Abby

We've been trying to get Abby to give up her queen size bed and downgrade to a twin so that she'd have more room to play on her floor. Sears had a sale on Princess bedding and we took Abby to look at it and they had it all on a real display bed so she got to look at it. And that seemed to work because she really wanted it. I think without having been able to see it and touch it and sit on it she wouldn't have been as excited about it. So she and I went back and picked up the comforter, sheet set, bedskirt and an extra pillowcase (which included a trip to B'ham because the comforter wasn't in stock here!). The next day I swapped the kids' beds and put her new Princess stuff on and she is IN LOVE. Sure makes her room look way bigger!


And she is doing a little better on the whole craptastic attitude thing. She finally won her Leapster and a game so she's been busy playing with that. She earned it by staying in her room until a decent hour in the mornings for 35 mornings. Only took her 4 months to get there!

The Flu

So Thanksgiving was great. I had all the dishes done by the time Jerry finished putting Abby to bed. I was perusing the Black Friday ads trying to figure out exactly what I needed to get from where. About 10:30 I started not feeling super great, thought I was just tired. By 11:30 I told Jerry I needed to go to sleep or I was going to die. By 1:30 I hadn't slept a wink and had started throwing up...neat. I made my way downstairs to tell Jerry that there was no way I would be going shopping at 4. Poor guy spent the next few hours listening to me throw up every mildly liquid substance my body could find. Ew. I managed to fall asleep by 6 and moved myself upstairs when Abby woke up so that she wouldn't see me. I spent the next 24, yes 24, hours in bed, mostly sleeping. I have never spent that much time in bed by choice. Thank goodness Jerry had the day off so he was able to take care of the kids. The next day I thought I was feeling slightly better so I got up and took a shower but that completely wiped me out. Jerry has season tickets to the Huskies and Saturday was Apple Cup so he for sure was not going to miss it. He called my mom and she graciously agreed to take the kids until bedtime so that I could rest. Yay! I spent a few hours on the couch, took a long nap in bed, spent a few more hours on the couch, put the kids to bed when my mom brought them and then went to bed myself. I feel slightly more human today. It's just amazing how a little throwing up (okay, a lot!) can wipe out your whole system.

Sadly, tree trimming and other Christmas decorating will have to wait until I feel up to it. But on the upside, Jerry did make it out on Friday morning and got most of the Xmas shopping done for the kids!

Thanksgiving

I hosted Thanksgiving for my family this year. It was great to get all the little kids together since they hadn't played together since July. Food was excellent, company was good and my house got cleaned!

Trey and Easton

Grammy and her girls!

Trey was very hungry

The Girl Table

Taste-testing the pumpkin pie

One of many "smile" attempts

Finally got a decent one

I Suck as a Mom!!

I've. Had. It.

Every single moment that I'm at home with Abby is a battle. Yes, she's cute and funny and silly and smart and I love her with every fiber of my being...however the bad moments outweigh the good right now by about 8 to1. She does nothing without a fight. Yells all day long. Doesn't want to take a nap, eat her dinner, take a bath, go to bed, get dressed, have her hair combed, etc, etc. I'm exhausted.

Yesterday was a typical day. I was working early so the alarm was set for a little after 4...so Abby woke up at 3:30 of course and needed a million things; her fan on, a hug, a kiss, a cuddle, a song ("No Mommy, sing it right. Louder. Not so loud. Just medium"), a drink of water. And I complied with them all, as it was just faster than having a "discussion" about the fact that it was 3 frickin' 30 in the morning! Back to bed I went for a blessed 20 minutes. After work, I came home and found the only bright spot to my day...my awesome mom had done my dishes and Trey was down for his nap!! It was time for Abby to take her nap. She screamed her usually blood-curdling "I don't wanna nap" scream at the top of the stairs (right outside Trey's door) and got in trouble for that. Then I told her I'd only read one book. After the one book she threw another berserk-o fit about not getting more books. So we had a LONG chat about what kind of behavior I expect from her. She did a lot of nodding and said okay...obviously she was just trying to get me to stop talking as she didn't actually plan on behaving in any nice way that day.

All the screaming woke Trey up, surprise surprise. So downstairs we went to get some lunch. He and I had a pretty good couple of hours together...mostly because I didn't really do anything so he got loads of my attention. Then when Abby got up things really got going.

She wasn't downstairs for 2 minutes (not an exaggeration) before both kids were screaming these horrible ear-piercing, shrieking screams that made fingernails on a chalkboard sound like Mozart...all because Trey stood next to her. I told them to stop it. Then Trey touched Abby so she whalloped him a good one and I told her that we DO NOT HIT and then she started screaming at me about that. I told her to apologize which she tried to do but since she'd just hit him, Trey wasn't going to let her give him a hug. Well, that just sent her over the edge (I thought she'd already tumbled over it but nope, it got worse). Then both kids were trying to get in my lap, which I wasn't about to let either of them do while the scream-fest continued so I unstuck Trey's hands from my legs (remember, I'm made of Velcro!) and told them both to go find something to do and leave me alone for 2 minutes so I could find my hearing again. Neither thought that was a great idea and the screaming doubled in intensity....and well...I lost it! I yelled at them to "Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP!" Oooooooooh, not cool. And as a double oooh, it did not have the desired effect and only made the screaming louder still. Ugh. Not a proud moment on my part.

And wouldn't you know it, that was also the moment that the chicken finally finished defrosting in the microwave and the oven was ready to go. But I could not get the little people to leave me alone long enough to cut the chicken for the delicious dinner that I was going to make. So I apologized to the kids for yelling and they both asked me to sit with them so to the rocker we went. I put on a movie and they sat quietly until Jerry got home and I made corndogs for dinner. Things went okay for most of the evening. However, the velcro does not disappear when Jerry comes home. The kids can be sitting right next to him and if they want something they'll come find me instead of ask him. By bedtime I was exhausted (remember the 3:30 start to my day) and not interested in putting either kid to bed. Trey is okay with whomever, Abby is not. She only wants me to put her to bed. I refused to do it last night so Jerry had to and it was another round of screaming from her about that. Seriously, how can one sweet little baby turn into such a scream-filled toddler.

And today is going no better. They were okay this morning but she threw another screaming fit when it was time for a nap which woke Trey up after a ridiculously short nap. I did another sucky mom thing and left him upstairs fussing in his crib while I ate lunch (leftover corndog) and tried to recharge my used up batteries. As I have typed this he has gotten in trouble 382 times for touching things he's not allowed to touch on the desk and has crawled on/off my lap 147 times and managed to find a non-washable marker to color his lips and the table with.

I don't know if you all have peachy kids who are generally well-behaved or if you're all just writing about the fun times but if you do have sweet, gentle, mindful kids...lucky you.

High Heels and Cheetos!

Mommy's shoes are so fun!

I let Trey have roughly 6 Cheetos (they're baked, so they're healthy right?????) while he watched Bee Movie. 10 minutes later the chips were gone but not the cheese powder! Seriously, how can 6 tiny cheesy chips makes so much mess!

Saying "Cheese" takes on a whole new meaning!

What a Weekend!

We had such a fun three day weekend (teacher conference week, no school on Friday!!). Jerry was headed up to my mom's on Friday to install her Comcast equipment and earned some major Husband Points by taking BOTH kids with him! They love Grammy's house and I'm pretty sure Grammy likes seeing them, even though she already watches them three days a week. Our house was a little messy, nothing too crazy but Jerry left me strict instructions that I was to just relax all day and not clean! Sweet! I did clean out Abby's rooms and dust/vacuum the upstairs. Then I did some laundry while catching up on all my DVR'd shows for the week. They left before 11 am and then met me at volleyball that night...so I had an entire day to myself.

Abby reading her new book from the school's book fair, princess book, big surprise

She still lets buddy sit by her sometimes. Harder to get away from him now that he can get up on the couch by himself!

Saturday we puttered around the house and then in the late afternoon headed over to the Corey house for our monthly get-together with the gang. It's 4 couples + 7 kids and a new puppy, quite a fun group! We got tired of saying that we never get together as a group very often so we started a monthly gathering, rotating houses. Tony and Shauna brought there 6-week-old pup (name to be determined...I voted on Copper), and he was a huge hit with all the kiddos. Anicia's room was super clean when we got there and 3 hours later the kids had utterly destroyed it! It took three adults about 15 minutes to get everything put back in it's home....a sign of a truly fun night! We love hanging out with everyone and hope that the tradition continues!

Abby and Anicia in their princess get-ups

Sunday was the day Abby has been looking forward to for quite some time....Disney on Ice!! She did wear her Cinderella costume and she loved that a lot of the other little girls there had princess dresses on too!

Ready to go!

There were a number of princess gowns on display which Abby was delighted to see. She was pretty amazed by Snow White and Belle's gowns

There was a real princess waving to the kids while we were looking at dresses but as we got to her stage she went behind the curtain. Abby was disappointed as she thought we'd missed seeing a real princess but then...CINDERELLA came out. Oh my word she was so excited to see the real Cindy. She got up on Daddy's shoulders and waved like there was no tomorrow!

And Cinderella waved back!

Two pretty gals!

We had to sit for about 20 minutes before the show started and Abby kept saying, "It's going to start any minute guys!" Finally the announcer came on when there were only 5 minutes before showtime....and the excitement built! We were a little disappointed to find out that you could take pictures there, just no flash once the show started. On the tickets it said no cameras allowed so we ended up with just cell phone pics.

Abby and Jer before the show

Me and my Abby

So excited! We were in the 6th row, perfect spot!

I asked for a "Princess Kiss" picture

The show started with Mickey and the gang, then it was Cars, Little Mermaid, Lion King and an intermission. Abby sang along (loudly) with all the songs she knew, clapped very enthusiastically and as soon as the lights came on for the break she had to go potty...NOW! I hustled her up the stairs and how great, the bathroom was right across the hall! We were the sixth mom/child duo in line so we got in fairly fast...and holy cow did she pee a lot, it even made her laugh 'cause it just didn't stop! I think if the show had kept going we might have had a problem. When we left the bathroom the line was about 40 moms long...yikes! After intermission it was Tinkerbell. It was a pretty long part compared to the other movie parts but it's one of Abby's favorite movies and she didn't move a muscle the entire time!

Mickey and the gang!

Mater (Daddy's favorite according to Abby)

Flo, Mater and Sally!

We have a few pictures of the other parts but they're a little blurry for a blog post, just don't quite do the show justice! I'm hoping that they'll come back again next year so we can take Trey, I think he'd love it too. And if the Princess one ever comes to town we are definitely taking the little lady to that one!

It was so fun to take just Abby and not have the distraction of Trey. She was so well-behaved and sweet and funny and cute! Jerry and I were both wondering where she hides this sweet little girl at and why she can't make an appearance more often! It was great to see her so excited about something. We took her to dinner afterward and she continued the great behavior, asked to go to sleep right when we got home....and then woke up her usual mildly cranky self. neat.

The good, the bad and the....dirty??

Good news: The kids are finally starting to do some actual playing together. They have made up a couple games on their own...usually involving running, rolling on the floor and/or scaring each other. Nice to see some interaction. I think once Trey's language really gets going that they'll start playing a lot more together, can't wait!

Bad news: I'm still Velcro Mom. I had a birthday dinner to go to Sunday night and I came downstairs after getting ready and they were waiting for me with arms up saying "mama, mama". And then I forgot my coat upstairs and when I came back down they came running back over arms up saying "mama" again. Jerry said it looked like feeding time at the fish store. And how true, the kids looked like starving fish waiting for their food. I think Jerry should start gluing candy to himself so that the kids will stay near him! Abby was not happy about me leaving and tried to put me in time-out. When that didn't work she threw herself in front of the door and yelled "Mom! Don't leave me here!! Take me with you!! Don't go!!" in a VERY LOUD, VERY SAD way. Yikes. I left anyway and went and had myself a margarita and came home after they were asleep :)

And for the dirty: Trey is still working on his Perfect Husband-ness and is learning how to do laundry. Every time I open the laundry room door he finds an article of clothing and tries to put it in the wash. Now I just throw a pile of clothes in front of the washer and let him load it. Such a good helper!

"Laundry is AWESOME!!!"

Halloween 2009

For Halloween we went to downtown Mt. Vernon again. They close down the main street and all the businesses hand out candy. The kids did great this year, Trey made it about 8 blocks before he needed to be carried, longer than I thought he'd make it. Once he found out what people were putting in his basket he forgot that he hated his fireman hat and left it on for the trip, giving the mamarazzi plenty of opportunities to get pics! Abby was Cinderella...a very sparkly Cinderella. Her carseat had to be vacuumed out when we got home and everywhere she sat she left a sparkly mess, but my word she was c.u.t.e.!!

"Candy is that way guys"

Cutest little fireman!

My two favorite firemen!

No glass slipper was left behind

Abby and her best bud Anicia (little mermaid!) holding hands

I asked for a nice smile and this is what I got

Gardner Family!

Abby and I got to hand out candy for a few minutes while the Per Dona girls and their kids got some pics together. Abby LOVED handing out candy, I think she may have liked it more than trick-or-treating herself.

Trick-or-Treating at Bumpa and Grammy Cece's house

and at Grammy Sue's house

"Check it out...more candy!"

A little piano concert to top off a great evening!

PS. This "fall back" business on the clock...not fun! Abby was up at 4am instead of her usual 5. Darn internal clocks! Took a few days but we're back to 5 am now.