Spreading his wings

Bert is still talking to us even though we moved away from him and he brought us Christmas presents!  He gave Alex a LeapPad Ultra.  Yeah.  The look on my face when Alex opened it, immediately prompted Bert to proclaim it was really really on sale where he got it.  It better have been.

Needless to say, Alex loves it.  A lot.  We have yet to set up our wireless internet router, so it took me a couple days to get downstairs and set it up.  What?  It's a big house!  But now that it's set up, this kid is obsessed.  Yesterday morning, his first request was to play his LeapPad.  He was of course naked, so I made him a blanket nest on the couch.

Me - Here, I made you a little nest.  Now you're like a baby bird!

Alex - A baby bird that knows how to use a tablet!

Tech Saavy

Guess who found the front facing camera on my phone?

Check that off the list

Drove right past the house this morning on my way home from dropping Alex at daycare.  Whoops.

My baby.

Alex's status as my only baby has a ticking clock, and that clock has about 6 months left before running out and sounding it's infant screaming alarm.  That's right people, there's another Julius boy on the way.  June's about to get a little bit crazier.

Since Alex has been saying he wants a baby to live at our house for about a year, I thought he was going to be all excited when we told him.  I thought wrong.  He had zero reaction.  To the point that Travis and I asked him a couple times if he was listening.  His attitude has since changed.

Now, whenever anything is said about the baby, he chimes in with a comment about "his baby."  "My baby is going to sleep in my room with me."  "I'm going to feed my baby his baby bottle."  And when I told him he would have to let Daddy and I put the baby in the crib because the crib will be too tall for him reach?  "Well, we are going to have to find a crib low enough so I can put my baby in it."

This outta be interesting!

Slow it on down now.

This past week and a half was absolutely  nuts.  I could not have made it through everything without the help of awesome family and friends.  Claire's impeccable glassware packing skills, Kari's astounding get shit in boxes and go skills, Mariah's thoughtful cupcake delivery, the muscles and dedication of Chad, Brent, Jeffrey, Reid, and my father-in-law.  And all the "Go Team!"s and "You Can Do It!"s from the people that love us.  But most of all, I honestly don't know how I would've gotten through the insanity without the massive amounts of love, support, and help from my mom and Nicki.

They were there to hold Alex and my hands through an emotional, but fast and successful trip to the surgery center.  They boxed up more of my stuff than I did I'm pretty sure.  They lifted and cleaned and sorted and moved all of our belongings.  They boosted my confidence when it faltered, and made sure I knew everything was going to work out and everything was going to be ok.  And through it all, they kept us laughing.  So much laughing.

I prefer to just get things done myself.  I don't like needing people to do things for me.  I don't like putting my needs on other people, so I push through and try to figure it out and I don't ask for help.  They didn't wait for me to ask.  They refused my assurances that I could do it and that I didn't need them to go out of their way so much to help.  And thank everything under the sun they did.  I needed it.  Real bad like.

Thank you, Mom and Nicki.  Thank you so much.

Better Late Than Never!

Merry Christmas!

Right on Time

I went ahead and set up my forwarding for my mail since, you know, we're MOVING TOMORROW.  Don't you worry, I got this shit on lock. down.

Someday...

One of these days I will have some time to sit down and write a worthwhile post.  Between minor surgery for the beast, getting the house ready to sell, packing our mountains of stuff to move, and work being crazy train busy, I've been neglecting my little outlet here.  I'll be back people.  I'll be back.  Just gimmee a couple days.

His mad track building skills can't be restricted by the common threads of the masses.  That just won't do.

So Helpful

Have some pictures on your phone you didn't realize you wanted deleted??  No problem, just let Alex play on your phone for a couple minutes and he'll quickly switch to "organizing" your pictures for you.

Your photo gallery will shrink in no time!

Santa!

Daycare had their annual Christmas party last Friday.  This year the preschool class, Alex's class, put on a little concert for us.  For weeks, they worked with the kids, ranging from 3 to 5 years old, and taught them Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Then they had the kids make little antler crowns to wear while they sang for us.  They made the antlers by tracing their hands and cutting out their hand prints.  Alex apparently does not understand how to curve the paper around when using a scissors.  He had very pointy dramatic finger antlers.  And he only had 4 on each side...I checked and he didn't cut off a finger, so I'm not really sure what happened there.  We'll just chalk it up to artistic license.  All in all, super cute.

Then we went to see Santa.  The line was long because Santa is suuuuuper thorough.  He spent anywhere from 3-5 minutes with each kid/set of siblings.  The one nice thing about that is it gave more times to get a decent picture.  This one is my absolute favorite:

Merry Christmas!!!

Saturday Night Races

I know you all think you had a rockin' Saturday night, but you weren't at the Julius house so...

I don't even know.

A couple nights ago, Travis and I were eating, and Alex was in the living room.  Alex requested an episode of Backyardigans, and since I really wanted to sit and eat my burrito uninterrupted, I happily obliged.  I turned on the episode and headed back to the kitchen table.

Within a half minute, the child I left in the living room completely clothed, bounded into the kitchen completely naked.  I was mystified at how quickly he managed that task.  Travis, on the other hand, asked what was going on.  And the answer left me beyond speechless.

Why did he take his clothes off?  Because he wanted the dog to lick his butt.  Yep.

Out of the mouths of babes.

Lil' Christmas Cheer

This is what you get when you are moving 5 days before Christmas but yet refuse to not have a Christmas tree.  I present to you our new 3' tall beacon of the Christmas season.

Charlie Brown ain't got shit on us.

Purge

The only thing I like about packing all our crap to move is the purging of all the actual crap we don't need.  I used to like that in college a lot too, back when I was moving every year.  If I hadn't worn an article of clothing in a year, welp, I wasn't gonna wear it the next year.  To the donation pile!

But then, every once in a great while, you find something you forgot you couldn't live without.

Oh yeah, those are lights in the frames.  And they have multiple flashing settings.  I know you're jealous.