Christmas 2008

So another Christmas has come and pretty much gone. It was a small Christmas this year, but still well worth the effort. All of our Christmas decorations must be down by the 2nd week of January (as ordered by our "friendly" HOA). So apparently the birth of Christ isn't a good enough reason to keep global warming on the rise. Crazy, I know. This year, Dave got a Metallica DVD that he's been missing for years. Jessica got a baking cookbook and 2 matching breadpans. The rest of the living room is covered with everything that Bradley received, which included a Mr.Potato Head with accessories for fireman and chef, 2 sweatshirts, a book and matching puzzle, a snoopy doll, a memory game, 2 hats, and other things that I can't remember at the moment. Ibanez got a bag of catnip (which she was NOT high on when she jumped into the tree this morning). We went to the Dickson's house and got a book, silly puddy, and Firefly on DVD!!!! YAY!!! SO HAPPY!!!! We also created a stitch, not like the sewing kind...the Disney kind. Yeah, I don't know what possesses Lisa to do these crazy things, but they always come out amazing and I'm just glad I was able to be a part of it. I will post a picture as soon as I get one. Aside from that excitement, we just ate off and on all day. It's been great! Next year, we'll probably have to put some more work into the whole Santa Claus thing. Bradley was super easy to negotiate with this year. That will change I'm sure.

Anyway, Happy Holidays, hope all is well for you!

New Family Blog!!

This is our new family blog. It will document anything worth documenting (and probably some posts will be not so worth while) My other blog (The Wonders of Motherhood) will be updated more often as well, hopefully. I'll try not to copy everything from one and put it on the other, but there maybe some posts that are the same. Sorry, we're just not that interesting.

As for the first post...

Our cat, Ibanez now fetches!! She has taken a liking to one of Bradley's cotton gloves. She will bring it to you and wait until you throw it, then she will chase after it and bring it right back. It's rather cute until 2am when she wants to play. She doesn't stop meowing until you throw it. But aside from the time issue, I love that she plays! Maybe I can take a video of it one day and post it so you all can watch!

The dreaded terrible 2s

Well, we have hit the terrible 2s! I don't have any pictures of it yet because I'm always cleaning up after him and I don't have any time to take a picture. Sucks, huh. This is usually about the time when parents start to get an inkling of what they got themselves into. Nothing up until now can come close to the disastrous things this child is doing! Take Sunday, for example; he pushed down his gate and got out of his room, from there he went to the couch and spilled a cup of milk all over my laptop, and went to the other couch and got a cup that Dave had left on the window sill and dumped that one on himself, then went into the kitchen and got a spoon out of the utensil drawer and brought it back into the living room to play with the cups that he had just dumped out. Later that day he got a hold of a box of toothpicks and threw them into the swamp cooler so that they were sticking out on the face of it. That was lovely to clean up. Yesterday, he got into the bathroom and got the toilet bowl cleaner brush and splashed half of the water out of the bowl. The list goes on and on and the horrifying thing about it is it's going to last! It's not going to go away in a week, it's here to stay and I'm really quite scared to be honest with you. This kid is so crafty, so meniacle, so sneaky that I'm really quite scared to go to sleep at night. I don't want to find myself duct tape to the wall in the morning. Well, if this is the way he's going to be for a while then I guess I should say good-bye to all of my loved ones before it's too late and he kills me or something. So to all of those people that have a special place in my heart and actually know that this blog exists (that would be you, Andrea)I bid you farewell and may God bless you with a nicer child than mine. :)

How I Feel Today

This is the fabric that I want to put in my kitchen. It matches my spice racks that I painted and it goes really well with my counter tops too!

After a long days work trying to get out of his room... he just couldn't take it anymore and fell asleep. Poor little guy!!

How do you teach a 1 1/2 year old that going potty is good?!

Ok for the last month or so, Bradley has been going potty at least once a day, fairly consistently. I dont' think he understands how incredible this is. I just don't know how to explain to him that he's doing so well. Everyone I talk to about it says that there is nothing that you can do for a kid this age. (Which is apparently why kids don't normally do it this early.) It seems to be sticking mentally though. He'll go in and sit on his little potty at night before we brush his teeth. And he usually goes at least a little bit. It's harder during the day because he has tons of distractions, and it's usually not at the same time. But when it's time for "aahh" (brushing teeth), he runs in and waits for you to take off his pants and diaper and set him on the potty. We usually do "aahh" while he's sitting on the potty just so he can't run off. And he says "Yay!" almost every time he goes pee. So, I think he understands that Dave and I are happy about it and therefore, he should be happy too; I just don't know how to help him develop this new talent of his.

On a different subject, Bradley is picking up words left and right. Dave and I have both noticed that he seems bored with simpler words like "pot" or "pan" and more interested in the 2 and 3 syllable words like "barbeque" and "flower". He tries real hard and watches you when you say it and then tries as hard as he can to immitate you. We have some birds that are making a nest in our carport and every morning he comes out with me and points to them and says "Bir'". It's really rather adorable. I went next door the other day and Dave was playing with Bradley. When I came back Dave said that Bradley had been walking all around the house calling me. But he wasn't saying "Mama or Mom", he was saying "Jess". It was cute but I kinda felt bad too. I don't want my kid to know me only as "Jess". Fortunately, tonight when I walked away from Bradley and Dave, he started calling for mommy. (That's me :) ) I don't know how to keep up with everything this kid is learning!!!! He's growing up a lot faster than I was planning. ( I think he's growing up a lot faster than most of us thought he would.) Before long, he'll be telling me what the most logical answers to life's little mysteries are and I'll just sit there - dumbfounded. I guess that's what I get for having a kid.... But I don't think I would change a thing.