Horsey Horsey

Tab pulled this old stick horse out of the closet on one of our many chances to play outside. I was planning on getting rid of it when we moved, but Benton took to it pretty quickly. (I just love how he is sticking his front teeth out like that...just for you Abbie and Anna...bucktooth Benny has returned. Poor kid had a bit of a hard time with how top heavy the head was and how long the stick was.

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

We had so much fun over spring break just hanging out and enjoying the nice weather. With a few windy days we decided to break out the kite.

Tab thought it was fun to help throw the kite up in the air and watch it take off. He was getting pretty good at it by the end. Jason enjoyed pitching the kite around and driving it into the ground a bunch of times before we figured out that we needed to let more string out to start as the wind was kind of crazy.Tab really enjoyed helping Jason fly the kite.
Benton looked like he was born to fly kites. The silly boy stood there holding the string giving gentle little tugs.As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that Benton spent more time flying the kite than Tab did. Jason stood on a loop of string and just let the boys have at it. Benton was convinced he was doing it all on his own.And the happy, windblown family after a morning of kite flying.

Going Bonkers

Over spring break we headed to Columbia to get a few necessities not available here in the 'ville. You know, fabric and cute girly clothes. We took the boys to one of our favorite places in Columbia, Going Bonkers. They just love it to death. Here they are entering the play place.Benton has become such a big boy and roams with Tab.Tab knows the maze like the back of his hand and it is impossible for us to keep up with him.Benton was a little tired from the day and was happy to roam with me or Jason as Tab was too impatient to wait for him.Tab calls this place "The Big Bonkers Slides". He talked about it all day and went down the big slides repeatedly in many many awkward different ways.
And finally the boys bouncing on the trampoline netted bed thing.I think this was probably our last visit to Bonkers. We sure will miss it.

Sweet Treat!

Over finals week, I made treats for Jason to take to school each day to share with his buddies while they were studying. The one day I apparently left the frosting bowl on the table while Benton was eating lunch. As you can see, the result was him pushing his lunch aside for the frosting. I have to admit, it was pretty tasty. At least I had already scrapped most of the frosting out of the bowl.

Home Depot Project Again

I just love the Home Depot projects and so do the boys. This last month the project was a racetrack. Tab was particularly fond of the goggles.Benton thought they should be worn like a hat.Jason helped Benton...
While I helped Tab...Benton immediately knew what the racetrack was for.We took them home and painted them so that the boys knew whose was whose.
Tab asks frequently when it is time to go back to make the birdhouses; next month's project.

Ride that Buckin' Bronco

Jason's mom made a wooden rocking horse for Tab when he turned one. Tab liked it but always had a hard time getting on and off of it and staying on it when he was on it, so it didn't initially get a ton of use. Benton (aka climber of the year) on the other hand can get on and off of that thing like he was born doing it and therefore spends a lot of time riding the horse. As a matter of fact, I sometimes have to time turns because the boys fight over riding it. And of course they can't ride the horse without the cowboy hat. It is just part of the experience I suppose.

Poor Kid

This is a little old...from about a week ago, but I had to share.

Tab spent one night puking last week. At first we had him sleep on a bed we made for him on our floor, but he got tired of getting up to go into the bathroom to puke every hour, so he just laid down on the bathroom floor. I got him a pillow and blanket and he slept most of the night there. Oh, did I mention I did too. He didn't want me to leave and I would have felt bad leaving so we snuggled together on the bathroom floor. After about 3 pairs of pj's, he decided he just wanted to be naked. Fine by me. Here's the poor kid trying to sleep.

The Cat in the Hat

With Dr. Seuss' Birthday being last week, The Cat in the Hat came to the local university with the Read Across America program. The boys really had a lot of fun. Tab was so excited to be able to meet the Cat in the Hat until he walked in the room and was ridiculously tall. I have to admit, I thought it was a little extreme. Benton however didn't care and went right up and gave him a high five! As you can tell, it took some coaxing to get Tab to be in this picture.They had a lot of really fun activities. I think Benton's favorite was coloring the door hangers.Tab really like making this "thingy". I can't remember what it is called. One of those pick a number things...come on...you know what I'm talking about. Anyway he played with it forever until I threw it away after he went to bed because I got sick of him crying because the paper was getting so flimsy that he couldn't make it work.
They also had a really fun time planting "clovers" aka marigolds, like the one in Horton Hears a Who. Benton mostly thought that the pots were stacking cups and it took some effort to keep him from dumping the dirt out.

Tragedy in our household

The Culprit: I was making some scones recently that called for heavy cream. I reached into my fridge and grabbed my carton and poured into my measuring cup. It was lumpy and disgusting and had gone bad. I mean, I know that I have been trying to cook a little bit healthier lately but come on really. I have never had cream go bad. I always use it up before it is anywhere near that point. I was seriously appalled with myself.

A Proud Mommy Moment

So as most of you know I have a food addiction. I cook a lot and take a lot of pictures of my food. Tab has caught on to this and on several occasions has requested that I take a picture of his plate also. I usually oblige and snap a quick photo. Well the other night after desert the camera was still sitting at the table and Tab asked if he could take a picture. I said sure, so he grabbed the camera and then grabbed his empty bowl and started snapping pictures. The funniest part was when he turned the bowl to get a different angle. I was so proud. Thanks for not thinking I'm a total weirdo for taking pictures of our food Tab. You Rock my mommy world!

Feeling the Love

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped me and my family yesterday and today. I'm overwhelmed with the outpouring of help and offers to help.

Update/What Happened- the very short version... lol:

Yesterday afternoon I took the boys to the park and then picked up a few things at the grocery store. As I was driving home my back started to ache. By the time I was home about 3 minutes later my back really hurt. I got the boys out of the car and in the house and then basically laid on my living room floor then on the couch and just couldn't get comfortable. The pain quickly got unbearable and started to spread from my back around to my stomach. Though the pain was constant there were surges of pain that were even stronger. I thought I was having contractions, so I started trying to call Jason at school. After calling about 5 times I had my sister try calling him. After she called several times he finally stepped out and answered, rushed home and brought me to the ER.

By the time we got to the hospital I couldn't force myself to get out of the car because of the pain. Jason had to pull me out and they wheeled me straight up to the Labor and Delivery floor. They checked my cervix and I was high and tight, good. They but monitors on me and couldn't find any contractions, good. So they moved rooms and got me on some morphine. After a little bit on the morphine I was able to at least be in control of the pain, although I was still in a lot of pain. They did an ultrasound and discovered fluid in my kidney. (Apparently the ultrasound of the baby was awesome, and I knew it would be, but I just couldn't force myself to look as I was still in a lot of pain and was just focused on fighting that.) They decided I likely have kidney stones, that I am now waiting to pass. (I can't even begin to explain the pain other than to say it was the most excruciating pain that I have ever been in, bar none. Definitely worse than my natural child birth.) Luckily at this point my OB approved having my morphine dose increased, thus allowing me to be rid of pain. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I also couldn't keep my eyes open as a result.

Late this morning they took me off of the IV morphine and moved me to oral pain killers, percocet. Since I have been able to "manage" my pain with those, they sent me home! So now I'm at home, drinking more water than should be humanly possible and hoping to pass a stone and hoping that I can continue to manage the pain with the percocet. So far, so good. I've been feeling pretty good being at home. I think there is just something about being at home rather than at the hospital that helps you to feel more alert and able to recoup.

Bed Time

Have I ever mentioned how early my kids go to bed? They hit the hay at 6:30 every night. Freaking awesome, I know. The problem is when we got invited to a birthday party at 7:00 PM and decide to go. When we got home this is what happened. This is about 3 feet in front of the front door. Nice.

Yummy Spinach

Last week I made a yummy soup for dinner. Tab was not in the mood for soup and so he decided to gag on every bite that we made him take complaining that it was gross. Jason and I were having some spinach salad on the side and Tab loves spinach, so we told him that he could have a plate of spinach when he was finished with his soup. At that point he at least willing gagged on each bite of soup. He then received what he thought was the grand prize. Jason took out the camera to document his silliness... I mean what 3 year old LOVES spinach?
It turns out it was lucky he grabbed the camera because we were then able to get this series of pictures.

Ecstatic that he got a plate of spinach he started shoving the rest in his mouth. He then realized that he had put a bit much in his mouth at once.
Oh yeah, it was way too much.All of this time Jason was taking pictures and what was I doing... laughing hysterically of course. Don't worry. I decided to be a nice mom and shoved the plate under his mouth right before it all came out. (Jason is making me post this picture so the grossness is his fault.)He decided that he didn't like spinach for a few days after that.

Holding Hands

Benton loves to hold hands lately. In the car, he is constantly trying to get Tab to hold his hand. Tab used to love this, especially when he was tired. Recently as Benton wants to hold his hand the entire time they are in the car, it has become a fight as Benton tries to grab at Tab, while Tab tries desperately to get Benton to stop holding onto his sleeve or whatever else he can get a hold of.I just think it is so cute.I think it is my favorite when he wants to hold my hand after he is done eating dinner. Pardon my dumb expression.

Good Old Winter Picnic

One of my best friends recently had a new baby. I had the privilege of watching her two other kids while she had the baby. It really was nice for me because they occupied eachother! One day around lunch time I was sewing at the table and didn't feel like having to put all of my stuff away and so we decided to have a winter picnic on the living room floor. It was funny because I gave the kids the option of Macaroni and Cheese or sandwiches. They chose sandwiches so I made peanut butter and peach jam. After a few bites, Alex told me that his honey tasted funny. I had to inform him that it wasn't honey. Poor kid got jipped. They sure had fun with their "picnic".

Transformers

Thanks to Tab's really good friends, he is obsessed with Transformers. He hasn't even seen the movie and doesn't fully know what it is about, but obsessed non-the-less. For Valentine's day he picked out Transformers hologram valentines to give to his friends. We had nearly an entire box left over and he has been carrying them around like trading cards for the past 2+ weeks.

I've been doing a ton of sewing and such for this baby and was feeling a little guilty that I didn't really make all that much for the boys when they were born. So I went back through my bookmarks for things that I wanted to make and decided to whip up a cool messenger bag using this tutorial. It was super easy. I would say that it was quick but it wasn't. Had I not appliqued the transformer on the front it would have been pretty quick. The applique part took a while and I didn't even do that great of a job on it. Oh well. Tab loves it and that is all that I wanted out of it.I also added a pocket to the inside with spots for markers or whatever.

What a Goober

Benton now insists on eating with silverware about 90% of the time. He is getting pretty good at it so I don't mind so much. The problem arises when he thinks he needs to have everyone else's forks or spoons. I guess he just thinks he can't shovel it in fast enough.

My love/hate problem

As most of you know I LOVE to cook. However, I think that I confuse people when I complain with a long sigh that I have to go home and make dinner. I've been asked why I dread making dinner, if I seem to love to cook so much. Documented below is your answer.

These are pictures of my kitchen after preparing one meal. That does not include dessert.It isn't cooking dinner that I dread, but the cleaning up afterwords. Sigh.

Poor Benton

Last night while Jason and I were talking after dinner, I mentioned that Benton had fallen off of one of the kitchen chairs at the table while I was making dinner(not an uncommon occurrence) but that he must have thunked himself pretty good this time, pointing to a small welt and huge red patch of skin behind his ear. Jason looked and said no because he has an identical one behind the other ear. We both just chalked it up to weird and then went to put the boys to bed. At this point we discovered he had little patches of red skin all over his body. We thought we would check it out in the morning.

Fast forward to this morning and it was covering more skin than it wasn't and so I called the doctor's office to make sure that it wasn't a reaction to an immunization that he had had on Friday. They said that it wasn't and just to keep an eye on him for a fever or acting weird, breathing problems as it was likely an allergic reaction to something. So watch him we did. He never got a fever or anything but when I got him up from his nap the spots on his head were large goosegg like lumps and the rest of the hives on his body made it look like he had been smacked really hard raising welts. A little concerned by the goosegg appearances on his head I called the doctor's office again to talk to the nurse. She said without any other concerns that the hives, he was probably fine and that we were ok to just give him benadryl. We did and the hives improved significantly. The pictures below are from about 4 hours after the benadryl. Sad that this is significantly better.

You can't tell from the picture, but they are all under his arms and in his armpits and such. They are still raised here as well but not nearly as badly as earlier today.Look at his poor back. And you can kind of tell that they are all under his hair too.
His poor head is really what gets to me. (Can you tell he has started to catch on that having his picture taken is fun? lol.)And we still have no idea what the reaction is from. Alas.