A Big Girl Seat!

This week has had a couple of big changes for Lucy. She got new shoes (post and pictures to follow) and she got a new seat. Yesterday Eric told me Lucy was Houdini and got out of the high chair on her own. I have been thinking about moving her to the big table for a couple of months now and today I put the booster seat on a chair and let her give it a try. I think it will be a great move for Lucy. She always wants to be part of the big kids and this will giver her even one more way to do it!

Super Big Girl!

I think I will still keep her in a high chair at restaurants and stuff for awhile. The boosters there don't exactly stay still and I think she will end up falling out of them. But for now and for home a little lady is now one of the big kids!

Andrew's 100

Andrew's class is having a party for the 100th day of school party. To celebrate Andrew had to make a collection of 100 something's and bring it to class to share. He chose chocolate chip cookies. Which meant that I had to make 100 cookies. Andrew's part of the assignment was that he had to draw 100 cookies on his collection sheet. Sure enough he drew 100 little cookies with black chocolate chip dots on them. It took him about 20 minutes. The cookies took me a bit longer.


I was a little concerned that it was going to take me 3 or 4 batches of cookies to finally fulfill all 100 cookies but when I looked at the recipe on the back of the Tollhouse bag (thank you Costco) it said that each batch made 5 dozen cookies. Well I can tell you for a fact that I have never had that many cookies turn out from a batch that I have done but I also am kinda lazy with the baking part and make my cookies big. So this time I tried really hard to make them small. So I wouldn't have so many batches to make.

Andrew was a big help with the stirring process. I used my big stand mixer last night to make some corn bread so these cookies were made the old fashioned way with a whole lot of elbow grease. We even broke a wooden spoon in the process! Plus I was a bit concerned that a double batch would kill my kitchen aid mixer and that would be a tragedy!

The end result of the cookies was 108 cookies made. Not too shabby if I say so myself. I got 20 on each sheet so I wasn't standing in the kitchen all day. And there are still some leftovers for the kids and Eric to eat. If anyone eats the 100 before his party I may just have to throttle them though!

Miss Independent Sassy Pants

So Lucy has been in a mood lately. She is getting extremely independent and opinionated. She has figured out how to get up and down the staircase without any help. And with that knowledge has come the realization that it is up to her to do it at will. For example, several weeks ago when she was first learning how to do the stairs it was always fun to go up them. Now when it is bath time we have to corral her up the stairs because going up them was not her idea. She also has gotten quite opinionated over when and how she gets down the staircase. In general with my kids once they have figured out a skill and time is not an issue I insist that they do it on their own.

This morning I was done with my shower and I went downstairs. Lucy thought that I needed to carry her down the staircase. She has been going up and down these steps at will for about a week and I was standing on the staircase to make sure she did not fall. Instead of just coming down the stairs she stomped her feet at me at the top of the stairs and threw a fit.

Also Lucy has decided that no one is allowed on Eric or my lap if she wants on it. She will come over to us, pull on who ever is on our lap (this morning it was Zane) and scream at us until she gets her way (there is a LOT of screaming and crying going on at our house right now). Also she has taken to pinching me if I am not giving her the proper sympathy during her tantrums. Just a hint, it doesn't go over very well with me. Oh Terrible Twos! How I do love you!

Hair by Eric!

A few weeks ago you will recall that I cut Andrew's hair to look "just like daddy." Well, we didn't necessarily get that reasoning out of Zane but he did let Eric cut his hair this last week. When we first cut Andrew's hair we asked Zane if he wanted me to cut his too. He determinedly said NO! After some days of talking about hair cuts Zane kept mentioning that he wanted his hair cut at the place with the suckers. EUREKA! We figured out what the draw was to the barber shop. So we asked Zane if we could cut his hair if WE gave him a sucker. He decided a sucker from home would work just as well. But only daddy could cut his hair. Fine by me.

Before Eric the barber.....

After! What a masterpiece!

We did not use as short a blade with Zane's hair so I think it turned out better. Not quite the scalping that I did with Andrew. In fact if you saw them side by side you would think that they had gotten their hair done on the same day. AHHHHHH..... $32 saved feels pretty good!

Braving the Mall

So today the kids and I braved the mall. It really isn't terrible to take all three with me. They are quite well behaved and listen most of the time. Eric has been gone since yesterday at noon and I was feeling like I needed an activity to break the day up. Hopefully he will be home before bedtime for the kids. It has been not fun taking Lucy places lately. She definitely knows how to walk now and is pretty stable at it so she constantly wants to be out of the stroller and on her feet. I am not quite ready for that yet. Currently I am just using my big Graco stroller but as soon as this new little one shows up I will be taking our double MacLaren everywhere. Newborns can be in it because the seats recline all the way and then I will have options for if Lucy starts ripping stuff off shelves. Teaching kids how to behave in stores is not exactly fun but I do remember having Andrew and Zane in a store when Zane was a newborn and getting so frustrated with Andrew taking socks off the little hangers at the register. I ended up carrying him upside down (he hated it) as I marched through the mall and back to the car. It is one of my finer mommy moments for sure. I think I am possibly more even tempered now but I still have those days for sure. One thing I know, I will not entirely forsake the mall just because of kids! That would just be crazy!

Doing the Trek

Yesterday we travel down to Eatonville to go to Northwest Trek with our friends Chris and Mandy and their little guy Owen. Northwest Trek was running a deal that kids got in free with a paying adult so we were all over that type of adventure! Along with the kids get in free deal was a scavenger hunt where you were looking for Food, Shelter, Water and Space (Living Space I am guessing). You had to mark off a certain amount of boxes of each one. The kids each had a sheet and they ran around and got the boxes marked off. Each paper had an animal on it as well and their were "predators" around the park who the kids were supposed to ask if they were wild animals. If they were and they ate what the kids animals were then they lost a life. Zane was a grasshopper and Andrew was a pygmy rabbit. They only ran into one creature, a bobcat, who ate them both. At the end of the day they got a prize if they had any lives left.

The game was lots of fun and actually made Eric and I think that we should put something like that together for the next time we go to the zoo.

As you can probably tell it was FREEZING! I don't know that the temperature got over 40 degrees at all. Lucy was not excited about being in the stroller but it is awfully hard to slow down to a 13 month olds pace. Plus if I am going to have her walking in that type of weather real shoes are necessary. But I digress. After Lucy finally fell asleep in the stroller we went and looked at the rest of the animals (first thing we did was the tram that takes you through the whole park). We saw lots of animals, although most of them were sleeping. Not a bad idea in that type of weather!

I got a couple of good pictures. Most of the antlered families have shed them for the year but we did catch this big bull elk just begging for his picture to be taken. If you haven't been to Northwest Trek I definitely recommend it. But pick a warmer day for goodness sake!

Man vs. Baby: Who You Gonna Back?

Yesterday we had a brawl at our house. Ok, so it may have been less of a brawl and more of a one sided fight. All I know is Lucy fights dirty and she fights to win! Eric was stretching out before he went on a run in the morning. Lucy came up to him and viciously and violently attacked him (aka: she poked him in the eye).


All day long Eric complained about his eye hurting him. By evening he could hardly stand to blink and the eye was bright red. He did keep telling me that she had poked him in the white part of the eye and why couldn't I see anything. This morning Eric finally went to the eye doctor after being in extreme pain all night long. Doctor put in eye drops and immediately found the problem. Lucy not only poked him in the eye, she poked him about as dead center in the eyeball as she could. (nowhere near where Eric indicated) And she poked him good, because the doctor called it a deep cut to the cornea. A marksmen I tell you! Sign the girl up for archery lessons!

Eric came home from the doctor with a prescription for eye drops and Vicodin. Apparently if you are poked in the white part of your eye it doesn't hurt that much. The cornea, on the other hand, can be extremely painful! He has spent most of the day hopped up on pain killers and running from Lucy in fear that she is out for his other eyeball. He really was hoping for a pirate patch though.

If I had to pick sides in a fight though... my money's on Lucy!

Two Days of Pee

So the past two days have been filled with pee incidents. It has been lovely. (Please read with all the sarcasm intended) On Thursday we had our first pee incident. Eric and I were headed to See's Candy for some Valentine's love for me. (I LOVE FANCY CHOCOLATES!!!) Before we went though we took the kids to McDonald's on 196th. They have a huge play area that is always packed but lots of fun. I go to start ordering and the kids run to the play area. As I am ordering a lady came to the counter and said that some little boy had just taken off his pants and underwear and PEED in the toy. The manager was not excited in the least because now the whole toy had to be shut down and cleaned. Now I just want to assure you that it was not either of my little boys that were the pee-er. However in the process of getting out of the toy Zane managed to crawl through the pee and then go down the slide. Great. Now I have a child covered in some other child's urine. Fortunately we had replacement stuff with us so he could change.

Yesterday I went to Cyndy's house like I usually do. I think Zane was trying to make it to the potty but he didn't make it. So again he is covered in pee, this time his own. I had no emergency clothes because I had just used them the day before. Fortunately Cyndy has a little guy who is about Zane's size and she let me borrow some pants and unders for the kid. I think Zane must have been having one of those sleepy days because later in the evening he peed his pants again. So if you haven't guessed I have been doing a lot of laundry. At least all accidents were on hard wood or tile so there were no carpets involved. Ideally that will be the end of the peeing for awhile though. Cleaning it up is not my favorite thing. Although I suppose there are much worse things to clean up.

Strange???

So for the past week or so my kids have been eating egg salad sandwiches for lunch. And not because Eric and I are forcing them to eat it. Rather they really, REALLY like them. All of the kids too. I have never seen Lucy mow through a sandwich so quickly. When Andrew asked to have one the other day with me I thought he will take one bite and be done. Nope, in fact he ate a big sandwich (2 pieces of bread) and I think he would have eaten more if I would have let him. Crazy. I can't get them to eat half of anything else but egg salad, possibly the most stinky of lunch time choices, they inhale. Kids, I shall never understand them!!!

Enough For Piggies

Today I tried to put pigtails in Lucy's hair. I was pleasantly surprised that she has enough to do it now. She looks awfully stinking cute in my opinion!!! Next up will be braids. Although I think I am going to have quite the wait for that one!

The universal "Don't take my picture" face.

Close up of the piggies!

My Sweet Girl!

My Zaner. He gets a bit jealous when I am just taking pictures of Lucy (even if it is just for a particular blog post) so I am posting one of him in his Thomas shirt. Quite the popular attire!

Valentine's Project

Tonight Andrew and I worked on his Valentine Party holder for all the valentines he is going to receive next week. I am so uncrafty but Andrew seemed pretty pleased with the outcome. It is hard to be a boy with an inartistic mom but somehow he will survive. I think my biggest frustration is that I don't have anything to do cute and crafty things with. I don't scrap and I don't make cards so my resources for the cute stuff are limited. And I really don't find it necessary to go to the store and buy the stuff every third day. Frankly I was embarrassed to realize that I didn't even own cotton balls when we were supposed to make snowmen. YIKES! At least this project turned out kinda cute. And Andrew is happy with it which is the most important thing! :)

***Oh and as you can see his eye still looks terrible!

Random Updates

So we haven't been up to anything exciting lately but since it has been awhile I thought I would give you the bits and pieces I do have.

Zane just finished his latest session of preschool 1 (aka: Minnows) in swimming lessons. He has now finally passed. He started a new lesson tonight still in preschool 1. The lessons are ridiculously difficult to get into so I always stick with what I have signed them up for for the whole quarter. When it comes time to register next week I will sign him up for preschool 2 (aka: jellyfish). We are going to do morning lessons next time with him. That should be fun getting me up and at them in the morning!

This evening we got the first of what I can only assume will be years of snotty teen comments from Zane. Eric and I had asked him to go let Phoenix out. Zane had already been in trouble for coloring on something he wasn't supposed to so he was sitting on the floor pouting. As he walked to the door to let the dog out he said, "You guys just need to chill out!" I kid you not. Eric and I both about lost it. Generally one of us is able to keep our composure for a few seconds to get after the child being naughty but this one about did both of us in. Oh the years ahead should be fun. Somehow that comment coming out of a 12 year old mouth though.... not quite the same amused response I am sure.

Andrew has been quite busy with swimming and school and such. We signed him up for T-Ball this spring and he is VERY excited for it to start. This is also the reason Zane is going to do daytime swimming lessons. I am pretty adamant about only having them in one activity at a time and having Zane go to swimming in the evening and not letting Andrew in the pool is kinda mean.

If you are noticing the nice scrape on Andrew's face and wondering if it is new; you are correct! Andrew found out a very valuable lesson today. Going down the slide on your knees can have dire consequences. Eric and I heard this unholy shriek come from the backyard and lo and behold Andrew came to the house looking like that. Of course Eric and I both thought it was the dog so we were actually kinda relieved when it was just a scrape from the slide. I don't think he will be repeating that feat anytime again in the near future though.

Lucy has been busy doing a whole lot of nothing. The best new I have for her is that she finally has cut one of her secondary incisors on the bottom. I thought they were never coming in. She has been kinda crabby lately so maybe the other one will be making an appearance soon as well.

Well, that is all for our crew! Hopefully I will have other news that is more exciting for you soon.