beanski

baby burrito

It's been going on since her very first bath when he wrapped her up safe and warm in her towel and called her a baby burrito.

Over time, it has morphed into a long, post bath-time rant leaving them both in stitches by the time she has her pajamas on.

It goes something like this:

Ski: "Are you a nacho grande?"
Renee: "No!" {SQUEAL}
Ski: "HMMM, well maybe you are a chicken soft taco?"
Renee: "NO!" {GIGGLE, GIGGLE}
Ski: "I got it, you must be a beef enchilada?"
Renee: HAHAHAHA {can't talk, laughing too hard}
Ski: "Hey Renee, are you a chicken chimichanga?"
Renee: "You're SO silly. daddy." {LAUGHING}
Ski: "Well, you must be a baby burrito. I could eat you up."

It's one of the many things I never ever want to forgot.  

the one that i love

She has her glare worked out...just in case you were wondering. 

octopii

The answer to the questions from the pictures of Renee's bedroom are:

• NO, it is NEVER that clean, I picked it up to take the pictures. DUH.
• YES, I'd love to help you decorate...I love spending other people's money :)

The only way any of this is possible is that I buy things when I see them cheap and I am not afraid of doing a little crafting or sewing to get the look I want. Once I decided on pink and green for her room I started buying everything that I saw that was one of those colors and on clearance. Some of the shades of pink aren't perfect but unless you are looking super close, you'd never notice. The pink frames on her shelves I got for ONE DOLLAR each. Her curtains were $10. The quilt was $22 for the quilt and the matching shams. Over the weekend, I saw some espresso 11x14 frames on clearance at Target for $5 and I literally bought 10 of them. I may not use them today but I will use them someday. When they are like 75% off, I buy. It drives my husband absolutely insane because we have an entire room of crap waiting to be used for something. But whatever, I will use it and in the long run it will cost me a fraction of what I would have paid for it full price.

The kid's bathroom has been done for a while but I just got around to hanging up the pictures and taking the pictures of the final product on Monday. I love it. So does Renee but only because she likes octopii and seahorses.



 
I made the shower curtain and it turned out really cute. I bought a cheap plain white shower curtain and cut the bottom off. Then, I sewed on the fabrics I wanted to use. Really, really easy, like two hours of work easy and I think the materials were about $30 total.

Room 2 of a billion complete. Cameron's room is next...I just started on his quilt the other day.

my big girl's room

I spent this morning cutting up Renee's crib sheet to make two pillowcases for her big girl bed. I was going to link to her old room but I apparently never posted pictures of it. Ha. We had converted her crib to a toddler bed a while back and then last week Ski sat down on it and it broke. So, our long-term plan to buy her a full size bed got moved forward to this weekend. She's still telling me that she wants her "little bed" back but when I went in to wake her up this morning she was sprawled all across the enormous bed so hopefully she'll see the benefits of it soon. I think it turned out super cute...even with the clearance quilt and cheapest sheets they make :)





Room 1 of a billion complete. I love checking things off my list.  

fourteen months

Sunny, that's what I've taken to calling my boy this month. We still throw Bubbs and Bubby and Bubba around a bit but his mommy has taken to calling him Sunny. It started as 'hey son' and has morphed into Sunny and I'm so attached to it that I'm not sure I'll ever call him anything else again. So here's why, son. There is no reason...one day I woke up and it just happened.

He is a man-i-ac and driving his mother (and father...and sister, for that matter) batty. He races for Renee's sippy cups the second she puts them down and then he high tails it for the other room giggling like a school girl just waiting for one of us to chase after him. When we get close he says "no, no, no, no." And then he laughs. And then my head explodes because it is the hundred and fifteenth time he's done that. IN THE LAST HOUR.

He's obsessed with climbing on anything and everything. During the course of the last three weekend days I have caught him standing on each of the following things: the dining room table, the play table, the back of the couch and my personal favorite, the roof of his sister's dollhouse. He climbs up there and just bides his time, waiting until I get wind of what he's up to and then he laughs and laughs and laughs. TURKEY. Turkey with a smashed up face, that's where it's headed. I don't worry about it so much when his dad is home because his dad hovers over him but good Lord, no one should leave me alone with him right now, seeing how I have the attention span of a gnat right now.

It's these children, they took my brain. Piece by piece, they took it all away.

He LOVES shoes. And boots and slippers and footwear of any kind. He drags them over and demands that we put them on and when we stand him up he gets this excited, proud little look on his face before he takes off running. He gets so frustrated when they are daddy's shoes and they are too big to stay on his feet.

He's at that stage where he wants so desparately to communicate that it is driving him mad. He can say Mama, Uh oh, kitty, light, no and night, night. He was poking at my teeth the other night and I kept telling him that they were called teeth and he made a very distinct 'Th' sound and you would have thought he won the Pulitzer Price for how proud he was of himself when he heard that sound come out of his mouth.

When you put food on his plate that he likes he starts clapping. If you mention the word milk, he runs for the fridge. He wants to tell us what he's thinking but he struggles to get the words out and those struggles usually leave him sitting in the middle of the floor with his head between his knees kicking and screaming.

Now that we've gotten his belly more stabilized we've been working on undoing all of the bad sleeping habits he had developed. It didn't take him long to get the hang of it, though, and he finally goes to sleep for naps and at bedtime all by himself. He still wakes in the night every few hours though screaming his bloody head off but I can go in there and pick him up for three seconds and lay him back down and he'll go right to sleep. I've mastered the art of Pick Up, Put Down without even waking up, I think. I can put him back to sleep, pee and get back into bed without even opening my eyes.

He is the sunshine of our lives and such a fun little boy to have around. I am amazed daily at how much of a boy he is and how different he is than his sister.

I'm so glad that I got the chance to witness the differences between girls and boys and I remind myself often that while he might be harder to have around as a baby, when they are thirteen and fourteen and we're smack dab in the middle of teenage girl drama, I'll be so glad that he's a little boy. I'm glad today that he is a little boy...I'm just glad in a very tired way.
 

thirty

My husband won nearly eight hundred dollars playing fantasy football this year. You read that right...eight HUNDRED dollars.

You know what he spent it on?

He spent it on me...on MY hobby.

He bought me a new camera for my 30th birthday. And not just any new camera, a shiny, new Canon 7d...more of a machine than I ever really even hoped to own.

I'm humbled in a you-should-probably-take-it-back-and-buy-something-for-yourself way. Humbled wondering how on earth I got so lucky that he wanted to marry ME.

Also: I can hardly wait to see what I get when I turn 40.

pre-school

She's going to pre-school two days a week starting next week and this morning, I took her there for a visit. I took her there so that she has something in her mind when I talk to her about it. I took her there in attempt to prepare her for the upcoming change. I was pretty sure she'd be scared and that she wouldn't leave my side. 

The teacher took the balls out for playtime and you could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. You could tell she wanted to jump in and grab a ball. You could tell she wanted to sing The Wheels on the Bus with the other kids.

But she didn't. She refused my offer to take her coat off. She held my hand tightly and watched cautiously.

After a few minutes of watching, she looked up and whispered to me that she wanted me to take her coat off. I complied. She always whispers when she's nervous.

She wrapped her arms around my knee and held me close. I rubbed her curls.

Then, all of a sudden, after her mind had properly processed her surroundings, she decided she was ready and off she went without so much as a backward glance. I stood along the wall of the classroom and watched with tears in my eyes as she sat down at the table with the other kids and had her snack. I watched her watch those kids, learning the rules and the routines, trying to act just like them. I watched her as she worked so hard drink out of a big kid cup just like them even though she begs for sippy cups at home. I watched her look down at her wet shirt in a somewhat embarassed way and wipe it off, trying to cover up the fact that she'd spilled in front of the other kids, in front of her new teacher.

It took her about 20 minutes and she forgot I was even there.

I couldn't be more proud of her.

I think I'll miss the sippy cups next week.

shel, you could have picked a better picture

Renee received a copy of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree for Christmas. It, like all of the other books, including the Monster Truck book, has been a huge hit. But tonight she turned The Giving Tree over after we had finished reading it and saw this:
   
She said, "EWWWW, MEAN. I don't like him mommy" and threw the book on the floor.

I haven't stopped laughing since.

resolutions

It's a new year and I like the fresh start. It forces me to take a look at my life and figure out where I can improve. Cameron started 2010 by sleeping through the ever-loving night, Ski and I had a nice dinner and a real conversation in what seems like a looonnng time last night and I woke up today and was all like "Dudes, there's hope. Maybe 2010 isn't going to suck huge donkey balls." At least we started off on the right foot this year.

1. Go out of my way to be more social, even if it's hard and the kids get out of their routines. 2009 was The Year of The Hermit and I think it made me sort of miserable.
2. Be easier on myself and on my husband. I have not been nice to him or to myself this year and it has to change.
3. Lose some weight. Seriously, I think all I need to do is quit eating chocolate and the pounds will melt off. It seems simple but it hasn't been simple for me.

My resolutions last year:

1. Waste less. Waste less food, less water, less paper towels, less everything.
2. Be a better mom and wife. Figure out the meaning of the word patience.
3. It wouldn't be a New Year's if I didn't vow to lose some pounds. This year I'm hoping for 15. Better to start big, I figure.

They look remarkably the same. The long and short is that I sucked at all of them. In fact, I was a crappier wife and mom, probably wasted more and gained another five pounts this year. HAHAHAHAHA. FAIL. Why do I bother? I'll never learn.

Do you have resolutions or do you think resolutions are stupid? (See Above)