Candle it up!

So it's a week later, but here are just a few snaps from Miss C's birthday breakfast. We celebrated several times last week and finished it off with a party on Saturday with all of her friends. I'd say she had a great birthday.

When Miss C was little (well she still is little) she would say, "candle it up!" when we would light candles. She loved to pretend to play happy birthday and we'd oblige by sticking a candle in play doh and letting her sing happy birthday to herself. After she was done singing and blowing out the candle, she'd shout "candle it up!" and repeat the whole process. I swear she could do this for hours.

Here's my birthday girl with her happy birthday donut--candling it up 4 year old style.

hallelujah

He finally is doing #2 on the potty again! Holy moly this has been one tough road. It's been 2 days now, and I hope I'm not jinxing it by blogging about it. I'm sure I'll eat my words tomorrow. After 2 episodes on Saturday, he and I had a little heart to heart about the whole situation. I was pretty much at my limit after spending the better part of 10 minutes in a public restroom trying to clean him up after one of his episodes. If I could have carried him out naked, I would have. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I signed both of them up for preschool next year. That deserves another, Hallelujah! And a hells yeah for good measure. This mama is excited to have 3 mornings a week all alone. I told Miss C I was going to throw a party when they were in school. She asked me who I was going to invite and what we were going to do at this party. I told her it's a party of 1 and I'll I'm doing is relaxing. To which J piped in that he hopes I'll use that time to clean. Hmmmmm. What kind of party is that?! It's actually going to cost us a small fortune to have both of them in preschool, so I guess I better clean up around here otherwise I'm going to be asked to get a real job :).

Tomorrow is Miss C's 4th birthday! She's so excited about it. She requested donuts for breakfast and Chuck E Cheese for dinner. Hello kitty is the cake du jour (it was a toss up between that and my little pony). Sounds like a fun day to a 4 year old. I can't believe 4 years have gone by already. She'll have her party with her friends this weekend.

Little D is out of the hospital, thank goodness. All the tests came back negative, so it was just some sort of little bug. We're all breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn't more serious.

Little J is still singing the monster mash. They watched that video about 10 million times. We're trying to wean them off of it slowly. He even does the little dance. It's quite funny. J is talking about getting one of those flip video things, so hopefully I can start posting video too. He's quite a little comedian and we want to be able to start capturing more of the funny things that he does. We have a regular camcorder, but it's such a PITA to upload to the computer (and edit). It's bordering on the dinosaur age of technology and still uses tapes. I can see C and J reading this down the road and wondering what tapes are. Remember Beta Max anyone?

Here's a recent pix of all of us. We took this over the weekend. I had a session in the morning and the fam met up with me to take some snaps for Mee Maw and Goompa's holiday cards.

Would you believe

I actually started this post last Tuesday? Notice that I couldn't even make it a week later. sheesh.

1. Miss C measures time in terms of her naps. I often get asked, "well, how many naps is that?" Like her birthday. How many naps does she have to take before her birthday is here. She even gets a little more precise and breaks down the naps between the "dark rest" and the "sun rest". Pretty sophisticated if you ask me.

2. We went back home for a short trip to attend the blessing of my nephew this past weekend. Little J got to meet his first cousin for the first time. I don't have any pictures of it though! *gasp*. I know, I know. I should hang my head in shame. I hardly pulled out the camera this weekend, in fact. Anyway, Little J loved his cousin. He got a chance to hold him for a few minutes and he constantly wanted to hug and kiss him. Little D has gotten so big! He's 6 weeks old and is smiling and trying really hard to communicate. I got quite a few big smiles out of him while I was there. He's already got this auntie wrapped around his little finger.

3. We finally had the #2 issue beat with Little J last week. He finally decided it was time to poop on the potty, thank goodness. He was good for about 3 or 4 days in a row. But then we left town and we are back to square 1 again. sigh. I'm getting really tired of swishing undies in the potty. I don't know how our parents did it before disposable diapers were invented. This swishing thing is totally for the birds. Not to mention it's totally disgusting. I'll admit that I've thrown a few pairs in the trash because I just don't want to deal with it. Hopefully he'll pick it back up sooner rather than later.

4. I'm finally getting around to sharing the halloween pictures. We started the day with a good ole pumpkin carving after the naps. When we went to get Miss C up from her "rest", this is how we found her. She did her hair all by herself. Of course we giggled to ourselves and let her wear it like that for the rest of the afternoon because she of course thought it was beautiful. Hopefully it will be blackmail later :)

She's a maniac, maniac on the floor......

5. Then we got down to some serious trick or treating. The kids had a blast this year. We let them stay up late (like 8 p.m.!) and eat candy like crazy.

Pre halloween silliness. Notice the skeleton's hand is on her shoulder

6. Consurey (I have no idea how to spell that!) has been popping up a lot lately. She is often accompanied by her brother "T" and her two dogs Jimmy and Swizzlely. Yesterday we were driving around the neighborhood and we had to stop multiple times to let Consurey and her crew in the car. I think I've mentioned Consurey on here before, but just in case I didn't, it's Miss C's imaginary friend. I think it's so cute. She's even got Little J in on it. He talks about Consurey all of the time too. I don't remember having an imaginary friend as a kid, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.

7. J and his best friend B. The two spidermen :)

Right after this series of shots, J decided it was a good idea to whack B in the chest with the bike helmet. Nice huh? I almost couldn't believe my eyes when he did it.

8. Miss C's birthday is next week. I can't believe she is going to be 4 already. She is growing up so fast. Here is an outtake from her birthday invitation shoot. She started posing and being silly.

9. Keep my little nephew in your prayers. He's in the hospital right now and will probably be there a few days. He came down with a fever of 100.6, was lethargic and not really eating well. I guess he also threw up a couple of times. In a 6 week baby, anything above 100.4 is an automatic trip to the doctor. I guess he has an infection (and it's actually not the swine flu, thank goodness) and they are waiting for his white cell count to normalize before they talk about releasing him. They did a battery of tests and we are all waiting for the results. Hopefully it's just a simple infection and nothing more serious. Please pray for my brother and sister-in-law. They've had a rough start with this little guy!

10. My 52 week project kind of fell by the way side. But I did get one for last week. See #5 above!

Post Halloween ritual

So if you have kids (or if you remember being a kid yourself) the post halloween ritual is always the same. Sit on the couch "looking" at your candy, sorting it, counting it, thinking about it, playing with it, and ultimately bugging your parents to eat it. No matter who you are or where you live, we are all doing the same ritual this morning. Well, this household is no different. The kids have spent the better part of the last couple of hours asking, no begging, us for candy. We've heard it all this morning. From the simple "plllleeeeassse" to the old "I just want to smell it" to "I don't feel good, I need candy" to the straight out hiding in the closet and just eating it without permission. Oh yes, we caught Little J in the closet eating the blue lollipop that he has been eying since he got it last night. About an hour after we caught him, he was digging in his candy and picked out another lollipop. He proceeded to walk around with it. J asked where he was going and he quickly replied, "in the closet." Yeah. Nice try buddy!

So after all the negotiations, we've given up and decided that if they eat all their breakfast they can have a piece of candy. Today is going to be a fun day.

A friend of mine has instituted the halloween fairy at her house. The halloween fairy comes at night and takes all of your candy and then leaves a toy in it's place. I think we should have started that this year because it's been pretty ugly this morning. Maybe next year we'll build it up before halloween and give it a try.