What's with teenagers?

I took the boys to the park yesterday. This park is usually deserted so I never thought it would be packed. If I had known, I would have taken them somewhere else.

There were a couple people there when I got there. I could tell there were some middle school aged boys there jumping around, but there didn't seem to be too many. I pulled the boys out and let them run to the park. Not even two seconds later, one of the middle schoolers yelled "There they are!" and a huge pack of boys was walking our way. Insert a bunch of cursing, name calling, pushing, shoving, etc... you know, stuff normal people do when they see their friends (rolls eyes).

They soon started playing tag and every time the "it" person got too close to one of the others, the f-bomb went flying. 10 large(r than my boys) boys jumping and running between my two tiny boys... my heart rate went through the roof! I finally lost my temper when one kid full on pushed Marcus to the ground so he could step over him and get away from the kid that was chasing him just moments before another kid pushed Jamesen down the long swirly slide upsidedown and on his back. I blew up a bit on them and of course the two kids had some snide remark like "If you don't like it, just go home!" and all the other boys started laughing.

I had no choice but to scoop my boys up and leave because I knew since I had opened my mouth, they'd go out of their way to hurt my kids. I had to drag two crying kids who only got ten minutes on the playground back to the car and force them into their carseats. I didn't want to take them home so soon after taking them there, but really I had no choice but to leave and keep telling Marcus I was sorry as he was crying "Park!?" frantically.

When I was in middle school, I never would have dreamed of getting a bunch of my friends together at a park that clearly says it's for 12 and under, curse up a storm and play tag in between the little kids, pushing and shoving them out of the way when it suits me. What is with teenagers these days? No respect what so ever! I can tell you right now, if I ever caught my boys doing something like that, they'd be grounded for the rest of their lives!

Easter Highlights.

We had a great Easter! The only thing that could have made it better was if Sabe was around to see it all too. Sadly for him, he'll be seeing it all through pics as well this year. Hopefully as we go through the years in the Army, he'll alternate between holidays so I can get pics of him and the boys at least every other year on the holidays.

For the last few weeks, I've been gathering stuff for the baskets. I was excited when my mom found these two adorable baskets! They're so durable and totally adorable! This is what the baskets looked like after the Easter Bunny stopped by :)


Jamesen made a B-line for the baskets when we woke up. The look on his face was so priceless. I wish I could have snatched a pic of it, seriously so awesome!


Took me a minute to get Marcus interested, but once he saw Jamesen digging around his basket, he had to have his own, lol


How classic is this... Both kids grab candy the first thing out of their baskets. Seriously, these kids take after me so much. Sugarholics!!



The biggest hit though, was the light up noodle monster things I found at walgreens. They love them! My 8 month old niece thought they were pretty great too! Best thing, they were cheap!



My mom had a pumpkin that she bought around Halloween and never got around to carving. Fast forward to Easter and it's still there, sitting on her porch, perfect like she bought it yesterday. Marcus kept wanting to bring it in and carve it, so my mom decided to carve it into a bunny. The boys loved it! Here they are in their cute Easter outfits with the pumpkin. They were kind of grumpy right before this. Marcus was hungry (hence the eating..) and Jamesen was really sleepy.




We had the hunt right after my nieces got to the house. Since all the kids were 5 and under, we decided to skip the candy and go with small toys for the hunt. We figured that would be better for everyone involved seeing as how all the kids are hyper anyways and add sugar they become the energizer bunny on crack.

Marcus had a lot of fun. My dad was going around with him so that I could take pictures and they were so cute together! My dad would point the area of the toy and Marcus would gleefully run over and grab it, throwing it into the basket my dad was holding for him.

Jamesen wasn't really that into the hunt. He found the two eggs in the sand box right away and put them in his bucket. But then... he took his bucket over to a corner and dumped everything out and gave up on the hunt. I'm glad I got this one picture because it's the only action shot I got of him during the hunt! Silly kid.

Here's another shot of my mom's crazy holiday mixing up tendencies. The fake trees are from my wedding reception that she's just kept around because she bought them. She decorates them with every holiday. I think it's such a cute idea! She bought lights for every holiday and hangs them around on the trees. She use to have ornaments on the tree too until we got here. Jamesen liked taking them off.


And because these pics are so dang cute, here are my smiley boys playing in the pool. I added some hot water to it with buckets from the sink so it wasn't so ice cold. They loved it and were all smiles!








Thanks for looking! Hope you had a great Easter!

Holidays are so much better with kids

When I was a kid, I loved holidays. I love my birthday, Christmas, Halloween... Everything. I loved all the excitement and everything that goes with holidays. I was sad as I got older because the excitement dissipated and holidays were just not the same...

Then I had kids...

I don't know who's more excited about waking up and seeing presents under the tree or Easter baskets full of stuff waiting for us to dive into. Wait yes I do, ME!! I get so excited wrapping the presents, picking the costumes, filling the baskets, etc. I just can't wait to see their faces when they see everything and watch as they find all the goodies they've acquired.

Easter is tomorrow and I've been dieing for it to hurry and get here! We colored eggs yesterday and the boys loved it! At one point, Jamesen actually stuck his face into one of the dyes and tried to blow bubbles, getting a mouth full of vinegar water. The look on his face was hilarious! I wish I could have captured it!

I can't wait to play Easter bunny tonight and go on an egg hunt tomorrow. I just wish Sabe were here to witness the gleeful faces of these beautiful boys too. Oh well, maybe next year.

I'm feeling pretty dumb right about now...

Remember a few posts ago when I said they accidentally included Sabe in the "You're going to Ft. Benning, Georgia" thing? And how I said I was so glad they corrected their mistake? Well apparently their mistake was correcting their mistake, because we're going to Ft Benning! That's what I get for talking trash about it. I should have known the minute I opened up my mouth about not wanting to go there, we were going to go there! Silly me. Silly, silly me. I hope Georgia proves me wrong and it's not as bad as I'm envisioning with the fire ants. Good news though, there should be lots of warm rain falls that we can run through in our galoshes!! That's a huge plus! And I'm not being sarcastic!

While Ft. Benning was pretty low on my list of places I wanted to go, it wasn't the bottom, or even second to the bottom, so while I'm not too thrilled about going there, it could definitely be worse and I'm very thankful that the two places I desperately did NOT want to go are not the place we're going to! Another good thing is that it's on the coast so we can go to the beach! I have aboslutely no idea how good GA's beaches are, but rest assured, I will personally find out and make sure to let you know! I just hope we don't run into any hurricanes while we're there...

I'm excited that I can finally research into things though. Way excited about that. Hopefully I'll have a list of preschools to check out once we get there, a couple soccer leagues or gymnastic classes as well, and the excitement of getting a new puppy thrown in! Hope we get a big yard!

I'm not excited about the location, but I'm excited to know. If I end up hating it, we'll only be there for like 3-4 years anyways :) Can't wait to set up our new bed and go comforter shopping for Marcus' platform bed we'll be putting him into!

Jamesen is almost 2

and he's still waking up a few times a night at least half the week. It was getting really frustrating until last night when I might have had a break through...

I think he was having bad dreams last night or something... he would cry and I could tell he was scared, so I would lay down on the floor next to his bed and he'd go right back to sleep. There was one point where he went right back to sleep, so I slipped out and once I got back in my bed, I guess he noticed I was gone and started crying again. This was the 4th time he'd started crying between 11:30 and 2. Needless to say, it was getting old. I went back into his room and firmly told him he was fine while putting him back into his bed. I made sure he had his binkie and was snuggled in his favorite blanket before telling him that he was fine and needed to go to sleep. I told him I was going to leave and it was going to be up to him how long he cried. I turned to leave and he started crying when I got to the door so I told him he was fine and to go to sleep and slipped out. He cried until I got back into my bed and then abruptly stopped and didn't cry again (until 5:30, but hey that's better than the hour between wakings he was doing before!).

I sat there for a few minutes shocked that it actually worked! Course I was also so exhausted that the shock wore off fast and I thankfully fell asleep quickly there after. What a relief! Hopefully it's a break through, because I'm one tired momma!

In other news, Sabe and I have decided that we're not going to be trying for another baby in July like we were originally planning. There are quite a few factors going into that decision with a few of the biggest being that 1. Jamesen is still very clingy and adding another baby probably wouldn't be a good idea 2. Sabe will most likely not be around very much for the next few years and being preggo while the boys suck at sleeping wouldn't be fun if I've also got to do all the care all day long with no help and 3. We've not had any time alone in the last year. We've been living off other people and think it would be better to spend some time just the four of us for awhile. In a few years we'll reevaluate if we even want another baby or if we're ok with our just our two hellians... I mean lovable and adorable boys :].

We've only got about a month left before we find out where we're going! I'm excited about that, because time really has been flying here. We've been having a lot of fun with Grandma and Grandpa (the boys love them so much, it's so cute) but I'm def. ready to find out where we're going next! Can't wait to start researching preschools, sports and things like that! I'll post it here once I know, so check back! :)

Alien Crunchies

I distinctly remember sitting with my little sister in the back yard as kids eating sand and calling it Alien Crunchies. I remember only doing it once because I hated the feel of the sand on my teeth. This experience makes me really think "What the heck!?" when Jamesen insists on eating sand every time we go out to play. It's not just a tiny bit either, it's entire handfuls. If I'm not careful to keep a very close eye on him, he'll end up pooping out a diaper full of sand. Not really that fun to clean up.

I've googled it, and the only thing I could even come close to is that anemia can cause you to eat dirt. Dirt and sand are two totally different things though so I'm not sure if sand fits into the category. He's a meat lover too, so I can't see him being iron deficient. Marcus eats the exact same things as Jamesen and doesn't eat sand. Really makes me raise my eyebrow a bit...

In other news, the Army decided to tease us by telling Sabe where we were going, only to tell him "just kidding!" a couple hours later. From what I could tell (seeing as how Sabe was being a bit cryptic and not really making sense), they told a bunch of guys they were going to Ft. Benning, GA and accidentally included Sabe in that. He sent me a cryptic text that read, "Got good news this morning! Gotta double check with my command before we're positive tho." or something along those lines. I was so excited to hear where we were going, because I knew that's what it meant. By the time I finally got a hold of him though, they'd already told him "just kidding!!" we may still end up going there, but for now I'm breathing a sigh of relief...

We lived in GA for about a year when I was little. My earliest memories are from there. I remember watching smurfs while I waited for my older sister to come home from school. I remember sitting out in the yard weeding while it was raining. I remember the rain being really warm and the drops being HUGE. The one thing I'm worried about though... I remember fire ants and those memories aren't fun. I can't imagine trying to keep the boys inside to try and avoid fire ants from eating them alive. That would not be fun! So needless to say, a sigh of relief from me, though it would have been nice to know where we were going so I could start looking into preschools and sports for Marcus... we should know mid May (I hope!).

We have an idea...

where we MIGHT be going. Most guys in Sabe's job are heading over to Washington (Ft. Lewis). I'm actually pretty excited about it and hope it happens. We were wanting a few bases and that was one of the top 3! We've got both family and friends that live close enough to where we would be for frequent visits, and that makes my day! How awesome would that be to move to a place where nobody knows you, but hey go drive for a only a little bit and you'll find someone you love hanging out with!

I just hope we have a big yard, cuz we're thinking about getting a dog for the boys. They need a dog really bad. Marcus loves dogs so much, but all the ones we've been around are just too touchy and it worries me really bad when he gets around them, for fear of him getting bitten. We'll probably get a black lab or something really docile so they can climb all over him and he won't care. That would be so cute!

Sabe's graduation is the first couple days in June and man am I excited to get into my own house. Mostly for the boys... they've got so many toys packed up in the storage unit it's insane! Like the train table? Oh yeah!! We're going to pull it out and glue all the stuff down on the table so they don't lose any pieces and we can keep it in an intricate set up without it getting messed up. I got kind of sick of setting the entire thing up only to have it smashed in a few seconds by Jamesen and accidentally knocked over by Marcus elbows when we had it set up in Kentucky. They loved it so much though! It was the most played with toy in our house and so worth the money!

I'm hoping we have enough room that I can have a craft room. We probably won't though, because I've also been hoping to have enough room for a toy room and we probably won't have enough room for both, though that would be awesome of we did! Kids come first. I guess my craft room will just have to wait a few years (more like decades...) before it becomes a reality.

I've got so many plans that I'm just itching to plan! I can't wait until we find out where we're going for sure! That'll be a good day!

Holy Spamoly

Does anybody else have a tendency to look at their younger child(ren) and think of them as being "younger" than the oldest child was at that age? I always look at Jamesen and think of what a baby he is compared to Marcus. I forget what Marcus was like at this age, but when I think back to it, I always think of him seeming older than Jamesen does to me now. But then I start to think of things like, Marcus was 22 months when I had Jamesen and Jamesen is now 21 months. If I had followed that trend, not only would I be pregnant right now, but I'd be in my last month! I can't imagine having a baby right now, mostly because I don't see Jamesen as being where Marcus was. Maybe it's because Marcus has always been so independent, so he seemed older, while Jamesen just happens to be a stressed out momma's boy who never leaves my side without a fight about it.

That train of thought up there always reminds me just how close Jamesen is to being two and while he may be more dependent on me than Marcus was at this age, he's talking way more than Marcus was at this age. Case in point, this morning I was holding something Jamesen wanted so he turned to me and said, "Oooh, mine?" and "thank you" when I handed it to him. Obviously not that clear, but pretty dang good I'd say! He amazes me sometimes!

And of course, when thinking about how close Jamesen is to 2 makes me think how close Marcus is getting to 4 since he's only 2 months further behind in his birthday than Jamesen. Is Marcus REALLY coming up on 4 already? Going to school NEXT YEAR?! How did that happen? I joked when Jamesen was born that I was in denial that I was even pregnant because I could have sworn that Marcus was still a baby. I think I still feel that way a little bit. Not only do I have a second kid, but my first is almost school aged!

Almost school aged and still waking up in the middle of the night too, bah! He keeps waking up and trying to come into bed with me, which is a no go. I had him in bed with me for the first year and that's all I can handle thanks. I don't mind a quick snuggle in the morning, but my definition of morning is more like 7 am than 2 am! Little turd. Gotta love him though. I need to remind myself every morning that soon they'll be teenagers and I'll have to wake them up and wonder how they got so old so fast and miss these days of them being little. I swear that's the only thing that gets me through my day, lol!

Maybe we'll have another one soon. My baby fever sure is spiking these days!

Words, words and more words

I'm utterly amazed at Jamesen's vocabulary now days. He's way far ahead of Marcus at this age who didn't ever say anything. He'd say a few words here and there, but never anything consistent and I could never get him to say anything on command.

Jamesen is saying things like "airplane" and "ready, steady, go!" Mostly things that we say or see every day, but he's talking and it's so cute! He's growing up so dang fast right before my eyes. We've only got 3 months until his second birthday and I'm in shock! When did that happen?! I'm trying to teach him to ride his bike, but he's having issues... He can't figure out the steering thing. He can peddle just fine, but apparently steering is essential in riding it, haha.

Speaking of speech, Marcus is doing so well. He can say so many words and is even starting to put sentences together! He's catching up to his peers really fast, which is so good to hear. He's doing really well with the potty still too. I was worried he might regress a bit when we moved here, but he's not had an accident the entire time. In fact, it feels like he's over doing it a bit with asking to go to the potty. If we're out and about, he'll ask to go potty at every place we go to. He's not night trained, but he's doing so well during the day!

The boys have really taken to my parents. I've left them a few times to do some stuff with my photography and they've done really well, which makes me so glad. I've been really worried that Jamesen would cry his little heart out the entire time and start hyperventilating like he normally does when he's really upset. Makes me so glad to know that he's not such a momma's boy that he can't warm up to other people. I've been a tad worried about it actually, lol.

Anyways, nothing's really going on. We're just hanging out and waiting to find out where we're going next. Looking like Washington so far, but we'll see in a few weeks!