Snow Day

Bodie finally got to enjoy a snow day this weekend. Last year he was afraid of the snow, but yesterday he was very excited to go out and play. Unfortunately it was very cold out so he didn't get to enjoy it for long but he had a good time while it lasted. He might get another shot at it this weekend if the snow fall predictions for tonight and tomorrow hold up.

Fun + Frustration = 2 year olds

Bodie has been a ball of fire lately, in good ways and bad.

Fun

• He is so sweet with Barrett. I tried getting a video of him singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to Barrett one night but as soon as I got out the camera he wanted to be on the other side. Also whenever Barrett is fussy Bodie will get close to him and in a high pitched, baby-talk kind of way, say "It's ok Barrett, it's ok". Also after he gives Barrett a kiss he declares "I so nice".


• He is a huge helper. We've found a new job for him around the house, sorting the silverware:


• He loves counting and singing his ABCs.


• Has a new need to take his (empty) backpack to school.
• He really uses his imagination. He brings us pretend ice cream, cookies and M's (M&Ms) every day. The other day he was pressing down a button on one of Barrett's toys and told me he was making coffee (since we grind the beans when we make it).
• He uses our words against us, and I'll admit I find it funny. Last night I was sitting at the computer and he pointed to the router and said "leave it alone". He'll also put his feet on the coffee table and then say "I need to put my feet down". At least we know he is hearing what we tell him even if he isn't listening.
  

Frustration

• Sleeping time has become so frustrating. Not only does he come out of his room multiple at bed time, but he comes out during the night. At 2 am he will tell me "I have good nap".


• There have been a couple of occasions where he will not want to chew and swallow his food at dinner. We don't let him leave the table until the food is gone from his mouth, and this led to a one and a half hour stand off one night. Finally at 8, Curt turned out the lights and told Bodie good night. Which led to spitting out the food and much screaming. Aren't we great parents? Here he is during the stand off:


• No desire to potty train. This isn't hugely frustrating yet, but I think it is going to be a tough road. One day we let him have all the apple juice he wanted while hanging out sans diaper, with his potty chair in the living room. He kept asking for a diaper and finally peed on the carpeted floor. He always asks to go potty and will sit forever and not actually do his business until he has a diaper back on.

Lights Out

When Curt and I built our house 6 years ago, we were both first time (soon-to-be) homeowners, and pretty clueless about things related to not only owning a home, but the building of that home. So we didn't ask a lot of questions, such as "where is said light fixture we are picking out exactly going to be placed." Shopping for our light fixtures was not a great, get along, moment for us. I wanted nice fixtures and Curt wanted cheap fixtures. We mostly compromised (some of us, well me, very begrudgedly) and have mostly descent ones, but a few definitely leave something to be desired. Anyway, one set of light fixtures I have never liked are the ones in our stairway (same fixture, same switch, two occurrences). I hated them even more on the walk through of our home where I found one placed in the middle of the stairwell, at the top of our fairly high ceiling. We had thought it would be placed above the landing at the top of the stairs. Shows what we knew. I asked the builder's representative how we'd ever change that light bulb and he basically said he didn't know. Nice. So we waited for the inevitable. And waited. And waited for 6 years, until it finally went out this week. We'd replaced its partner fixture's bulb once or twice, but the big one up high stayed lit. Today Curt went out and bought a new contraption for changing light bulbs (the packaging never indicated it could be used on the fixtures) and got to work. After some frustrations he finally got the fixture down and the bulb changed. We put a CFL bulb in there so hopefully it will have another lengthy life ahead of it. The tough task came to putting the fixture back up. The apparatus thingy suctioned itself to the fixture but not enough to turn it properly. Curt began to lose the grip on the fixture and told me I'd have to catch it as it dropped (given that I hate the fixture I probably wasn't going to try too hard to catch it). I told him it was probably better if I held the changing thingy and he caught the fixture. We had a switch off, the fixture began to drop, and I see Bodie walking up the stairs. I screamed! Curt caught the fixture thankfully...the last thing I needed was for it to drop straight on Bodie, or shatter on the half wall and crumble on Bodie. With his next attempt Curt was able to get the fixture back up. I believe this fixture has shot ahead of our ugly bathroom fixtures on my list of replacements. We are definitely going to get an open, drop down type fixture in the future.

All things Christmas

So our Christmas festivities went much better than I could have imagined. Way better than the horror I imagined in my previous post. Bodie was very well behaved in Chruch. Although he spent most of his time sitting with Grandpa, which I think would make any kid behave well. I didn't even have to pull any distractions out of the bag until mass was more than half over. And mass was only about an hour and a half. I think I had confused Christmas Eve with Easter Vigil, which is very long. I did try to feed Bodie before we went but he really wouldn't eat. He more than made up for that later, putting away pizza, bread sticks, spaghetti, cookies, and some candy at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Bodie was very much into opening gifts this year. With each package he unwrapped he exclaimed, "what's that." Although the way it came out sounded much more like "Wuz up" so I just cracked up every time he said it. As always, my parents were very generous with the gifts they gave, and we had fun spending time with everyone.

Today we opened the gifts we received from Curt's family and the ones the boys received from us. Curt and I didn't exchange. Instead, he gets to go to 2 golf tournaments next year and I bought myself a new camera and I'll also get a new purse and pajamas, as soon as I can find ones I like.

Grandma bought each grandchild a Santa hat. Unfortunately she couldn't figure out how to get them on so there is no photo of all the kids wearing them, as she'd imagined. Curt came to the rescue and put Bodie's on, and he wasn't taking it off.



We bought Bodie a football outfit (helmet, shoulder pads, pants and jersey). He wore the helmet but didn't want anything to do with the shoulder pads. Thankfully Barrett had no opinions on the situation.

A Christmas-time Vent

Before there were any grandchildren in our family, we typically would get together for Christmas Eve mass and head to my parent's house for pizza and presents. Since the kids have come along, my brother and his wife have been attending their home Church's service and then coming down afterwards. Last year we went to mass on Christmas day, and I had figured that would be our routine for the next several years, at least until the boys are old enough to sit through a longer mass. Well this year my brother and his family decided to come down for Christmas Eve mass. Since they are not even Catholic, and are coming to mass at a Catholic Church, we are pretty much expected to go as well. I am soooo not looking forward to this. Do they remember how long the service lasts. That it goes right through dinner time (obviously not a big deal to me but I'm just thinking of the kids). Maybe their 1 and 3 year olds are very mature and can sit for 2 hours. I know my 2 year old cannot. I fully expect someone will be spending at least half the time with him in the back. And then my mom decided to order pizza for dinner tonight. Fine. Except the pizza place closes at 7 so she'll be leaving mass early to get it. Really? How does that even make sense? At least I told her she can take Bodie with her if he is misbehaving. I'm about ready to say we will not be going to church and they all can go themselves. We can just go tomorrow. I guess my strategy will be to feed him a meal before we go (still tough given we don't have our fridge yet) so it will be fish sticks and easy mac. Lots of distractions for mass - books, colors. Maybe we'll make it and I can get past my debbie downer attitude. I'd so been looking forward to the holidays this year, I'm hoping this won't ruin it for me.

**Edited to say: I was going to run off my aggressions on the treadmill, which is now apparently broken. So that's just great...

What is this, a blog?

My blogging has taken a back seat to life over the past few months. Back in October, Curt broke his leg officiating (he had to correct me when I wrote refereeing in our Christmas letter) and I got super busy at work. I won't dwell on all of this, but things were very crazy at our house for a period of time. Thankfully Curt was off his crutches by Thanksgiving and we are slowly returning to normal. Or normal for us anyway. I don't think I've really cleaned our house since before the leg breaking incident. I was able to keep it unembarrassingly tidy until this past weekend. I knew I was off work the next 2 weeks and am focused on organizing and cleaning, so I didn't bother to pick up a thing this weekend. And then my mom came over today. Yikes. I warned her it was messy, but I could still tell she was shocked to walk in. Cleaning is definitely a big focus of my tomorrow. Today was spent finishing the Christmas shopping, wrapping, and assembling a new shelf to hold some toys in the basement. Also we are without a fridge right now because the compressor went out on our old one yesterday. We have a new one that is scheduled to be in on the 24th, but we are unsure when we'll actually get it. We thought we'd borrow my dad's truck and pick it up, but he is working that day. Curt called tonight to see if we could switch to delivery and, after calling several different numbers, someone was supposed to be calling him back. That was several hours ago. We might see about borrowing a friend's truck that day. We really don't want to wait until Friday to pick it up as it is a huge inconvenience to not have a fridge. We've tried keeping some of our goods in the garage and they just end up freezing. Tonight Bodie had what he dubbed "apple juice ice cream" which he was actually very excited about eating. Good thing too, because we could whip that up again tomorrow night for snack.

I guess the point of this post is to say I'll be back blogging with some regularity. Hopefully my posts will be a little bit more focused than this on is :)

Four Months

Barrett had his four month doctor visit on Monday. He is so good at the doctor, really calm and lets the doctor do his exam without fussing. It is a huge contrast to Bodie. Barrett seems to be doing great. He does have a little eczema but we got a script for some ointment that should clear it right up. I guess both of my boys inherited their daddy's sensitive skin.

At four months Barrett's stats are:

Height: 26 inches - 89th percentile

Weight: 15 lbs 12.6 oz - 74th percentile

Head: 16.5 inches - 45th percentile

We will wait another month or so before we begin Barrett on solids. I know Bodie was over 5 months when he started so that is our plan with Barrett also. Of course Curt thinks maybe we should think about starting sooner if Barrett keeps waking up during the night. He had been doing so well sleeping through the night, until the past few weeks. He did sleep through last night so hopefully the trend is returning on its own.