Herro?

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time explaining why I haven't blogged here in so many months, But I'll leave you with this:

Michaela:
picks her nose
eats it
sings loudly and terribly with her iPod on
writes great stories
loves to draw
plays soccer
is my super big girl

Maeve:
still sucks her thumb
finally succumbed to potty training
is far too bossy for her own good
started preschool
can almost write her name
can almost sing the alphabet song
is my current "favorite" of the bunch

Doodie:
is a troublemaker
can't keep his feet off the dinner table
but at least they are cute feet
throws a mean tantrum
loves trains
has the biggest brown eyes
is my cuddle bug

Here's to posting new stories in 2010!

Doodie, Maeve, Michaela, Mama and Car

Yep. That's what Doodie calls his Dad. He's got me down as Mama, and he's Baby. But whenever we point to Mike and say, who's that? He says "CAR!"

It's hilarious and bewildering all at the same time. :)

the cleanest kids on the block

A couple of weekends ago I was having dinner at my friend's house and she gave me some hand soap and sanitizer from Bath and Body Works. She had bought it, but the scent ended up giving her bad headaches. So I brought it home and put it up until we would need it. Apparently I didn't put it "up" far enough.

A couple of days after that dinner, I was sitting in the living room working and Maeve came out to me and said "Mom, look at my face!" and she was caressing her cheeks, which I noticed had a film of some sort on them, and she reeked of fruitiness. I actually thought she had gotten into Michaela's chapstick, which she has been known to do and to destroy. I got up and followed her into Doodie's bedroom where I see what has really happened.

They had gotten the little bottle of hand sanitizer and a tupperware bowl (thank the Lord) and proceeded to dump the whole bottle into the bowl. Then they were smearing it all over their hands, arms and faces. Yay! They smelled like that stuff for two days afterwards, I swear.

And to top it off, like two days after this incident, I was in the bedroom on the computer and on the phone with my sister when I realized that it was too quiet. So I came out into the living room to find Maeve and Doodie with the Bath and Body Works hand soap and they were pumping it all over the top of Maeve's potty chair and rubbing it all over. Luckily I caught them before it got too out of control, and I don't think anyone ate any of it. But geez!

Even though Maeve and Doodie fight, I can see that they are also going to be fabulous partners in crime.

Maeve started swim class!!

So, Maeve started her very first organized activity: swimming. She's been watching Michaela do it for her whole life and now it's her turn to finally get in the pool. And she's doing really well! She'll put her head in the water, she'll let her teachers put her completely under, she jumps in to her teacher's arms all by herself. I'm really proud of her! The first day when class was over, they did their high-fives to the teacher and I went to collect her from the side of the pool. I asked her if class was over, and she said, "No, not yet" with her little had waving palm out at me. And when I told her it was and we had to go take a shower and get dressed but we'd come back in a couple of days, she freaked OUT. And she didn't stop crying until a half hour later when Michaela's class was over. Poor thing. But her second day out she didn't cry at all. I think she realized that we would come back, so she was okay.

Below are some pics. Enjoy!

Dude Polly Pocket

Maeve and Michaela got a Polly Pocket Cruise ship for Christmas. It's pretty cute. It's got all the great amenities of a real cruise ship. You know, the tiki bar, the hot tub, the water slide, the rock wall, parasailing, the boutique. And best of all, it comes with Dude Polly Pocket. Of course, he doesn't have any clothes, just his painted on swim trunks and some flip flops. But Maeve thinks he needs to get dressed up just like any other Polly Pocket. So here's her attempt at dressing up Dude Polly Pocket. She's got him in a dress and the back of it doesn't even come close to closing. His shoulders are so broad and he has huge pectoral muscles, not to mention his biceps, so naturally a size 2 dress is NOT going to fit this guy. :)

Plus, he's obviously not cut out for the whole matchy matchy thing. What's up with those boots?

Maeve and the Butterflies

Over Christmas break we went with my sister in law and her fam down to the Pacific Science Center to give the kids something fun to do out of the house. I won't bore you with all the details, but I do have to show you the photos of Maeve in the butterfly house. Now, Maeve LOVES the butterfly house. She goes right in, grabs her laminated card with the photos of all the butterflies and she tries to find them as we see them. It's awesome. And she knows not to run, and to watch on the ground for the butterflies so that we don't accidentally step on them.

Here's the photos of our journey:

Maeve grabs her laminated sheet after we walk in.

She spies a butterfly on the ground and gets down for a closer look.

Wait, not close enough. I'd better get closer... There. Now we're talking.

Then, as we're walking along a little later, a butterfly lands on Maeve's shoulder. So I tell her to hold still so I can brush him off without hurting him. She spies him. She FREAKS OUT.

All she could say after the horrible butterfly incident was "Let's get outta here Mom! Let's get outta here!" I honestly never thought a little butterfly scare her so bad! But we left and she calmed down. Poor Maeve.

I think the parents in there thought I was a heartless freak because I pulled away from her while she was screaming to take a photo. But it was too hilarious. I couldn't NOT take a picture. :)

Who new laundry could be so FUN!!

I had loads and loads of laundry to do the other night, so I cleaned up the living room and brought it all out to sort and fold. Usually I just do it in my bedroom on the bed, but there was FAR too much of it. Probably close to 8 loads, maybe 10. Anyway, for some weird-ass reason, my kids love to sort laundry. They also love to jump on the piles of it.

Why can't I love laundry so much? It would make it less of a chore and we might actually have clean clothes once in a while! :)

The Doodie of Destruction

I swear, every single thing Doodie did today involved some sort of destruction. You can't leave this kid alone for even a second, because when you do, things get quiet, and things get broken or eaten or hidden.

Destruction #1: The Tea Party Flowers

So, we had a tea party for Maeve's 3rd birthday party on Saturday. I bought some pink carnations and put them in one of my glass mugs and then wrapped the mug in pink toile. Cute! here's a before picture (kind of blurry):

Here's an after picture:

Doodie was eating breakfast this morning (strapped in to this chair of course, I've learned THAT lesson before) and things got really quiet. After a couple of minutes I started hearing a slurping noise, and I was like, "wait, he can't slurp yogurt like that. Oh NO." yeah, I found him in the middle of yanking all the flowers out of the mug and placing them into his yogurt bowl. Then he decided to drink the flower water. Gross.

Destruction #2: The Sunglasses

So, Mike has this habit of spending WAY too much money on sunglasses. A few months ago he left them lying around and I accidentally stepped on them and broke them. He was pissed and I was annoyed, but he was able to fix them, sort of. But they were wearable. Somehow Doodie got ahold of them and broke them for real this time.

Destruction #3: The Banana Bread

Tonight I took the girls to Michaela's swimming lessons and left the boys alone. I had baked some banana bread earlier and it was cooling on a rack in the kitchen. Mike was using the powder room for a couple of minutes, thus leaving Doodie indirectly attended, and the boy went to the table, grabbed the whole loaf of bread, brought it into the living room and went to town. Below is the aftermath. I didn't even get any and that makes me more annoyed than anything, even the fact that I had just vacuumed the carpet. Ugh.

This kid is CRAZY. I'm sure only one of us will survive. There can be only one.

How to make sure you don't get any work done

Build your kids a fort in the living room with 4 chairs, 4 rubber bands and a sheet. While it's tons of fun, it also means you have to go fix the chairs and/or rubber bands every 2 and a half minutes so that the fort stays in tact.

After about 20 minutes I gave up. It's now in shambles in the middle of my floor.

*sigh*

The Scream of the Wraith

I heard a sound come from Doodie today that I've never come from any child. Of course Maeve was directly responsible for it. I made the kids go play in their room instead of watching cartoons all morning and Maeve decided that Doodie wasn't allowed to play. So she slammed the door shut on him, which she does all the time, no matter how many times I tell them to keep the door OPEN. But this time Doodie's fingers were in the way, and she PUSHED on the door to close it. She is evil.

When I ran to see D's fingers there was a nice, neat row of deep lines pushed into his skin on all four fingers of his right hand. After calming him down and having him sit with me for 30 minutes or so I can now see that they are swollen to about twice their normal size and I'd bet they are going to be purple and blue before too long. I don't think they are broken because he doesn't scream when I touch them and he's up playing now, but man.

Maeve is evil.

I hope Doodie survives.

;)