Single parenting

Really, I don't know how my mum did it. Although I'm pretty sure it cost her a good part of her sanity... that may explain why she deals with my crackheads so well. Heheheheh...
Anyways, CJ's going to Utah tomorrow for his sisters graduation from BYU. {CONGRATS AUNTIE CAMEL!!!!!} I wish we could all go, but I don't want M to miss too much school, plus it throws the kids out of whack and gives me a hard time of getting them back on a schedule, and there's the cost too. To pay for all of us to fly, or else to pay in sanity in driving it. So he's going alone, and I get to play single parent for 3 days. Not bad compared to when he was in the academy, but still. I keep joking that he owes me so big, but the truth is I'm slightly serious. Man, I'd love a break sometimes... not just a trip to Target on my own, but a few days of not having to worry about one kid laying the smackdown on another, or someone getting into something they shouldn't be in, or if it's time for J's neck exercises or to get M from school, so on and so forth.... but I signed up for this, so I'll suck it up, get some snuggle time from J, and endure. Any TimTams floating around would be welcome here though.... where's an Aussie when you need her... {I love my Angie, I do.}
J now has a collar that we have to put on him at least four times a day, for as long as he'll tolerate it for up to an hour at a time. He's such a trooper, he's up to a half hour with it on!! He doesn't complain about it much either. I can't believe he's going to be six months old on the 25th... what the crack! He's supposed to stay my baby forever!! He's almost too long for the basinette {okay, honestly, he IS too long for it but I play denial a lot}, so in May he's finally going to get the crib from P, and P is going into a *gasp* big boy bed. Waaaahhhh... HE'S getting too big too! I think J and P will room together and we'll leave M in her room alone, mostly because they both like to sleep in the dark, and if M had her way the sun would constantly shine in her room. J's also pretty much sleeping through the night now {knockonwood} so hopefully it'll go well.
M has decided that she must have a fishie. We were at the store yesterday, just wandering around, and we stopped to see the fish. She was talking to them all, asking them how they were, it was so sweet. She asked for a fish and I told her that maybe for her birthday she would get some fish, and ever since then she keeps talking about her "birthday fishies". Ha!! We had to get some stuff for CJ at the store, and on the way M said "daddy, we go see the fishies?" he said sure, so she said "we go get the birthday fishies? I get fishies for Mercy's birthday?" I about choked on the cuteness. Then she proceeded to tell us about the fish and about how she was getting them for her birthday over and over, so I asked her how many fish, and she said "I get two fishies. One birthday fishy, two birthday fishies. Two!" Bwahahaha! And apparently she does not want purple fish like CJ suggested, she wants the orange ones. I don't think she realizes that her birthday is another 4 months away... I may succumb earlier than that, and CJ may come home to a fish in the kitchen. We'll see...

TO TIM: thank you for being a woooooonderful imitation woman and voting for J. He says peace out, homie.

Because I'm on a roll...

You all get graced with another page!

credits in my DST gallery.

Mercy and Lexi

This is a layout of some pics from when Lexi and Mercy went "swimming" last February (yes, it was February in these pictures!). Jesse sent me some of her digiscrapping wonders to play with, and this apothecary label was perfect for this layout. And yes, the flowers took me forever and a day to do!

Who wants to see...

some little crackheads? {note: they aren't *actual* crackheads, it's just a pet name. Ask Mandy, it's the only name she calls me.} They were watching the JibJab video of P as a leprechaun... if you have sound you might want to turn it down, they get.... loud.



And just so J doesn't get left out, here he is listening to his favorite song. I do his neck exercises to it because he really relaxes and smiles when it's playing and I'm singing it to him. {he likes the whistling the most}

Look what we (finally) did!!

We finally planted something in our backyard!! It's only taken us.... a year? Ha. Anyways, while we were in Vegas with mum, the kids were all about playing in/with her garden, so I got a bug in my ear about finally planting something in the back on the retaining wall. Here's what we got:

Here's the wall untouched:

After CJ ripped the weeds out and turned the soil (go muscle man):

The finished product!

CJ also got all wild with some seed packets, chucking them wherever he felt like they should go, so we'll see what it looks like in a month. Heheh. M's plants are the yellow daisies, she picked those out specifically and "helped" CJ put them in the pots. She has her own pink watering can to water them, and now first thing every morning she asks to go water her flowers. P doesn't really care either way, he sits on our patio and chucks rocks. There's a boy for you.

Back! *long, sorry!*

We're home! Okay... so we've been home for a few days. But it's been CJ's days off, so we've been playing family.

We. Had. A. BLAST. Oh wow, it was so great to see people I haven't seen in ages or have never seen face to face! The kids loved auntie Peggy within hours of arriving at mum's house, and she loved to cuddle and play with them. They got spoiled rotten. A *ton* of clothes, and all from my favorite store EVER, Roots. {they're a Canadian company, they make the Olympic clothing for the USA teams} My favorites are the matching shirts that say "My Roots are Canadian" on them. Dang skippy they are!

Not sure why M's legs look so pale in this picture... probably the flash.

Yes, that's a Chicos catalogue P is looking at. He's helping his grandma pick some things out.

Oh gosh, J looks so big in this picture! Sniff.
We got a pic of all three kids in their shirts for Sarah, since she couldn't come. Next time, I hope!

Peggy and Sarah also got the kids some great toys. These awesome stacking blocks that all the kids love, a My Little Pony for M {I think they avoided Strawberry Shortcake because of Sarah and I's history with the doll *teehee* that's a story for another day}, the newest Robert Munsch book {Sarah and I used to get to see him read his books at our local library as kids}, and a gorgeous growth chart! I know I'm forgetting some things, forgive me.

Mum's new house has a great little park and playground, and also a pool, so we spent some time there. Peggy and I pushed the kids on the swings forever {little addicts} and then they discovered the rest of the playground...

P saw this and just started climbing it all on his own. He's never been on one before, so I was color me shocked when he just went on up as if he'd been doing it forever! Little monkey...

The playground had this neat little musical pipe scale that M loved! Such a creative idea to put on a playground!

After the park we went to the Mad Hatter Cupcake store {YUM.}, hit up the Greatland Target by mum {uh, smack my tush and call me jealous! It was huuuuge} and then took a drive to Red Rock Canyon (I think it's called that), so gorgeous.

J trying to help mum finish off P's cupcake {shhh...}

We also hit up the Gymboree outlet. Let's just say we did not walk away disappointed!! It's probably a good thing we don't have either an outlet or a regular store in this town... Checked out Carters (J sleeps in footed sleepers, has to have the feet or he wakes up) but I didn't like any of the ones they had, even tho they had some good sales. M got to ride a carousel at the outlet mall, and that's all she really cared about. Ha!

We also hung out at the pool at the park. They had a neat wading pool for the kids that was only 1.5 feet deep. Perfect for M, who could easily crawl along the bottom, but not poor P. He had a scary incident. We just got there and mum and I weren't quite in the water yet, but M got right in so of course P followed her. He was walking around it fine, having fun, but he tripped and fell forward. Well, he's big enough to walk around it, but not big enough to crawl. He could get himself back up! Really, one of the scariest moments of my life seeing him face forward and not getting his head out. I dropped my camera on the chair and jumped into the pool next to him and grabbed him out of the water. Luckily he wasn't under very long but honestly, I've replayed it so much in my mind that I couldn't honestly answer you how long he was under, because it seems like it was hours to me. I think he only gulped some water down, because when I hauled him out he coughed and spluttered some water out, but then started sobbing. My poor poor bubby! I wrapped him and cuddled him and calmed him down, and we tried to get him to put his feet back in the water {I don't want him to be scared of water because of this} but he wanted nothing doing. So I bundled him onto the lounge chair to watch M and mum in the water, and sure enough he finally got up and walked over to sit by the pool. Then he'd put his feet in the pool. Then he'd splash a bit with his feet. Then he'd sit in the water. He never got brave enough to walk in the pool again, but he'd scoot around the step on his bum. We couldn't help him, he wanted to do it all on his own, which was probably a good thing anyways. So that was our scary moment of the trip.

Poor P-man after the incident. A bit shy and unsure.

M, so NOT shy in the pool.J's first time in a swimming pool! Look at the rolls, LOL!!

We got to meet up with Sam, Mandy, Zach and Jackson on Saturday!! Woo! It was like no time had passed. I love friendships like that, where you don't see eachother for months or years, and when you get together it's like time never passed. Zach's speech is incredible... I wish we'd stayed in Utah because I bet he would be a great influence on M's speech. Usually M is really shy around people she doesn't know very well at first, but with Zach she grabbed his hand and they were playing almost right away, it was so nice to see! Cutest moment of the day: Sam, Mandy and I were sitting and talking at the park (we had a picnic) and Zach comes up to Mandy and says "mommy, those big kids are being mean to me!" You could see Mandy's momma bear instincts rearing up and she asked him which kids, and he pointed to the ones playing on the playground. She asked him what they were doing, and he goes "they were being mean! They said tag, you're it!" Oh my gosh, we just started cracking up laughing. It was so cute!! And, of course, all the pics are on mums camera. She's going to get them on CD for me, but there's a really cute one of M and Zach jumping on the couch laughing, I wish I had that!

I also got to meet Gaily for breakfast on Monday, before we headed home. I only brought J so that I wouldn't scare them with my insane children, and J charmed them up at the beginning. All smiles and flirting. Then he got grumpy, but Gail and Brian and Tracy were so great with him. Brian even walked him around a bit to try to calm him down! J finally got happy after I let him try a teensy bit of whipped cream from my fruit bowl, lol. She and Brian are so sweet, I really hope we get to Santa Barbara this summer so I can bribe them into taking pics of the kids for me. :o)

For a parting shot, here's J and Richard, my stepdad who he's named after {Richard is J's middle name}. J was just fascinated with him!

I think they kind of look alike in this one:

And my mum and Peggy, in the kitchen cooking up a delicious roast beef dinner on Sunday. mmm!

I realized as I was typing this up that most of the pictures I seem to have taken must be on mums camera! Sucky. Hopefully I'll get my hands on the copies soon...

Vegas bound

Yyyeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to vegas we go! Can you tell I'm excited to go? Lol. We decided to bump up our leaving by a day, so we're going tomorrow instead of Thursday. Peggy's already there, and M doesn't have school Wednesdays anyways. So why not. I just have to go to parent-teacher conference tomorrow at 8am, and then come home, shove everything in the car, and we're outta here. A bit nervous about the drive by myself, but we should be fine. We have juice and snacks for the kids, coke for me, a DVD player and a good amount of cheesy cartoon movies, crayons, Care Bear coloring books, a mass amount of Matchbox cars (heaven forbid that P go anywhere without at *least* 5)... we're set. And now, not only do I get to see Gaily-O and Peggy, I get to see MANDY AND SAM!!!!!!! WOOOOOO! {I'm betting Mandy thinks I'm totally faking this, but I'm not. I adore my Mandikins and terribly miss not having her close to me. And I miss Samwise just for that. His smart a$$ remarks and how he thinks almost exactly like me. Poor Mandy.} I've never met Jackson and they've never met Jameson, and Mercy used to love playing with Zachary, even when he'd use her as a climbing tool (remember that? I have photographic proof... heheh). So all in all, it should be a vunderful vacation. Plus I get to hit up the Gymbo outlet in Vegas. Sweet. {Yeah, I'm a secret Gymbo addict. So? Don't be hatin'.}

Let's see... what have we been up to. J's neck is looking pretty good, it's not as noticeable anymore and he's a lot more willing to let you do the exercises now. The only time you can tell he's really got the Torticollis is when he's pissed off and/or tired. He's such a happy baby too, when he sees you looking at him he gets all excited and starts kicking and grinning. Love that boy, he truly makes my day sometimes.

P is totally over whatever bug he got last week, thank HEAVENS. He's a great kid... when he's not sick. When he gets sick he fully believes the world needs to hear everything come out of his mouth in the whiniest way possible, plus with a "NO!" at the beginning and end of everything. You could ask him "P, would you like all the toy cars in the world?" "No! No toy cars!" "Okay, no cars then." "NOOOOOO! I WANT CAAAAAARS!" *insert bawling mess of a little boy here*. Thankfully the nos have mostly gone away with the bug, and now we only hear them when he's really tired. He's back to trying to make everyone laugh as much as he can; we had Kim and Tim over for dinner and we showed them the pillow game, where P runs in circles in the living room (and giggles hysterically) and you try to take him out with a pillow. He realized how much harder we laughed when he fell, so he started falling even when we hadn't even thrown the pillow. And look, his first tattoos! Aww. He has a huge Spiderman on the other arm. It's quite hilarious to see in Church.

M is doing great, her speech is really coming along, and she's starting to love singing even more now that she can do most of the words. The cutest to hear is her singing Popcorn Popping. I sing it to J in the morning as I'm starting his neck exercises, because it distracts him from being a pooper about them, and M will sometimes sit next to me and sing it to J too, he loves it! She also loves to sing Mister Sun, and of course the old favorite, Twinkle Twinkle. Although I think she thinks Twinkle and the Alphabet Song are the same song, because she always sings the Alphabet song as soon as she's finished Twinkle Twinkle.

And on that note, I will leave you. I have a stack of laundry to sort through and toss either on the "coming to Vegas" wall or the "staying" wall. Plus I need to actually pack the clothes. Booo, no fun!