Did He Just Say...?

One day while the boys and I were eating lunch:
Me:Who's handsome?
Eli: ME!
Carson: ME!
Me: Who's funny?
Eli: ME!
Carson: ME!
Me: Who's smart?
Eli: ME!
Carson: ELI!

***

Eli has been very introspective since starting Sunbeams. His teacher is really getting through to him in a way that we never have. It's been awesome to see! Today after church we had this conversation:
Me: Okay, Eli have a good nap.
Eli: Mom?
Me: What?
Eli: Are there bad people in this world?

The "in this world" is the part that was hilarious to me. I could tell it was a phrase he picked up today at church.

***

For the rest of the day he kept saying "in this world." Examples:
"Mom, did Jesus put monsters in this world?"
"Why are there so many signs in this world?"

***

One afternoon as we were trying to get out of the house to run errands:
Me: Eli, you have to clean your room before we can go.
Eli: O-KAY.
Me: Eli, have you cleaned your room yet?
Eli: I told Carson.

In the car one afternoon:

Silence.

Eli: MOM! We have to talk!

Me: Oh! Okay. What do you want to talk about?

Eli: Hmmm. We haven't talked about meerkats yet.

(Jeff had just read him a book that had a meerkat in it, and he latched onto meerkats. He could not stop talking about them for a whole week.)

***

We were painting hearts for Jeff for Valentine's day. I always love that Eli is such a boy's boy, so this quote really captured that:
Me: Eli! You're a great painter aren't you?!?
Eli: Mom. I'm a tough painter.

***

We just started a joy school with Eli. One evening at dinner:
Jeff: Eli! What did you do at joy school today?!?
Eli: Ummm. (nonchalantly) I did some crafting.

***

I went with Eli to the first day of joy school. The teacher was singing Old McDonald Had A Farm with the kids...
Teacher: And on that farm he had a ... (points to Eli for him to tell her an animal)
After he wasn't responding, Me: Eli! What animal do you like?
Eli: I just like Barkley. (Jeff's parents' dog)

***

I bought a plastic dresser thing from Wal-Mart one day while Eli was at Preschool. It came with wheels, but I wasn't going to use the wheels, so I put the wheels down on the kitchen counter, and I put the dresser up in Eli's room to store his clothes in.

Eli found the wheels on the counter as soon as he got home, and he made me open them up for him so he could play with them. Then he ran upstairs for his nap while I cleaned up lunch.

Five minutes later, as I was walking upstairs to put Eli down for his nap, Eli came wheeling his new dresser out of his room. He figured out that the wheels went on his new dresser, and he assembled the wheels correctly onto the dresser -- all in under 5 minutes! I was completely amazed!

Jeff and I always say he's got the brain of an engineer. He has a burning desire to figure out how things work. He will stare at things until he figures them out. And when he doesn't understand something, he will ask endless, detailed questions about whatever he doesn't understand until he can come to grips with it.

And he's so awesome at figuring things out. And his attention to detail blows my mind. If one thing is mildly out of place in the house, he will recognize it. Or if I get something new, he picks up on it right away. Or as soon as we took down our Christmas lights, he was so concerned whenever other people had their Christmas lights up because that didn't make sense to him for people to still have their lights up after Christmas. We love seeing his little mind work.

(I walked into my bathroom one morning to find this mess. When Eli wants something, he finds a way to get it!)

We are having so much fun with Eli! He has taken a turn over the last 6 months. I feel like he has figured out a way to harness his energy into constructive things, and he's learning to control himself. Everyone has been telling me three-year olds are harder than two-year olds, but Eli has been a dream the last several months! He has had such good manners, and he is starting to get a good grasp on consequences, and on deciphering between good and bad. Anyway. I just can't say enough good things about my little Eli.

Carson on the other hand is STILL not sleeping through the night after approximately 546 failed attempts to sleep train him. So I will save my words about him for another day.

One last Eli story. Tonight we were at my grandparents' house for our monthly birthday dinner. Eli was playing with the lighter when this happened: 

 Then he proudly announced, "I did it!" As everyone stared in unbelief and laughter ensued. He's too smart, I tell ya!

Shout Hooray!

I had a birthday, shout "Hooray!" Do you know what the best thing in the entire world is? Having a birthday on a Saturday. In years past, I found myself expecting the kids to miraculously know and understand it's my birthday and be on their best behavior for me. Well. They are children. And don't really get the concept of giving mom a special day of rainbows, holding hands and getting along for once, so my birthday expectations for my children were never quite reached.

But on a Saturday! Oh! A blessed Saturday birthday. Guess what. It was all rainbows, hand holding and getting along -- at least from my perspective, because I let Jeff deal with all the kids' mischief on January 25th. And it was awesome.

Bonus -- I even got a hot breakfast first thing in the morning by the kids' only caregiver of the day.

And then I hopped online to decide where we were going to spend my birthday, and I was surprised to see Google had a bunch of cakes and candles for their page. "Oh look! They knew it was my birthday!" I joked, thinking it was for some other birthday related holiday, or the invention of the candle, or something like that. Well. I was quite surprised to hover over the logo and see a special message just to me!

Then I heard a honk outside, and Eli said, "I've been hearing cars honking all morning!" I looked outside to find a treat in my front yard from the Young Women leaders.

Then I requested the whole family sing me Happy Birthday. Eli covered his eyes like so, hoping to escape my only demand of him for the day.

We decided to journey down to Ikea for the morning.

As we were driving northbound on the freeway, trying to decide where to eat, I realized we were within 5 minutes of Schlotzky's! Well, I think we all know what happened after that.

Schlotzky's lunch. At the park. And I didn't even wear a jacket for the first half of our lunch. The weather was nice!

I got a nice walk in in the afternoon, and then we waited for the party to arrive!

I invited Kenz, Melissa, and their husbands over for a little Nintendo64 Birthday Party.

I like cake batter. It's one of my most favorite things on earth. But I do NOT like cooked cake batter. So since I didn't think my guests would have gone for us dishing up spoonfuls of cake batter for my birthday treat, we settled on our latest favorite dessert -- peach cobbler in our new dutch oven! Best birthday decision I made all day.

The bad news -- Melissa's husband is a state champion at Super Smash Brothers. Yeah. That's a real thing. So he kind of dominated.

And then we had the suspenseful battle of Eli vs. Joe. Better luck next time, Joe.

After Nintendo fizzled out, we played The Newlywed Game.

I don't remember who won, but it wasn't me and Jeff. It was probably these little love birds.

It was a fun night and a fun birthday! Thanks for coming, Kenz and Melissa!

Hasta La Vista, Bebe

I hadn't made meticulous plans to strip Carson of his binky (or bebe as he calls...called it). But then Carson began slinking back into his wake-up-every-hour-at-night routine, and after one particularly rough night, my inner sleep nazi erupted and I decided it was time to introduce Carson to Mommy Boot Camp.

I began devising plans to sleep train Carson. I read experts' sleep training blog posts, I gave myself pep talks and I was practically on the verge of drinking my first Mountain Dew to prepare for the long nights ahead. I was going to get Carson sleeping through the night once and for all!

And then it hit me -- Carson kept waking up at night because he would lose his binky and needed help finding it. If I was going to sleep train him anyway, might as well just take the binky away too. One of my motherhood secrets is if you're going to embark on a planned week of awfulness, get all the awfulness that needs fixing over with at once. So if I was going to have a screaming kid over sleep training, might as well get the binky screaming over with at the same time. 

So I made a very sudden, somewhat experimental decision to snip the binky. I was just going to see if he threw an all-out raging tantrum at the damage done to one of his precious bebes. I was just going to test the waters and see how attached he was to his treasured pacifier. So I dangled the bait.

Carson took one try with his broken binky, and threw it out of his crib. He didn't even really cry about it. It was just...broken, and he decided he didn't want it anymore. That was that. He asked about it like two more times a couple days later, but I just reminded him it was broken, and he continued on with his day without any tears shed. Well that was easy.

Miraculously, once the binky was out of the picture, he stopped waking up at night! But getting him to sleep for naps and bedtime was not so easy.

For sleep training, I used similar techniques to what this mommy blogger wrote about. The plan was basically to have a consistent bedtime routine -- putting him to bed at the same time every night. Then go in to check on him every 10 minutes until he fell asleep.

The first night he fell asleep faster than expected (under 1 hour). The second night he fell asleep within 15 minutes of putting him in his crib. And night three was the dreaded regression day which was the worst day. Over an hour of crying. We almost gave up, but he finally hit the sack just before we reevaluated the sleep training plan.

After night three it's been pretty smooth! He still cries when we put him in bed, but it never lasts more than 5-10 minutes. We did notice tonight that he has a sweet spot for when it's best to put him down. If we put him down too early, he's not tired enough, so he screams like crazy. If we put him down too late, he's overtired and screams like crazy. But if we put him down right around 7:45-8:15, he does pretty good.

Tonight we put him down, and he didn't even cry at all! Eli's room is right next to Carson's, and Eli was playing really loudly in his room right after we put Carson down. After a few minutes, Carson yelled, "ELI!" He does this often when he is in bed and can hear Eli next door. But then he said this, "Eli! I'm sleeping!"

Ha. It was hilarious. So there's hope that all this sleep training really might be working.

Next step -- toddler bed, potty training and getting the boys to share a room. But we'll let Carson have a little break before Mommy Boot Camp Phase 2 starts.

Saying Goodbye to the Monkeys

By Thursday I was getting preeeeeeeetty good at this whole having a girl thing. I was a hair braiding, outfit coordinating, headband applying pro.

The kids had suggested Monkey Bread as a dinner idea for one of the nights. Apparently they had never had Monkey Bread before, so Jeff and I tried to convince them they would all turn into monkeys the morning after eating the Monkey Bread. Emma and Luke were eager to help make the new treat.

It had been years since I had had Monkey Bread! It was a favorite for everyone!

By Thursday, the kids were starting to get tired of me nagging them to clean the house every evening. So after several failed attempts of me trying to motivate the kids to clean, Natalie and Emma came up with the fun idea to do bucket races! The kids had to pick up 10 toys to get a ticket to ride in the bucket. It was a very successful idea!

Eli's at the cute age where he does things like this when I say smile:

After bucket races, Natalie orchestrated a bedtime story corner.

I loved that Pillow Pets were a mandatory part of the activity.

On Friday, I was trying to snap a picture of Claire's cute outfit when Carson decided to become a part of the photo op. Claire wasn't too keen on Carson stealing her thunder.

I think this is my favorite outfit I put her in. Little girl clothes are to die for!

I went up to take a shower, and when I came back down, Jeff whispered to me, "Look at Logan and Eli. They've been planning out some race all the cars are going to have for the last half hour." They had all the cars lined up, and they were discussing the order the cars would race in, and which of the cars would crash, and where they would all go. It was so funny.

Claire spent the week by my side helping me edit the music video.

When the kids got home from school on Friday, there were more bucket races to be had. I love this picture.

Claire and Carson snacked on the counter so I could keep them both contained while I cooked dinner.

Luke loved showing me his doll -- Sarah.

On Friday night, the kids were begging to do something fun. Luke had mentioned the idea to do snow cones. I've never been one to turn down a snow cone, so we had a winter snow cone party!

You can probably guess what word I said right before I snapped this picture...

And I'm not sure what word I said to get this reaction out of Logan:

Emma and Natalie were our snow cone baristas.

Even Claire got a taste of the flavored ice.

We had a few last shots to get of the music video before we watched a movie.

Saturday morning, we got a text from Jacob first thing, so we sent this text to Jacob to welcome him back to solid ground:

And then it was time to clean up! First up, the kids! Turns out a five-person bath is as fun as you would expect it to be.

Then came the bribery. Jeff had taken candy orders from the kids that morning, and he had bought two candy bars for each kid. Each of the candy bars "cost" them $2. So they had to do $4 worth of chores to get both of their candy bars.

It worked pretty well...once I started threatening to eat their candy if they didn't clean. I'm happy to say everyone earned both their candies!

Jacob and Laurie were delayed a little bit, so we filled the extra time that evening making a second batch of chocolate covered strawberries, and then we rented a movie.

Then the boys went to bed while Emma and Natalie stayed up to make their parents a welcome home banner.

They were so cute to write down all the fun things we did while their parents were gone. They couldn't wait for their parents to get home so they could show them our music video surprise!

While we were taking pictures, a little rascal emerged from the basement. Carson learned how to climb out of the pack 'n play while we were there, and he was practically impossible to put to bed.

Jacob and Laurie arrived safely home, and we had a fun time exchanging stories. Then on Sunday morning, Logan insisted on sitting between Eli and Carson for their goodbye breakfast.

We got a quick group picture before heading off to the airport with tears welling up in our eyes to have to say goodbye to our "fake children."

We were much less nervous about our plane ride home since we only had a one-hour layover this time. On the second flight, all of Carson's refusing to sleep in Nebraska finally caught up with him and he fell asleep in my arms within 10 minutes of takeoff. It was so pleasant.

Then Eli fell asleep as we were landing, so we decided to be the last ones off the plane to let him have at least 10 minutes of shut-eye.

There we were, peacefully staring at our two, darling, perfect, adorable sleeping children -- taking a moment to exhale as we let the responsibilities of five extra kids float off our shoulders -- when I felt something snag my hair. I ran my hand over the top of my head to get all my hairs smoothly in place and unhooked from whatever they were snagged on, when I felt something fall behind my back.

My first thought was that it was a cell phone, until I looked back and saw the girl standing behind me looking completely horrified. Then with a gasp she whispered, "I am SO. Sorry."

Why are you so sorry about a cell phone? I wondered. And then I felt moisture on my back. And then I heard her say, "It's all over your back. Do you have wipes or anything so I can help you wipe that off?"

And then I saw that it was a cup that fell on me. Full of a milkshake. And it was all over my hair and back, and I was sitting in a puddle of milkshake slush.

She picked the right person to milkshake though. Because I did have wipes. And I have had many things much worse than milkshake spewed all over me between the two little rascals that were so deceivingly peaceful in that very moment. So no harm done. But it does make a good story. So thank you clumsy milkshake passenger. I do appreciate a good story for the sake of finishing off my adventurous trip to Nebraska.

So there you have it. We had an awesome week. I would do it again. The conditions were perfect, and I couldn't have imagined it to have turned out better than it did. Thanks for the fun opportunity, Jacob and Laurie! We'll be your go-to cruise babysitters for life! Or at least until we have another kid. :)