2 Today!!!

I can't believe our little guy is two years old! The time has flown by! He has been the easiest child a mom could've asked for. A good sleeper from the beginning, he's always been obedient and patient in just about any situation. He quietly makes his needs known. Having him around has kept me young. Made me feel younger, in fact.

Okay, I just wanted to see what it felt like to say that.

From the time he was a few hours old and his piercing screams got him kicked out of the hospital nursery, he has been anything but quiet when making his needs known. And sleep? Who needs it? Not Isaac, for sure.

And whoever said having a baby keeps you young was senile.

But I wouldn't trade a second of the last two years for anything in the world. For all the earsplitting screams, impatient groans and moans, and days of surviving on 2 or 3 hours of sleep, there have been many more smiles.

I say, keep 'em coming! (The smiles, that is.)

Happy Birthday, Isaac!!

Weekend of Labor

Looking back now, I guess I have only myself to blame for our Labor Day weekend gone bust.

On Thursday, I was looking forward to a long holiday weekend with perfect weather predicted. Sunny. Temperatures in the 70's.

With the kids starting school in a week, I was anticipating some fun family time. Lots of grilling out and playing games in the backyard.

To make things even better, we had dinner plans on Sunday at a very nice restaurant with some very nice people. Adults. And we were lucky enough to get The Good Babysitter. The older one. The one that can control our wild kids. She's usually already taken, so this too was a special treat. Oh, and did I mention that the dinner was going to be free?

Sounds too good to be true.

And it was.

On Friday, Dylan got sick. High fever throughout the weekend. I took her to the doctor today to rule out anything needing medication or hospitalization. Thankfully, it was just a random virus that she's slowly recuperating from.

I wouldn't dream of blaming poor Dylan. She certainly didn't ask for it.

But I should have known better. If the weather predictions had called for nonstop rain...if the only babysitter available had been the one that we refer to simply as The Zookeeper - for obvious reasons... if the only place for us to eat had been McDonalds...then everything would've have gone as planned.

Six Flags

We took the kids to Six Flags last weekend.

Dylan got up the nerve to ride her first two roller coasters. Scott practically dragged her onto the first one, but she willingly rode the second one and loved every minute of it!

Katherine focused more on consuming all the junk food she could handle. Actually more than she could handle. When Katherine consumes her weight in candy, I should have a bucket nearby. (This happened on Halloween as well.)

Isaac's favorite ride was the spinning teacups. After screaming and crying the first time, he begged to ride it again. He loved it the second time. We also took him to a Wiggles Show, but he nodded off in the middle of it, leaving us to do the hand motions with Dorothy the Dinosaur with all the other screaming 2-3 year olds while he was snoozing.

Our Projects

For some reason, I've had a hard time getting the color of our kitchen right. We started with beige wallpaper. But I wanted a cheery kitchen. So we spent DAYS stripping wallpaper and painting the kitchen red. Even though I tried, I never did like it. But I kept quiet. At least for a while. After all that trouble, I was hoping I'd warm up to the red.

Didn't happen.

So.....We once again tackled the kitchen walls. This time going with green. But the dining room was already green. And I didn't want them both to be green. So we decided to repaint the dining room as well. The color we chose? None other than red. Yep. We changed the kitchen from red to green and the dining room from green to red. Sounds crazy. But I'm happy with the results. For now.

Isaac's redecorating project was not so desirable.

I'm constantly reminding the girls not to leave their markers or crayons within his reach. But all of my constant reminding wasn't enough.

I had gotten a babysitter to watch the kids for the morning while I ran some errands. Something I do very rarely. Like maybe once a year.

I arrived home to chaos. The kids were running wild. And the babysitter wasted no time in letting me know that Katherine had run away from her. Then she had locked herself in the sunroom, refusing to open the door until the sitter promised not to tell me what she had done.

As I was dealing with Katherine upstairs in her room, Isaac found that one black marker. Starting at the door of the sunroom, he proceeded to mark on the door, the wall, the tile floor, the rug, the couch, the pillows on the couch, the rocking horse, his wagon, a ball, a dog toy, the white cabinet, and the sofa table. When he had marked every spot in the room, he turned it on himself.

When I found him, he looked like one of those blackfaced vaudeville performers with white around his mouth and eyes. He gave me a big grin and said, "Isaac draw a kitty kitty."

Boston Pics

1st picture: Boston Harbor

2nd: Very Old Historical Cemetary

3rd: Paul Revere's House

4th: The Girls on the Sailing Ship

5th: The Guys

6th: The Trouble Maker

Boston

Scott had a conference in Boston, so the rest of us tagged along to take in the sights while he attended meetings.

We experienced a little of our usual chaos when we reached our hotel room and were missing Isaac's security blanket/bunny/old rag. To him, it's simply Uh-oh. But he's completely attached to it and has to take it everywhere. Except, somewhere between the plane and our room, he had become completely unattached to it.

We retraced our steps, looked in every spot we could think of, enlisted the help of half of Boston, but still no Uh-oh. It seemed that Uh-oh had become a big UH-OH. After we managed to distract Isaac and even get him to sleep without it, we awoke to a message from the front desk that they were holding something for us. Sure enough, at 1:00 in the morning, Uh-oh had made it's way back to us. After being left in the car we'd taken from the airport to our hotel, apparently he'd had a big night out on the town, even taking in a concert over an hour away.

After our rough start, the rest of the trip was wonderful. The weather was great, so we were able to walk through several of Boston's historical districts. We saw Paul Revere's home and several old cemeteries. We ate clam chowder and took a sunset sail through the Boston Harbor on a beautiful sailing ship. We went to the aquarium, saw the swans, and the kids swam at the fountain in the middle of Boston Commons.

We packed a lot into a few days, but it was great! Boston's a beautiful city and I can't wait to go back.

You Turkeys

We've seen our wild turkey friends here in our yard several times in the last few weeks.

At first I thought it was a mama and daddy with their babies. But when you look closely, you can see that the chicks are not all the same age. Scott also went on to explain the difference between the mamas and daddies - something about a beard and all.

Anyway, there's something about these two mama turkeys hanging out together and taking the young'uns out for a stroll that really cracks me up.