Recap

Highlights from this week (my apologies....it's a little long):

TUESDAY: Dean's birthday! I was so unprepared for his birthday this year (as I am unprepared for almost everything these days!). I hadn't even thought about a cake until his actual birthday, so the boys and I bought a Boston Creme Pie (Dean's favorite) at Kroger. I set it inside my cute little cake dome and possibly would've gotten away with claiming that I made it, except that Dean was home eating lunch when we got back from the store (he happened to have a training just a few miles from our house that day). The first thing out of Grant's mouth when he saw Dean was "we bought you a birthday cake at the cookie shop!"

The boys were awfully tired and fussy that afternoon, so they were both asleep by 6:45. This never happens at our house (usually bedtime is about an hour later), but it sure was nice having almost an entire evening to ourselves!

WEDNESDAY: Drew and I stopped at Hobby Lobby while Grant was in school. I found the one item I needed , then we walked through the housewares section on our way to the front. Drew was not in a shopping cart (I didn't bother because it was a quick trip), and he was walking with me when we saw an endcap full of decorative glass balls (you probably know where this is going). Drew picked up a ball and I took it away from him, then he reached for another one. So I said, "okay, time to go," and I picked him up. Well, he must have grabbed and held on tight to the piece of glass that was holding those balls in....and as we stood up, the glass came with us, and all of the balls came tumbling out. It seemed like the crashing lasted forever as each one hit the ground and shattered. Shocked and embarrassed, I looked to the left and right, not really knowing what to do. Ladies were walking by, wincing and feeling sorry for me but not saying anything. I would say there were probably 25 balls that fell, and amazingly there were about three that looked intact. They were marked $8.99 a piece. Two workers came within a few seconds, and they were as nice as could be. I apologized profusely and asked if there was anything I could do, but they were very gracious and said not to worry about a thing. I felt so guilty walking to the front of the store to buy my $2.99 item, having just destroyed a couple of hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise. Yikes....

THURSDAY: Not wanting to spend yet another day doing errands and playing at the house, I took the boys to Memorial City Mall up in Houston (it was rainy outside and I'd heard about an inside play area there). Grant acted superbly the entire time...I dragged them into a store and tried on a couple of shirts, and he said, "that's cute, Mommy! You look cute!" And they had fun in the play area, although at one point this strange girl (very cute, but very odd) came up to Drew and was acting kind of weird (she couldn't have been a day over two). Grant noticed it, stopped playing and came to stand behind Drew, putting his arms around him and saying, "this is my brother!" She walked away and everything was fine (although we did see her later and she was acting strangely again). But....when it was time to leave the mall, I picked Drew up to carry him out, and he let out this loud scream. He did this during lunch too, because I wouldn't let him stand in his highchair. It makes me stressed out to now have two kids who can throw fits and embarrass me in public! I could go on about this for a long time, but that's another post. On to...

FRIDAY: My day off! After the previous two days, I told Dean that I needed an entire day away from the boys or I'd go crazy....and I'm not joking. He's starting a 9/80 schedule (he'll get every other Friday off), so this was his off day. I left the house at 8:30am and didn't come home until 7:45pm. Dean was a trooper and didn't complain about having to care for the boys by himself on his day off. I shopped and shopped and spent time browsing inside stores that I never get to visit. It was so nice....I can't even describe it! Fairly regularly I'll leave Dean with the boys for a couple of hours on a weekend so I can do a couple of errands. But I've never had an entire day away like this. It was refreshing and I can't wait to do it again!

Blog facelift

When I started the blog almost three years ago, I didn't know many people who blogged. And it didn't even occur to me to come up with a creative name for it. But now everyone who starts a blog has a really cute, catchy name, and ours started to seem totally boring!

So for a few months, I tried thinking of a name that represented our lives well; how do you describe craziness and chaos in a way that also sounds positive? One day "little rascals" popped into my head. I thought about it for a while, and it just seemed to fit. Grant and Drew are silly, mischievous, headstrong little boys....but (usually!) in an endearing way.

As for the picture header on our blog......I added these cute letters to a picture of the boys (it's from the summer, but at least it's a newer picture than I had before). Picasa is amazing. Wow. Thanks to those of you who encouraged me to use it. They have SO many cute fonts that you can just add straight to a picture! No Photoshop required! I meant to add something else to the picture, but for now I've just posted it as-is.

We really do have fun!

I know there are so many posts where I gripe and complain about life these days. Yes, we have day-to-day challenges that seem like they're never going to end, and a lot of frustrations that come with living with a strong-willed three-year-old boy (my guess is that this age is probably just about equivalent, in terms of difficulty, to a fifteen-year-old girl......Grant better not get much worse than this!).

But.....we also have a ton of fun with our little men, even with all of the daily battles. Here are some fun-time pictures from the past couple of weeks. I've been meaning to post these every day, but then by the time the boys are in bed I just want to relax....

Drew loves to wear sunglasses and hats....he thinks he's such a cool kid. Here the boys were having fun trying on a pair of daddy's work glasses (and in the 3rd picture, Grant's clapping for Drew for putting them on himself):



Caught red-handed! Drew is such a climber right now.....I probably remove him from a chair/stool/train table 20-30 times per day. He can drag the stool over to a particular place to see what's on the counter (guess who he learned this from?):

Little boy in need of a haircut! He eats a waffle every morning for breakfast.....he gets so excited when he hears it pop out of the toaster!

Needless to say, this was a very loud activity:


There are lots more from this month that I love and want to share.....hopefully soon!

Another week, another step towards insanity!

Well, no, it's not quite that bad (although we've had a few moments in the past couple of weeks that have made me wonder if boarding schools accept three-year-olds!). Grant is acting every bit of three (which, some people have said, can be worse than two).....he seems to be getting more obstinate by the day. Some days it seems like he yells and screams every time I tell him "no," even when it's something very minor. Like for example, one morning just after going downstairs (before we even ate breakfast), he asked if he could have a piece of gum. I told him not now, but maybe after he eats breakfast. He just erupted, flapping his arms and throwing himself over the floor. So of course that makes me really want to give him a piece of gum!

He is also extremely protective of his toys lately, but only at certain times. Sometimes he'll share his very favorite toys with Drew without me even asking. But then other times, he'll be playing with a toy and he can detect that Drew is getting too close to one of his other toys a few feet away from him. He'll run over there, grab the toy and say, "I'm playing with that!" So then Drew starts crying and usually screams at Grant. And then they both yell at each other. So fun!

And at night.....oh my gosh.....sometimes we feel like we're at our wit's end. Dean reads stories to Grant and tells him goodnight, and warns him not to turn on his light or leave his room, or else he'll get a spanking. For about five nights straight, Dean had to go back upstairs multiple times to give spankings. And these are hard spankings.....I can hear them all the way downstairs. And he'll just cry and cry. But then a few minutes later, Dean is back downstairs and we hear another thud, or we hear the door opening. One night Dean spanked him four times before he finally went to sleep. We're wondering if it's inhumane to tie our child to his bed?? I'm assuming yes.

But to change the subject......last weekend, I spent my first night away from the boys. Ever!! It's not that I've been afraid or hesitant to do it before, but it's just not something that we ever really get the chance to do, unless we hire a babysitter.....and I am too cheap for that! But a group of blogging friends from high school got together last weekend in Bryan. I was looking forward to it for weeks, and it was a blast!! It started at 7pm, and I didn't leave until after 2am....and I wasn't even the last one to go. I spent the night at my parents' house and Dean stayed here with the boys. We're going to try to do it every 6 months. I can't wait until the summer get-together! Here's a picture of the group:

You see, Drew?

My big Christmas present was an iPod touch. I mainly wanted it so I could listen to music inside the house with the kids, without having to transfer all of their CDs to and from the car all the time. But I've had it for three weeks, and I still haven't put any songs on it! I love being able to browse the internet or check my email quickly without having to come upstairs to the study.

I've always been bad about letting Grant hold my cell phones. So when this one came, of course he immediately wanted to play with my "new phone," as he called it. The day it came in the mail, I took it out of the box to look at it.....and it was like Gollum on Lord of the Rings.....he was dying to have that thing in his hands! I put it back in the box and up on my dresser (after he threw a fit because he couldn't hold it), and the next day that stinker made himself a stepstool so he could reach the box!

These were pictures we took a few days after Christmas.....for one short day, we gave Grant privileges to hold my "new phone" when we were sitting there right next to him. So here he's showing Drew how it works.....he loves to act like an adult when he's explaining something to Drew. He'll talk in a really high-pitched voice and more slowly than he normally does. I think it makes him feel so big to be able to teach things to his little brother, or to tell him what's right and wrong. He'll say, "Drew, we do not throw food on the floor. No, sir. If you do that again, I'm going to give you a big spankin." Here he's saying something like, "You see that, Drew? You can touch it. Isn't that cool?"

Unfortunately, Grant lost his holding privileges soon after I took these pictures (probably this same night). Because, you see, our little boy doesn't yet understand that when something fun comes to an end, it doesn't mean he'll never be able to do it again. This has been the story of my life these past few weeks. No matter how patiently I try to explain to him that it's time to give something back to me (being sure that he understands the consequences if he doesn't give it back----mainly that he won't get to have it again), it just doesn't compute in his little head. He kicks and screams and falls on the floor crying......and so now Grant's iPod-holding days are officially over! And he's actually been doing pretty well; he'll see it on the counter and reach up to pick it up, but then he brings it straight to me and says, "here's your iPod" (the Gollum in him is still satisfied because at least he lays his hands on it for a few seconds!).

About a month ago, my cell phone fell into the toilet at Lowe's while I was helping Grant go potty. It still works, except you can't see the screen (which makes it basically useless). So my friend Erin offered her old Sprint phone to me (mine was only a few months old). The day before I went to pick up this new phone, Grant wanted to play with my iPod and I told him he could play with my "boring phone" instead. He grabbed it, pushed some buttons, saw that it didn't really do anything, and said, "no, I don't like this boring phone. I like that one better" (reaching for my iPod). That little stinker knows what he wants!