Happy Halloween Ya'll

Happy Halloween Everyone! We went trick-or-treating with our neighbors, Joey, Steve, and Kaleigh tonight. Griffin and Gray rode around in their red wagon (makeshift firetruck), and we hit the houses on our block and a few others.

Griffin insisted that Brent and I dress up tonight. He really wanted Mommy to be a witch, so we went to Walmart for a hat today. We decided to pick up a pirate wig for Brent too. Unfortunately it did not include an eye patch, so he didn't look much like a pirate. We had a fun time anyway.

Our neighborhood is a great place to go trick-or-treating. Lots of trees and the houses are close together with large porches. People sit out front on their porch and drink beer and hand out candy. A few people were having a whole meal outside and even offered us appetizers:)
Last but not least... a cute shot of Skylar (cookie monster) and Claire (a witch) from tonight.

Halloween at Trinity

Today was a fun day at preschool. The kids wore their costumes to school and had a parade through the hallways. Then they went down to Eaton Hall and sang all the Halloween songs they have been learning all month. Check out the videos of the parade and the firefighters marching. Later in the morning I helped with Griffin's class party. The kids were a lot of fun and very well-behaved. They had cupcakes. Then we played, "Ghost Ghost Boo" (Duck Duck Goose), did an art project, and read a book.

Bed-time Prayers

An excerpt from the soon-to-be written novel, How to Say Your Bed-Time Prayers, by Griffin Robert, age 3:

"God has a wand and he can make gardenias, clothes, a cup, a piggy bank, books, and a window."

This seems to pop up every night in his prayers. I think he has confused God with a magician. I usually have to respond with, "well I am not sure about the wand, but yes, he can".

Dress Rehearsal

Here is a preview of the boys in their Halloween costumes. Griffin loves his and wants to wear it all the time. Tonight we went to a Pumpkin Patch party at our church. There was a jump house and some games. Griffin had a good time running around with Noah, a bigger kid from church. He also demonstrated his "stop, drop, and roll" technique for everyone.

At My Limit

Just when I thought things were going pretty well at home (with the exception of Brent not being at home during normal hours), I am at my limit especially with Griffin. He has been a horror over the past two days. Part of it is that it has been raining here non-stop so we have stayed home in the afternoons. Next time I will know better.

Griffin is still refusing to nap in the afternoon. I am trying to teach him about quiet time, but that is easier said than done. HIS version of quiet time includes taking his diaper or pull-up off followed by his clothes, then climbing up and sitting in him dresser drawers, singing random songs at the top of his lungs, jumping on his bed, falling off his bed, and banging on his door. Needless to say "his" version of quiet time and "my" version of quiet time are not in line with each other at all. I go in his room to remind him to be quiet, but it ultimately becomes a game of him trying to run and get into his bed before I get in his room. I have tried letting him have his door open (trying to give him a sense of control) so he can go potty when he needs to. This hasn't worked. I have tried closing his door but then he bangs when he needs to go potty and wakes Gray up. I have tried a visual timer to help him stay in his room for a certain period of time. This works, but that darn timer only goes up to an hour:) So yesterday I took some of his toys away and told him that he needed to earn them back. Every time I went in his room, he lost a toy. The problem is that this set him off and he is so over-tired that he just LOST IT. I mean he starting running at and butting into his door until it sounded like it would break. He started throwing things at me. It is such a hard situation because Griffin and I were both yelling and Gray just starts crying because he doesn't understand what is going on. I have tried spanking Griffin but that just seems to make it worse. I just don't know what to do. I really feel like he needs some down-time (and I definitely do) and sometimes he needs a nap too. I know some people let their kids watch a video during quiet time, but I don't want to reward him for not taking his nap. And he won't be quiet even during a video. He just wants to talk to me the entire time. I love him, but it is just so frustrating. Any ideas?

Yesterday I finally told him that he needed to get away from me and give me some space. When Brent came home last night, he went in to have a talk with Griffin. Brent said he was trying to be positive about how tomorrow would be better, and Griffin looked at him and said, "Daddy you just need to give me some space".

No tooting in the car

Another excerpt from the car ride to school today. It is sometimes hard to figure out what Griffin is talking about when you don't have the context. Today we are driving to school and Griffin says, "Mom, that man is tooting in his car". I am thinking How can he tell that a man in the car next to us is farting? The windows are up, so what is he talking about? It was raining so I thought maybe he was talking about the windshield wipers. I asked him about that one, and he just says, "No the man is tooting smoke out of his horn". Long story short, the man was smoking a cigarette inside his car and it peaked Griffin's interest. A pretty good segway into a discussion about why smoking isn't good for you. I guess this is one of those "teachable moments" the experts are always talking about.

Not So Deceptive, But Definitely Delicious

I am sure most of you have heard about the new Jessica Seinfeld cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. I bought it the other day because it sounded unique. Basically she steams and purees varous vegetables and sneaks them into recipes as one way to get her kids to eat more healthily. Some are kind of weird (Think spinach in brownies and garbanzo beans in chocolate chip cookies). I tried one of the more normal recipes today. I roasted and pureed a few sweet potatoes- not too hard and pretty quick. The chicken nugget recipe was basic except you added the puree to the egg mixture (to dip the chicken in) and added flax seed meal (yes, Kroger sells it here) to the bread crumbs. Griffin came in the kitchen a few times to ask me some questions about the food processer and the sweet potatoes. The verdict? We had dinner about an hour later, and Griffin LOVED the chicken nuggets. He said he liked them better than dino nuggets. As for the vegetable "deception", he said, "Mmm, these chicken tenders are very yummy. They taste like sweet potatoes". I didn't think he was watching that carefully but I guess I was wrong:) Anyway I ate the chicken nuggets too and thought they were pretty good, although, the breading is a little more flimsy than normal chicken nuggets.

Griffin has been pretty sweet lately and is really trying to help out at home (folding laundry, cook, making his bed). He has also been trying to practice a "real" conversation. We were in the kitchen tonight, and out of the blue, he started asking me about my day. He really was using some of the exact same questions I use to grill him. It went something like this:

G: Did you have a good time at Mom's Group today?

M: Yes, I did.

G: Did you have nice hands and feet? And were you kind to your mommy friends?

M: Yes, I was.

G: Did you play nicely with your toys at Mom's Group? What kind of toys do you play with?

M: I don't know- we don't really have toys. We just talk and eat.

G: Oh, yeah.

Anyway it was kind of funny to hear my words coming back at me. I guess you can tell what things we work on at school- especially keeping his hands and feet to himself. Today he got pulled aside in the preschool pick-up room because he was hitting kids with his back pack. I guess we need to keep on working.

3-year-olds are tricky

Three-year-olds are so tricky to deal with. On one hand, we as parents are supposed to encourage their independence, but sometimes, it is so much easier to limit them.

Griffin is basically not taking his naps anymore. Maybe once a week at best. I am trying to do "quiet time" in his room, but he usually loves to sing so much that he wakes Gray up. Then Gray is grumpy for the rest of the day. One of the dilemmas I am dealing with during quiet time is with potty training. I put a pull-up on him every day at nap time. If he sleeps, then he goes potty in the pull-up. If he does not sleep, then he comes to his bedroom door and yells, "I need to go potty", when he needs to go. I want him to use the potty, but the process of helping him always leads to waking up Gray. I don't think I can leave his bedroom door open and expect him to stay in his room for more than 5 minutes. What to do? Anyway he is also changing his clothes during nap time. So he has one outfit on when I put him down for a nap, and when I go back in at "potty time"... he is wearing a completely different set of clothes. Somehow he manages to get into his tall dresser and put on underwear, shorts, and a shirt. Today he put on a button down shirt. I know he can't do buttons, so I guess he just got lucky.

We are trying to use his alarm clock to help him with times to get up. In the morning, he knows he can't start calling for us until 7. Somedays we wish we had told him 8:) So this afternoon I told him he has to stay in his room until 3 and he can read books or play quietly. It is 2:30ish now and he has called for me twice already. Once to go potty and once to get out. I think he will get the concept, but I don't know if it will actually work.

Beautiful weekend

We had a nice weekend although Brent still had to work a little. We did get a date night in on Saturday so that was fun.

Griffin had a soccer game on Saturday morning, and he seemed much more compliant this week. Usually he is excited to go, loves the practice part, and then whines and mopes for the entire "game" until they hand out the snacks. Then he is magically feeling much better. Anyway this week he tried to get into it. Most of the time he was still at the wrong end of the field or just kind of looking around, but a few times he ran after the ball and tried to kick it. He even grabbed one kid's shirt in an effort to get the ball- now, that's the spirit! Of course he also loved being silly and sat or laid down on the field several times. He even got his friend, Jacob, to sit down with him. With playing 3 on 3, that makes a big dent in the action on the field. Later that afternoon we had him practice riding his tricycle. He got it this time. He still has a hard time pedaling on these old bumpy sidewalks, but he gets the motion of pedaling. There were a few downhill stretches that he could do all by himself.

Today we went to church and let the boys pick out some little pumpkins from the church pumpkin patch fundraiser. Griffin was super excited that he got to put a "face" on his pumpkin and just kept hugging it the whole ride home.

The boys are really starting to play with each other a little bit. They do well with sharing the big Tonka trucks. Gray also loves to eat leaves and mulch. He thinks that Griffin is absolutely hysterical.

That's Silly Indeed

Conversations with toddlers are so crazy. Here is an example of the dialogue between myself and Griffin on the way to school this morning.

G: Mommy? I'm not a mermaid because I have feet.
M: You're right. You're a boy.
G: That's silly, indeed. (Indeed seems to be a new popular word lately)
G: Hey mom, look there's a firetruck. It says number 7.
M: That is a firetruck, but it says one and seven which means seventeen. The number one and then a seven means seventeen.
G: Oh. One is a Seven and one is a team. Just like soccer. When I play soccer, you have to run and do a soccer cheer just like on a team.

It just goes on like that forever. Very cute sometimes, but I never know which direction a conversation is heading.

Today we are heading up to the Ginter Park library to see a firetruck and meet with the firefighters. Griffin is very excited about it. Not sure how he knows this, but he swears that the firefighter's name is "Brooks". We will see.

No one is sleeping

No one is sleeping in our house- not sure why it is all hitting at once. With Gray, I get it. I was convinced this weekend that he had an ear infection. He was fussy, crying a lot, tugging at his ears, even banging a train next to his ear. I felt like a horrible mom for not taking him to the doctor on Friday. But when I took him in on Monday, Dr Vaughn said that his ears and everything else looked "perfect". She thinks he may be getting his bottom two teeth in now, and I can just give him Advil or cold teething rings. I was actually hoping for an ear infection so I could get some antibiotics going and get this fussiness over with. The crying is pretty hard to take- he starts out fussing and goes into an all-out shrieking fit. Today I was worried that the neighbors would think I was abusing him and hoping that his fit wasn't being picked up on someone else's baby monitor.

Griffin must have decided that sleep is over-rated too. He has not taken an afternoon nap since last Wednesday. He acts tired, but he just plays in his room for an hour or so without sleeping. I have tried bribing him, but not much is working. He actually plays quite nicely, but he always sings while he plays and that usually wakes Gray up. I hope Griffin isn't giving up that nap for good. I need the break! And he falls apart crying and throwing more fits during the day.

National Folk Festival

This weekend was the third year for Richmond to host the National Folk Festival. It is a free event held downtown on Brown's Island with lots of kids activities, food, and music. We had so much fun.

Griffin really enjoyed "sledding" on cardboard on this hill in the Family Fun area. There were kids everywhere! We had a picnic dinner next to the James river with Thai food, Irish nachos, and lots of other wonderful things. Gray loved dancing to the music. I am attaching some video clips of both boys, just bear with my novice recording skills.

UFOs in Richmond

So what a morning we have had...meaning NO SLEEP yet again. Gray has been developing an annoying habit of waking up at 4:30 AM every morning even if he really isn't hungry. Usually when I try to go back to sleep, Brent's alarm clock goes off and he snoozes for another 45 mnutes which is super frustrating. Anyway this morning went a little differently. Gray woke up bright and early as usual, but this time Brent had trouble falling back to sleep. So he went downstairs to watch tv. I fell back asleep, but Gray woke back up at 6 (usually this does not happen). I was trying my best to ignore him a little bit and get a few more minutes of sleep, when I hear a super loud noise at the side of our house followed by objects hitting our bedroom window. I had NO CLUE what was happening, and in my very sleepy mind, I felt like someone was throwing pumpkins at our house. I know this does not make a lot of sense since pumpkins would most likely have broken the window...but still that was what went through my mind. I jumped up and ran downstairs to look for Brent. He was standing outside our front door. He apparently went for an early jog and locked himself out. So he found a football and soccer ball from our backyard and started throwing it at the windows to wake us up. NOT the best way to be woken up at 6.

Something I learned about the toddler mind this morning...you can create funny jokes just by coming up with the name of any fruit or vegetable and adding "head" or "butt". I am sure other body parts work well, but these seem to get the biggest reaction. So "apple head" and "pumpkin butt" were pretty funny this morning- Mommy had already lost her sense of humor.

Also Halloween has prompted discussions of all kinds of things namely vampires and skeletons. Griffin really wants to know about skeletons. So I told him that we all have a skeleton under our skin and had him feel for the bones in his hands, arm, and chin. He kind of got it, but he finally decided that having a "skeleton in your armpit" was the most interesting location of all.

The boy is a talker

I had Griffin's preschool parent-teacher conference today at school. I have been a little worried about it based on what Griffin says happens at school (timeouts, hitting kids in the head), but I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part his teacher said he was settling in well and had started to get the routine of what was supposed to happen each day. She did say that he was very "lively" and "the most affectionate" child in the class. I think we all know what "lively" means:) Apparently he is also quite the talker and sometimes has to be told to hold his conversations until later. Brent and I cannot guess where he gets the talking part from! Otherwise he is doing pretty well and needs to practice cutting. I think that Griffin will love working on cutting if we can just find a safe way for him to practice.

After the conference, we drove downtown and met Brent for lunch. It was a beautiful day- sunny and kind of cool. Griffin loved walking around downtown with his dad. He was also very proud of his Thomas lunch box.

As for Gray...we are dealing with teething. He has been really fussy and chewing on everything. He will chew on his sippy cup handle until it hurts, and then he starts howling again. I hope these teeth come soon.

The Littlest Volunteers

Saturday was a great game day for the Volunteers! We beat the Georgia Bulldogs, and now, I really wish we had been at the game. I guess being there with a toddler and baby would have been a little much, but maybe next year. Anyway the boys wore their Tennessee orange and got into the football spirit.

It is almost impossible to get a good picture of a 3-year-old boy- they never look at the camera!

Griffin Singing "God Made Me"

Here's a quick video clip of Griffin singing a song that he learned at school.

The joys of boys

Usually at least once a day, I hear Gray squealing with "delight?" from the other room. Griffin's latest and favorite game is jumping on his brother. He just bounces up and down like he is riding a horse. Luckily Gray is 18 pounds of substantial baby, and he thinks it is pretty hysterical. Yesterday they were on my bed and this is what I found. See for yourself. I think my days are about to get a lot busier.

It's Froggy outside

Just a few more pics coming your way. It is kind of a dreary day, or "it's froggy outside" as Griffin said when he looked outside this morning. Here is a shot of Griffin in his new raincoat. I have it on here to remind me of how charming he can be when he wants to be:)

We will see how today goes at school. Somedays I wonder if he is a terror for his teacher. When I pick him up most days, he will tell me how he went to time out for Mrs Duffy or how he "bomped Kellan in the head". Not sure how reliable that information is, but the parent teacher conference next week should be interesting.

This morning we had a huge improvement in the "wanting to share with my brother" department. Usually the rule is that Gray cannot touch ANYTHING So yesterday we picked five toys to take upstairs which means that they are off limits to Gray. But everything else that stays downstairs is fair game. Griffin quickly chose his fire truck and cowboy hat. And then surprisingly enough this morning, he decided that Gray might like to play with his fire truck. I had to a get a picture of this- I am not sure it will ever happen again:)

No, he's not wearing a dress

So Griffin has started "playing" pee wee soccer at the Y this Fall. I don't know if it is actually considered playing at this point, but he sure looks cute. His uniform is huge, and it looks like he has a dress on most of the time. He is not too sure about soccer- some days he likes it, and other days, he doesn't want to go. But then I remind him about the snacks that he gets after the game, and he is pretty excited about it. It is kind of hard to teach the competitive element. He doesn't get why the other kids "wont' share" with him. We have to unteach that sharing concept I guess. Here are some pictures of his first game and practice. Grandma and Grandpa Belding were in town which was great fun. Last week Griffin tackled 3 kids. Maybe he is playing American football:)

Trying it on for size

This is my first attempt at the whole "blog" thing. I wanted to find a picture of the four of us, but that is easier said than done. Especially with a three-year-old who won't cooperate. So this is a cute picture of Brent with Gray from a few weeks ago.

Things have been hectic here in Richmond. Brent has been working crazy hours for the past two months. I am trying to just act in survival mode and keep everything together during the day.

Griffin has turned into a typical three-year-old...driving me crazy every chance he gets. He is SUCH a boy! I feel like everything he does requires climbing on something, jumping off of some surface, and pee or poop jokes. I think I have heard enough although Gray seems to think they are hysterical:) I guess it is good that someone gets the "Mr PeePee" and "poop nugget" jokes.

Gray is as sweet as can be. Very affectionate and good natured. As long as he is not hungry or sleepy, he is great! He is getting more social every day and really is exploring his hands. He is grabbing everything. I had him on the counter the other day, and he was tossing bags of chips, vitamin bottles, and anything else he could get his hands on. I will be having a hard time keeping up with him very soon.

That's all for now- just trying this on for size. It is sad to be so behind the times.