Big Party Weekend

We had a very hectic weekend. Grant's birthday party was on Saturday, so most of Friday was spent getting ready for the party. Saturday was all about the party and Sunday was recovering from the party and saying goodbye to the grandparents and one aunt who had all come out to celebrate with our monster. Here are a few things that I learned over the weekend.

• Your sink will spring a major leak the day you have to bake the birthday cake.
• A 2 year old can operate a 5MP digital camera but the pictures won't be great.
• Most kids today do NOT need more toys especially toys that make lots of noise.
• Really hot weather makes everyone in our town want to eat out for dinner.
• Playing board games with a 5 year old can be almost as exciting as watching paint dry.
• A nap never sounds so good as when Mom and Dad are taking you out to dinner.
• All it takes is one Power Ranger birthday card to restart the PR obsession.

Overall it was a great weekend and the boys loved seeing all the family that came to visit. But today it's back to just me and the monsters. I hope I can keep them entertained until my back up gets home. Just a couple more hours now.... woohoo!

Grant turns the big 5!

We had a great adventure today. For Grant's big day, Glayde took the day off and we all headed to the zoo. It was pretty fun to see all the animals even though we didn't go to the new (and not quite finished) childrens' zoo. I was not up for a mad rush with 100+ people through a minor construction site.

Our favorites
Grant - Elephants
Glayde - Bobcats
Stacy - Meerkats
Heath - Camels (at least he looked at them a lot)

Grant also took his first ride on the Sky Chairs. Glayde got the honor of going with him while I stayed firmly on the ground with Heath. I'm not taking that squirmy 2 year old on a chair lift anytime in the near future. The train was a big hit too even if it is a ticket hog. Grant really loved the little tiger roller coaster. We could hear his squeals during the entire ride.

I'm sure you've guessed where we went for dinner... yep... Chevy's. I hate it when they make a big deal over some adult's birthday there but it's really touching to see your kids get a huge kick out of signing waiters and a huge sombrero. Heath with his hat fetish will be stealing that sombrero in the near future.

All in all it was a great way to celebrate being a mom for 5 years... I mean to celebrate Grant's big day. It's hard to believe that in such a short time he's grown into a big personality and character that are all him. Happy birthday to my BIG boy!

Messy Genes

I'm busy, busy, busy today. I have tons of things to finish up for Grant's party on Saturday. We're making tons of the goodies for the goody bag. It always seems like a good idea until it gets right down to time to get everything done. LOL But no other birthday boy will give out the same goodies as we'll have at Grant's dino bash.

Plus I'm starting to feel the stress of a messy house. You see my mom is a very neat and organized woman. Why oh why did I NOT get that gene?!? And my folks along with the in laws are coming for Grant's birthday. My dad won't really notice what the house looks like. I mean this is the man I got all my messy tendencies from! Plus he says that the real reason he's driving 2000+ miles to visit is to use our high speed internet. My folks now live in the boondocks of southern Missouri and they have only dial-up service, so Dad saves all the big service pack downloads for visits to our house.

I'm hoping that one of my boys got the recessive cleaning gene and that it's a late developing characteristic. They've both shown a love for books and Grant is showing Glayde's tactile issues. Glayde can't make a ham sandwich without washing his hands at least once during the process because he touched the ham and it was slimy. Now let me say this is can be ham fresh from the deli counter at Raley's and the man still washes his hands after handling the ham. Grant seems fine on handling his food but the other day hiking he obsessed about not falling in this little creek that he was crossing. Nope, he wasn't worried about falling and getting wet. He was worried about the algae. In his words "algae is slimy... slimy and sticky." Yep, that Glayde's genes all the way.

After Mom's visit, I'll be on the look out for either boys to develop a tendency to really clean or just put away some of the toys that are like land mines around our house. I can hope, can't I?!?

Harry Potter

Yep, I'm obsessed with Harry Potter, the books that it. The movies are okay but they really don't cover enough the intrigue and magic that is Hogwarts. I got my copy of HP and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday and finished reading it little after lunch today. Don't worry I'm not going to give away anything too interesting here. Glayde was glad the that book finally got here or rather that he checked the mailbox and found it there with a bunch of other mundane things. You see all morning I was asking "Where's my Harry Potter?" and jumping up to check the front door whenever I thought I heard a delivery van drive by. Why was I waiting for a delivery van when the book was in our mailbox. I was easily fooled by the fact that Amazon gave me a UPS tracking number. I still haven't figured out how that works actually I haven't thought about it too much since I was devouring the book instead.

You would have thought that once I got my hot little hands on the book I would have calmed down. Nope! I was giving Glayde updates about things in the book he could care less about. He's only seen the movies and doesn't seem to get that he's really missing out here, so I feel compelled to keep telling him tidbits about Harry and Malfoy's ongoing feud, how romance is fairing at Hogwarts and whenever someone dies. He's really thrilled about this let me tell you.

It was a great story like J.K. Rowling always delivers. No it wasn't high art but it was a great read. It's sad to read the end of the book not only for the events of the story but knowing that the next book is not even on the horizon yet. *sigh* I'll just have to reread HBP a few times. Heck, I'm even think about reading the first book to Grant here soon. Hopefully I can do it justice and he'll be my little HP fan.

Hey, you're not supposed to do that!

Of our two boys Grant is the puker. If the flu is going around, he's sure to get it and pyrotechnics will ensue. He gets sick at least four times a year and never once has Heath thrown up... until last night. The poor guy seems to be getting in some molars. He's chewing on everything in sight. So last night when Heath was having trouble sleeping I assumed that it was the teeth. After a couple of trips into comfort him, I decided it was time to break out the Tylenol and hope that it gave him some relief. Heath happily took the medicine but it either didn't agree with him (or maybe it was the chicken that I was so happy he ate at lunch that didn't sit well) because on my next trip into Heath's room he got spectacularly sick.

Did I mention that Glayde is out of town this week? Yep, I got to comfort and clean up our latest puke-a-saurus on my own.... three times. The whole effort works much better with a team to do the work but some how the cats just didn't want to get in on this action. *sigh*

I've come to the conclusion that parenthood is just a very messy sport. It starts off messy... morning sickness, amniotic fluid, transition, delivery, after birth... it's all messy. Obviously the end between bits are messy. There's mud pies, food items ground into your carpet, shoes full of sand, puking in the middle of the night and many more than I can count. I'm not sure that there's a real end in sight but I'm sure that it will be messy.

Oh by the way... no food experiments are scheduled today for Heath.

What did he just eat!?!?

If you've had dinner with me and the boys recently you know how limited Heath's food choices are. I'd swear he's on the Anti-Atkins diet. It's all carbs all the time. Okay and some fruit too. He used to eat more things than this but somewhere along the line his 2 year old personality decided that he needed more control and that meant less variety.

Today after a trip to the pool, we brought McD home for lunch. Grant love's Happy Meals for more than the toys, but Heath mainly sticks to tons of fries. As the eternal optimistic mom I slipped a small piece of Chicken Selects onto Heath's plate. When I checked his plate a few minutes later, the chicken had disappeared. I surreptitiously check around his chair thinking he probably just dropped it. Well, I don't see any evidence of littering and our cats do not patrol the dinner table looking for hand-outs, so I'm rather confused about where the chicken went. To follow this experiment to it's conclusion, I put another small piece of chicken on his plate and watch intently this time. Heath blithely picked up the tidbit and ATE IT! Holy cow, what's wrong with this child! A piece of chicken has not passed his lips in at least 6 months! Heath proceeded to wolf down about half a Chicken Select. Sheesh, if I'd known this would happen I would have bought a bigger meal.

Tune in tomorrow for more news flashes on the food experiments happening at our house. Will Heath finally eat a hot dog? Will he decide that pizza isn't so bad after all? Or will we fall back on our all stand by... PB&J? Only time will tell.

Isn't it bedtime!?!?

I've lost count of how many times I've put Heath to bed in the last hour and a half! He's learned how to climb out of his crib. It amazed me that it took my extremely active little climber this long to achieve this feat, but now that he's learned to do it quickly and quietly. I often don't know that he's out of bed until I hear him playing with one of his toys or my ever helpful husband asks "Is Heath's light supposed to be on?" No usually a light being on is not that conducive to toddlers sleeping. Thanks honey.

Heath wised up to turning on the light after I threw him back in bed the second, fourth and fifth times. Now his climbing out and playing in the dark. Obviously he takes after me on the night vision. I like to read books at bed time in semi darkness, so Heath playing with his toys or rearranging his books in the dark isn't too odd.

Yes we are looking for a "big boy bed" for him but I'm not sure that that will really put an end to Heath's night time excursions. When we started discussing big boy beds, Grant sweetly piped up and said "Heath can sleep in my bed with me because it's really big." Great then I'd have two of them playing in the dark together!

More on tantrums

2 1/2 is an interesting age especially for Heath who just doesn't have the best communication skills yet. When things don't go his way and he can't get across what he wants, it's tantrum time! He can go for total sweetheart to Tasmanian devil in about 3 seconds flat and it's not a pretty transformation.

Just in case you're wondering how things went at the gym after Heath's last tantrum over a toy... They got worse before they got better. On Thursday, Grant had his last swim lesson and as soon as we pulled into the gym parking lot Heath started to sniffle then all out wail. I firmly kept heading for child care not about to give into this little terrorist. I got him checked in and explained to one of the teachers that I really didn't mind if he cried the entire time we were gone. Basically he's figured out that if he cries enough he doesn't have to be there and Grant and I must be going somewhere fun without him. The teacher said that they would try to help him transition into playtime.

Well 15 minutes later the dreaded page happened. Heath was still crying in child care. I assured the teacher that he was fine. He wasn't sick. He was just trying to manipulate the situation and I for one wanted him to stay in there. The teacher agreed to give him 5 more minutes to calm down. When I called back Heath was still crying, so I was forced to go see him. Of course by the time I made it down to child care he had stopped crying. Evidently 21 minutes is his maximum crying time. But by the time I was there, Heath had seen me and was not about to let me leave without him.

I tried to make watching the remainder of Grant's swimming lesson as unfun as possible for Heath. That meant no walking around the pool or gym. He had to just sit and watch the class. He didn't seem to worried about it all. The good news of the day was that Grant did get promoted to the next swimming level even though he needs a little work on floating and swimming on his back.

I decided not to brave volleyball at the gym on Friday. Instead we all went on an outing with friends which had it's ups and downs but no all out fits. Today was open play for volleyball again and I was determined to make it in even if it meant I had to resort to diversions. I decided to have the boys eat lunch at the gym so that Heath would have something "fun" to do as soon as he got there and hopefully he wouldn't think about having another melt down. That child loves to carry around his yellow lunch box. As soon as lunch was packed Heath marched off with his lunch box and stood patiently waiting at our front door. Once we arrived at the gym Heath was happily toting around his lunch and ready to go into child care. Not a tear in sight. He actually kept bidding me good bye before he was even really checked in. Evidently this mom outsmarted the Tasmanian devil this time around. Wish me luck on the next round!