Boys Rule

I have cute boy pictures to show you! Eli has turned into quite the artist lately. He discovered water colors one day while visiting the Golden family. They were such a hit, I decided it was time to purchase our first water color set.

One day I went into Carson's room to spy on him during one of his naps. He must have fallen asleep in the middle of his yoga workout.

Eli wore a bucket on his head for an entire day over Christmas break. He earned himself the nickname "Bucket Head." He continues to live up to his nickname:

I meant to buy Eli a nice train set for Christmas. I made the mistake of ordering his "big" Christmas train set online. When we got it, it was a little, dinky train set that held his interest for two minutes. I decided to make up for my Christmas mistake by buying Eli a real train set to get us through all these winter storms. He hasn't spoken to me since we got the train out of the packaging, he's been too busy playing. Success!

 Be prepared to be creeped out - One day last week I was getting ready to go to the store with the boys. I checked under Eli's bed moments before we left, looking for one of his shoes. We piled in the car and went to the store. When we got back, I was the first one in the house and I walked past Eli's room to find this:

What?? I started shaking and checking all the corners of our home for the intruder who busted into Eli's room clearly looking for the sack of hundred dollar bills he keeps hidden under his bed.

I asked Eli if he tipped the bed over and he calmly replied, "Yes. I was looking for my airplane." 

Can a toddler really flip a bed over? Not to mention flip it over without me hearing a sound? I have yet to find a logical explanation for this incident. Any insight would be appreciated. 

Moving on...I am so happy Carson fits in 12-month clothes because now I can finally buy him and Eli matching outfits!! I found some pajamas at Target, and couldn't resist buying them when I found a pair in each of their sizes. I'm a sucker for matching sibling outfits!

We have 1:00 church now, so Eli and I spend our mornings bonding and being cute.

This is what Eli does when he gets thirsty during prayers.

Carson in happier times. He and I have been sick for the past two weeks.

My kids don't wear clothes in the winter. Or ever. So what? Look at those thighs! They're so much easier to pinch when he's mostly in the nude.

Eli's friend has started coming to play with us a few times a week. Eli and him share a birthday, and they're cute little friends.

I think Carson was happy while I was taking this picture, but he looks a little angry/possessed to me now.

Here's our happy cheese ball. Cheese Ball is Carson's new nickname. We also call him "Giant Baby." Not because he's particularly large (which he is), but because when Eli's playing with his cars and Carson starts stealing them, I try to turn it into a game where Carson is the giant baby attacking the city. Eli never caught onto my game, and instead thought "Giant Baby" was another nickname for Mr. Cheese.

Pardon my instagram repeats. As I said there, "Not many people know that Carson is a snake charmer."

The boys are getting to a fun age where they are starting to actually enjoy each other! I love when they make each other laugh, or when they figure out a game they can both play. Here are some quick things they do with each other right now that I want to remember:

• The moment Carson makes any kind of noise from his room after he's been down for a nap, Eli will look at me excitedly and scream, "CARSON'S AWAKE!!" Then he runs up to Carson's room, charges through the door and climbs into the crib with him. Both boys jump around and giggle for about ten minutes. 
• Eli cannot leave Carson alone while Carson is eating. He has to be right next to him, particularly at dinner, touching all of his food. 
• Their favorite games are peek-a-boo and chase. Eli chases Carson with various items, screaming like a wild man, and Carson thinks it's the funniest thing ever.
• Eli always pats Carson on the back and calls him, "Cute little baby." It's so sweet.
• Carson loves to crawl into Eli's bed with him while I read stories to Eli before his nap.
• Carson has started fighting back. If Eli hits Carson, Carson flails his arms at Eli with a lot of force and a lot of anger. I fear the black eyes in our future.
• Eli freaks out if Carson starts crawling up the stairs without me or Jeff right next to him.
• Carson can say Eli's name better than Eli can. Eli still hasn't figured out there's an "l" in his name. Eli only calls Carson by his actual name when he's mad at him. Otherwise he calls him "Baby" or another nickname.
• We had their carseats next to each other for a couple of days and they held hands most of the time we were in the car. 
• Eli bites Carson's finger every time I leave them alone together for more than two minutes.

They are cute.

Twenty-Five with Hives

Hola. It's me. I've been MIA. I blame my children.

I had a birthday. Shout, "Hooray!" I had to pluck these pictures out among 300, so be prepared to be hit with a lot of Lucky Number 8 posts.

Let me start by confessing to those I love most -- my blog followers -- that I have ventured out of my comfort zone and made another bold fashion statement. You know. Like scarf wearing. These things are big and blog worthy in my book. I bought red pants folks. And I wore said red pants on my b-day because I love them so much. This is what happens when you get called to work with the Young Women I suppose.

I can tell you now because a year has passed, but last year was probably my worst birthday ever. Eli was a pill the whole day. This year was a different story. The kids were angels. Maybe my red pants mesmerized them into cooperation.

Although the kids were good all day, we aren't the type to risk taking them out in public to test their good behavior. No, we prefer our Olive Garden at home where the kids are free to scream their guts out, thank you very much.

What is this? For me? You shouldn't have.

I kid you not, moments before I opened this gift, I had this conversation with Jeff:

Jeff: I'm so sore! I went to the gym today.

Me: I'm jealous you can be sore. I haven't worked out in forever. This snow is killing me.

Fast forward five minutes -- I'm unwrapping a gym membership! My husband can read my mind.

He also got me (and himself) a water bottle. He was a bit more excited about these than I was. Apparently they are super great for protein shakes which I think are disgusting. We don't have any water bottles though, so I'm happy to finally have some!

Next we moved to the kitchen where my mind-reading husband was finishing up some tasty cupcakes.

Twenty Five. 

I put off curtain orders on my birthday evening so I could cuddle up with Jeff and watch our favorite shows together. I got tired really early and kept complaining about being cold. Then the next morning I was hit with a fever. Let me tell you, it knocked me out for three full days. On the morning of day three, I began to grow concerned when I noticed a rash on my feet, knees, elbows and hands.

Of course I immediately thought I had Scarlett Fever. Then I thought I had Pneumonia. Then I thought I had hand, foot and mouth disease. Then when the rash started itching it was self-diagnosed as Shingles.

Fear not. I am alive. The rash eventually faded with my fever, and the only logical explanation I can come up with is that I got a heat rash from having a fever for so long?? Anyone else have any ideas? 

In other body related weirdness, I have recently sprouted sideburns:

Can someone contact Heidi Klum and tell her to send some sideburns down a runway for me so that I don't have to spearhead this cool trend all by myself?

There are certain things people never tell you about having a baby. This is one of them.

Since there is no hope of my hair being cute any time soon, I've been focusing all my energy on making over my house! Being cooped up all winter has me pacing around thinking of all the darling things I need to get done to spruce the place up. Then this little gem arrived on my birthday and now my mind is really racing:

I am not going to do a big reveal until we get everything done (probably in the summer), but I'll give you a little taste of my latest projects. 

I have been DYING to have big, bold, striped curtains. I finally figured out the perfect spot for them -- on our sliding glass door in the kitchen. I love, love, love them! They add a lot of spunk to the room and look a lot better than what was there before.

This curtain was hard to get a cute picture of. I wanted to add a little more color to our living room. The pop of burgundy on the walls did the trick! The curtains have two vertical ruffles going down.

Pinterest helped me give one of my plain vases some personality with a little twine. Love the way this turned out.

I also made a maxi skirt:

And today the boys blessed me with long naps, so I was able to make 12 freezer to crock-pot meals! Reeeeeeally hoping they turn out.

Yaaay for birthdays and projects. More to come!

Nine Months!

Let's take a moment to cheer as we ring in the new year. Because as soon as that clock struck twelve, Carson was finally a fully insured little boy again! I made him a doctor's appointment first thing on January 2nd, so we finally got some stats on our little man!

 Here's what our 9-month old did this month:

• Stood without holding onto anything for several seconds a handful of times.
• Decided he hates baby food one day and now completely refuses to eat it.
• Loooooves to climb the stairs...consequently...fell down a few stairs twice this month. :(  It was even while I was standing right by him both times, but he still took the plunge. No harm done though. He's a graceful faller.
• Buckled down on sleep training. We started consistently doing a bedtime routine. I got him a new "comfort blanket" like I did with Eli. We had him used to his sound machine. Then the crying began. There were several nights of shushing and drowsy singing, but we finally got him to sleep all the way through the night a couple of times!! That's huge improvement, and I feel like a new woman with a full night's rest! Fingers crossed he keeps it up.
• He usually takes two naps a day, but a few days he only took one afternoon nap and did totally fine. 
• He loves bananas, cheese, blueberries, pancakes and macaroni and cheese.
• He hates Cheerios, applesauce and raisins. 
• He copies what we say on certain words! I know it sounds nuts but it sounds like he says, "All done" every time after we say it to him. He also seems to repeat "Eli," "Uh-oh," and "Ni, ni" for night, night. He regularly says "mama" and "dada" though I'm not sure he connects that he's saying our names. I wouldn't believe it if I didn't hear it for myself, but I swear the boy is already trying to talk.
• To go along with the above bullet, I started trying to teach him sign language and he looked at me like I was a moron, then he would mimic the words I was saying. It always gets a laugh out of me and Jeff.
• Wears 9-12 month clothes and size 3 diapers.
• Waves at people when they say "hi," waves a different wave for goodnight, and can clap his hands.
• Dances like you wouldn't believe. Pump some tunes and he goes wild.
• His favorite toys are cars, the dishwasher, and anything that makes noise.
• He's a goof and we all love the little guy!

 We're seeing more of this lately! Yipee.

 New comfort blanket that helped big time with sleep training.

 Insists on feeding himself. Still hasn't learned he can't digest food through his eyes.

Happy nine months Carson! You're growing up too fast.

How My Phone Sees It

I have a smorgasbord of pictures from my phone to share with you. True to phone photo dumps, these pictures are unrelated and not always the best quality. But I trust that you can deal with that.

This happened between Christmas and New Year:

More to come on that later (if we ever finish all my projects).

Gah. This picture makes me want to die. For two weeks I had what Jeff called, "Dangling Participles." A.k.a. my children. We were all sick and crabby and the kids were whining constantly, needing to be held nonstop and making faces like this at me all day long:

Luckily sickness has passed and my "participles" aren't quite as clingy.

Jeff's putting that new papa bear chair to work. Love this.

My mom bonded with Carson over Christmas break. She was always eager to hold him while he slurped down a bottle, though nobody wanted the spit-up king after he finished.

And you really don't want Mr. Spit-up right after he's been fed and spun around in circles several times. This may be his favorite thing, and I may have almost dropped him trying to capture that happy face on camera.

Here's another happy face! Eli's great at giving cheesy, fake smiles when I encourage him to look at the camera. I'll take it.

The lineup. Eli's loving all his new matchbox cars. (So am I!)

Trying to come up with ways to entertain the kids while we're cooped up all day avoiding the snow.

Yes, we're sitting on the floor in the kitchen. No, I don't remember why.

Carson had his Blue Steel face on.

Carson discovered our washing machine this month! He was hypnotized.

Eli still loves watching the clothes spin, too.

I think Eli and Carson look completely different, but everybody always tells me they look like twins. These next two pictures have me thinking everybody might be right. Behold the Excell cheese ball smile at its finest:

And finally, Eli "reading me the recipe" to sugar cookies (with a sneak peek of our new blue wall! Eeek).

(There's another new post below!)

Dreaming of Summer

Remember last year how I went on a walk almost every day from November - March which led me right back into the beautiful spring weather? Remember how Jeff longed to shovel snow for the first time at his very own house, but the weather never provided that opportunity for him? Remember how I was loving the idea of global warming if it meant I didn't have to deal with snow for the rest of my life?

Global warming is a lie. A big. Fat. Lie.

No walks for us this winter. Or maybe ever again.

Because it will probably take two years for the two feet of snow that plopped onto our neighborhood to melt. The snow plows conveniently decided to call our neighborhood a lost cause and barely even bothered to plow. I don't even dare venture to go outside for the mail anymore. I have come to learn about myself that I completely hate the snow. Other than to look at, but I really only like looking at it on Christmas day. Other than that it should go ahead and melt and turn into spring.

Even though I've tried to convince Eli the snow is horrible and awful, he still found joy in our winter wonderland.

And let's face it, I'll have to give the snow a big, "Thank you!" for setting this scene for an adorable wintery photo shoot of my snow bunny.

Rosy cheeks. Always in the winter.

Jeff got his fill of shoveling. Four times in one day.

Trying to be artsy on Instagram:

As if the ever present snow wasn't enough motivation to stay inside, the icicle/death traps all along our roof have secured my spot next to the fireplace for the next four months.

Snow. Snow. Snow. If you weren't so pretty I would hate you even more than I already do.

Can someone bring me a hot chocolate? Thanks.