The Joys of Microwave Cooking

"Mom!  21 seconds I have a breadstick DONE from frozen!!"
"Cool."
Sung while dancing, "Oh yeah!  Uh huh!  I did that!  Oh yeah!"

Just keeps gettin' better

"Mom?  I need you to smell something for me."
"What."
"I need you to smell my shirt."
"Oooooookkkkkkk..."
sniff sniff
"Ugh!  What is that?!"
"Pee.  When I was going to the bathroom I forgot to pull my shirt up far enough."
"WHY DID YOU MAKE ME SMELL IT???"
"Because I wanted to know if the smell was still there."
"Yes!  It is!  Now go upstairs and put on a clean shirt!"
An evil cackle erupts as he runs up the stairs.

~End scene~

Better

While the boys were in the bath last night, I removed the amazing tree decorations from the previous night and rehung the lights.  Once they were out of the tub, and wearing at least underwear or a diaper so they would STOP PEEING ON THE FLOOR SAM, I had the boys help me hang the ornaments.  I think it turned out pretty darn nice.

Sam is very excited about the tree again this year...

Don't be fooled by his cuteness.  These were taken after he rammed his little shopping cart into the tree...twice...while looking at me and smiling.

Clever Boy

We borrowed a friend's trailer yesterday to get our Christmas tree.  It is super helpful this particular friend lets us use his trailer whenever we need it, buuuuuuut there is usually something in it that needs to go to the dump before we can put our stuff in it.  Yesterday was no exception.

We picked up the very full trailer and headed to the dump to unload it.  Travis was grumbling a little bit about how much was in the trailer and while I was equally annoyed, I figured looking for a bright side would be in order since we were on a fun tree shopping trip and there was no sense starting it off with yucky mindsets.  That, and both boys were listening.

So, I said, "Well, how about we think about it this way...instead of having a financial payment to make for the use of a trailer, we have a manual labor payment to make for the use of a trailer.  We don't have to pay any money for it, but we still get to use it whenever we need it."  Before Travis could agree, because of course he was going to agree with me, Alex piped up from the back seat, "Yeah!  It's symbiosis!"  Uhhhhhh, wat.  He continued, "Yeah, we get to use his trailer and he gets a clean trailer.  Everybody gets what they need.  It's symbiosis!"  I agreed that is in fact what it was and asked where he learned such an awesome word.  "Ocotonauts and Wild Kratts."

And people say TV is useless.  Ha!

The Holidays...

...they are upon us.  After a weekend of driving and a ton of great time with family we decided to get some Christmas decorating done.  First thing on the list?  Get the tree.  It only took two stops and a lot of chasing boys through stacks of trees, but we found a great one.  We set it up, but I didn't put the lights on right away so we could let the branches relax a bit.  That was too much waiting for Alex, so he asked if he put at least one strand of lights on and just a few ornaments.  Knowing I was most likely going to have to take off whatever he put on, I let him at it.  With the help of his brother and two friends, he created this masterpiece:

As Mariah aptly commented:  #nailedit.

A, B, C, J...wait.

Every Monday, Alex gets a list of 15 spelling words and every Friday, he takes a spelling test.  So, every night we go through the list.  This week's list had some doozies on it.  Barge, place, badge, space, etc.  At first I was just thinking they were doozies for a 2nd grader, but then...

One of the words was bulge.  For some reason I had it stuck in my head that bulge is actually spelled "buldge."  And I kept correcting Alex.  Like every time.  Travis even said from the living room, "Huh, I wouldn't have spelled that with a D." but I just thought he was saying that so Alex didn't feel bad about not knowing how to spell the word.

You guys.  This went on for 2 days.  I kept telling him to spell it "buldge."  Until finally last night I actually looked at the list instead of my normal glance at it to know what word to have him spell next.  And I was all, "WAIT!  NO!  I WAS WRONG!"  And then I had to start the process of unteaching it.

This may not be his most successful spelling test.

Hiiiiiiieee

It's been almost a week!  Whoops.  Not much goin' on in the Ol' Julius House.

Sam is so much a two year old it is making me nutso.  His current favorite mode of communication is scolding me, usually followed with a hitting attempt.  So that's fun.  He's still pretty cute, so I guess I'll continue to fight this battle instead of giving him to someone for Christmas.

Over on Alex's side he is showing signs of pre-pre-teen fun by claiming everything, other than the TV and his tablet, is too hard and he'll never be able to do it right.  He's the worst at everything!  He will never get it right!  Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

Fun all around.

That time of year

Time for Alex's turkey decorating project!

Fall has a couple pluses

I am not a big fan of fall.  Mostly because it is a daily reminder that we are just that much closer to winter and winter is wretched.  This year has helped me a bit by providing some pretty stellar photo ops...

The trees in our neighborhood are getting big enough to drop a decent amount of leaves now.  Alex was a little excited about that yesterday afternoon:

Whoops!

A while back I bought Alex a new bike helmet.  His old one is all cracked and has holes in it.  I realize the decorative outer shell doesn't do much, if anything, by way of protecting his brains, but a cracked helmet doesn't set one's mind at ease.  So, a new helmet it was!  I bought a super cool skull one and we were good to go.  Until we weren't.

I noticed he wasn't wearing it, so I asked what was up.  He said it was pulling his hair.  What?  Whatever dude, you said you liked it, now wear your new helmet.  I let it go for a couple of weeks until it was annoying me just too much.  So I asked him again why he wasn't wearing it.  Again came the claims of hair pulling.  I told him to bring me the helmet so I could fix it.

And that's when I saw the three stickers on the inside of the helmet I hadn't noticed previously.  And all three had hair stuck to them.  Whoopsiedoodle!

For those of us keeping score...

...Sam was a monkey again last night.  And...and today at day care.  He just loves having a tail!  And when he looks up at me and says, "I wear my monkey suit?" in his little voice, there is no way I can say no.  Good thing it seems to be holding up to hand washing so far.

Love

Alex has off of school today and it is beautiful outside, so when he asked if we could take Aiden to the dog park, I could barely get my shoes on fast enough.

It was a good day.

Halloween 2016

As I said before, Alex was Batman again for Halloween.  He was cute and normal and wore his costume for trick or treating (twice) and to his school classroom party.

Sam was a monkey.  For THREE FULL DAYS.  Saturday morning, I had him try on Alex's old monkey costume to make sure it fit.  And he wouldn't let me take it off.  For three days.  He would freak out any time I changed his diaper because he thought I was going to change his clothes too.  He straight up yelled at me yesterday morning when I untied it so I could change his soggy over night diaper.  "Leave my monkey suit ON!"  Dude.  Chill out.  I'm just making sure you don't get a rash.  Geeeeez.

He was a monkey all day on Saturday.  He went to watch Alex play soccer as monkey.  He ate lunch as a monkey.  He took a nap as a monkey.  He rode his tractor around the neighborhood as a monkey.  He ran around in the neighbor's leaves as a monkey.  He ate dinner as monkey.

Travis did manage to get him into pajamas Saturday night and then in regular clothes for about 20 minutes on Sunday to go out to the barn at Gramma & Grandpa Z's.  But as soon as his feet hit the floor in the house?  "I wear my monkey suit?"  And as soon as he was back in it, he was running and jumping around, giggling and showing everyone his tail.  It was too cute to even attempt to stop.  So he got to sleep in it Sunday night.

One thing though...the monkey suit sheds.  A lot.  There is monkey fur all over the house.  And I was more than a bit taken a back when I changed his diaper for the first time after he had been wearing the suit.  Apparently it also sheds on the inside.  And that fur can get its way into a diaper.  So there I was innocently changing my 2 year old's diaper, when I was staring at a dark brown fur covered not supposed to be fur covered for many more years diaper area!

But then yesterday I picked him up from daycare and it smelled like I picked up a diaper pail.  Oh he didn't have a dirty diaper, just three days of 2 year old stank hanging out on his monkey suit.  I let him wear it for the rest of the day because even though I loathe Halloween, I myself am not a monster.  But when Travis took him to put him to bed we made confirming eye contact that pajamas were in order.  After a contested bath, he was in pajamas and asleep.  This morning I made sure to keep the monkey suit out of sight, and he didn't bring it up.  We'll see how long that lasts.

I think I'm gonna do some monkey suit hand washing today.  How in the world would I be able to say no to that cuteness??