Reach to the sky!!

I consider myself (for the most part) to be a pretty good mom. I spend as much time as I can playing with them, I'm firm when I must me - which is a lot with toddler boys - and I take them to church and Sunday School every week. But I had to stop and review what I've been doing wrong when Tj was swiinging on his swing set and said to me, "Mom, I'm going to swing so high I'm going to kick God in the butt". Hhhmmm....What would God think of that? I like to think that he got as good a chuckle out of it as I did.

Looking back at my previous posts, I realize that It's been a while since I posted some recent pics and videos of the kids. Obviously, I find it much more entertaining to pick on my husband....can you blame me? But really, I should at least give a brief update on those two little boys who have an amazing way of making me want to hug them and strangle them at the same time.

TJ constantly surprises me with how much he knows (if you ask him he knows everything). There is a reason kids are called "sponges". He absorbs everything we do and say and can repeat it at any given moment - whether you want him to or not. There's definitely no pulling a fast one on this kid, you tell him we'll go to the pool later on the weekend - and Saturday morning he's putting on his swim suit before breakfast. My plan this summer was to teach him to ride a bike without training wheels - I figured it would be a good summer activity and it might take him that long to get the hang of it. So we took the training wheels off the bike and ran beside him holding on just like you're supposed to. Only TJ had other plans in mind. He soon was going faster than I could run and took off on his own. He stopped and looked at me like "so what was so hard about that?" I posted a video below of him doing one of his "tricks" which is really just graceful falling - but I promise you he was ok.


Chris was my "easy" baby. He never fussed much, he went right to sleep in his crib, and started sleeping through the night by 6 weeks. I thought I had it made - until he reached toddler-hood. I often wonder what an 18 month old has to be so angry about? Mostly he just wants what he wants when he wants it. And if he doesn't get it - the arms start flailing, the head gets thrown back and the screaming starts. Whoo- I now realize I was pretty lucky with TJ being so layed back. But of course he's also incredibly adorable and extremely funny. He has whole conversations with you without you being able to understand one word. He's also extremely happy...most of the time. He wakes up in crib and is smiling, sometimes talking away to the the stuff animals. TJ and I - who are not so happy at 7am - are completely baffled by this behavior. There is no doubt that Chris will be the comedian of our family.

So here's some videos and pictures....

New Playground in Backyard....Thanks Grandma Sue & Papa Pete!





TJ's Big Jump Chris' Big Jump

TJ's "Trick"

Tom's Birthday

I can no longer complain about Tom' budlight obsession....I've totally given him a free pass to collect a much stuff as he likes! What other wife do you know that would turn their garage into a Budlight shrine for her husband's birthday. I figured if he's going to keep collecting stuff, he might as well have a nice place to show it off.....not in the house!

Another Great Tom Story

Well one more year of Heritage has come and gone and Tom and I managed to survive. This is the 6th year we've been managing the commissary for the concession booths and we still are in awe of what an amazing week it is. It is so much work (much more now with two kids in the mix) but when we are sitting in our golf cart on the 18th hole over-looking the calibouge sound watching the PGA pros walk past us, we know it's definitely a privilege to be part of such a cool event. If the subject of moving away from the area is ever brought up, we quickly squelch the thought knowing wherever we move or whatever job we took - it most likely wouldn't include spending a week being paid to hang out on a golf course. Each year we've done this we seem to get a little smarter about our job at the commissary, but there are always the "fires" that need to be put out - and there's always a good story to be told. So here's this year's "good story". I must preface this with saying that If Tom had a say in what I wrote on this blog this would be a completely different story.

It was Thursday of the tournament and it had already been a long week. It's hard for me to leave the kids in someone else's constant care, the normal "guilty" feelings that are a part of the normal make-up of any mom take over. I know I need to be at the commissary but the questions "are my in-laws tired of the kids?" and "am I taking advantage of my sister being here on vacation?" kept creeping into my thoughts...even with the few beers I had. The busiest part of the week was still ahead of us and I already felt I hadn't seen the kids enough. So when Tom wanted to go to the "19th hole" (a golf term for BAR) I reluctantly said o.k. I figured another hour would be okay. I should have known better. Needless to say an hour quickly turned to two and I was getting very cranky and ready to go. Just as I finally got Tom in the golf cart a small cute blond woman (who I had noticed was paying a lot of attention to Tom earlier) bounced up to Tom asking him to drive her to the club house - which by the way was about 50 yards away - max. I quickly stepped in and said we needed to get home to OUR kids. Tom looked at me- almost annoyed that I wanted to go home - and said "come on, we can take her" Just when I was thinking - okay this chick can sit in the back, it is a maintenance cart, but I've sat in the back before - Tom was saying "you stay here - I'll be right back". I don't really remember what I was thinking at that point or why I decided to comply with this idea, but next thing I knew I was left standing there while my husband drove off with a cute blond who was acting 1/2 her age and was obviously in the mood for some more partying. Tom came back about 20 minutes later and we left together and that was the end of it. I teased him about it a bit...I really wasn't mad, kind of amused by the whole thing actually. But by the next day the story had gotten out to the all the vendors and booths (thanks to the Barry the Bud guy who witnessed the whole thing). It was classic. By the end of the week, he had "thrown" me out of the cart and went home with another woman. Of course this was all in fun....the more people teased him, the more defensive he got, which of course just made it more funny. He's actually standing behind me now exclaiming how "everything was blown out of proportion" and "totally exaggerated". HAAHAA!!!! It's my blog...I'll tell the story how I want! :) He won't live this one down for a looonnnnngggg time!

How I know I'm raising a boy

TJ and I were driving home from work yesterday and it was low tide. As we came over the bridge you could easily see al the oyster beds. So I gave a brief science lesson and told him all about oysters and even explained how sometimes a piece of sand can get inside an oyster to make a pearl. He looked thoughtfully out the window for a moment then said "mom, I think there are actually bombs inside the oysters and they are all gonna go BOOOOM! Wouldn't that be cool mom?" Ahhhh Boys, they are not happy unless something is being demolished or destroyed.

FYI

Hey everyone! I just changed my settings so anyone should be able to post a comment now. Not just registered users of blogspot! So start writing me back!

Time to reboot

I'm sure some of you thought I was never going to post again, for those of you who check in regularly, I'm sorry...I hope you didn't loose faith that I would be back. I just realized that Febuary is gone. Just like that a whole month of my life was gone in a blink. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, but it sure did feel like that. Somewhere along the line a few months ago I decided it would be a good idea to take a second job at the church working 2 nights a week in the nursery. I know what posessed me to do this...it was the extra money, of course. But I sure have learned a lesson about over-doing it. In my former life - B.C., "Before Children" when I needed extra money, I got an extra job. No big deal, I had all this time between 5pm and 11pm that would otherwise be spent getting into trouble or spending money. Now, however, I have two very young boys who's whole sanity relies on me sticking to a routine and schedule. So the 2 nights a week activities are out, and I'm going to stick to this for a while. I know as the boys get into sports and afterschool activities only one night a week will be impossible - but I hope as they get older maybe they'll adjust better.
I have to say that the job wasn't the only reason February was a crazy month. The whole family, me , Tom, TJ and Chris all got really sick. For three weeks we were all fighting cold, flu, sinus infections etc. Mom and Dad were in town thank goodness...because they helped a lot. But of course they were sick too. Then there was the vesectomy that went very wrong. I won't go into too much detail, mostly because I still couldn't explain to you exactly what went wrong. Let's just say what started out as a simple in-office procedure turned into a two-day ordeal that ended with Tom in the operating room. If that wasn't enough Tom has been suffering from a headache that won't go away. The month ended with a MRI of tom's brain. We were happy to know it was "clear"..... I asked if that meant there was no activity at all??? All is fine but we're still trying to pin-point the cause of the headache. I'll keep you updated.
The last few weeks have made me feel like my computer when I have too many windows open. My life is a series of windows, each with it's own program agenda it is trying to accomplish and with each task I ask it to do it runs slower and slower. I had so many thoughts and worries going through my brain I felt like I had "SYSTEM FAILURE" written acrossed my forehead flashing in neon. I have no other choice but to shut down and reboot. I will go to sleep tonight and wake in the morning to the first Monday of a brand new month with a new hope and attitude. March is going to be a great month! I need to start taking my walks again, stick to routine I have set for the kids whenever I can and find time to spend with Tom. The system will run fine until I start running too many programs again (as I always do) and then I'll reboot again. But for now...Good Night!