And just to keep things in perspective.....

I almost just went back and erased my last post......I am so ashamed at how much I take my kids for granted sometimes. Some people who read this probably also read popular mommy blogs like BabyBangs and Kelly's Korner. I don't read them much, but every so often I'll start blog-hopping and end up on one of them. On Kelly's Korner, she has a prayer page where she posts prayer requests that are emailed to her (that girl has thousands of readers). And today she highlighted a few specific requests. I already knew about one of them (a couple in Alabama who lost two-year-old twins in a drowning accident in July.....unfathomable).

And one of the others was for the Maxey family, who lost their one-year-old little girl Madeline to a brain tumor in 2004. Then they had a little boy (Grant), who is just a little older than our Grant. And then they had a little girl Annette, born last October (just a week or so after Drew was born). Now Annette is dying of cancer too....they're taking her home this week from the hospital.

I spent about 20 minutes just looking at their website and am heartbroken for them. It's impossible to look at it for more than a few minutes without crying. Apparently they were told after their first daughter died that none of their future children would have any greater chance of getting cancer than she'd had. So if that's correct, it just seems so unfair for something like that to happen twice to one family.

And I think about how much I complain and feel sorry for myself that my boys are giving me a hard time. I completely take for granted that I've got two healthy babies. Wow....

Anyway, just thought I would mention this for the people who aren't familiar with Kelly's blog. The Maxey family's website is http://www.maxeyweb.com/ . I don't know them or even where they live, but they definitely need prayer. I don't know how I'd be able to get out of bed in the morning if something like this were to happen to me.

This is usually why I don't tend to read blogs of people I don't know. Because one of two things usually happens. One, I happen upon family blogs where the family seems perfect in every way (and I end up feeling lousy about myself and my family when I have no real basis for thinking that way). Or two, I end up spending way too much time learning about people (who I don't know) with heart-wrenching situations. I don't think it's healthy to become consumed by things like this, but this particular one (and reading it on this particular night) just made me realize how trivial my problems are, in the scheme of things. So what if I'm bored during the day and my boys are driving me crazy?? There are people going through much harder things than me.....

TWO little stinkers

Yes, Drew is in full stinker mode now, and he just turned 11 months old! What am I going to do?! When Grant would throw fits or act unruly before, at least I had my sweet little Drew to get me through. But now I'm wondering if he's going to be worse than his brother. Whew....the past few days have completely wiped me out. Grant WILL NOT listen when we tell him to do things.....sometimes I tell him five, six times to sit in his carseat before I have to spank him and physically put him there. And the same goes for pretty much anything.....diaper changes, getting off of Drew when he's wrestling with/laying on top of/physically abusing him. I usually have to go over and pull him off of Drew (who, by the way, rarely cries when Grant does this, but it still worries me!). It drives me crazy to have to say things sixteen times to get him to do anything!

And Drew.....oh my goodness.....that little boy is becoming so independent. He will put up a fuss and start fighting when he can't have his way.....I don't think Grant started that quite so early?? For some reason I think I remember that Grant hit this point around 13 months. Drew loves climbing stairs right now (in fact, if I'm holding him when we get to the stairs, he pushes against me to get down, so he can crawl up himself). And if he crawls over to the stairs himself (and the gate happens to be ajar), he'll try crawling up. When I grab him to bring him down, he kicks and fusses. And the same thing happens when he wants to go outside too.....and pretty much any time he doesn't want to be taken away from something he wants!

So it seems like my little snuggler is gone....at least for now. Tonight when I put him to bed, I tried to rock him for a while (like I do most nights), but he was not interested. He just wanted to be playing on the floor, and kept trying to wriggle out of my arms. So I put him in his crib and left the room (he was very tired anyway, and only fussed for a few seconds). I'm hoping that maybe he will learn the cause/effect.....he doesn't get to read stories or rock when he squirms and tries to get down.

But it's so weird.....at the same time, he is still super clingy to me at times. Today my friend Jen came over with her little boy, and he wouldn't let me walk 10 feet away before crying. But then I'd pick him up, and he wanted to get down again a few seconds later!

So anyway, this is just a frustrating time with Drew. I think he sees his big brother doing so many things that he also wants to be doing, but he's just not big enough. I've been (seriously) wondering how I am going to survive the coming years with both of them acting like this. Should I go back to work and put them both in daycare?? Because right now, I'd say that I'd be very content dropping them both off somewhere at 9am every day, and coming back to get them at 5pm. They are just driving me crazy that much. I love them so much but I'm not a good mom to them when I'm getting mad and yelling every five minutes. And I spend so much of my days completely frustrated.

I was thinking.....when we're at the house, we are truly having fun probably 10-20% of the time. When we go out, it's more like 80-90% (as long as I pick somewhere child-friendly and don't try staying at the mall for 4 hours). So I do think that as it gets cooler, we'll be able to make more trips to town to do fun outdoorsy things (on days that Grant doesn't go to school). Maybe the key is just getting out of the house (which is just plain difficult in the summer....it's nearly impossible to go play in the sprinkler in the backyard before 4:30pm, let alone anything else).

Okay, this is way too long but I needed to get that off my chest. I could go into so much more detail but will keep it (somewhat) short for the blog. The boys have actually been doing some fun stuff too, so I will write about more lighthearted topics next time!

Eeeewwww!

Even though his face is probably a bit too much out of focus, I still love this picture. About a week ago Grant was playing outside on our playground, and we noticed this weird bug. It just sat there while we stared at it and took pictures of it!





And here are a few more funny pictures. The other day Grant found an A/C filter in our closet and decided it was a guitar (not sure how he made that connection!). I heard Jesus Loves Me from the other room and came in to see him singing and playing the "guitar." Kids have such an imagination......

And last, here he's throwing a complete fit because he can't get his hand out of his pocket. We were playing and having a good time, and he'd stuck a race car in his pocket, then couldn't pull his hand back out. When stuff like this happens, it takes about three seconds to go from being completely fine, to being mildly frustrated, to throwing an all-out fit. It's funny how he seems like he's becoming such a big boy, yet at times like this he seems like such a baby, laying down on the floor crying when something doesn't go his way. I wonder when these crying fits end?? Surely he won't still be doing this when he's 10 (please, God?!)?

This one goes here, and this one goes here....

Grant has had a blast while we've been working on our bathroom for the past few months. He is such a little handyman.....I've said before that one of his all-time favorite activities is helping Daddy with projects. Actually, it's more that he likes to have access to Daddy's tools while Daddy is working on projects.....he loves walking around holding screws, nuts, bolts, and sockets. They are just the most magical, amazing things to him. At Home Depot and Lowe's, he'll walk over to the bins and just grab a couple of bolts to carry around while we're at the store. That's such the little boy in him....he probably knows more about tools than I do!

About a week ago Dean was hanging our new light fixtures in the bathroom, and Grant grabbed the instruction sheet and started saying what we needed to do. He'd point and say, "this one goes here, and this one goes here." He'll also now walk into his "train room" (our formal living room), and walk to one side of the train table and pretend like he's talking to someone at the other side of the table. He gets embarrassed if we see him do this, but he'll say things like, "I need some nails and some screws to fix this. Yeah. Okay, bye bye." Or "Hi, I bought this, but it doesn't work. No. Okay, bye bye." Can you tell we've been to home improvement stores too many times?!



And here are some pictures of Drew talking on the phone.....he picks it up and immediately says "da" or "dada." That's all he says into the phone (actually, that's pretty much the only word he says anyway!).

Our (somewhat) scientific study

First, I have to note that it's not even 7:30pm and both boys are in bed! This doesn't normally happen, but we went to Palm Beach today (at Moody Gardens in Galveston). The boys were totally worn out, and they both had short naps because the ride home isn't very long. Grant's behavior tonight proved that he was tired, so he actually went to his room before 6:30 (although he didn't go to sleep right away). And I just put Drew to bed. Yippee....lots of free time!

Anyway....

In mid-July, we got our electricity bill and I almost gasped when I read it. Four hundred and twenty one dollars! That is by far the highest we've ever had....I know last summer we spent a couple of months in the $300s, but nothing this high. But it wasn't too hard to believe. The previous month we'd kept our A/C pretty much constantly at 75 degrees (which we don't normally do in the summer). And at times it was even lower (esp when we had company). It's always a couple degrees warmer upstairs than down, so even at night it was around 77 in our bedrooms when it was 75 downstairs. Frustrating. (By the way, I will never buy a house again without asking first whether there's a separate A/C unit upstairs!)

So I told Dean that we had no choice but to notch the A/C up a little after that ridiculously high bill. And pretty much constantly this entire month, it's been a little experiment of mine. Instead of being constantly set at 75, we set the thermostat at 77, and that's where it stayed pretty much all month (except for a few hours here or there when we either set it higher or lower by a degree). And......we also didn't run our dishwasher on heated dry (which I probably did 50% of the time the previous month). Aside from those two things, we didn't do anything differently. And I think the outside temps were pretty much the same from mid-June to mid-July as they were from mid-July to mid-August.

So.....I got an email notification of our new bill last night.....it was $319! Yay!! I'd say that it's worth sitting in a little bit warmer house if it saves you 100 dollars per month (of course Dean might not agree!). I've never been able to see such a direct relationship between thermostat settings and electricity bill, so I thought I would share!

Also, here are some pictures of our snazzy new couch. I think it looks so great in our den and I'm always happy when I walk in the room and see it. It's just fun getting new stuff, especially when it's cheap (and nice)! Our old couches still felt brand new after 10 years....the cushions weren't broken down at all. But they were looking dated, and it was becoming a chore keeping Drew out of the corner table between them. We went through this stage with Grant, and it was starting to get annoying with Drew wanting to be on top of (or inside) that table all the time. Plus, we felt like that room would be the perfect place for a sectional, and that it might open up the living room to the kitchen a little better.

Old couches:

New couch!Now I just need to go look for some accent pillows. And this is what's so great about Craigslist....we bought this couch for $375, then we sold our old couches the next day for $100. I would have asked for more, except that there were quite a few cat scratches on the back of one of them. Plus, with two babies who spit up a lot, I knew all the stuff that was embedded in the cushions and my conscience couldn't let me ask for more!