The Lengths She Would Go To

There is a conversation that takes place daily in our home between Vivi and I (sometimes multiple times a day).  It usually begins like this:

Vivi - "Mom, I really, really, REALLY want a sister.  Can I please have a baby sister?  Can you talk to dad about it, please?" 

Me - "Viv, we go over this almost every day.  There is a very, very likely chance that if we had another baby, you would just get another brother."

Vivi - "But I don't want another brother!  I want a sister!  A baby one!  Will you please pray for me to have a sister?"

I asked her a new question yesterday.  "Vivi, what would you do if you got another brother?  It's not like we could send him back you know."

To which she promptly replied "Well, couldn't we just give him to somebody else?"

Me - "Umm... No.  That would not be an option.  If you had another brother, you would be stuck with him."

Vivi - "But I just want a sister!" 

She is almost in tears at this point.  Then I have to remind her that this is all just hypothetical anyway.

The only reply she has is, "Well, I still want a sister."  

He Never Ceases to Amaze Me

A while back, I installed these handy-dandy locks on both my front door, and the door to the garage.  They have been very effective in keeping a certain toddler I know in the confines of our home.  Until the other day that is.  Yes, that's right folks.  He managed to break the lock.  Literally.  He has tugged, and tugged on that door so many times, the ball part of the lock just snapped clean off.

This is what it looked like before.

And this is what it looked like after he was done.

You see, Preston has had some issues lately about anyone leaving the house without him.  In his mind, this just should NOT be done.  He gets freakishly angry about it.  So much so that I keep expecting him to turn green and quadruple in size.  Anyway... As a result of this mind-set of his, he has had some major tug-of-war matches with the lock on the door any time someone leaves without him.  I think he really surprised himself when the lock snapped the other day.  He went for one big tug, and next thing he knew, he was several feet from the door, right smack on his bottom.  Serves him right I say. ;)  Well, he has been able to escape to the garage again the last several days, so I ran to Home Depot today for another lock.

All fixed.  For now at least.  The last one lasted since August, so hopefully this one will last at least that long.  Maybe I better run back to Home Depot and get a few of these, just in case they decide to discontinue them.  That would be just typical, wouldn't it?

As far as other locking mechanisms go in our house, this one is rather effective as well.  Get one, good, long piece of duct tape, and your golden.  Preston can tug, and tug, and tug on the door, and it doesn't even budge.  Depending on how much we go in and out of this door, I would say we only have to change pieces of tape every week to two weeks.  Oh, the lengths we have to go to sometimes.

Decent/Desirous

We've been working on door manners at our house lately.  Just the typical... knock and wait for an answer before entering a room.  Trenton's door manners are fabulous, but Colson's are a bit lacking.  After Colson barged into our room the other day while I was in the middle of getting dressed, Trent sat down and told him it was fine for him to come in after he had knocked, asked if I was decent, and waited for the "okay", that he could come in. 

While getting ready for church yesterday morning, I heard a knock at the door.  After saying, "Who is it?", Colson responded, "It's me... Are you desirous?"  

Trent and I looked at each other quizzically, and I said, "Am I what?"

"Are you desirous?"

Yep, we had heard the question right.  We couldn't help it... we both busted out laughing.  I think after hearing us laugh, he realized he hadn't used quite the right word.  He came in the room looking a little sheepish.  I asked him, "Did you mean, 'Are you decent'?"

"Oh. Yeah. Are you decent?"

Thanks for the laugh buddy.

Can't Wait!

Just 9 more days, and Trent and I will be here!

I can hardly wait!

Slight Obsession

Cal really likes birds... I mean, really likes birds.  So much so, that one of his favorite spots in our home is right next to the sliding glass door.  You see, we have birds that have built a nest in the eaves of our house, right above the deck, (that is where these poor little things fell from last summer) and another nest in the eaves on the other side of the house.  So there is no shortage of birds flying here and there around our house.

So this is where we find Cal a lot of the day... Staring, staring, staring at the birds.  After a while he just can't take it anymore, and he has to get outside to see them.

He'll stand against the deck railing like this for minutes at a time, his head flitting back and forth as fast as the birds that fly by.  He sure loves birds.

My Little Vivi-kins

I just love the outfits this girl comes up with sometimes.

Spoons... And Other Things

 I used to have 24 spoons.  Over the years that number has dwindled down to 12.  Several years ago, I kept wondering where my spoons were disappearing to.  Then one day, I went to throw something away, and low and behold, there was a spoon sitting on top of a paper plate in the garbage!  One of the kids had thrown their spoon away with their paper plate.  There was a time where pretty much all we used to eat off of were paper plates and bowls.  I kept noticing more and more spoons vanish though, so after a while we switched back to regular dishes.  So, 12 of my spoons are now sitting in a landfill.  The weird thing though... why just the spoons?  I still have all of my forks and knives.  Hmmm...

On another note... The kids and I had a movie marathon the other night.  (It is still Spring break, after all.)  One of the movies we watched was Charlotte's Web.  The one with Dakota Fanning.  Anyway, we were at the part in the movie where Charlotte had spun two of her miraculous webs, and the people kept talking about what a miracle it was.  It was at this time that Colson turned to me and said, "She is a real miracle worker... Kinda like you mom.  Except you don't have eight legs."  Thanks bud.  Although there have been many times I felt like I could use eight arms or legs.

UGH!

I am so over the whole snow thing.

Insomniac

I'm just going to come right out and say it.  I have never had a child with such atrocious sleeping habits as Preston.  I keep thinking that any day now, he is going to start sleeping through the night, and finally let Trent and I get a good nights rest.  So far, nothin'.  Ever since he learned to climb out of his crib, it has been one sleepless night after another.

We've found that the days he doesn't have a nap, he won't necessarily sleep through the night, but he sleeps a lot better and will only come into our room once or twice instead 4 or 5 times.  The problem though, is that he still could really use a nap.  To be honest, by the time 4 'o' clock comes rolling around, he is an absolute bear.  And sometimes it is just impossible to keep him awake.  Almost every day I find him somewhere in the house, zonked.

He was sitting in the chair in the living room the other day, eating an apple, and before I knew it, he was out.

He has been known to fall asleep on the stairs a time or two.

He has even fallen asleep on the hard wood floors.  When the kid is tired, he's tired.  Somehow, I've got to keep him up until bedtime and hopefully get this kid to sleep through the night soon, or I might start dropping off to sleep at random places throughout the house myself.

Loose Tooth

Trenton had a really loose tooth a couple of weeks ago.  I mean really loose.  He was able to bend it all the way in to the roof of his mouth.  So naturally, I thought it was time to pull it.  After he ran and grabbed the floss, I made a loop and tied it around the tooth, nice and tight, and gave it a good yank.

It was still a little too attached.

Poor Trenton.  I tied such a tight loop around the tooth, we couldn't get the floss off.  And the tooth was not about to come out.  We did finally get the floss off with scissors... very carefully.  I had to laugh my head off for a while first though.  I know, nice mom, huh?  The tooth ended up coming out all on it's own a couple of days later.  I think Trenton was pretty happy we didn't have to pull the floss out again.

My New/Old Ottoman

It has been almost a year since I took apart one of my ottomans with the intent to recover it.  I've had all the supplies to recover it, it's just another one of those things I haven't gotten to that has been taking up space in my sewing room.  Trent's mom took the kids for me for about 6 hours the other day, so I figured it would be a good time to tackle this project.

This is the before picture I took, almost a year ago.  These ottomans used to have buttons on them at one time.  I think it took all of two weeks after buying them that the buttons started popping off.  And the fabric is horrible!  Everything snags it.  And since we repainted the inside of our house last spring, they don't match so well anymore.  We have three of these ottomans btw.  And a chair to match.  I eventually want to recover the chair, but since I am new to the whole recovering thing, I figured I better start with something... smaller.

So here goes.

This is what it looked like all torn apart.

I decided to beef up the padding a little bit.

This part was a PAIN IN THE BUTT!  Trying to get the straight line around the bottom of the ottoman was a bit tricky, but after removing staples and restapling a couple of times, I finally got it pretty even.

And here it is, all done, sans buttons.  Don't look too closely.  There are a couple of areas that could have turned out better, but I figure it's not too bad for a first try.

One down, one to go.  Well... two and a chair, that is.  But just one more in this fabric.  Hopefully the next one will go a little smoother now that I've done one!