Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing—Benjamin Franklin


Little's improving communication skills (AKA: the constant battle of wills)

Little is getting more and more talkative by the day. I am overjoyed. It means that we are a lot more productive and we laugh a whole lot more at what goes on inside the little man's head, but it also means I get ordered around... a lot. 
    He insists on choosing his own shoes and cannot be convinced that other shoes would be better no matter what. So much so, that I have taken to asking him about his shoes and then choosing his outfit to match. 
    The other day I apparently took too much time getting him cleaned up from dinner because when I finally released him into the wild he said, and I quote: "Hooray! I'm free!" and bounded off to play with his toys. 
    Instead of asking for help, he roams around the house saying, "Hmmmm... Hmmmm..." as if he is puzzling out the mysteries of the universe, until you ask him what he needs and then he leads you right to whatever he wants. 
    He'll use the potty, but only if it is on his own terms. He in fact drags his potty out of the bathroom so that it is in the proper place, and then maybe only once a week. I'm undecided whether to actually pursue legitimate potty training yet or not.
    He is still as obedient as ever, but now everything is a game and boy does he like to test the limits. If I tell him not to do something, he'll find his way around it faster than I can blink so I have to be very specific as to my instructions, which is definite proof that he is indeed his father's child. 
    He is a prankster constantly. He sneaks up and steals something necessary to whatever I'm currently doing (I'm not sure how he always knows the best things to take, but he does), takes it across the room, and then starts taunting: "Mommmy!" and waving said object at me until I chase him down to get it. If I don't come get it in time/care if he has it, he brings it back and I am usually scolded as he hands it right back.
    That said, he's also very helpful. He's become my little errand boy. He can find anything, take anything to the trash (which sometimes backfires), fetch anything you need, and he has a selectively fantastic memory.  
    In short, he is a funny funny little man and he gets cuter (and more opinionated) every day.

Watching our language

I was reading somewhere about how to help your child not pick up swearing if he hears it (not that Bryce and I have foul mouths or anything, but it was an interesting article). One of the suggestions was every time an inappropriate word is said, use a ridiculous word to replace it in a memorable way. Ex: If someone swears yell, "ZAFTIG!" as loud and over the top as you possibly can. That way the child will remember the word "zaftig" instead of whatever bad word was said. Bryce and I may or may not have been using this as an excuse to yell silly words whenever one of our blacklisted words (stupid, freakin, etc.) slips out. Whether it is being used for the intended purpose or no, it turns out it's a lot of fun.

Happy birthday to me!

Well, this birthday was an interesting one all told. We originally planned on heading to DC for a fun-filled day with my sister and her family, but then had to cancel do to a surprise storm that we're attributing to divine intervention. So, instead I woke up to this: 
An elbow heart attack made by my oh so funny husband (and yes, those little black and white ones in between the hearts are indeed elbows). Let me see how succinctly I can explain why this is the funniest thing he could have done... There was a time not too far back that my elbow was having weird pains. As I was complaining to Bryce, he decided that it must be a heart attack, to which I replied, "Yeah... An ELBOW heart attack!" And being tired and ridiculous like we tend to be, this made us crack up and every fake/overly dramatic bodily complaint from that point forward became and "elbow-whatever." Ex: elbow stomach ache, elbow brain tumor, etc. Thus waking up to an elbow heart attack on my door was pretty much the best way to start my day. 
Then, that same wonderful husband brought me my Little and put on a show for us to watch in bed while he made a fantastic french toast breakfast for us to consume while still in bed. Then, he let us kidnap him to do whatever we wanted all day. Which turned out was just hanging out and doing a few errands. That is where we discovered this little gem to the left. Yes, I acknowledge that I am obsessed, but really... Pirate ice cubes? Amazing. It was a fantastic day. 
Up until around 5:00pm that is. Little was falling asleep weirdly early on his daddy's lap when suddenly Bryce turns to me and says, "Honey, he is burning up." I think he's being overly dramatic until I put my hand on the little man and it turns out his head feels like I just pulled it out of the oven. Unfortunate. Within a half hour his temperature was 103.7 and climbing and he was getting increasingly lethargic. Come to find out, Little is in the small percentage of kids who are lucky enough to get Roseola twice. I can handle sick days when he just has the gucks, but when he acts half dead... no good. Between baths and popsicles and medicine, we finally got his temperature down, but it was definitely a long night. Scratch that... a long couple of days. The poor chap is tired, but back to acting like himself with only a bit of groggy moodiness to show for it. Hallelujah! 
And to make matters worse, the sister we were supposed to hang out with had some pretty serious catastrophes of her own. We're pretty sure the storm was Heavenly Father's way of looking out for us and making sure everything worked out as well as it could despite all the semi-disasters. Man alive! I am more grateful than I can say that He watches over us!

The latest and greatest

Ok... so perhaps it is not the greatest, but let me explain why I'm so proud of this little cake: It started as a disaster. I kid you not. By the time Bryce came home my hands were dyed pink, I had been forced to change my clothes twice and Little's three times, there was frosting all over the kitchen from not one but two exploding containers and spewing bowl, cake scraps were everywhere from the oven to the counter from several overflowing cake pans... The list could go on for hours. Seriously. I should have taken before and after pictures. When I got it out of the oven it looked something akin to a science project gone horrifically wrong so I tried to cut it and frost it and fix the problem and I thought it was working up until the bright pink frosting started exploding across my kitchen and all over the newly frosted cake. I was about the bag the whole thing--which would have been something of a tragedy because it turns out from scratch red velvet cake is amazingly tasty--when I came up with a few brilliant solutions and figured out how to hide the poor cake's true nature for the most part, and this was the result. I'm so proud. And no, it's not the most fantastic cake there has ever been, but from where it started... it is pretty much a miracle.

Stranger danger

I cut my hair. Still undecided whether I like it better than my longer hair, but I do really like it. So quick and easy. And that is worth its weight in gold (which occurs to me is actually not that much seeing as I have fairly little hair left, but you get the point). However, the point of this post is to say that I came home from said haircut and my child did not recognize me. When Little saw me, his face went from happy to confused to borderline panicked and all he could say was, "No, no, no!" until I left the room. Eventually, I had to bribe him with a treat so that I could get close enough to talk to him and make him realize who the woman with the strange hair was. I don't know whether I'm relieved or stressed about the fact that it worked because if I can bribe him to talk to me with a treat, who says it wouldn't work for everyone? Good thing we have time to learn more about stranger danger.


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