Halloween's in the Bag!

I'll be honest: this morning when the streets were wet and it looked rainy and dark, I was sort of hoping for all day thunderstorms. Something-- anything, really-- to make Halloween go away. I'm a total Halloween Scrooge, as we have previously discussed.  But of course, the day ended up beautiful and warm, perfect for trick-or-treating [or, in MB's new slang, tricker].

MB ended up with several costumes, but their real costumes were Max & Ruby [Ruby! And her Little Brother Max!] My mom contributed significantly to their costumes. I made Bo's shirt and whined through most of it. Did you not believe me when I said I was a Halloween Scrooge? Because I was not really exaggerating.

This was the last time Bo wore his ears. I think he thought they were his dinner. Why my dinna on my head? he must have thought to himself.

Mary Bullock was serious about tricker this year. She didn't really understand what the deal was with the candy at first, but she figured it out very quickly while swindling four candies out of the nice mommy at the first house we visited.

As it got dark, MB just had to take a little bweak. A bweak from walking, that is. Not from candy. Oh no. That would have been ridiculous.

And then Ruby & Superman walked home.  I bet Superman's parents even pilfered his candy. [Not that Ruby's parents would ever ever ever ever do that.**]

And that was that. We didn't even carve pumpkins this year. Oh well.

On a side note, though: I took Bo to a playdate for MOPs this morning dressed like this:

It was a costume party, so I claimed that he was dressed as his Daddy. But really these were just the first clothes that I grabbed out of the drawer and wrangled him into on our way out the door.

Then Daddy showed up to our pre-tricker festivities at Meg's house dressed like...drumroll please?

And though I may be the biggest Halloween Scrooge ever, that was definitely a Birthday Thing.

**TELL ME THE TRUTH: YOU EAT THEIR CANDY, TOO, RIGHT?

Now & Later

What I've got now:

What I'm going to have to have later (like in twelve years?): an unlisted phone number.

It's the Great Pumpkin 2011

[Catch It's the Great Pumpkin 2010 and 2009 here and here. Mary Bullock has different colored eyes every year! Wonder what next year will be?]

Our annual October obsession with the pumpkin patch is well under way around here. We were temporarily derailed last week of course, so we're a little behind. We've only had three patch trips so far, but I'm sure there will be several more before November.

It has come to my attention [via Jill] that what we call a pumpkin "patch" in Florida is kind of laughable to the rest of the world. There are no pumpkins growing here. It's just a place for us fall-starved folks to go and pretend for a minute that it's not still in the upper 80s straight on through December.

But we'll take whatever we can get!

Welcome to Bobo's Stroller Body Shop

Dear Bobo,

Here are a few of the many things I love about you:
1. Your cheeks are cool and squishy.

2. You laugh so easily. It makes me feel like the funniest human being alive. [I mean, next to Sissy. Because she is clearly the humor winner in this household.]

3. You sit down with a toy and play and play and play. And when you've played so hard with your toy that it rolls away from you, you wait patiently for its replacement instead of squawking as another [nameless!] child in our household would have done.

4. You let me sleep until 5 this morning. I would have loved you for 4:30, but that extra thirty minutes really sealed the deal.

Kisses!
Mama

Half Way

Is it just me, or did July 4th come sooner this year than it ever has before? I'm still kind of mind-boggled that we're half way through summer. I thought for sure I would have myself together before now.

But no.

The opposite, actually. Instead of getting myself together, so far this summer I have:
Created a holla hoop monster
Smashed my brand new cell phone to bits
Utterly failed at part 2 of potty training if you know what I mean

Allowed MB to watch ungodly amounts of Toweus Jowges [Curious George] and Mawfa Peaks [Martha Speaks] in the name of my own sanity
Hmm...what else.
Forgotten to get the dry cleaning...oh...every single week. Not even kidding.

I've also:
Taken whatever semblance there was of Bobo's schedule and trashed it
Said some bad words much louder than I meant to
Lost my temper
Lost my bathing suit
Lost various pool towels
Lost some of Lee's brand new work shirts.

Most of that turned back up eventually.  We're hoping the shirts are the result of a forgot to pick up the dry cleaning incident, and not a forgot to lock the car door and they were stolen from our driveway incident.

Oh well.

As MB says in potty training: That's o-tay, I guess. We'll just have to teeeeeeep twying.

I learn something new from her every day.

Rules

Have y'all seen this book? I guess unless you have had a boy recently [or had a friend having a boy maybe?] you might not have come across it. We received it as a gift when Lee 4 was born. Aside from being an awesome color to add to my color-by-numbers bookshelves, I love thumbing through it to see the advice for boys.

I especially love the bits that advise boys to be nice and respectful to their mamas.  I have to admit that when I found out I was having a boy, I couldn't really picture how it would be to love a boy baby. If we're being honest, I didn't really know if I could love a boy the same way that I loved my girl.

Turns out, I don't love him the same. Just as much? Absolutely. Same? No. I hope to one day be able to articulate the difference, but I'm still trying to put my finger on it. 

I pray that I do him justice in his upbringing.

But if he doesn't call me on his birthday when he's an adult, I can always go over to his house, press my face to the window, and ask him if he wants pancakes or waffles for breakfast.

What? Is that bad?

Honestly

I have felt like whining this week. Summer [i.e. having two babies to manage 24/7] has already blown my mind.
But I don't blog to whine. Whining is boring to read about, I think.
So I'm coping by taking pictures of MB and turning them into collages with commentary.

This makes me laugh [after the fact, of course] at a situation that was not so laughable at the time. Does your baby have a face he/she makes right before the playing ratchets up a notch into violence? This is MB's look. The one that says I might need to go to my room for a few minutes.

I have to remind myself daily that even the best two-year-olds are still only two years old. And one day, I'm going to really really miss my two year old. The one who gives more night-night kisses than she gets, the one who, after peeing the floor right in front of the toilet, hugs my leg and says, I love you in the WHOLE WORLD, MAMA. The one who, first thing upon leaving her room in the morning says, I COMING RIGHT NOW, BABY BROWA! Yes, even the one who cut her own hair this week.

Luckily, I'll have another two year old in about...18 months. Maybe he'll give his mama a pass on the hair cutting, though.

I Don't Care What People Say

I think he looks like me.

Twinsies!

A Little Bit of Everything for your Friday

I took the babies to the pool by myself this morning! I hope you are proud of me. I am proud of me. Actually, I'm proud of me most mornings that I actually get all three of us dressed and out the door, even if I leave a hurricane in my wake [which is what happens most mornings].

But taking them to the pool by myself seemed very intimidating. I kept imagining how it would all go down, trying to pre-think every imminent disaster. In the end, I just packed our stuff and walked out the door without worst-case-scenario-ing it to death. And it was actually great--dare I say?--even easy.

This sweet baby makes everything pretty easy. I have honestly NO idea where he got his easy going temperament, because Lord knows it wasn't from Lee or me.

Mary Bullock did her usual pilfering of pool toys from babies whose mothers are more prepared than I. :) She does ask nicely [most of the time] and say thank you very sweetly, but one of these days I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get the girl her own pool toys! I've been remiss so far, but it's only the second week of June, right? That doesn't make me totally awful yet.

This was our view of the smoke this morning. Just to give you an idea, we can usually see Downtown clearly from here. The view was sad, but the smell was worse. Pray for rain!

This is one of my favorite new shots of Bobo [can you guess who came up with his new name?]. It probably looks the same to you as the other 1,000 pictures I've taken of him, but this one represents all the practicing I've been doing with my camera. I'm still figuring out how everything works, so I'm always psyched when I learn something new like how to adjust the aperture and the...other...thingy...whose name is escaping me right now. I took these indoors with no flash.

Lastly, if you're still reading, I read this book this week.

I posted a warning on facebook, and I'll post it again here: be wary. I had a two-day stress headache from sobbing, and had to throw away one pair of contacts [a second pair are questionable, but I'm down to my last two pair, and I'm cheap and lazy, so I'm going to wear them another week. NO ONE MAKE ME CRY.]

But someone asked me if the book was "more sad than worth reading," which I thought was one of the more interesting questions I've been asked about a book. Answer: Go ahead and read it. But only if you are seriously not A) pregnant or B) immediately postpartum.

It's definitely a book that I hope will stay with me. I'm not ruining anything you wouldn't gather from reading the book jacket, but the wife/mother dies the day after her first child is born, before she is even allowed to hold her. It's devastating. But because I couldn't dwell on that frightening scenario and actually get out of bed and function everyday, I'm choosing to take something else from it. That's this: life is too short and too uncertain to spend time being mad. After reading this book and thinking of all of the time I've wasted being mad at Lee for stupid things, I feel sick.

And so, my dear, sweet, living, breathing husband: I love you, and I promise not to get mad next time you come home late. As long as you come home.

The end.
Happy Weekend!
PS. Happy Anniversary to my mom and dad on Sunday!

Reason #457 Why I'm Worthless Lately

Until this week, I had forgotten that MB used to lick my face. Now Lee 4 has started licking my face, and suddenly I remembered the best game ever.
I put my cheek next to his soft chubby cheek, and he turns his mouth and licks.
I squeal with delight: EEEEEEEEEE!!!
Repeat.


I could do this all day.
Which may explain why the laundry's piling up.
Whoooops.

I'll make it quick...

Because there's nothing that wakes up a sleeping baby like a Mama who sits down to accomplish something.

I have to say this about my littlest Valentine: before he was born, people told me it would be different with a boy.  Mothering would be different, I mean. And I could never quite imagine what they meant. But now I get it. And I love it.

And now he is demanding his mama, so I'll have to tell you more about it later.

You asked

And by you, I mean, Taylor. The rest of you might not care. Except Molly. You care about everything MB and L4 related. :)
So-- the nursery. The nursery that I fretted, nagged, cried, and swore over? It's not done. I'm not sure it will ever be done. I prefer to think of it as a work in progress, sort of like me. I'm sure we'll keep ticking projects off of the to-do list right up until the time this room is ready to be turned into something else!

First, a repeat picture of my squirrel.  I posted the first picture of him with his giraffe here, just so you can see how big he is getting. So-- this is his crib. The outside of the bumper is Amy Butler Full Moon Dots in Cherry.  Here is a better picture of the bedding-- taken the day we came home from the hospital. The inside is super soft minky dots. [I want to cover my entire house in minky dots. I rub my face on MB's pillows when she's not looking.]

I chose this fabric because it coordinates with the Amy Butler Wallflower print that I used for MB's bedskirt.

Finding fabrics that coordinated for both boy and girl was a little tricky, especially since I am not skilled enough to make decisions about color and scale and design-y things like that. Amy Butler prints are coordinated enough for dummies like me. :)

The curtains are sailcloth panels from Target that got an upgrade from Grandma Moose [my mom]. She is my go-to seamstress for baby rooms, much to her dismay at this point. I'm sure every time her phone rings now, she's willing me to just buy something from Pottery Barn Kids already.  Ahhhh-- but I could never be so easy. [Which she should totally know by now, having raised me. =)]

Just a few weeks ago I finally got around to doing the "art" [if you can call it that] for the space above the changing table.

I wanted [and actually convinced Lee to get] a Sugarboo print for above the changing table. I've wanted one forever and thought it would be perfect for this space-- until the day that MB stuck her hand into a tub of Aquaphor and smeared it all over that very wall while I was changing her diaper.  And then Plan B was hatched. It's a canvas covered in burlap and painted with fabric paint, so even if it one day gets covered in poop, [and I am positive that day will come sooner rather than later] I can toss it and do something else and not shed tears over it.

We finally got around to hanging Lee IV's car mobile a few weeks ago. And by we, I mean Lee III.  I am no help on these projects.

[Another idea hijacked from Sugarboo and executed by my chief seamstress.]

And that's about it, unless you want pictures of the piles of toys and dirty clothes on the floor. Let me know if you do-- I like to keep it real around here. ;)