the website is www.helpthehoneybees.com. This was news to me! We see bees all over the place here (esp this time of year), so I thought the girl had just pulled the idea out of thin air.

Anyway, thanks to Kristen and "Just a drone" (not sure who this is!) for correcting me! As a 6th grade teacher, I saw too many examples of horrid spelling and grammar (and I was a science teacher, so I couldn't spend all my time correcting it). But apparently, this was not an example of that (except that she DID still spell "extinct" incorrectly!)! I will have to make sure I check all of my facts next time..... :)

I stand corrected!

Okay, my mistake!! I stand corrected....."just a drone" (funny!) has correctly pointed out that the bee is in front of the word "coming," making it say, "Save the bees. They are bee-coming extinct." So I admit, that is very clever. I can't believe neither Dean nor I ever noticed that. My confidence in the school system has been raised a notch. But.....they still misspelled "extinct." So there!

And.....again, am I missing something?? Are bees really at risk of becoming extinct?? If someone knows, please let me know.....maybe I will stand corrected again!

Kids these days....

We were tearing wallpaper in our bathroom on Saturday and Dean grabbed this paper bag to contain our mess. About a month ago, I had randomly asked for paper bags at Kroger instead of plastic, and all of them were brightly colored and decorated with various "be kind to the earth" types of messages.

Anyway, this one was particularly amusing to me. "Save the bees. They are coming exstinct." Excuse me?? First of all, are bees really on the verge of extinction? Maybe so, but I had no idea. Second, does this look like the handwriting of a seven or eight-year old?? I would expect a first or second grader to use the term "coming extinct," but to me, this looks more like the handwriting of a fourth or fifth grader (I had a brief period in 5th grade where I wrote my a's like this!). If so, shouldn't a ten-year-old know better than to use the term "coming extinct?" Not to mention that extinct is spelled wrong (although I can somewhat understand that....I guess it's not the most simple word to spell).

I guess I just wish that schools would spend a little less time teaching/scaring kids about climate change (and how we're supposedly destroying our planet), and more time making sure kids actually know how to spell and write a gramatically-correct sentence!!

Okay, that is my soap box and political message for tonight!

Short....

We just got in from visiting my parents for my dad's late birthday celebration. Rob, Leah and Evan were there too....Grant had SO much fun playing with his cousin. They just followed each other around all afternoon. And they had some cute conversations and sang and played the guitar together too!

Drew was so fussy.....not like himself. He was like this the last time we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house too. And then a few days later, he cut his first tooth. Maybe the same thing will happen this time? He just never really wanted to play, and always wanted me holding him. I hope he's not just getting to the stage where he doesn't like other people (because Grant went through this for quite a while!).

We are exhausted so I will hopefully write more tomorrow.

One more thing.....

Something I forgot to post yesterday about Drew....and since I don't have much time and can't think of anything else really interesting to post today, here goes.....

When we're out and strangers notice Drew, they almost always assume he's a girl. I think about 8 times out of 10 (no joke), people say "she" when referring to him. They'll say, "she's so pretty," ask how old "she" is, mention how content "she" looks in the Baby Bjorn. On and on! I know this happens to newborns a lot, but an 8 month old!? I'm not really complaining.....I guess it's a compliment and it means he has a pretty little face. Plus, the fact that his hair is a little long on the sides probably doesn't help. But like I said, I'm not complaining.....I may never have a little girl, so this might be the closest I come to it!


Also.....we're making progress with Grant and his addiction to his paci.....I think! Today we were about to leave for his friend Andrew's birthday party (it started at 3pm), and he handed his paci to Dean (without being asked). He didn't have it the entire time at the party, and didn't need it until Dean took him to bed at 7:45. Five hours may not sound like a lot, but that's a long time for Grant!

Eight months

It is completely surreal that Drew is eight months old! He is busy, busy these days.....he started crawling a couple of weeks ago, and now he's cruising around everywhere. He's still not super fast, but he goes at a steady pace and can make it across a room before you know it.

And just in the past couple of days, he's started pulling himself up to standing on almost everything. He loves turning over bins and boxes to see what's inside.....he is just constantly on the move and is even starting to squirm out of my arms if he wants to get down to play.

I think it's interesting....he's reaching these crawling/pulling up milestones about a month before Grant did (he was 8.5 months when he started crawling). I think a lot of it probably has to do with Drew sleeping on his belly from the beginning. We'll see when the walking starts. It's so cute and exciting to see him crawling, but it does make life a little more difficult. Now I not only have to make sure his surrounding area is clear of small objects, but the entire room!

A few extra things about Drew at 8 months:
- He can now eat Cheerios, puffs, and these little rice snacks made in China (I forget the name now....they're in one of the pictures). He loves to eat, and he scoops puffs and Cheerios into his mouth so fast! But I can't find Biter Biscuits anywhere! I'm assuming they still make them??

- Yesterday at the doctor's office (I took him in because he has a horrible croupy cough when he wakes up), he weighed 20 lbs, 3 oz.

- He's making a lot of sing-song type noises.....but "da da da" is still the main consonant sound he makes.

- He now loves playing with phones and remote controls. He also loves standing up at his play tables. Those things are wonderful.....Grant loved them and now Drew does too. And he always tries to take Grant's cars to examine them and chew on them. He can actually occupy himself with toys for a while before he needs me.

- But....if he is tired and he sees me walk away from him, he fusses and keeps his worried eyes on me until he sees me come back!

- He's been taking 30 minute naps lately, for the most part. I had been letting him cry it out until he went back to sleep, but I'm not really able to do that while he's sick. I don't want him to continue this, though!! At night he usually sleeps straight through, but will only sleep until about 5:45 or 6am. So sad for me!

Mean mom?

Erin P. wrote a comment the other day asking whether I take any pictures of Drew crying. She said that sometimes she'll run to grab the camera when JHP is crying, just because he looks so cute (and also, how accurate would your picture album be if your baby was happy in all of his pictures?!). So Erin, to answer your question.....yes! I do take crying pictures of the kids (at times). Grant REALLY hates it and gets extremely angry at me.....but I'm not too worried that they'll be damaged for life! These are some that I've taken of Drew in the past couple of weeks:
In these crib pictures, I walked in to Drew's room after a nap to find him standing up! It was the first time I'd seen him standing in his crib before, so I had to run and grab the camera (it was in the study, which isn't too far away!). He was crying already, so he really wasn't happy to see me leaving! But I love these pictures.....I love his little cry face.

Happy Birthday, Daddy/Grandpa!

My dad's 60th birthday is today.....he and my mom are celebrating in London! So I'm sure he won't see this until they get home tomorrow, but happy birthday Daddy/Grandpa! We'll see you soon!

Some things about Grant.....

A few things about my wacky, sweet, daredevil son at two and a half:

1. He is still completely obsessed with and addicted to his pacifier. Our trip to Alabama in April made it worse, I think (because he was so tired and always wanted it with him). Now he usually notices if he doesn't have it after a few minutes, and will ask, "where's my paci?" But....when we go outside, he easily gives it up (sometimes before we even ask).

2. He holds onto his ears (or ours) when he's stressed out or tired.

3. He loves playing soccer and golf. He'll always ask, "do you want to play soccer?" In the backyard, he'll swing Dean's golf club at any ball outside. He's proud of himself when he hits it, but he gets easily frustrated when he doesn't (not unlike most golfers!).

4. He has gotten very sensitive and pouty when we yell at him, but only for certain things. If we yell at him for misbehaving, he gets angry and usually yells back at us. But the other day we were taking a walk and he bent down to pick up this nasty mold stuff next to a tree. We both yelled, "no!" We explained to him that he can't pick up gross stuff like that, but he got really quiet and bowed his head, just staring at the ground. It's so weird what he decides to pout about! He also doesn't like it when Dean and I argue; he'll yell, "no!" at us and plug his ears!

5. He loves being chased. Many times during the day, he'll say, "chase me, Mommy/Dada." He also loves jumping off high places (like most 2.5-year-old boys!). He is constantly jumping....

6. When he's describing something, he talks with his hands a lot. He has also started making up stories. If I'm telling Dean about something that happened that day, he'll interject and include "facts" that didn't really happen! Not sure what to do about that at this point.....

7. He knows my name and calls me "Alissa" every once in a while.....and thinks he is very funny! But he doesn't know Daddy's real name.

8. Unfortunately, he doesn't really like reading books. Except for his stories at night (and sometimes at naptime), he doesn't like to read. I hope this changes! Unless he's watching Cars or one of his favorite shows, he is always on the move.....I think he is just too busy to concentrate on books during the day.

9. He is just so zany and spunky.....when he's in his silly mood, he'll run around waving his arms, tongue sticking out, making goofy noises. He also likes to sing a few songs (ABC, Jesus Loves Me, the Circle Time song from school). He is very animated when he sings.

10. He'll repeat things to his stuffed animals that I say to him.....telling them to be quiet, telling them it's time for a nap, etc. He has a new Lightning McQueen remote-controlled car (about 8 or 9 inches long), and the other day he held him like a baby, rubbing on him and patting his "back." Then he took him into his room to take a nap!

There are a lot of other things, but I will stop there! Here are also some funny things he's said recently. He is making so many complete sentences; at the end of every day, I try to write down some of the funnier things he's said, or things that make me think, "how did you come up with that?" But it's so hard to remember all (or most) of them. They just learn things so quickly at this age. Here are some:

That drives me nuts!
Okay! Here I come!
Awesome!
That'd be great/That'd be perfect.
Is that a deal, Mommy?
No, we are NOT going to take a nap.
Crap! (yes, this is my fault!)
What the heck?
I'm a stinker.
Look, Mommy/Dada, Look!
Drew can't have that screw. He will choke and die.
Oh, man! I can't find Scooter. Where'd she go?
It's so nice out here.
Remember? I don't need my paci on the playground.
Hush! You cannot watch your movie because you screamed at me! (talking to one of his animals).
Let me open the door for you. (when Dean left for work one day)
Don't forget your bag. (also when Dean left for work)
There's Amminadab. He's my best friend.
It's okay, Mommy. It's okay. (during one of my less patient moments!)
My dada told me I can't stand on here.
Yeah. That should be fine.

Two and a half

I know he LOOKS like a baby here (sucking on his paci, sitting in the bumbo chair, holding a teddy bear), but my little rascal turned two and a half today! I had grand plans to write all these things he's doing at 2.5 years, but that list will have to wait until tomorrow. We've just watched the season finale of 24 (a little disappointing, in my opinion), and it's too late to start now. So hopefully tomorrow! Happy half birthday, sweetie!

Just a weekend picture of all of my boys....

It is 10:30 and I am off to bed. We had a fun weekend.....I was going to go into detail, but instead I will just post a cute picture! Yesterday Grant was watching......take a guess.....Lightning McQueen! We let him watch it up in our bedroom that morning because we started working on removing wallpaper from our bathroom walls. I hate wallpaper!! We're making very slow progress....but hopefully we're figuring out a good method that will make it go faster as we go. Anyway, I took this picture of all of my guys and I thought it was really cute. Grant loves to hold earlobes (his own or Dean's, especially) when he's tired or stressed out. Here Dean and Grant are engrossed in the movie, but Drew is still all about Mommy!! In another year, I'm sure all three of them will be staring at the screen if I try to take a similar picture!!

My little smiley man

Here are a few pictures of my smiley little guy. I love this stage.....Drew's not old enough to really complain about things yet (unless he's tired and doesn't want Mommy to put him down or hand him to someone else!), and he's usually cheerful and playful. If he's playing on the floor and decides he wants to be in my lap, he'll just crawl right up! He also loves to laugh when I make silly faces or sounds, and of course he's always instigating play time with Grant. I look at his sweet little face and I am so thankful for my little sugar bear.....
This is a typical laugh/smile for Drew.....he scrunches up his eyes and nose and makes a little "heh, heh" sound....it's hard to explain but very funny!

He's also constantly chewing on his lips.....
And here he's probably saying "da da da da".......
Also....these springy doorstops are Drew's new favorite toys. He'll crawl up to them and pull them over and over. We need to finish taking the white caps off of them, though.....they seem secure but I'd hate for him to get one in his mouth.....
Oops!! Normally I don't post spit-up pictures but I thought this one was especially cute!

Sleep

Why, oh why, does sleep have to be SO difficult in our house??!! That is BY FAR the hardest issue we've dealt with, now with both boys. Sleeping through the night is not the hard part.....at least right now. Grant woke up a lot from 7 to 11 months, and Drew has sporadically woken up at random times.....but for the past week he's been sleeping straight through.

With Grant, I got in the habit of nursing or rocking him to sleep as a baby. This was fine until he started waking up in the middle of the night (at 7 months), and couldn't settle himself back to sleep. So finally at 11 months, I got so sick of it and just let him cry it out for a few nights. And it worked! So this time, I vowed to not rock or nurse Drew to sleep every night, because I didn't want the same thing to happen. And......for a while, I did well.....I'd let him fall asleep in my arms sometimes, but then I'd also just lay him in his crib awake other times. But then I gradually got lazy......after all, it is much easier (in the short term) to lay him down when he's asleep (not having to worry about him crying and waking Grant up, and also just being able to immediately get to work on whatever I want to do during his nap!).

So, in the past week I've really been trying to institute a bedtime/naptime routine (which apparently you're supposed to start at 4-5 months, and he's 7 months old now!). This is SO hard for me. I am not a routine-driven person myself......I love just going with the flow, which I know is not good for little kids! And.....Drew isn't really keen about the idea of having a naptime/bedtime routine, either.....he doesn't care about books or singing songs at this point. He just wants to be nursed to sleep like he's been doing for the past month! So usually he screams and cries until I come back in, and this goes on for a while before he finally gives up. But I am still inconsistent.....I know the sleep training could be over in two days (like with Grant), but sometimes I'll feel so sorry for him if he's been screaming for 15 minutes, so I'll pick him up and let him fall asleep in my arms. As a mom, you just feel so torn about these things....

So anyway, I would love to be one of those moms who puts her kids down for naps and leaves the room, knowing they will go straight to sleep and wake up 2 hours later. As I sat down to write this, both boys were screaming in their rooms (we went to Katy today so they're taking really late naps). Now they have both gone to sleep.....thank you, God!

More tomorrow on our trip to Katy.....blogging every day is more difficult than I expected!

A new favorite

These days, I spend pretty much every minute from 5:45am (yes, that is the time Grant and Drew have been waking up lately) until 7:30 or 8pm with my boys. I love them more than I can describe, but some moments I just feel so bored, and I yearn for things that aren't baby/child related.

A while back (I think it was while I was sleeping on the couch when Drew was a newborn), I came across the TLC show called "Say Yes to the Dress." It's about a wedding dress shop in NYC called Kleinfelds. Every episode, they pick two or three girls to follow around as they try on wedding dresses. I LOVE IT! A lot of the dresses at Kleinfelds are ridiculously expensive, but most of the girls they show are everyday, normal girls (despite the fact that they have $5,000 wedding dress budgets!). It is so fun to watch.....Dean will probably not be happy that I am writing this, but even he doesn't mind it too much!! I record the episodes (they come on back-to-back on Friday nights at 9pm), then watch them whenever I get a chance.

It's hard to describe, and I know I'm not the only one......when you have little kids, you can easily start feeling like you're not the same person you used to be (mostly just because you don't have much time anymore for things that interest you personally). So it's fun to watch girly shows like this that take me away from mommy thoughts for just a few minutes!

Conversations

It's been a long, hard couple of days, so I feel completely out of energy. A couple of funny things Grant has said over the past two days:

- Today he found a basket with some CDs and emptied them by the time I found him. I was irritated and asked him why he gets into things he's not supposed to have. He said, "it's okay, mommy! I'm just, like, so frustrated!" He's said "I'm just frustrated" before, but has never thrown the "like" in there before! I guess I say both of these things more than I should!

- Yesterday he sat at the computer and said he was checking his email (he does this a lot now). He said, "I'm typing email Aunt Corie. Hi Corie. Are you still at your house? I'll be there in a minute."

Idol worship

I know I say all the time that Drew absolutely adores his big brother. One of the biggest joys for me this second time around has been watching the boys interact with each other. Drew simply thinks Grant hung the moon. He watches Grant almost constantly while we're eating, he gets excited and laughs when Grant does anything silly, and just recently he gets excited when I'm changing Grant's diaper (on the floor)....he'll crawl over to him and try to grab him and mess with him! It's so funny watching him become the pesky little brother.....it puts me in a hard place because I know it must be frustrating to Grant (being climbed on!), but at the same time I can't let Grant push and hit Drew just because he's getting annoyed by it.

But I know that Grant does love his little brother, even though he never cares about going to give him kisses or anything like that. When Drew's taking a nap, he'll ask, "where's Drew?" And the other night he said, "my brother is funny."

Anyway, here are some cute pictures from the other day. Grant likes to get in Drew's bed (his old bed) and jump. Drew had so much fun playing with him and watching him.....

Really quick....

I have been reading other posts and would normally not write my own tonight, but I don't want to take a day off and mess up my promise to write every day!

Mother's Day was fun.....Grant and Dean went to church while Drew and I stayed home. We woke up late and I was just so tired (I am trying to sleep train Drew). And Drew was even more tired....so we just stayed home. But Grant and Dean brought home some chocolates after church.....Grant brought them to me and said, "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy." It was sweet! It's the first year that he MAYBE understands what some of these holidays mean.

We had a very uneventful day.....I never even took a picture with the boys! Oh well...I can take one later and no one will ever know that we didn't really take it on Mother's Day, right?

Today was another day that makes me wonder how in the world I'm going to make it through this summer!! I will go into more of that later.....but the more I think about it, I don't know how a mom survives her first summer (in Texas) with a toddler and a baby who's just started crawling. That will have to be the subject of another post.....it is almost 9pm and I need to go spend some time with my husband!

A few of Grant's favorites

At (almost) two and a half years:

Favorite Foods: cheese, graham crackers, peanut butter, cottage cheese (for such a picky eater, we think it's crazy that he's so wild about cottage cheese....he eats bowlfuls of it!), grapes, anything made out of chocolate.

Favorite Toys: all of his Lightning McQueen cars (and other racecars from CARS, the movie); his tricycle (he calls it his motorcycle); his sand/water table in the backyard; his Little People garage.

Favorite Movie: Of course, CARS. We try to introduce new movies but he's not too interested. Today Dean watched Ratatouille with him (we had it recorded on our DVR), and a few minutes into it, he told Dean, "I don't like this movie. It's a little scary."

Favorite TV Shows: At the moment, he really likes Curious George and Handy Manny. He also still likes Little Einsteins quite a bit.

Favorite Song: Jesus Loves Me. He will start singing it out of the blue and it's one of the sweetest things to me. He learned it at school and always asks for Dean to sing it to him before he goes to bed. He also likes Rock a Bye Baby.

Favorite Books: According to Dean (who puts Grant to bed), right now he likes Go Dog Go, The Runaway Bunny, and Bear Snores On (for anyone who doesn't have this book, it's one of our all-time favorites.....), among a few others. Unfortunately, he's not much into books right now, except a few at bedtime. He prefers to read books that he's familar with, so getting books from the library is no fun.....which is sad to me because there are so many I'd love to get! Hopefully he will outgrow this stage soon.....I think during the day he is just too busy to sit down and listen to me read a book to him.

Favorite activities: being outside.....he's always asking to go for a walk or to go out to the backyard. He plays with his sand table and workbench, pushes his lawnmower, and loves to swing and play with the water hose. This worries me a little because it's getting so hot outside already! He gets so bored inside, he doesn't like to do arts/crafts yet, and he doesn't do very well when we run errands. So I don't really know what we're going to do during the days this summer......

Favorite random objects: He absolutely LOVES batteries. He will just hold them in his hand and walk around the house with them, putting them into containers and taking them back out. He does the same with coins and screws. I have been throwing away any of these things when I see them, now.....especially because Drew is starting to crawl. YIKES!

Milestones this week

I've already talked about some of these.....here's a shot of Drew scooting his way across the floor towards a toy.
This week, Grant learned how to pedal on his tricycle the correct way. He was so proud of himself and tells us to watch him every time he does it. We just got the tricycle about a month ago (from Craigslist!), and I guess we should have bought it maybe more around 18 months to 2 years.....his legs are a little long for it. What he likes most about it is the trunk; he stores his cars and trains in it.
Drew's front two teeth are almost fully in now.....no more toothless grin!

Drew tends to scrunch up his nose like this when he's laughing....

He learned how to play the piano..... :)

And he does really well standing while holding onto something (although he can't really pull himself up on most furniture quite yet).
And here are a few pictures after getting back from a walk one afternoon. Grant and I had popsicles, so I gave one to Drew too. He loved chewing on it.....it was a perfect teething stick!


One more thing.....he has become really attached to mommy at some times. At church, he doesn't cry immediately when I leave, but then he gets tired and cries until I come and take him. And if there are other people at our house, he doesn't even usually like for me to get up and leave him to play on the floor! It's easy to get frustrated at things like this (after all, Grant was very similar), but I have to remember that ten years from now, I will yearn for the days when he wanted only mommy!

Brotherly bathtime

Last Saturday, Drew got promoted to the big boy bath with Grant! We tried bathing them together about 6 or 8 weeks ago (when Drew learned to sit up), but Grant wasn't too keen on sharing his bathtub at the time. Now he doesn't seem to care at all!

Sometimes they just ignore each other...........but we have to keep a close eye on Grant. He's always trying mischievous stuff, like squirting Drew with his squirt toy.....
.....trying to pick him up by the neck to drag him somewhere (where can he possibly be planning on taking him?).....

.....or trying to pour water on top of him......
A couple more......