THIS is a good story

One day at preschool last May, was "Teacher Appreciation Day".  We were asked to bring one flower per teacher in order to add to a vase to make a bouquet.  My yard doesn't have any annuals at this time of the year, and I was super tempted to borrow steal my next door neighbor's Irises (it was only 2 after all!), but instead I went to the local grocery store at 8:30 the night before.  You might think that is procrastination, but I was putting it off as long as I could as fresh flowers just don't last in our house.  Well, the local grocery store sucks, I'm sorry to be crude, but it does.  The floral section is tiny and you could tell that it hadn't been tended to for the last 12 hours.  So my pickings were slim... not to mention, there was probably 20 other Moms picking through that same section on the same day!  So I finally settled on a bouquet of 2 hydrangeas.  I took them home and put them straight in the water with the food packet.  I jokingly told Brad, "They only have to stay alive for 12 hours.".  Well, the next morning Brad said, "Deanna, I'm really sorry, but the flowers are dead."  Of course he HAD to be joking, there's no way the flowers were dead..... But, oh yes, they were DEAD - well, one of them.  Which just proved to me that the grocery store SUCKS and it was nothing that I could have done wrong.

How could I take these 2 flowers to the class?  How could I take just one flower to the class?  I couldn't run past the store on the way to school - the baby still took a morning nap and it was just too much trouble. So I call to my friend down the street - great friend - former Texan, former Aggie - so much in common - she's my rock. She sends 2 of her 3 kids to the same school so I knew she must have bought an actual bouquet and might have flowers to spare.  So, of course, she doesn't just lend me a flower, she drops it off on her way to school.  She brought us a pink carnation.  Now, I will admit that the flowers were not quite equal in the garden status of life, but we had 2 LIVE, beautiful flowers, so I was fine with it.  I let Caden get the flower from Kiandra as she dropped the flower off.  He was carrying it around as we were loading in the car.  I tried my best to explain to him the delicateness of the flower, but he is a little B-O-Y and soon enough he started swinging it around like a nun-chuck.  SNAP!  Went the carnation stem.  Now the inequality of the flowers has been intensified.  We have one HUGE 4 inch round full hydrangea with a 12 inch stem and one tiny pink carnation with a 4 inch stem.  And it is time for school, so off we go!

Here are the flowers!

Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Leak are simply the best!

15 Months!

My love bug, snuggler, tickle-bug, giggle-monster, and jokester.  It is so fun to see the difference in personalities between both boys.  Carsten is much more play than work and he always makes us laugh.  I laugh even harder when he cracks himself up - which is fairly frequent.  He is just SILLY.  He does things that crack you up.  And that worries me for his future - I think he might turn out to be a class-clown.  He is great at independent play.  He enjoys company playing, but has no problem going off to play on his own.

He is NOT a big talker.  He is more into grunting and pointing - squealing on occasion.  He had so many ear infections, especially for that month and a half where we couldn't kick it, he went a while without hearing - which in turn has delayed his speech development.  We decided to go ahead and have him evaluated by the State Plan just to see if he was eligible for speech therapy. Their plan is a total body evaluation - physical, mental, social.  He did show that he is delayed in speech, BUT, his overall score was high enough that he didn't qualify for the state plan.  So for now, I am just working with him the best I can and we'll see if we need to seek out a speech therapist at the 18 month appointment.  His first word was Moma, but he wouldn't even use that on a daily basis, more just when he was in distress.  His favorite two words were Kitty (because they are in the house) and Shoe (because that means he gets to go play outside).  Speaking of, he LOVES to play outside!  Thank God for good weather and that we can finally get out!!!  He likes to play in our driveway, riding in a push car and pushing a lawn mower, he really enjoys swinging and digging in the sand box.  Around the house, he enjoys playing with cars and balls.  He likes to get into whatever big brother is doing. He LOVES books.  He seriously can't get enough reading.  Before bedtime and naps, he will throw a little fit when it is time to stop reading and starting sleeping.  He also reads all throughout the day as he comes across a book.  Minus the fit he throws after books have stopped, he has turned into a good sleeper.  He gives us 11 hours a night, sleeping from 7:30 - 6:30. And he also has a nap everyday for about 2 hours.  He has a little brown bear blanket that he takes to sleep with him - he calls him Brrrrrr.

He is a pretty good eater - fruits are his favorite by far.  He can eat a whole banana in one mouth full like a monkey, if not monitored closely.  He loves berries, especially blackberries.  Still not big on some textures like rice.  We eat lots of crackers, grilled cheeses and fruit.

I just LOVE him in that hat!!!

One of his hang-outs.

Maybe he's not TRYING to be funny with his plastic upside down ice cream cone, but it turned out that way!!!  I said he was too young to eat an ice cream cone on his own, but I had this lovely plastic one for him to hold!!!  ;)

Well, he is definitely trying to be funny here!  This is how he spent the whole month of April, while we had the Easter Buckets out!!!

This is my absolute favorite, my child is a jokester picture.  There is no way this was unintentional - and no, nobody was asking him, where is your belly button?

This GUY!

My 3 year old.  My BIG BOY!  We've been gradually (you know how we do!) potty training since last summer.  He got the hang of it quickly and would potty before bath every night.  He knew the feeling of what it meant to need to go, but he wasn't quite ready to commit to quit playing and start pottying.  After we returned from Christmas travel, we started potty training seriously and it took all of, no time.  He had it from the start.  No accidents, no clean up.  He's a quick kid!  It also helps to do things on his terms, less battles.  Yay for no diapers!!!!

Right now he is REALLY into pretend play.  His favorite thing at the time is to pretend that he is packing to go to Texas.  He does it very realistically.  We pack some stuff.  We all go to pretend sleep and wake up really early in the morning, it's still dark outside as he puts it. We then have a few last things to pack.  He toasts us some bagels and makes us some apple juice and we eat in the car on the way to the airport. I LOVE THIS KID!  He is so in-tune to what is going on around him.  Nothing slips him, NOTHING.  Today during pretend travel, he arrived at Nona's house, pulling his suitcase behind him.  He told the dogs to get down, then went on to air pet Willa for a few minutes.  It cracks me up!!!!

He much prefers pretend play over structured play.  For Christmas, Santa brought him this really cool 5-1 sports center that we have in our basement.  It has a soccer net and foam soccer ball.  Well, the other day he wanted to play soccer in the basement, he sat up this hard plastic ball for me to kick into this other random toy that was our goal.  I told him that we had a net and soccer ball right over there, he said no, we are playing with this. :)

We also pretend fix things a lot.  He is really into Bob the Builder right now, but unfortunately Bob isn't big anymore.  We get books from the library and have a few hand me down toys.  He has plenty of tools though, and he just picks them up and tells me, Wendy, what we are going to fix.

He still loves school (he goes one day a week, from 9-3).  And is learning a lot.  I like that they have chapel, since we find it hard to get to church with the baby taking morning naps.  He learns about Jesus and will ask me questions about where Jesus lives.  The other day at the lunch table we were talking about body parts.  I would point at a part, and have him tell me what it was.  We were almost completely through the body and I was running out of parts to ask him, so I pointed at his chest, where his heart is.  I was going for the word heart.  But when I asked him what was in there, he said Jesus.  I just about melted out of my chair,  How Sweet!  Interesting I say that, he has his sweet moments, but more often than not, they are devilish.  Especially with the easy target of Carsten toddling around these days.  Being the baby of the family I tend to side with Carsten and think that Caden is the instigator/bully of the two.  But good thing for Caden, Brad was the older sibling, so he sides with Caden.  Caden is not great at sharing his toys, but he has no problem taking a toy out of Carsten's hand and says, "he shared it with me!".  Uh - not so much!

He is still such a great eater!!!  He eats just about anything we put in front of him. His favorite is cheese, and sweets.  He also likes bar b q flavored chips a lot.  He is completely off of cheese for now, as we are trying to figure out some stomach stuff.  And so far, it has done the trick.  The first couple of weeks of no cheese was hard for him, being that he loves it so much, but now he knows the benefit and will more often than not say he is not interested in it.

He is still a napper and is sleeping great at night.  He gives me a good 2 hour nap in the afternoon.  Which he needs, you can tell.  He is a much happier, more enjoyable guy when he gets his sleep!  He goes to bed around 7:30, and tries to stay quiet until his "OK TO WAKE" alarm lights up at 6:30, but there are many days where we hear him calling out around 6:15.

Just the other day he had a note sent home from school saying that they were so impressed with Caden because every time before he interrupted them, he would say Excuse Me Mrs. Kelly/Mrs. Leak.  I am really enjoying seeing his personality develop and see him grow into a BIG BOY.

Mental Exhaustion

A light bulb went off this morning.... I know Caden wears me out, and we all know that being a stay at home mom is mentally, physically, spiritually exhausting ;) but this morning I finally made the comparison that makes the most sense to me.  The mental exhaustion that I experience is like that after being at a 2 day interview.  I still remember some of these interviewing trips that I went on straight out of college, and for 2 days we were put in a glass box and intensely judged!

Today Brad's truck was in the shop, so the boys and I dropped him off at work.  So the conversation on the way home went like this - and this was all within 5 minutes.

Caden: "Mommy, are you going to drive us home?" (Seems like an innocent opening question.)

Me: "Yes, Caden, I am going to drive us home.  We just dropped Daddy off at work, so he can't drive us home." (Good enough answer??? Tried not to get too technical, just stated the obvious.)

Caden: "Maybe Mike can drive us home?" (Well, that came out of left field... hmmm... wonder what he is fishing for with this question... how do I respond)

Me: "Mike?  Mike doesn't work here, he works at Lily, that is at a different building." (Short, sweet, to the point.  Did I nail it?)

A little stammering and confusion. (Uh Oh, I caught him off guard with my answer, maybe that wasn't what he was looking for???)

Me: "Are you talking about Catherine's Daddy - Mike?" (Let me try to save myself... quick! another question!)

Caden: "No, the regular Mike.  The Mike we see at Gramma and Grampa's house." (OK,phew, now we are on the same page!  Relief!)

Me: "Ohhhh, OK!  That Mike doesn't work here either."

Caden: "I like that Mike!" (Wondering if we are through with this conversation now.)

Caden: "Mommy, where is Uncle Jesse's moma?" (Yep!  On to a new topic and this is one we've discussed a million times before and I know where this is going and this is not fun/easy for me to discuss with a 3 year old!!!)

Me: "Uncle Jesse's moma is in Heaven." (What question is coming next... WHY???)

Caden: "Why is she in Heaven?" (YEP!)

Me: "Well, God calls people to come to Heaven with him sometimes.  And he called her."

Caden: "Why?" (There it is again!)

Me: "Well, she was really, really sick, and God knew that she would be better off living in Heaven." (How many more rounds of whys can we squeeze in???)

Caden: "Why would she be better in Heaven?" (Exhaustion is setting in!)

Me: "In Heaven you don't feel any pain." (My answers are beginning to get weak.)

Caden: "Mommy, I want to drive the car from the front."

Me: "OK baby, you can help me drive when we get to the driveway."

Caden: "No, I want to drive on the road."

Me: "Oh baby, I can't let you do that until you turn 16."

Caden: "Why?"

Me: "Well, if the police saw me let you drive, they would give me a ticket or take me to jail."

Caden: "Ok, I want to drive when we get to the driveway."

Phew.... and I am spent AGAIN, just reliving that whole conversation, but it was a good one and I wanted to capture it, so I tried my best!

We get to the driveway and I say, do you want to help me drive?

Caden: "No, I want to drive on my own."

Me: "Well, you can't do that."

Caden: "I couldn't reach the pedals!!!"

Me:  "That's right!"

Caden: "I want to pretend drive."

Me: "Ok, when I park in the garage, you can come up here."

Caden: "NO! No, Nnnn, NO.  I want to do it in the driveway."

Me: "Caden, it is 18 degrees.  I need to put the car in the garage.  The baby is tired of sitting in his carseat.  I've got to get the baby in the house.  You cannot drive in the driveway."

I park the car, unbuckle Caden and let him crawl into the front seat to pretend drive.

Caden: "It's too dark in here!!!"

So I turn on the overhead lights for him - OH CRAP!  I turned on the overhead lights!!! Are they still on????

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 I just ran out to my garage and the overhead lights were indeed still on.  That would NOT have made for a good afternoon when we left to get Brad from work.  THANK YOU BLOG!!! :)