Drumroll Please

Ta da!!

As you can see, rolling over makes for a happy Hen!



And these eyes make for a happy Mommy!

Rolling Over and Fairies!!!!

Hen decided today was the day! Adam left him on his back on his baby gym to go help John Dickson go potty. He came back, and Hen was on his tummy! Supposedly he did it several more times at daycare today. We haven't actually seen it, so it is possible the roll over fairy came and flipped him, but we're pretty sure Hen is rolling over now!

Did I mention we switched daycares? We don't have to get in to all that, you should just know that when it was time for Hen to start going, we decided to move both boys to a different school. And let me tell you. Hen is not hurting for any attention! I have had teachers who aren't even in his room tell me that Hen is their favorite. Supposedly whenever teachers go in to relieve Henry's primary teacher, they always go straight for Hen. He's "the most cuddly." And always smiling! Even the director goes in there to see him. When Adam went in the other day, Hen was being rocked and kissed on. He's quite the hit. It makes me feel so much better about leaving him there - my biggest concern with having a baby in daycare was worrying that he didn't get cuddled and loved on enough. It seems he is doing just fine!

John Dickson seems to enjoy the new school, and he's become a champ at singing his ABCs! I have started to think that he likes to mess with me and that he knows more than he lets on. He pretends not to know any letters, but when we were at Leslie's house, he got a W magnet off the fridge, held it upside down and said it was an "M", then turned it over and said it was a "W" and then held it sideways and said it was "number 3." However, we were looking at a Nautica add that had NAUTICA in big letters. We went through each letter with me asking him what it was and him telling me something completely wrong. What's that? Letter C. No, that's an N. What's that? That's a B. No, that's an A. You get the picture. We get to the last letter, and I think he might get it right - afterall, it is the 2nd A. "What's that?" "That's the number 3!" Little stinker.

We love Costco. You probably already knew that about us... we're not my in-laws - our Costco actually needs more customers than just us to stay in business, but we are there pretty much every weekend. I realized just how much when this conversation took place yesterday:

Me: What do you want for Christmas?
John Dickson: I want a fire truck
Me: What else do you want?
John Dickson: And some samples

And can I tell you my mom of the year moment last week? I went to pick up my boys, and I started to buckle Henry in his car seat. I got the top part buckled, and then he spit up. So I stopped and got a wipe and cleaned it up, and then we went and got John Dickson and got in the car. We got home and I got John Dickson out of his seat, and as I did, I happened to look over and notice - I never finished buckling Henry in. So, foregoing any potty mouth words in front of my older child who repeats EVERYTHING, I went for a more appropriate "OH POOOP!!!" John Dickson turned around and looked in his own car seat - then looked at me like I was crazy, and said "no..."

John Dickson had another one of those moments a few weeks ago where he thought I had lost my mind. He had thrown his tower fan yet again, and we had taken it away. It was pretty cool on this night, and I didn't know if John Dickson wanted his ceiling fan on or not, so I asked him. He said yes, so I left it on, turned off the light and I shut his door. He immediately started crying for his fan, so I opened the door and explained to him that his fan was on. He was still crying, so I turned the light back on so that he could see it (and as I type this, I realize he no longer says "roun and roun" - SAD!). Anyhoo, he looks not up at his ceiling fan, but in the spot where the tower fan normally sits, he squints his eyes, and genuinely confused he says "I dont see it!" Of course I had to put it back - that was just too cute.

Those are the latest happenings around here! There were a few hilarious things that happened a few weeks ago that I forgot to post, but you probably think it's too late to hear those now. No? Oh, ok!

So I take the boys to meet Adam at Mellow Mushroom on one of the nights Adam was working late. We're sitting outside having the best greek salad on the planet (yes, better than Zorba's), and a Chinese guy walks by. My child, who takes like 20 minutes to warm up to people he already knows, forgets he is shy and says "bye bye Mexican! Bye bye Mexican!" I kid you not - NO IDEA WHERE HE GOT THAT.

We were in the parking lot another day and John Dickson says "that's an old man right there!" I told him that was rude - he said "that's not rude, Mommy!" He was just stating the facts!

One of the most hilarious moments of John Dickson time happened probably even 2 months ago?? Fine, fine, I'll share. John Dickson hates to nap. We have to hold him down for approximately 90 minutes. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. It's awful. Adam normally does nap duty, and on the days where we win, I hear John Dickson's door open and close very softly, and a very disheveled looking Adam emerges. So I'm in the other room, and things are quiet. I hear the door very softly open and then shut, and I'm quite impressed that Adam has managed to do it again. I look up, and then I look about 3 feet lower, and there is a very triumphant looking little boy. Adam was asleep in John Dickson's bed. John Dickson had put Adam down for a nap. It. was. hilarious.

So while we are majorly backtracking, I have one last story for the books.



It seems every pair of shoes should have a good story, and boy does this pair have a doozy. It was a March day. Adam and I had recently gotten into a little argument because John Dickson was wearing an outfit that had a pair of shoes that went perfectly with the outfit, and Adam had put these shoes on him instead. What? I was pregnant. So Adam has it in his head that I have a problem with these shoes. Not true. Anyway, John Dickson and I were driving home from daycare (its a 25 minute drive). John Dickson wanted his window open. After a quick look back to make sure he wasn't holding anything that he could throw out the window, I roll it down and let him enjoy the spring weather. We are driving along, and John Dickson says "shoes go?" You have got to be kidding me. I'm sure I know exactly where "shoes go." We pull in to the driveway and I check the backseat. No shoes. Just as I suspected. So I call Adam, who was living in Columbia at the time, and now he thinks this is some master plan I have to get rid of shoes that I actually like. I swear up and down he is so wrong!!! (This has to be a record for italics in one post). The next morning, I am taking John Dickson back to daycare, and somewhere about 10 miles from our house, I see a cute little shoe, in the median. Now I'm really aggravated. What good is one shoe? It's just there to taunt me. I keep driving, and low and behold, the other shoe. In the median. Making myself late for work, I pull a U-Turn, pull over and run in the street to gather one shoe - back track and do the same to get the other shoe. Ahhh redemption. I take John Dickson to school and I still cant believe what just happened, so I tell his teacher the story. She tells me every time they open the windows at school, John Dickson throws all of the toys out. Little. Stinker. Here's the funny part though - John Dickson rides on the passenger side, and threw the shoes out of the passenger side. So they should have been in the street, thrown into the lane farthest from the median (which would be on the drivers side), but both shoes were in the median. It was like the shoe fairy delivered them to safety.

I wonder if the shoe fairy is the same as the rolling over fairy...

Sleepless in Superhero City

We've been busy around here... only we haven't been "doing" much. Life is just busy now. We work, we do dinner, baths, books, bed, then we do dishes, make lunch, label bottles, wash pooped on/peed on/spit up on clothes, and pack extra clothes. When we are almost done, this thing wakes up again:



I only wish I was kidding. And you see that "who me?" face? That's what you get the next morning.

Life is certainly different when you have kids, but these faces make it totally worth it...





And if we had never had kids, we would never have been able to have a superhero for a child! John Dickson has a superhero starter kit, and one of the pages tells you how to come up with a superhero name. John Dickson's name is "Mighty Miles" and he absolutely will not part with it. Today he gave Hen his name - "Doctor Elephant." I'm pleased to introduce to you, "Mighty Miles."



Notice anything familiar in the background??? A Halloween costume, perhaps? It's superhero city around here. The night after we got the costume in the mail, John Dickson woke up around 2am (seriously, we never sleep around here)crying for "red buggy." He wanted his costume. He knows what its called, he was just disoriented and confused. He slept with it like a blankie.

Anyhoo, I should probably get back to this one.



It's 8:41 and he is being put to bed for the 3rd time. The 3rd time.

Edit: I put that last picture on this post for a reason, but then I couldn't remember what it was and then he started crying and so I just wrapped it up. How I forgot, I do not know. THAT FACE IS GOING TO BE A BIG COUSIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's gonna be a big job for an 8ish month old face come April 4th-ish, but we are all pretty excited to have a littlest Libet on the way!! Yay to Lauren and Jared!!!

Silver Bells... Silver Bells...

Hello dear friends and family. It's the time of year when everyone is asking "what do you want for Christmas?" Glad you asked. I put this on the blog because I think you all will probably want to go in on it together. It's a tad pricey.

Amanda's Wish List

The best part is, no day after Thanksgiving crowds to beat! Happy giraffe buying!

P.S. Uncle Mike - don't think I forgot you drew my name :-)

A Few More Pictures

Ready for church. Check. Him. Out.



Riding the carousel at Fall for Greenville



Riding the train

You Got Me...

I'm a slacker. Remember my official John Dickson 2 1/2 and Henry 3 months posts? No? Hmmm... Obviously your brain is playing tricks on you. Here is a refresher.

My sweet John Dickson is 2 1/2!! He not only has a large vocabulary, but he talks like an old man! And by old man, I mean, a grown up. In fact, we were on Clemson's campus the other day...

John Dickson: There are a lot of bicycles around here
Me: What are you now, an old man?
John Dickson: Yes. A BIG old man.

He has also taken it upon himself to let Henry know everything that's going on when Hen wakes up. "Cars is on tv, Hen." In traffic - "we need to go around these cars, Hen" etc etc.

John Dickson has become really good at sharing! I try to always ask him for a bite of what he is having, just so he will learn to share with us like we share with him. He almost always lets me have "yittle bite" or he makes me lick his candy (that is usually unsolicited). He also gives me a piece of candy everytime he goes potty, whether I want it or not. He is pretty much obsessed with pudding, yogurt (CARS yogurt - it tastes so much better in that packaging!), and, you guessed it... fhru hnacks (thats "fruit snacks" in your language). He's actually just obsessed with all things "hnack." "No, I no want besses. I want hnack." "No. I no like supper. I want hnack." Other times, he argues over what meal he wants. He usually wants supper for breakfast. Kind of like me when I was pregnant...

John Dickson is getting pretty good at counting. He can recite 1-10, but he's just starting to really count objects. Letters confuse him, and he always wants to call them numbers. Today he told me the letter A was the number 3. His memory, however, is amazing. When I read to him, I leave out random words and he almost always fills in the blanks.

John Dickson loves Cars and Mickey Mouse.

John Dickson has fallen asleep on the floor behind his door two nights in a row. The night before that, we found him asleep in his bed with his sweater vest. Speaking of sleep, our bed was occupied last night by Adam, me, John Dickson, Henry and Bear. Must get a king.

The other day John Dickson took Elmo into Hen's room and said "Elmo eat my tummy!" He then proceeded to lift his shirt and feed Elmo. Then Elmo pooped, and John Dickson had to wipe him off. Of course I did not take pictures... and I would never put those on the blog!





Anyhoo, yesterday was 3 months for Hen! Fortunately he's still as small as the day he came home from the hospital.




You hush.

Hen continues to be an easy laid back baby. He's not a good napper and its even worse now at daycare. I guess I should say he's just not a good sleeper, because come to think of it, he doesn't sleep at night either. ::sigh:: I thought by the time I went back to work, Hen would be sleeping through the night, and I wouldn't look like a big tub of goo. Wrong on both counts.

Hen is a HAPPY baby. He's like a puppy - you barely have to do anything to make him happy - he smiles all the time. When I pick him up from daycare, he just grins ear to ear. He makes sweet noises and as I said before, he is laughing now. You have to seriously earn your laughs, however.

Hen is a wee bit lazy. He can sorta lift his head, but he prefers not to.

We have a lot of nicknames for John Dickson (JD NOT being one of them...). When we named Henry, I wondered what in the world we would call him. "We can't get any nicknames out of Henry" I thought... "We would have to call him 'Hen' and we're definitely not gonna do that!"

Wrong again. This is like a new record for me.

I think we've landed on a chicken costume for Hen for Halloween. Stay tuned.

More Denver Downs

We had a busy, busy, busy weekend this past weekend! We went to the zoo, ran some errands, took a trip to Denver Downs Farm to pick out our pumpkin and let John Dickson play, made it to church (it takes us roughly 3 hours when we have to get ourselves and both boys ready. Seriously. Seriously.), and we went to Fall for Greenville. It was a jam packed weekend. Here are a few more pictures from the pumpkin patch:

On the hayride:



John Dickson racing a rubber ducky:



Playing in the corn (photo credit for this awesome corn in the air shot goes to Amanda Kelley. And would you just look at that subject? She's half responsible for that. I know...)



Adam and his little buddy on the slide:



As an aside, there were some ladies there going on and on about what a good dad Adam must be. He gets that a lot... he had the boys at the zoo without me, and was asked if he was single. And a lot of people comment on how their husbands wouldn't do half the stuff he does. I'm starting to think maybe I've taken his good dad-ness for granted?? He's amazing.

And this is a cute video of John Dickson checking out the farm animals. I especially like the guy in the background who asks somebody if they saw "the bacon" (i.e. the piglets).



Whaaaaa?? Goats in the sky?



Yes indeedy.

Has it really been a year???

The pumpkin patch.

Notice any differences?





Perhaps you can see that John Dickson no longer needs his Mommy on the cow train...






Or maybe you notice there is now one of these...

Hen Teaser

Here's a little teaser of the cuteness that makes you wanna melt that is Henry laughing. This is more of a little giggle, but when you have 2 free hands, you can get some big ones. That's the task for tonight.

Bonding Extravaganza: Wednesday

Bonding week may or may not have fallen apart yesterday... Adam didn't have to go to work until 1, so John Dickson and I went to the library for some thing that I thought was yesterday, but was actually today. Did we make it today? You'll just have to wait for the Thursday post to find out.

I know, that's just cruel.

No, we didn't make it.

We did go and get some books though. I got 4 cookbooks in hopes of some new recipes I can make ahead - suggestions are welcome. Anyhoo, that about summed up our day, with the exception of a trip to the grocery store to get some new potty candy.

There was one other thing... I had just finished folding clothes and went to put away John Dickson's clothes. I left John Dickson alone on the couch with Henry's clothes, and when I came back, he was wearing this:



You may notice his pants are a little snug... a size 6 months snug, you might say. I tried to get a picture, but once he realized what I was doing he ran around me in circles as fast as he could.





I love that kid.

Oh and today Henry had his first real adorable big belly laugh, and it was the best thing ever. What can I say, we make cute kids with cute laughs. We'll get it on video soon, I'm sure. I told Adam that Henry laughed today, and he has already gotten him to do it again. He's good at that.

Bonding Extravaganza: Tuesday

I would just like you to note that today is October 5... John Dickson's half birthday! Happy 2.5 to him!!! It also happens to be Adam's cousin Jackson's 20th birthday! Happy 20 to him!!



And the best part of it all is that they got to celebrate together. We met up with the Griffeths (less Kirkley and Will) at the Esso Club for lunch today. It was Henry's first time.



Well, it was John Dickson's first time too, but he wasn't the one sitting next to the sign. Anyhoo, we had a delicious lunch followed by some awesome homemade zucchini bread. Both boys were angels, despite sitting there for an hour and a half. I was impressed.

We decided to go to PetSmart to check out the animals and buy crickets for our gecko, who, by the way, does NOT have an english accent. I feel mislead. Anyway, I know that doesn't really sound like extravaganza material, but John Dickson loves it! Check him out.




Are you as in love with his new hat as I am??? I don't know what I'm going to do when his head gets bigger... he is in the biggest size at Janie and Jack... I'm going to have to find a new place to buy adorable hats. Not an easy feat when you are looking for adorable boy hats.

We wrapped up the afternoon of day 2 by playing on the playset that is now 2/3 of the way together. John Dickson is sort of afraid of the slide, and so "playing" consisted of him climbing up and jumping to me from every side. I so wish I had 48 hour days - 24 with Hen and 24 with John Dickson. I love so much to be with them and give them my full attention, but juggling the two of them is hard. Anyway, John Dickson and I had fun outside while Henry took a little snooze. And then we made some pretty awesome potato heads, if we do say so ourselves.

Bonding Extravaganza: Monday

John Dickson is staying home this week for Mommy/John Dickson/Henry bonding extravaganza (who doesn't love an extravaganza?). So naturally, we are trying to stay busy and cram as much as we can into this week. It's harder than it sounds, since everything we do has to revolve around where half decent toilets are (Did I mention John Dickson hasn't worn a diaper, other than to bed, in a MONTH??), Henry's mood and the amount of time I can leave him in his infant carrier, and of course we live about 20-30 minutes from everything fun... but we are troopers :-) So to kick off bonding week, we bundled up for the chilly weather and headed out.



First stop: Story time at the library, complete with a guest appearance from the local firemen and a tour of a real truck. I didn't think John Dickson would get on the truck - he has had a few experiences with sirens scaring him - but he was all over it. Literally.






After story time, we made our way to get John Dickson's haircut. Now I know that doesn't sound like much fun, but he's been asking for it for a week, and he got a sucker. Who doesn't like suckers?? (Well, I don't, but thats beside the point).

We wrapped up the afternoon by watching Cars, and then John Dickson spent the early evening "helping" Adam put together his new play set. I'll put some pictures up when it's finished.