you know you enjoy being a mom when...

...you get a craving for oatmeal raisin cookies and wait for 2yo and 3yo to actually wake up to make them (as opposed to hurriedly making them during their nap)
...while making said cookies, you let them pour (after you've measured) not only the oatmeal and raisins but also the messy ingredients: cinnamon, flour and vanilla
....and despite the fact that said cookies turned out delicious but kinda dark and super flat, you gobble them up because they are so proud. and you let them eat them for breakfast the next day. i mean after all, they are OATMEAL and RAISIN? that's 2 food groups!
in other news, peanut tried rice cereal for the very first time ever tonight! i really wanted to wait to start solids until he was 6mos old but the little chunker is really starting to notice us when we eat. he sits in his highchair and stares until he starts to fuss/cry. then once you pick him up, he stares at your fork/spoon as it moves from the plate to your mouth. then he opens his mouth, as if he's REALLY wanting a bite.

well since he's been doing this for about a week, and since i had some milk that i had pumped to mix with the rice cereal i bit the bullet. it was somewhat a success. he did much better eating it off the spoon than i thought he would! he ate a good 8-10 bites before we called it quits, he was just so tired. so we'll wait a day for two then go again. i did buy fresh sweet potatoes and carrots so that i can start making his baby food this weekend! those will be the first two "real" foods we will introduce, followed by applesauce. this has been the pattern for older boys so we're gonna keep a good thing going!

"what is this?!?"

"mmm, i don't know what it is but i know that i like it!"

and approximately 5 minutes after eating--he was carb loaded and sleepy i guess. he didn't even need the binky!
speaking of binkies, pooks is doing WONDERFUL without his! he said bye bye that night then the following morning he excitedly slid down the entire flight of stairs to see what the binky fairy had left.he was excited to find a bag of M&M's, a Mr. Potatohead and a Cars football. he loved all the "pezents" and never even asked for the binky. two days later he did ask for his beloved "ga-ga" but it was after his nap. i just reminded him that we already said "bye bye" to the binkys and he said "oh". that was it. he never asked about it again. smooth as silk :)

conversations with bubba...

this was sunday mornings breakfast conversation. we were at Yeuy's house visiting and had just returned from krispy kreme and starbucks. since it wasn't an ordinary day, i let bubba and pooks get an orange mango banana smoothie from starbucks. i figured all that fruit off set the fact that they were having donuts for breakfast.

{peanut fusses from in the bedroom}

bubba: whats dat? {makes his listening face} dat baby?
me: yeah, sounds like the baby is waking up. daddy's with him. i'm sure he'll bring him to me, he probably wants to eat breakfast. do you think he's hungry?
b: yeah. he eats beckfast yike me?
m: yep, just like you.
b: no, not yike me mama. baby dinks milk from mama's boobies.
m: yes, baby c drinks mommy's milk.
b: not me mama, i don't dink mommy's milk...i dink my starbucks.{then proceeds to loudly slurp his smoothie} i dink my starbucks and eats me donut.

he was SO serious about it too! like "duh, this is what i eat and drink everyday." which is SO not the case.

apparently it made a good impression on him though!

a week's worth of pictures....

no seriously, i literally have a ton of photos from last week. here they are, i'll save the long rambling explanations and stories for later :)

peanut being silly in the tub

all smiley outside

and his newest thing, sucking on his bottom lip

bubba in disbelief about something....

pooks having fun at the playground

hanging around at the park (i dressed them alike in case we lost one at the "circus")

bubba riding a horse at the "circus" (in the loosest sense of the word)

peanut likes to "move it, move it" seriously, he LOVES to dance

bubba being silly

these pictures are from grandmas' 98th birthday dinner

grandma B with all 5 of her great-great grandkids

our newest 5 generation picture

aunt debbie's 5 generations photo with belle-belle and ashly

aunt nathalie with brenda's 5 generations

great grandma with her daughter, and her daughters and then their daughters

fyi

i totally have been slacking. i know, i know. i'm not even going to bore you with reasoning or excuses! i have pics from playing outside, going to the circus, playing at/in the house, etc. i will get them posted in the next 24hrs, i promise!

Orange you glad...updated!

our blog has gone orange in honor of Stellan today. i know several of you stalk follow MckMama's blog and those of you that don't, should! Stellan is only a month older than peanut and has a severe medical condition called SVT and also arrhythmia, that makes his tiny little heart beat irregularly and much of the time, way too fast. he's been in the hosptial for over 4 weeks now and today he is having an ablation. straight from MckMama's blog:

"During surgery, the electrophysiologist will work from the inside of Stellan's heart to trigger SVT using electricity. Having Stellan off as many anti-arrhythmics as possible will be better so as not to hinder that triggering. Once SVT has been triggered, the goal will be to map, identify and then destroy the accessory electrical pathway(s) on Stellan's heart that are causing his problems."

the surgery isn't common at such a young age but they can't postpone it anymore. Stellan's ablation started at 8:30est this morning and in honor of that the boys are wearing orange today, i've changed the blog to orange to let everyone know that today our thoughts are with stellan.

I WANTED TO UPDATE AND LET YOU ALL KNOW THAT STELLAN PULLED THROUGH THE SURGERY! WOOHOO! the boys and i continued our orange day by having orange goldfish with our sandwiches at lunch, and for dinner we had popcorn chicken nuggets (kinda orangish) with sweet potato fries (definitely orange!) and cheesy rice with broccoli (the sauce was a yellowish orange but we tried). i am so glad that Stellan made it through the surgery and things are finally looking up! keep up on mckmama's blog for more stellan updates!

the binky fairy...

this all started because earlier today while the boys were coloring, i was checking up on my blogs. i was in the middle of reading heathers blog today when pooks came up to the computer and saw a picture of all of sassy's "bippys'' in a bag. so i explained how sassy put all of her binkies in a bag, and at night the Binky fairy came and took all of her binkies away to give to new babies, but because sassy was a big girl she got new toys instead!

at the word ''toys'' pooks eyes got pretty big! so i gently said ''pookie, do you want to find all your binkies and put them in a bag? then tonight the Binky fairy can come and take those away and leave you new big boy toys instead!" he was kinda looking at me like ''is she really saying what i think she's saying?" but bubba, jumped on it! he was telling pooks how he was gonna get to be a big boy, and how it was ''yike the easter bunny" and he was gonna get m&m's...

now we're getting somewhere! he's eyes grew huge at the thought of m&m's. next thing i know he's yanking a bag out of the kitchen drawer. so we run upstairs to start on our binky hunt. (naturally sung to the tune of ''we're going on a bear hunt'') i swear to you, within 5 minutes the kid found 7 binkies. seven. binkies. he had 3 hidden under his pillow, one between his bed and the wall, one under our bed on B's side, one in the toy box, and one hidden behind his cars sofa chair. on a good day, it takes us 5 minutes to find a binky, let alone seven. so we put them all in a bag and left them on the table.

i did take the time to explain to him that babies get to have binkies because babies don't have teeth. since pookie has teeth, he doesn't need a binky anymore. bubba, mommy & daddy all have teeth so we don't have binkies. we are big boys. (yes, even i am a big boy---apparently).

fast-forward to bed time, we came downstairs and told the binkies bye-bye (he waved and everything) and got in bed. not a peep. he's been asleep for almost 3 hours and hasn't said a word. he fell asleep fine, never even questioned.

so immediately after they fell asleep i had to make a run to the store as a favor to the Binky fairy. tomorrow morning he will be waking up to find a bag of m&m's just for him, a football with tow mater and lightning mcqueen on it and a mr. potatohead.

i have to say, i'm really optimistic but we shall see how tonight goes :)

"my name's mater...like tuh-mater but without the tuh"

the many sides of peanut

peanut was in a good mood this morning so i took full advantage of it. here are a few pics that i thought were pretty stinking cute, and they show off all his little rolls :)

he loves to ''fly'' and usually i get huge giggles, today just this look:

check out those thunder thighs!

and those big brown eyes!

apparently the sun tickles
(see those dimples?)

and finally, a squeal!

random thoughts

i have a lot of random thoughts/vents/updates so i'm gonna just list them out. read if you want to, and if you don't....well what are you still doing here?

• -i am tired and i'm SO completely over this damn virus that i've decided should be name the 'whine virus'. seriously. all 3 of my kids are so flipping whiny. and i get it, they are little kids, they don't feel good they are all mucousy and coughing, etc. i know they don't feel good. but we are on day 8 of this and mama is tired. i'm over it. actually, bubba really is almost over it. he's doing great and feeling a lot better. pooks however seems to be doing worse. he's so clingy and fussy and miserable. he has been on antibiotics since last wed but today he had green snot so i don't think that they are working. looks like we'll be back to visit dr. s tomorrow. peanut is handling well enough. he's sleeping a ton and when he's not sleeping he wants held. no problemo except for the fact that pooks also wants held. so i changed peanuts' diaper and got him dressed all with pooks on my hip. fun times....NOT! i just want my kids to feel better!
  

• -pooks 2nd birthday is in a month. up until last night, we still hadn't thought of a theme. there isn't any theme that he *loves*. he likes thomas the tank engine, backyardigans, mickey mouse, cars, dora--he's so laidback that he likes everything. then you have bubba who tells me what he wants. ''he wants mickey mommy" and pooks is saying ''pablo'' over and over. er, those don't go together. well then i decided that because pooks is still to young to really care or pick his own theme, i would just decide for him. then i realized that HELLO we share a birthday, we'll just make it a joint party and i can help decide without being pushy ;) so i told politely suggested a 'pirate theme' and pooks response was ''ARGH" so we're going with it. shiver me timbers matey!
  

• -sometimes i feel as though i have all this seemingly great ideas and i really want to run with them ya know? but then i realize that i might be a wee bit in over my head. like making diaper cakes. i love doing it, i make a little bit of spending cash and everyone is happy. i feel useful as a human being and not "just" as a mom, and it works. but then add those orders to my plan for the *perfect* mothers day gift, which truly is perfect. and i would tell you but i can't; and not because my mom doesn't know (because, well she does) but because it's also part of my brother and future SILs wedding gift. needless to say that it is time consuming in a different kind of way. the general idea is easy, getting everything needed to detail the general idea is the time consuming part. then i don't know if i ever blogged about it, but i also started a moms group. so i'm the organizer and planner of that too. which means i have to force my creative juices to plan and organize activites that kids will enjoy but that the moms will too; that work with a variety of age ranges.

i have GOT to learn how to balance things better.

(for some unknown reason the formatting just F'ed up and i can't allign the following paragraph correctly)
all of these things are are {obviously} in addition to my daily responsibilities/expectations that come with being a mom/wife/daughter/best friend/sister/living-breathing-human. some days, i'm just tired. like right now, i can think of at least 4 things {finishing a cake order, working out on the wii, planning may activities for the group, working on the moms day gift, showering, sleeping} that i should be doing instead of blogging, yet here i am. can we say procrastinator?

• pooks has learned how to stay ''i want that''. not only has he learned how to say it, but he's already learned how to over use phrase. referring to m&m's? done. toys? done. food? done. uncooked egg noodles drying on the counter? done. coloring books? done. a bottle of glue? yep. don't get me wrong, it was cute the first 5 times.

happy easter!!

i hope that everyone reading had a happy easter! we did...low-key but nice! the boys woke up around 8:30am and we kept them busy upstairs while nanaw and papa drove over. once they were here, the boys came downstairs, tore through their baskets then hunted for eggs. originally i thought we'd do the egg hunt outside but the weather didn't cooperate so we were forced to have it indoors. oh well, the boys enjoyed it. nanaw had to work at 11am today so we didn't have the traditional Easter sprial cut, juicy ham dinner. instead we enjoyed a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and coffee. i know for a fact that bubba liked it--he ate 3 pancakes! what a little porker. anywho, that's about it for us. here are the pics!

their baskets

{each kiddo received a book & the little dudes each got a pez dispenser, bunny toy with runts, a jelly bean ''carrot'', chocolate cars and teddy grahams. peanut got a light-up toy and binkys}

bubba checking out the baskets....

peanut staring at the egg light

sleepy lil' guy wasn't up for much, he's fighting off that virus

pooks searching for eggs

finding the eggs

once he realized that they were full of m&m's, he lost interest in hunting and just wanted to eat!

getting papa's help to open the egg

by bedtime, i finally found the bunny ears. go figure, right? so we snapped a few pics before bed...

bubba loved the ears. he WAS the easter bunny

pooks didn't really care about the ears at all

not.a.fan at all!

not even if *i* was wearing them!

it was nice out!

finally!

the boys are sick; well bubba and pooks both have a virus and an ear infection. (peanut has a bit of a cough, right now we are just keeping an eye on him). the little dudes are now on antibiotics and they seem to be doing much better. this morning pookie had a fever of 102...poor lil guy. B actually stayed home from work today because they both woke with fevers, they both were fussy and whiney and i knew i'd have to get pooks into the doctor. he was so hot, pulling on his ears, and i have never seen him so clingy...it was obvious that he didn't feel good.

well after a dose of antibiotics, a round of motrin and a nap they were in much better spirits! obviously i didn't want to take them to the park {hello, they are contagious} but we did take them outside. it was SO nice out! a light breeze and about 71 degrees made for a beautiful afternoon and we took full advantage of it. here are a few pics:






oh and you *might* have noticed that pooks got his haircut...and yes mom, i know i know, you hate it. well when the little guy has a fever of 102 and is sweating, then he is pulling on his hair all around his left ear, he just looked hot and miserable. i made an executive decision, so you'll have to deal with it. sorry! (but i think that he looks adorable!)