Well, we had a lovely weekend, although it was ridiculously cold up here! Lee went to Branson for the weekend with his dad and brothers and his mom came to St. Louis to stay with me and the kids – and I am so glad she was here! It’s just so nice to have an extra set of hands, you know? Especially when those hands are so gifted at the laundry :)! I am very grateful that she was here. It gave the kids and I a chance to have more fun. Sloan, Tia and I went to Monkey Joe’s on Friday, which, if you’ve never been, you should go. Super fun! Then I took them to this kids health expo on Sat. morning, which was slightly disappointing but oh well. But all in all, it was a great weekend. I even got to go on a date with my dad Friday night, which was so fun! We never get to go out just the two of us, so it was nice to just be with him and be able to talk. We went to Brandt’s down on the Loop – another great place. They had live music, an old jazz group, that was fabulous! So, yay for fun weekends. Oh, and I found one toy that I do believe may be worse than the aforementioned talking bird from Hades… a kazoo! The kids both got one at the Expo this weekend and they’re awful. I may accidentally step on them today…
The bad night in the title refers to last night. Landon seems to have regressed in his sleeping. Not so fun. He got a cold and was sleeping awesome in his car seat, and now won’t go back to the crib. He was up twice last night and the second time we attempted the cry it out trick, which did not work so well. So, I’ve been up since 4:30 and I’m feeling it right now! Luckily naps are coming soon!!!

I don’t think any of my kids are going to nap today because of the thunder. That does not make for a happy mama.

Well, it’s been quite awhile since I have posted a tale of my crazy daughter. So here we go. Saturday was gorgeous here! The first day that I feel like I could truly call a perfect day. So, late that afternoon, we decided to take the kids to the park for the first time in months. Lee had to run through Fed Ex on the way, so I gave the kids some cereal to munch on in the car and off we went. At Fed Ex, the kids and I sat in the car and waited on Lee. They were happily chomping on their Gorilla Munch (think Kix, only organic) and I was reminiscing as I listened to Micael Jackson on my MP3 Player. Then I heard Tia.

“Mama, Mama.”

I looked back and she was pointing at her nose (can you tell where I’m going with this?) Because she’s had a cold, I reached back and did the mom pinch (you know squeezing as much snot out of her nose as I can, then wiping it somewhere discreet, like her pants. Gross…I know.) But when I did that I noticed a knot in her nose. Yep. You guessed. She had shoved a piece of Gorilla Munch all the way up her nose. It was now lodged in the skinny part of her nasal passage. Lovely. So, I stuck my pinky up there and tried to get it out. All that happened was blood began pouring out of her nose. Literally, a steady stream of blood. Well, at this point Sloan is quite freaking out. He’s not so tough when it comes to blood. Neither am I. I also have nothing in my car to wipe it up with, so I jump out of the car and tear into Fed Ex, my hands covered in blood saying in as calm and cool a voice as I can muster up, “Do you guys have any Kleenex or paper towel?” Lee pretends not to know me. I see some paper towel on a little rack and grab a few and run back out to the car. Tia has now smeared blood all over her face and up to her elbow. Sloan is near comatose from his severe freaking out and I’m giggling because only Tia could do this. Praise God she just recently figured out how to blow her nose. After a couple of blows, the now soggy piece of Gorilla Munch dislodged itself and I was able to get the bleeding to stop. Then I had to do the spit and wipe all over her face to get her cleaned up. Meanwhile, she’s just looking around like “What’s the big deal?” We then spent a significant amount of time talking about why we do not put anything in our noses.

In other news, Lee completed the marathon relay yesterday. You’ll notice that I did not include myself in that, because I realized not long ago that there was absolutely no way that I was going to manage to pull that run off. And my friend Amy knew someone who wanted to take my place so I gladly reliquished my spot knowing that it was much less shameful to back out ahead of time than to have to stop and walk during the race. But I am proud of Lee. And a little annoyed at how good of an athlete he is. He hardly trained at all, but still managed to go out and run 6.4 miles in 54.5 minutes! That’s crazy. And he was hurting! But he made it and wants to do it again.

The kids and I did drive downtown to watch him, which, incidentally, I deserve a friggin’ medal for managing to get all three kids downtown, park, find Lee, watch the race, drive them by the Arch, and get home all without losing my patience or getting lost. It was actually fun! A quick Sloan story, as we were walking back to our car, we passed a man who had run in the race…in about as tight of lycra pants as one can find. They were a deep blue with large polka dots all over them and they left nothing to the imagination. As we’re passing, Sloan says – loudly – “Wow, mom. He has on funny pants. I could see his booty and everything!” Nice. The above picture is of all of us after Lee and his team finished. And finally, I’m posting a picture of Landon and all his chubbiness. He’s so cute and fun these days. Very smily and happy. He’s got another cold too, poor little guy, and it stinks because he was just getting good at sleeping in his bed and it’s back to the car seat. Oh well. Bye for now, blog world!

You would think that since I have successfuly potty trained one human being, I would have a little confidence in my ability to potty train a second. Wrong! I feel like I’m walking around with two left feet, stumbling over myself to figure out what on earth to do with poor Tia. To train or not to train…that really is the question. On the one hand, I think that she’s fairly ready, though I think she may still be a little young. And the youth factor is what’s getting me. Well, that and the fact that I am gulumping around the house like a moose trying to take her to the bathroom but not timing it right at all. I think this is just poor timing for me, not necessarily her. With Sloan still in school and it still be kind of cold out, a lot more is required of me. She gets cold without pants on, or she wants to go outside and play so I have to bundle her up, which makes accidents even more of a hassle. Plus, my mom is out of town for two weeks which means I have no help. I really need a couple of days alone with Tia. We need Potty Boot Camp! So, my thought was that I would just put her in pull ups but really talk them up like they’re underwear and still take her to the bathroom but not have to deal with the mess if our timing’s off. I guess that’s fine for now, but it’s not very effective training. Oh well. My one solice is that it will not be like this forever right? Right?
I have come to the conclusion, however, that I will likely never get a good night’s sleep again. Apparently, our bedroom has a revolving door and it appears our children like to come through it at all hours of the night (or cry out for us to come to them). A typical night for us usually includes Landon getting up once to eat, Sloan getting up once for any plethora of reasons (from being scared to needing more light to his toe hurting…that’s right his toe hurting. This is actually one of his more frequent middle of the night complaints.), and Tia generally waking up at the crack of dawn and waking up at least one of her brothers in the process. Last night we even got the joy off a tumble out of bed. We heard this crash about 10:00 and it scared us both. We went running into the nursery and found Tia standing in a daze next to her bed. Now she has a toddler bed so I’m not sure how she managed to fall such a short distance and make such a loud noise. Luckily she’s like super sleeper and went right back to bed. And Landon didn’t wake up, which was a huge praise. So if you see me and I look tired…it’s because I am. But, on a happier note, it’s beginning to look a lot like spring! The trees are budding, the grass is green and my eyes are running! Woohoo! I can’t wait for warmer weather!!!

I decided to try and start potty training Tia today. I’m seriously questioning that decision now, though. The problem is not that she is not ready, but that I’m not. It’s much more difficult to do when I’m dealing with two others. Sloan was so easy but I was able to focus on that and nothing else for as long as it took to get it done. He was also significantly older than she is right now. But, she seems pretty ready. And she’s so dang independent that I’m tired of fighting her to put her diaper on. At least with underwear she can dress herself. Tia was a baby when I potty trained Sloan and she slept all the time. So I could focus on him and stay home and really be alert and ready all the time. I don’t have that luxury with Tia. I think she’s only peed in the toilet once today. Every other time it’s been on the floor. This is overwhelming. I’ll give it a few more days, then we may have to go back to pull ups for a little while longer. Blah.

So this weekend was “Rendezvous.” This is a time for me and four of my dearest friends from college to get together and play, reminisce, and get away from everything for awhile. We have tried to do this once a year since we graduated college, and for the most part, have managed to pull it off. Of course, there are life issues that come up that have made it hard some years for everyone to make it, but we have stayed in touch and stayed close, and when we get together it’s as if we’ve never been apart. I thought I would share a few photos of us, back then, and now, just for fun! The five of us are: me, Melissa, Joy, Rachel and Jillian. We all met our freshman year at Baylor and clicked pretty much right away. At one time or another, I think we all either lived together, or spent so much time at one another’s places that we might as well have lived together. We were all volunteers for K-Life, a youth discipleship organization. And we had many, many crazy, silly times together. The first picture is of Melissa, me and Joy. I have no explanation for it as I have absolutely no idea why we were dressed up like that. We were freshman in this picture, and sadly, we probably left our dorm looking that way.

This picture is of Melissa, me, Joy and Rachel our senior year in Mel and Rachel’s apartment. I’m pretty sure this is the night that we decided to try and meet once a year after graduation. We celebrated that decision with wine coolers apparently…
Here is one of our random, silly pictures. Honestly, I have so many fun, goofy photos of us all that it could have taken me hours to look through them all. Even though the five of us were involved in several different organizations, we still spent so much time together. From late night “swims” in the lake, where we trespassed on someone’s property (and got caught), to ski trips, to midnight excursions to the David Koresh compound (one of the more foolish things we did), we always seemed to gravitate toward one another. I cherish each one of these girls deeply and still feel grateful to be a part of their lives.
Here we are at my wedding. In the past eight years since we graduated we have seen each other through many wonderful times, as well as many terrible times. Since these photos were taken we have had 11 children, with three more on the way this summer! That is wild.
And here we are this weekend in San Antonio where Jillian (bottom right) lives. What a fun time away it was. Because Jilly had to start a new job this week, she wasn’t able to join us in Waco where we met up with Joy for the day. Joy is pregnant with baby number 5! She is seriously upping the baby production of our group. Last weekend was Joy’s husband’s 30th birthday so she wasn’t able to meet up with us for the whole weekend, so we spent the day walking around Baylor campus, reminicsing. We even got to visit our old dorm, which sadly hasn’t changed a single bit in twelve years. It even smelled the same. Gross…
As you can see, I am the only one not pregnant in this photo. I wish I could have captured the looks on the faces of the people we passed as we walked campus. It was hysterical. Everywhere we went, people stared at us with their mouths half open. They didn’t even try to hide their shock. Some even pointed. It was as if we had descended from some alter universe. It confirmed to me that though I feel like I still look quite young (I have three more months to relish my 20’s!), I don’t fit in with college students any more. Especially when I’m surrounded by pregnant people! Anyway, to my dear friends, thank you for all the years of memories! I look forward to so many more. How blessed I am to have you all be a part of my life!

I think I may go crazy today. It’s a good thing I’m leaving town. Cats and Dogs have nothing on my kids. They’ve been at each other all morning. Can you put kids up for sale on ebay? Just curious.

I went all Hollywood today and decided it was time for a major hair change. Well, in actuality, I wasn’t looking for this major, but the stylist told me I had enough hair to donate to locks of love and I thought that might be a fun little thing to do, so off went my ponytail! She cut 12 inches off! EEK! Well, at that point, I figured we might as well just keep going, so I told her to put in some fun layers. Ummm…she took me rather to the extreme. She kind of stacked it in the back. Not my favorite, but whatever, it’ll grow back. Then, I decided to have her color it a little blonder, only something happened and it ended up turning kind of a strawberry color. I’m going to give it the weekend to see if I like it and if not, I’ll go back next week and have her fix it. I’m going to San Antonio this weekend with some girlfriends for college so I’m sure I’ll get a couple of pics and I’ll post one. We do this every year. We call it rendezvous, although this year I am lovingly referring to it as my “absence makes the heart grow fonder” trip. There’s nothing like a few days away to make you really miss your kids, ya know?

We pulled the trigger last night and put Landon in the room with Tia. The kids did great. I, however, did not fair so well. I woke up at 3:30 and laid awake all tense, just waiting for Landon to wake up. He slept until 4:50 though, so I laid awake awhile. I’ll have to get used to this. But I don’t think Tia even woke up when he did. I rushed in there and got him out before he could make too much noise. I didn’t quite have the courage to put him back in her room after feeding him so I just put him in the pack n play in our room. I’ll try that later when I am feeling braver, and when I haven’t been up half the night. Sheesh. But, this is just one more hurdle that we had to get over on the road back to normalcy. YAY!