Funny ongoings

Last night at dinner Shane refused to eat, so we put him to bed with no dinner. Mind you, it was the exact same dinner he loved the night before, but last night he wouldn't eat it because it was "all mixed up" and there were mushrooms in it. After a tantrum, Brian went up to talk to him and he said, "Tomorrow night can mommy make peas and carrots because mushrooms stink Dad."

Earlier in the week, Brian called Shane and Shane stormed over and said, "Your wasting my time Dad" and then he stormed off. This one was much funnier after the fact and not so funny at the time.

Every night I sing songs to Myann at bedtime, Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Spider, and Jesus Loves Me. She now knows the songs so well that she sings them quite loudly along with me. Tonight I was singing softly so I could really listen to her, since she doesn't know all the words. During Jesus Loves Me, instead of "little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong," Myann said "...but He is drunk." Now, I don't know how she knows the word drunk and am not 100% sure that is what she said, but it definitely sounded more like drunk than strong. I was cracking up, then of course she had to laugh too.

Last week, Brian brought Shane home from school and Shane said, "Why did you and Mommy have sister (Myann)? And why did you have brother (Anders)? Brian said well because we love them and Shane said, "Well we don't need anymore Dad, you can't bring home all the kids Dad. You'll break our house." I guess Shane wouldn't support an Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt family. However, just this morning Shane said that Myann and I needed a baby girl because he and Daddy had a baby boy. So we'll see.

Giganta Baby

Today was Anders' 4 month doctor appointment. Mind you, he is 4 1/2 months, but this was the only appt I could get. As we expected, he is huge, hence the title giganta baby.
Weight 19 lbs. 14 oz. 100% plus (off the charts)
Length 26 1/4 inches. (90%)

Anders continues to be such a joy, how did we have 3 wonderful babies!!! He is all smiles and a chatterbox - Lord help us! He is trying to roll over, but rolling 20lbs is proving to be a challenge. He can sit up for a few seconds and then topples over, so he should be on his own before too long. He is even getting better about sleeping. Last week he slept 7 hours two nights and this week he has done 7 hours and 5 1/2 hours. He has not been as kind to me as his siblings with sleeping, but I guess he didn't get to be 20 lbs without a midnight snack or 3.

Check out these thighs!!!

Where have I been?

So this is the question of the week from friends and family both in Spokane and from afar. Well the answer is boring, we have just been busy. It took me forever to recover from Christmas in Texas and then we had visitors back to back.. Mind you we LOVED our visitors and had a great time, but it took us out of our routine, so I fell behind on blogging. I plan to backtrack and blog retrospectively for the past two months. So if you are interested, feel free to scroll back for a few months. I will do Myann's birthday, Christmas, Sandy and Cheryl's visit, and the Cross family visit. It will take me all weekend to catch up.

Cross Family visit

One of my closest friends, Jenny, and her family came to stay with us for a week. It was supposed to be their vacation, though a house with 5 children 3 and under probably does not constitute a vacation for anybody. We had a great time though. I was disappointed for them that they did not see any snow fall during their visit, but there was a ton of snow on the ground and we had freezing fog for most of the week, so the white trees were gorgeous. I wish I had taken pictures.
We went to Mobius, the mall, sledding at Manito, night snowmobiling, and Silver Mountain for the water park and tubing.







Shane loved having his girl Chloe stay for a week and will talk about her for a while, no doubt.

Shane and friend

Just a cute picture of Shane and his buddy Jameson.




And yes, Shane is wearing a halloween shirt. He likes to pick out his own clothes most days, and he really loves this shirt, so it will likely get lots of wear this year.

Asparagus

I think this has been discussed elsewhere in the blog, but funny enough to justify repeating.  We are not above using any means necessary to instill a love of veggies. We encouraged Shane to eat asparagus by telling him that it would make his pee stink. Some where along the way he decided veggies made his peepee strong.  So Shane said, "Anders has a strong peepee."  I asked, "What is a strong peepee?"  Shane says, "Well he ate asparagus in your tummy so now he has a strong peepee." Okay sure. 

Aunt Sandy and Cheryl visit

This weekend Aunt Cheryl and Aunt Sandy came for a visit. We stayed busy.
Friday was a hang out at the house day. Saturday we went to River Front Park ice skating rink and then dinner out at Luna. Sunday, we went to breakfast at Maggie's South Hill Grill and then bowling (in the dark with fluorecent lights) and then ice cream at Cold Stone. The kids loved having them here, but the dogs loved them the most.



Myann too cute in ice skates, they are the tiniest skates.



Cheryl getting bombarded with kids

Myann and Muffins

Ahh, my girl loves her mommas cooking. I was downstairs baking banana muffins, best recipe ever by the way, and Brian went upstairs to get Myann, she just woke up. As he was carrying her down the stairs, Myann said "I smell muffins, muffins cooking, muffins cooking." Then she came to me and said I want a muffin mommy. How sweet is that!

Last night was pretty funny with the kids. Myann was going around giving kisses to everyone, Aunt Cheryl and Aunt Sandy are in town. Well she got to Shane and asked for a kiss and Shane was playing his Leapster and said, "No, I'm busy, go away". Very mean of him. Well time passed, 45 minutes, and Shane was done with his Leapster so he went to Myann and said, "Ok Myann I'm ready for my kiss." She glared at Shane and said, "No I'm busy, I'm too busy Shane". And she went back to playing her puzzle. Touche!!! My girl has spunk!!!

Last funny of the day, Brian picked the kids up from preschool Wednesday. On the way home, Brian was talking to Shane and Shane said "I need to see Jesus Dad, I've never seen Jesus before." Brian said, "You have to close your eyes and you'll see him in your head and feel him in your heart." Shane closed his eyes and said, "No,just Baby Jaguars, Sponge Bob and friends." Gotta love kids and their bluntness.

Manic Monday

Brian taught me how to use the snow blower on Sunday, so I got up at 6:30 am to blow out the driveway before he left for work. So far I hate the blower and may go back to shoveling, ok, so maybe not, you just can't shovel snow this deep. But the blower really is pretty tough and then the snow kept blowing in my face, since you can't always blow with the wind or you end up blowing over the area you just did. Then I got a flat, yes, day one and I broke the darn thing. I am hoping it just needs air, but it was so flat that I may have put a hole in it cutting through the icy packed snow.

Monday started out wonderfully. Happy kids doing art projects. However, that gave way to kids who were done and started spreading glitter glue and foam pieces all over the living room. We picked up and did lunch. I was cleaning while they ate and their conversation went like this, Myann said "Barack Obama", Shane said, "hehe, Barack Obama". Then Myann "Barack Obama". I think they were saying more than this, but all I heard was Barack Obama. Oh brother, we are raising liberals, or at least we need to quit watching the news when they are around, since they are really listening.

Kids wow me

What an impressive kid I have!!! He loves to make cards with his foam letter stickers. Well he told me he wanted to make a card for me. He asked how to spell mom and I told him M-O-M. I walked away to clean up the kitchen and came back to this picture. We were apparently out of M's, so Shane used his creative skills to use E's on their sides to make M's. What a little smarty pants.

Great Day!!!

Maybe I am crazy, or maybe I am still a Texas girl at heart who is SUPER excited to see the snow. I love snow. I know that my friends in Spokane are cursing me right now. Sorry, but I have been gone for 3 weeks, so today was our first day to play in the snow. We played hard!!! Anders passed out in the Bjorn, so I had the fun task of pulling Myann in the sled with 20 pounds in front of me. I got my work out for the day. Shane loved sledding, Myann loved being pulled in the sled, but she was kind of odd, you'll see in the pictures. Puppies loved the snow too, but watching them try to poop is sad, they do it with their butt as far from the snow as possible.





Myann sledding


As we pulled her back up, she leaned all the way back, it didn't make it any easier. Brian thought she had fallen asleep.


Anders asleep




Myann went in to warm up and locked us out, I tell you, she is rotten!!!



BTW, getting 3 kids ready for playing in the snow is an undertaking. Trying to coordinate getting them dressed, but not overheated in the house, so we all dressed in layer sessions. Luckily, the kids were super excited, so they were happy to cooperate.

As for Shane, he was better today, but still a stinker. Brian and I were trying to knock some snow off the roof, since we are afraid of getting a leak, tons of friends and neighbors are getting leaks from all the snow. And Brian was teaching me how to use the snow blower, well 10 minutes passed, and Shane and Myann had gone into the house and were unsupervised. The first time I came in, Shane was "melting" snow in water, so water was all over the kitchen floor. I went back out to move the truck so Brian could reach more of the roof. In the short time period, I came back in to a silent house. All moms know silence is bad. So I walked around calling for Shane and Myann, no answer. As I went upstairs, I heard giggles, low soft giggles. I walked in Shane's room and realized they were under Shane's bed - Shane has been taking food and toys and hoarding under his bed, so I was fearful of what I would find. I bent down to see two kids giggling with sheer delight faces covered in white cake icing. They had gotten a can of icing from the pantry, ripped it open and eaten half the can in less than 10 minutes. Amazingly, little icing was on them or the surrounding area, good or bad, they had eaten it all. Their enjoyment made it too hard for me to get angry. I told them to come out and clean up and they wouldn't be punished. There was some icing rubbed in the carpet, so I will be shampooing the carpet tomorrow. I would have taken a picture, but was afraid of how much more icing they would eat while I ran for the camera. Mom and Dad, this was reminiscent of the crisco story you tell about Alex and I. Ok, so crisco is much worse than icing, I shouldn't complain.




Our house in the snow. I love it, it looks like a cabin off in the woods.

Honesty of a 3 year old

We are going through a rough patch right now with Shane, and by ROUGH I mean HORRIBLE!!! I keep praying it is a stage. I really wonder what happened to my sweet well behaved 2 year old. Even early 3 he was fine, but the past 4 months have been bad. It began with back talking and now that is a dream of the past. The new Shane is mischievous, to the point of dangerous. He has brought childproofing to a whole new level. Try childproofing a boy who can undo any lock or gate and scale the highest shelves. We are seriously considering padlocking everything. Which is why I have been awake since 5am, standing guard to keep him out of things he shouldn't get into since he is awake and on the prowl. As for the honest part, yesterday Anders was crying as Brian and I were trying to childproof the pantry door, not easy with bi fold doors. Then Anders' whiny cry gave way to a blood curdling scream. I run to him to see Shane scurrying away with a rotten grin. I asked him what happened and he gladly told me that he jabbed Anders in the eye with his finger. Real nice, let's just say Shane went down for an early nap. Next example, this morning he came in at 5am to go to the bathroom. As I am wiping his behind he said, "Mom don't follow me to my room." You could have seen the light bulb above my head glowing, I knew he was up to no good. So I waited a minute and found him in his room getting into the medicine bag I keep in the diaper bag with a small thing of Tylenol, his epi pen, and baby teething gel. I was less concerned with him taking the medicine and more concerned with him dumping it into the carpet, which is his disobedience of choice the past month.

I welcome any tricks to stop this and suggestions on why it has become so bad. The obvious being the birth of Anders and Shane feeling replaced or neglected, or any of that other emotional stuff that comes with a new baby. But while we were in Texas, he was getting all the attention he could want and he still did rotten things when it was time to sleep. Mostly they involved dumping bath gels and shampoos into carpets or sneaking junk food. At Grandpa Jo's I spent 2 hours one night shampooing all the kids bath gel out of their carpet at 10 pm. Then at my mom's he snuck a box of fruit rollups in his room during nap. While the men thought he was sleeping, mom and I were out shopping, Shane consumed 9 fruit rollups. At 3 feet each, that is 27 feet of sugar. His poop was bright green as late as yesterday. I know the psych reason for that behavior, he doesn't eat his meal and then he waits until no one is looking and gets junk food. I am about to ban all snacks from my house unless the new pantry lock I ordered works.

I really don't like to post negative stuff on my blog, but I needed to get this out and really could use some advice. Otherwise I will be sending Shane off to my cousin Micah for discipline 101, Micah has the best behaved kids I have ever seen.

New Year's Eve

Ahh!! (Brian and I)
The Boys (Alex and Brian)

The girls (Danielle and I in our party hats)
Happy New Year!!!

We had a wonderful New Year Celebration in Dallas. My mom and stepdad watched the kids so we could go out with my brother and his wife, Danielle. We went to the Dallas Stars game and braved the crowds after to enjoy some drinks and music. Brian and I had never been to an NHL game, so that was a treat. Also, a night with no kids and FREE babysitting, can't beat that. Plus we stayed out until almost 1am, I can't recall the last time we did that.