Gulf Shores 2012

In May we took our now-annual trip Gulf Shores with Mommy's extended family.

No, we weren't raised by wolves. Yes, we eat like we were.





Tyson took a face-plant into the sand, but as a whole we both liked it pretty well this year. Just don't get either of us within 10 feet of the ocean or we will ACT like wolves - scratching, clawing, and howling to get back from the water. 

Here's Daddy and I playing some football on the beach. PopPop had this nice tent that we set up so we had some shade. 

The fam enjoying some chips on the beach. 

Millie and I braved feeding the seagulls the remains of the chips. They're feisty!

How could you not love this sweet little face in the morning?

One morning Daddy took us boys to an Alligator farm while Mommy went shopping. Here I'm trying to help Tyson see over the edge of the fence.

 Don't worry, Tyson, I'll protect you from those beasts.

 Yikes, we may need some fatherly back-up to stay safe with these bad boys.

 Family pictures: Either the kids are distracted by a plane flying overhead....

 Or your husband is clowning around...

 So you just have to take what you can get - 3 out of 4 smiling.

What a great trip! It was so fun to be with my cousins and aunts/uncles and Nana and PopPop. We missed Uncle Daniel!

A few funnies from the big guy

• Cole hopped off the potty so I could wipe him. He always likes to look at what he's done and said, "Big poo!" . "Mom, can you eat poo?" I'm laughing by this point but he has no idea why. "No, honey, poo isMe, impatient as usual because I hate wiping, "Yep! Now lean over." Cole keeps looking at the poo and says thoughtfully, "Mom, there's carrots in the poo." I start giggling because he's very serious and it's so funny gross." Not satisfied he asks so innocently, "Can you eat the CARROTS out of the poo?" I'm rolling on the floor by this point.

• The boys were playing with the box of sand on the driveway and I got a towel to put under it to help catch the spilled sand to put back in the box. I laid it down, put the sand on top of it, and Cole says, "We can sit on the towel too! It makes us warm and happy." :)

• I hear him getting upset with Tyson and he says, "Don't break my beautiful train! My beautiful train!"

• Cole woke up one night crying uncontrollably. This happens every so often and eventually he calms down one way or the other. I couldn't get him to tell me what was wrong (not unusual) because he's not really awake, but finally he said, "I want the song about the food!" I mentally searched for what he could be talking about. "The fruit of the Spirit song?" I ask. "Yeeeeaaaahhh", he wails. So I sang it, and he went right back to sleep. Thank you Twin Lakes!

• During the Missions Conference weekend in March the boys were in the nursery a lot so they heard the term "missions conference" a lot as I tried to explain to them where we were. A few weeks later Cole asks out of the blue very serioiusly, "Mom, is the Missions Conference this weekend?" I guess he was trying to decide if the weekend would be a good one or not :).

• I prefer to go to the grocery store by myself, but often the boys are with me. The book "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go" has been a perpetual favorite for both boys, and Cole loves the exchanges between Officer Flossie and the bad driver Dingo the dog who Officer Flossie chases all through the book. For months every time we went shopping he would hang on the side of the cart, then get off when I stopped, and when I started again he would start yelling, "Officer Flossie! Officer Flossie!" and come running to jump on the cart again. I'm not sure quite how the shopping trip mimicked Officer Flossie chasing Dingo, but I heard "Officer Flossie!" many times while winding up and down the aisles.

• The boys' favorite thing about the store is going to see "The Nobbers and The Cobbers." It took me awhile to figure out what this term referred to when Cole first asked me if we could go see them. You're confused as well? It means "The lobsters and the crabs." He can say both words just fine, but somewhere in there the seafood counter has come to be known as seeing "The Nobbers and the Cobbers." I still hear it referred to this way :).

• Cole loves telling stories, and they almost always revolve around animals of many various species and the Natchez Trace. They usually start something like, "Mom, one day last week I was driving with Freeman on The Trace, and we saw a deer eating a fox who was climbing up a tree, and the tree was walking down by the water and the...." and just get yourself a drink and pull up a chair because these stories go on for a looong time. They don't even make sense most of the time, but they're chock full of animals doing all sorts of crazy things, almost always seen while he was "driving on the Trace." The Trace is Cole's Narnia. We HAVE seen some deer and a fox on the Trace, and that has built for Cole a whole world of animals that live on the Trace. One night Thomas was commenting on what was on TV while Cole was playing in his room. "Without a Trace" is on, he said. Cole comes running into the room and goes straight to Thomas and asks very earnestly, "DAD, what did you say about THE TRACE?"

Memorial Day 2012

We decided to just have a fun afternoon home with the fam on Memorial Day. Here's Cole balancing and throwing a ball off his spoon.

 Eating, of course.

 And playing in the pool and the "slip-n-slide" made with a slide and water mat.

Tyson talks - the funnies from the littlest guy

Tyson might best be described as the quiet clown. He's usually not wild and crazy, but he says and does some really funny stuff...often just to be funny. If you take his clothes off and let him run around in his diaper, it's like a cat in catnip - he goes crazy dancing, running, and being silly. He talks so much that I have to start a funny corner just for him. Almost everything he says these days is understandable.

 One day I was playing on the bed with Tyson and he came over, softly brushed the top of my head, smiled, and said, "Peacock!" Perhaps that was his way of complimenting my haircut :).

 Tyson had a bad cold a few nights ago so I gave him a few breathing treatments of saline solution. One thing I've learned is to do breathing treatments while they're sleeping. Usually they sleep close to the side of the crib and I can hold the mask close to their mouth without them screaming like I'm skinning them alive. So I did this for Tyson but the second night he woke up. He was in such a sweet little mood, laughing and laying there and talking while I held the mask just inside his crib by his mouth. Then he rolls on his stomach and starts petting the face mask. After a minute he looks at me smiling and says, "Nice doggie." For the rest of the time he petted the doggie or asked me for "doggie come visit me" in various different slats of the bed as he moved his head around.

Tyson mimics EVERYTHING that Cole does. Bad behavior, good behavior, he attempts to follow Cole's every move and mood, as though he's actually experiencing the same thing Cole is (if Cole gets hurt and cries, Tyson pretends he's hurt and tries to cry - and I think he actually believes he's hurt). One morning Cole had been mean to Tyson while I was in the shower so I told Cole to come sit next to the shower door in the corner for a time-out. Tyson watched while Cole came and sat in the corner and whined, "I'm ready to get up, Mom!" After he was calm again and had finished his time, he got up and we went on with our day. 2 hours later I hadn't seen Tyson for a few minutes so I asked Cole if he knew where he was. Cole said he thought Tyson was in our bedroom. I listened and heard whining coming from that direction. Fearing that Tyson had gotten himself hurt I flew in there, only to come around the corner of our bathroom and find Tyson in the exact spot Cole had been sitting in for his time-out, and Tyson is moaning, "I'm ready to get up, Mom! I'm ready to get up!" And I really do believe that HE BELIEVES he's in time-out! Even though it was his own idea!

The next day we were outside and I was mowing (it was VBS week so I was helping Thomas who was helping every night with VBS - i'm not usually THAT good of a wife) and filthy. Cole had to pee so I took him over to the bushes on the side of the house and let him go. 30 minutes later I was on the front of the house and asked Cole to peek around the corner and see if Tyson was on the swingset. Cole goes and looks and starts giggling. "Mom! Tyson is trying to pee on the bushes!" Sure enough, Tyson is standing right where Cole was trying to pull his pants down. Oh my.   

"Peas Porridge Hot"

Guess what? I love to drum. My drum set is a constantly evolving thing. It moves to various "venues" in the house and I switch out drums as new items become available. Here I'm sitting on a container from my toy organizer and drumming on an oatmeal box, a lincoln log box, a xylophone, and a true toy drum. My favorite song to drum to is "Peas Porridge Hot" from my Wee Sing cd. Mommy can't figure out what it is about that song...it has almost no beat and sounds like a lullaby, but whenever it comes on I stop what I'm doing, usually with an urgent, "Oh!" and RUN to find my drums. It's a short song so I have to be quick.

Living the Dream

Momma gets tired of reading the same books to us over and over, but reading to us is one of the highlights of her day. She says it's living her dream...reading to her boys.

So what do you DO all day?

Momma's gotten tougher since she's been a mom, but she still hates, really hates, roaches. The problem is that she equally hates THEM, and KILLING THEM. But at least if you kill them they're gone. We're not sure why, but we've only had maybe 4 since we moved to our new neighborhood...this is a blessed ammenity for my mother. But the last one we had was in my room. She used to make a half-hearted attempt to corner them and then get mad when they got away. But these days she's out for blood. The only thing worse than a roach in your house that you see is a roach in your house that is HIDING. So once she knows he's there, it's game on. It took us the better part of an hour to get him, but we did. She almost completely dismantled my room - from the bed to the dresser to the drawers in the dresser, and everything in between, we tore that room apart as we chased him....but we got him.

Props to my Pops

Just wanted to say my dad is a stud. He found a video on YouTube on how to build these shelves, got the supplies, and banged these puppies up in a few hours. We love them!

Softball 2012

One of our favorite parts of the week is Daddy's softball games. Cole loves to wear his "baseball shoes", a pair of cleats I got on a yard sale that are 3 sizes too big for him.

Here's Daddy cracking a good one.

One night Cole even got to run the bases after the game!

Move over Stanley Steamer

Vacuuming is a big treat around our house. Cole LOVES to haul out the tank vacuum and suck things up.  One day I was working in anothe room and came back to find that he had folded up and hauled the 5'x7' rug from the breakfast room into the no-mans-land by the sink so he could clean the breakfast room floor!

Unfortunately Tyson happened to be sitting there. But when the man is at work, you better just move out of the way. Too bad for Tyson, he got mashed with the rug.

Here they are, Tyson with the Swiffer, Cole with the vacuum, cleaning away.

 The end is even better: After they were done I asked Cole to put the rug back down in there. I figured if he had folded it up and managed to move it 5 feet, he could move it back and unfold it. I was cooking at the stove which is 5 feet from the breakfast room.  I had heard Cole whining and grunting but he's easily frustrated sometimes and I ignore it because I want him to learn to overcome it and finish the job on his own if it's something he's capable of. Suddenly I feel like the rug is very CLOSE. I turn and there's Cole pushing the rug behind me, close to tears but more mad than sad. "What are you doing, Cole?" I ask him. There's no-where to put the rug in the kitchen, I have no idea what he's thinking. "It's not working so I'm putting it in the trash!" he says. :)

Brotherly love

I peeked around the corner to find this sweet moment. Cole has a string of beads draped over both ears that are his "headphones", and he's "reading" to Tyson out of a book we haven't read very often. I hear Tyson say, "Read it, Cole." And Cole replies apologetically, "Tyson, I don't know those pages yet."

Cole loves to give lessons to Tyson on anything that Tyson will put up with being tought. Here Cole is going through the family albums with Tyson telling him who everyone is and what they're doing. Uncharacteristically, Tyson is actually interested in the lesson. 

 The drumming obsession continues. I was in the kitchen and heard Cole drumming loudly and a small breathy harmonica sound. I looked over and saw this. Cole is drumming and yelling, "Louder, Tyson, louder!" And Tyson is trying to summon more breath and blow harder on the harmonica while Cole beats the life out of his drums and continues, "Louder, Tyson!" It is worth noting that both drums in this picture were drummed into oblivion and had to be trashed.

Still the puzzle man and the engineer

Tyson doesn't really care about puzzles too much. Cole still loves them. Here he's putting together his "Harry the Dirty Dog" puzzle.

Every now and then I give them some chocolate chips with their peanut butter-smeared waffles. Tyson just scarfs a handful of chocolate chips down. Cole likes to put one in each hole, and tries to convince me that he should have one for EVERY hole in his pancake, no matter that that would be 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips. He likes things precise.

A funny story: Cole has had croup several times in the last year. The first time we wound up in the ER because we didn't catch it early enough. If you know about croup, you know that at the first sound of the "barking seal" cough you wisk them into the bathroom and steam it up with the hot water on full blast and the door closed, then out into the cold night, then back again and so forth until they're not wheezing anymore. It almost always happens in the middle of the night too. We've had to do this probably 4 times in the last year so we have it down to a science. Unfortunately if it's not cold outside you have to find another source of cold air. The freezer is a good one, but convincing a sleepy, wheezing 3-year-old to stick their head in the freezer can be impossible. So a few months ago when our latest bout of croup hit at 3AM we steamed up the bathroom and had to go the freezer route. I decided the only way to get him to look in it was to interest him in what was in there. So I asked him to name everything he could of what was on each shelf. Surprisingly he obliged and we went through the whole freezer, then back to the bathroom, then back to the freezer for another round, then back to the bathroom. I was exhausted and so was he, but while walking back to the freezer he croaks out, "Mom, this is fun!" Glad someone was enjoying it :).  

The Shoe Patrol

Tyson loves wearing other people's shoes. Here he's wearing Cole's shoes. He often finds Cole's sandals or tennis shoes and wears them around the house.

And sometimes even Daddy's shoes!

Mommy, I'm a trash man!

I know most kids like to pretend that they're trash men, but this kid really does believe he IS a trash man. Here he's doing "trash man" on his bed. He also does it on the couch, on the rocking chair, in the grocery store, on the back of the van when the tailgate is up, while standing on the armrest of the lawn swing, on a stool in the kitchen, and my favorite, a doorjam. The last one is accomplished simply by standing on the floor and hugging the doorjam. He is a hoot!

Easter 2012

We had 2 Easter egg hunts, one at Uncle Joel and Aunt Rachel's house, and one at Mimi's house. Here we are hunting in J & R's backyard with Millie and Simon.

                                     

And here we are partaking of the spoils.

Jiji helped Tyson, whose strategy was critically flawed. Instead of finding all the eggs he could and then sitting down to eat the jelly beans out of them, he ate the candy as he found each egg. Needless to say, I found way more than he did. 

Here I'm worried that Daddy is going to take some of my eggs, so I'm ready to run. 

We even got to dye some eggs!

And a cute story:

Cole: "Mom, I want to go outside and play with those honeybeans." Me: "What?" (assuming I heard incorrectly). Cole: "I want to go outside and play with those HONEYBEANS." My mind is blank. "What are honeybeans?" Cole: "You know, you can hide them and find them." hahaha - I told him I got jellybeans at the store to put in eggs for an Easter egg hunt. Honey, Jelly, they're both sweet, easy to mix up. So cute :)