Happenings

Lots of stuff going on this past week. We've got Friday night at Friendly's, Barclay the wonder dog somehow managed to get in to the clubhouse with Tyler and Juliet, I got to have a few hours of pampering and some drinks with the girls, Tyler and Juliet having fun swinging in a blanket, fun at the park with ducks, more snow, fixing Dad's car, and a little guy who is starting to explore outside and has his own ways of getting down steps. Phew, now picture overload!

Playtime

I might have to start a separate blog just to document things my kids say...

Tyler and I were reading his big brother book the other night and I asked him if he remembered when Zac was born and when he came to the hospital to see him. His response was "Yeah, and I ate ravioli.". So Zac, what he remembers from your birth is ravioli, sorry kid. I can't understand how kids remember things like eating ravioli at the hospital a year prior. It's crazy.

Tyler and I were walking up to the bathroom the other day and I was kicking his butt to be funny. He turned to me and said "Mommy, I don't appreciate you doing that." The words he uses blows my mind.

Last Friday, we were watching tv and I had a beer and set it on the table. I walked out of the room and when I came back in Tyler was standing on the couch leaning against the cushions with the beer up to his lips (mind you dave was sitting right next to him on the couch totally engrossed in Wild Kratts.) When I asked Tyler what he was doing he said "Mom, I'm just pretending". Oh ok, in that case just go about your business then ;)

This past weekend, Nash and Juliet came over to play. It snowed on and off all day Saturday. So we had some good times playing inside. Spring, just so you know we're ready whenever you'd like to make your appearance!

First off, no nap means that around 5 o'clock you might just pass out for a little refresher before friends come over to play :)





























I finally got a picture of our little friend who visits every morning.

Luck of the Non-Irish...

It's here again (I'm a day early), the day where we all have an excuse to drink and celebrate being Irish, or not so Irish, or we're Scottish and Welsh and that's close enough to being Irish, right? For the record, people always think Dave and I are Irish. So it works. And we've produced two fair skinned boys who may or may not inherit our freckles. I guess only time will tell. No one in the family has inherited the bright red hair that Dave's Mom, her sister and Dave's Grandma have. There's 11 kids/grandkids that could have inherited it and not a one has red hair. Oh, except for Dave's beard, which is randomly red.

Last year at this time, we were sitting in the front yard in short sleeves. We already had 3 days that hit 70 (very rare, but it made my maternity leave glorious). This year, we're going to have some snow showers today and I just heard the meteorologist say something about feeling like 30 outside. You never know what's going to happen around this place. Mother Nature keeps us on our toes.

The boys had their St. Patty's day parties at school yesterday and I dressed them alike in Ninja Turtle shirts. I don't dress them alike too often, but when one gets a Ninja Turtle shirt, the coolness factor of the other shirts doesn't compare in a little boys eyes, so they both got one. Tyler came home and said "I ate broccoli and green beans at lunch. They were good." You think he will ever eat this stuff at home? Not a chance. Peer pressure is great sometimes. He also came home last week after his green eggs and ham breakfast at school and said "Mom, I love green eggs. I just don't like regular color eggs." Go figure. All I need is some green dye.

I interupt this post to say a fox just greeted me at the back door. And there's a coyote in the neighborhood. This makes a certain 3 year old boy think he's one of the Wild Kratt brothers, I just asked he says he's Chris. He looks for animals out the window as if it was his job.

Before we get to pictures, I forgot to mention one important moment from last weekend when Dave was away. We were playing outside and Tyler decided to take some rocks off our neighbors garden rock wall. While I was putting the rocks back he ran up to the next neighbors house and swung a bat at their hanging frog bird feeder as if it was a pinata. The bat was apparently laying beneath the feeder and he thought something would come out of the frog. He came running back through the yards with the look of fear on his face saying "I broke it." Off we went to apologize to Ms. Patty for taking the bat to her frog. He knocked on her door, told her he was sorry and even said "We'll buy you a new one" and that was without my prompting. He kindly asked her to put the bat somewhere else so he wouldn't be confused next time. Ms. Patty had to turn her head she was laughing so hard. Thank goodness for the neighbors we have. They really are the best.

Zac in the cup on my head is super duper funny series...











Last night we had to pull a splinter out of Tyler's hand. You can see he was very sad, but quickly got over it.











Karen and I recently has a conversation about the dreaded "man cold". My future looks bleak in this department.



Stealing his brothers ice





And I finally got a picture of "the squat" that Zac does. I love it ♥

When Dad leaves town...

I write about this stuff below so I can look back in years to come and laugh about the chaos that always happened when Dave left town. Murphys Law.

Dave returned home last night after being gone for 15 days. A test of my mothering with two kids for 15 days without my other half was quite eventful. The first week was great. Dave came home after that week for 2 days and I told him we had a great week. No stress, no problem, kids were good. I've got this. I should've known I would jinx myself by saying that.

He left again on Monday around noon and by 2 o'clock the phone rings and it's daycare. Ask any working mom knows how your stomach feels when you see the daycare number show up (especially when said husband just left town). It sinks. It was Tyler's teacher telling me he ran in to a pole on the playground and when she looked back he was laying on the ground. All was fine, but she wasn't quite sure how to write up the incident without it sounding crazy so she just called to let me know. Then Zac's teacher gets on the phone just to let me know he wasn't being himself, but no fever. Just a heads up for later when I pick him up. By 4 o'clock I got another call that Zac had a 102 fever. Off I go to get them. Call Grammy 911 (my Mom), she said she'd come down to watch him, thanks Mom! Juggling work and sick kids is no fun. 6 sick days/year, little vacation time since I used it all on maternity leave last year and am still building it up, this is the hardest part of being a working mom, it really is. Zac ended up getting pretty sick and had a double ear infection and a 104 fever when he went to get checked out on Wednesday. I was pretty much sick the entire week also with the same thing as Zac. Grammy stayed until Thursday night and I stayed home on Friday and ended up keeping Tyler home too because I didn't have the motivation to leave the house when we woke up to snow on Friday morning.

Jill came down Saturday with the kids for her bday and the weekend was gorgeous and felt like Spring! Even though we just had a few inches of snow the day before it fell and melted pretty quickly. I had to get Zac's antibiotic switched on Saturday because he still wasn't feeling better, but we still played outside, went to the zoo and enjoyed the warm spring sunshine that weekend. I also locked myself out of the house twice while Dave was gone, but the second time all spares keys were in the house. $200 later a locksmith got me back in and it was at that point that I texted Dave and said "I think this has been the worst week of my life". He was skiing in Vermont because he already had a trip planned to take Kyle skiing before his work scheduled two trips back to back. Hence the 15 days.

Zac would not leave my hip for 7 days. We ended our weekend with a Sunday dinner trip to McDonald's so they can play and I had nothing left by this point. Dinner went well, but we ended the trip with a screaming session in the McDonald's bathroom by Zac while Tyler was going to the bathroom (half naked because he just had to get undressed to go to the bathroom in McDonald's of course). And Zac dropped his binky in front of the toilet there and I refused to let him have it back (and believe me, I'm pretty lenient with germs, but not this time). Then, as we left, I accidentally pushed the door open and Tyler's fingers were in the door. Cue screams and some looks from the worker who was also present in the bathroom for the chaos that happened in there. On the way home Tyler said to me "Mommy, can you please never do that again to my fingers?".

Sunday night Zac was up from 3:30-4:45, but Monday I had to just take him to school and hope for the best. I went to work and prayed I wouldn't get a phone call. I didn't. We got home on Monday and Zac was an animal. I wrestled him to take his medicine. I bribed with hot fudge, strawberry jelly and peanut butter. I didn't care if he never had peanut butter and what if he's allergic and I'm home here alone, I'd figure it out if he was allergic, but I was desperate to get him to take a full dose of meds without spitting it out. Nope, nothing worked. It's like wrestling a 200 pound man to get him to take his meds. Tyler never, ever gave us problems with this. Guess it wouldn't be fair if you had two kids that took medicine well. I put him to bed, asked Karen if she could come over and sit at our house while T and I went to feed Ryan and Juli's cats (thank goodness for our awesome neighbors, thanks Karen!). I woke up Tuesday morning at 5:23 and thought "No one woke me up last night, this is fabulous!". Lots more chaos happened that week, but I'd be writing all day if I included it all.

When I picked them up yesterday everyone was happy as can be. And Dave had just come home. Of course. The minute Dad walks back in to the house we all go back to normal and life is happy again. The End.

Here's some pictures of cuddles with grammy, ninja moves, playing in the last snowfall of the season (hopefully!), feeding Juliet snow, cheers with hot chocolate, funny incident report, last snowman standing, Zac learns how to crawl on to the couch, and first zoo trip of the season and birthday celebration for Jill.