Happenings in our casa

So a pregnant lizard made her way into our house. How do I know she was pregnant? Well, I really just deduced that little nugget of info based on the onslaught of baby lizards that have been appearing in random corners of our house. Thank goodness it's just the ol' regular garden variety lizard, not the creepy monstrosities that park themselves in the sun on our driveway. Those things are more closely related to the American Alligator, I'm pretty sure. Anyways, a baby lizard was the reason I screamed for Daniel and felt helpless as I cowered in the corner of our nightlight-lit bathroom the other night. I swear, it didn't look like a lizard when it scurried across the floor in front of my foot...they're all over the place. Sigh.

After our crazy downpours over the weekend, life in Wellington is finally back to normal and the roads are drivable again. Logan has a new found love of bounce houses after we went to Monkey Joe's, and also has requested to bake cookies every day since I showed him how to use the mixer to make sugar cookies. Guess cookie making was a hit! :)

South FL is rampant with nature, but at least this is the pretty kind:

Cabin Fever

So sick of all of this rain! Between the boys' colds and Tropical Storm Isaac, we've managed to stay relatively homebound for the past 4 days (which is very unusual for us!). I think I'm about to go stir crazy if we have to spend one more day locked inside this house. Unfortunately for me, not only is it thunderstorming like crazy outside...but the roads are also flooded so we really are stuck here! UGH. Thankful we have power though!

Daniel and I have been catching up on the first season of Mad Men lately. I'm really getting into that show - I just love their outfits and the way life was lives back then! Our conversation about this last night:

Me: I really think I should have lived back in the 60s since I really love just being a housewife who takes care of the kids, does the grocery shopping, cleans the house!
Daniel: Clean the house? What? You don't even do that.
Me: You're right. See, I really was supposed to have lived back then...I would have had a housekeeper! ;)

Alright, so I really hate to clean. I prefer the somewhat messy look! :)

Making sugar cookies with Mama Nell's old (read: vintage 1960s (Hello Mad Men!)) mixer on a rainy day!

Sick kiddos

Today was a sick day for us - both kids woke up with fevers. It's always a double ugh for days like this...not only are they not feeling great, but we also have to cancel our plans for the day. That usually means we have a boring day ahead, but surprisingly enough the boys were both in pretty decent moods! So despite the fact that we didn't even set foot outside the house, we still had a fun day of play-doh, coloring, dancing, games, and a movie :) too bad all sick days aren't like this!

New recipes & a craft!

Finally got my butt into gear and tried a few recipes and a new project for Logan, all found on Pinterest - a Lego table!

He loves playing with his Legos but is frustrated when his towers topped over on the soft rug. Enter Lack side table from Ikea, only $7.99! I bought a Lego Duplo base plate on Amazon for around $15 and used some double sided tape to attach it. Can't get any more simple than that! Hardly worth calling a "project" really, but Logan seems to like it so far!

The recipes I tried include a bacon, egg, & cheese crescent roll wrap (sooo yummy!), crockpot chipotle and lime chicken tacos, and crockpot BBQ chicken sliders. I've become such a crockpot meat convert...chicken simply tastes SO much better when slowest cooked for 4 hours in the crockpot!

Four months of Cloth Diapering!

Four months down of cloth diapering and I can officially say that I still love it! I bought them on a whim before Blake was born, half expecting to give up on it a few weeks in and resell them. It probably helped that I wasn't able to CD until Blake was 3ish months old (due to the hip dysplasia braces) because by then I kind of felt ready to take on the challenge!

My wash routine is exactly that, a routine. I still wash every other day with Rockin Green and use two wet bags as my dirty diaper storage. I especially love that I'm not buying tons of boxes of disposables, and he looks so stinkin' cute in his Bumgenius 4.0s! :)

The Blake man

Blake has just been cruising (literally!) through several milestones lately.

Last week he started to officially crawl. Hurray! It's always SO much fun when babies crawl, albeit a little more crazy town at our house. He is still a pretty slow crawler (good for me!) but I'm sure that will change soon.

He has also learned how to pull up on things, constantly giving me a heart attack since most of our house has tiled floors! Eek! So far no major incidents, knock on wood. But that still doesn't change the fact that my heart drops every time he starts wobbling while clinging on to the side of L's train table!

To top things off, tooth #4 popped through this morning. Yeesh! We are just speeding right through this whole teething business.

Giving Mama early gray hair!

Roar

Signs that we read Where the Wild Things Are too often at bedtime:

We got to the last page and Logan beat me to the last line...
"and it was still hot."

He is so into monsters and dinosaurs right now (even though I'm pretty sure he has no idea what a monster really is, besides the Tickle Monster book that my mom got him). He goes around roaring at everyone, then proclaiming that he is a "di-saur". I don't really mind most of the time (it's pretty cute, not gonna lie), but today he walked into the pediatrician's waiting room and roared at some little girl. Whoops.

Blake had his 6 month checkup today (a little late obviously, since he's actually seven months...another whoops). Anyways, he seems to be falling into the same pattern as his big brother. At his 4 month appt, he was in the 41st percentile for height.

Today he measured in the 15th percentile for height. Poor guy.

At least his weight also came down so he is only in the 57th percentile, at 19 lbs & 1.5 ounces. At the rate we're going, I'm sure that will continue to even out until he's in the 15th percentile for both height and weight if he's anything like his brother! :)

Sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g

I was perusing some old photos on my hard drive (thinking about trying that $5 engineering print project that's all over Pinterest these days) and found these little gems:




Holy cow. Hard to believe those were taken pretty much a million years ago by Heidi for our engagement. So much has happened since then!

(Photos by Heidi Mitchell Photography)

Baby Fever

I know this is super silly, but I can't shake that wanna-be-pregnant-again feeling! Grr! Too many darn preggo friends on Facebook posting their super cute belly shots and sonograms.

Well, that, and combined with my efforts to rid this house of everything we don't actually need, I've been going through lots of baby stuff that we don't use anymore. Bye bye whale tub, bye bye rock'n'play, bye bye swaddle blankets, bye bye tiny knitted hats...sniff sniff.

Then all of the sudden I'm getting all nostalgic and wishing I had another baby to name when in all actuality I have a barely-7-month old baby and two-and-three-quarter year old toddler that keep me running around like a chicken with my head cut off most days. Case in point: dealing with a constipated toddler who finally decided to poop after three days...and of course picked the most inconvenient place and time, like when he's wearing Lightning McQueen underwear while running through the middle of the park on a sweltering hot morning. Yuck.

Anyways, I suppose I'll just have to live vicariously through all of my preggo Facebook friends and pray that they pick awesome baby names that I can be totally jealous of. :)

Blake, only a few minutes old!

More Potty Adventures ;)

Potty training: SUCCESS!!!

Today Logan pooped in the potty. I am truly ecstatic about this, since cleaning poopy underwear is really not my cup of tea (I know, another shocking revelation). Thank goodness for my stomach of steel or I might not have survived. We really haven't had any accidents in the last days either, but on the other hand...he doesn't tell me when he needs to go.

Sooo.

What does that mean? I have no clue. I mean, I guess eventually he will figure out how to tell me when he needs to go, but until then I'll just stick to asking him every hour or two. I usually ask if he needs to use the potty and he'll say no, so I don't force it. I do make him go before we get in the car, after mealtimes, and before nap time (when I change him into "special nap time underwear" aka pull-ups).

Whatever, at least I'm not changing diapers so I'll take it!

PS feeling kind of sad about this whole potty training thing...I know it's ridiculous, but my baby isn't really a baby anymore! He's a big boy that wears Mickey Mouse underwear, talks all the time, eats dinosaur shaped pb&j sandwiches, and has an opinion about everything. Ay yi yi.

Some random pictures from our last two weeks! :)

Logan-isms

*dust on the floor*
L: look Mama, a duck feather!

L: I go.
Me: go where?
L: in the car, on a trip.
Me: a trip to where?
L: Aubby's (Aubrey) house

*points to my dirty feet*
L: Mama, bath.

Lost days

Some days I really miss being sixteen and carefree, where my most worrisome problem was what beach I was going to go to the next day and where we would go out to eat for prom. Today was one of those days where I kind of smelled like poop the entire day (no kidding), I spent more time in the mall bathroom than actually shopping, and I ate all of my food with one hand. I really don't think I appreciated those teenage years enough...in fact, I'm pretty sure I spent them wondering what life would be life when I "grew up". Well, let me inform you, past me: it is filled with poop, spit up, spilled milk, and messy mini-vans...but lots and lots of love <3

Best part of my day: Daniel joked around with Logan and told him that we were going to send Mama away...and Logan worriedly replied, "no!! I go too!!" :) don't you worry, little man. Wherever I go, you go too! I love my little men!

Fun Etsy Finds

I'm not much of a fashionista when it comes to clothing (shocking, I know!), lol, so I rely on lots of fun accessories to spruce up my usual plain t-shirt & jeans. Daniel always jokes with me that someday I'll be the little old lady wearing masses of gaudy beads and baubles around her neck, but what can I say - I'm a girl who loves obnoxiously loud and garish jewelry! And the cheaper the better, so when I inevitably lose it or break it I won't feel quite so bad.
I'm really loving the bib necklace look lately. I've been on the hunt for the perfect one to buy! Some are a little overwhelming, but I think they're perfect with an understated tee or tank.
A few I found on Etsy from sellers GemPearls, NikitaAccessories, and NoPlainTs:
(and I suppose I cheated a little because one of these is technically a brooch. Yikes, a brooch. That makes me sound grandmother-ly old...)

Potty Adventures

Some good ol' Logan quotes:

"nice hair, Mama"

After putting a new blanket on his bed: "oooo, soft!!"

Me: "do you need to use the potty?"
Logan: "No. I racing. Two minutes." while he races his cars around a track.
Guess I tell him "two more minutes!" pretty often! Haha!

Logan on the potty: "I can pee!"
Me: "Doesn't look like you have any more pee, buddy. That's ok, we can try again later."
Logan: "No, I buy more pee. At the store."

The best part about all of this is that most of the time, he's telling me all of this while wagging his index finger at me. I feel like someone should be standing in the background saying "You got TOLD!" while Logan talks to me.

Today he was quite the little chatter box...but not really the good kind. On days that he's more tired than usual (sheesh, he should be exhausted all of the time since he never naps, but I digress), he tends to repeat himself. Over and over and over, all day long. It can drive a person batty. Lucky for me, it turned out to be a good afternoon to watch a little of the Cars movie until daddy got off work ;)

As you can probably tell from Logan's weekly quotes, these past three days have been spent doing potty training! Ohhh boy! I really wasn't planning on starting any time soon, but he pitched such a fit the other day about me wiping him during a diaper change that I told him that unless he wanted to start wearing underwear, this was it, buddy. Apparently that was enough inspiration since he sat up and demanded to use the potty. Well ok then! The downside of this is that I was completely unprepared. I did have a few pairs of underwear stored up and a frog potty from way back when, but that was about it. We ventured out today to the store to buy more underwear and a potty ring for the big potty. And so far, success! First two days we had two accidents apiece (both after 3pm), and today we only had ONE accident! :) and that one was partially my fault - I made him laugh really hard during dinner and peed in his pants. But he was so genuinely upset about it that I think it wouldnt have happened if I hadn't made him laugh.

Tomorrow will be our first 'real' outing with underwear. Today we went to story time and Target, but I had him pee in the car potty before and after each activity so we wouldn't have any issues. Tomorrow, however, we're going to Playmobil FunPark...which doesn't have easy access to the car for potty visits and isn't a short activity - most likely we'll be there for 2 hours and have to use the public restroom...yikes!!!

And just so I don't leave out my other munchkin...Blake just popped his 3rd tooth through yesterday! What a big kid :)