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.