Another End of the Month Recap Coming At You!

I do hate doing this to you guys. I really want to be better about posting more often and not just dumping a ton of things on you at the end of each month. And really, there's no reason why I keep doing this. Sure, I have things going on and projects and things I was trying to get done, but it's not like I can't spare 1/2 hour every few days to write. I'll try to to better from now on. Promises, promises. ANYhoo...

Not too many exciting things really happened the 2nd half of this month (maybe that's why the blogging's been sparse?). Finn discovered his toes, and he's FASCINATED with them (his tongue too now, but that's harder to get a picture of as he's constantly wiggling it).

Two weekends ago now I drove from New Jersey down to Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland to visit a friend of mine stationed in Alaska who was wounded in a non-combat injury while deployed to Afghanistan (there are a LOT of VERY different places in that sentence). Basically, she landed on her spine, paralyzing herself doing backflips. She was flown to WR and underwent a 6 hour surgery. She's walking and doing really well, but still has a long road to go (I know you know what I mean). To help raise her spirits a little bit (where are actually in really good condition - oh how we both did laugh that weekend) I took her to the mall so she could buy some "real" clothes.

She didn't buy those glasses or the scarf (too bad), but she did buy some nice stuff and we had such a good time walking around for 6(!) hours. It was sad leaving on Sunday after chapel and lunch at the DFAC, but I missed my boys who spent the weekend having a "dude-cation" with Daddy.

While I was gone and for many days after, Josh worked on his new garden project "with" the boys' "help". We planted the peas already and hopefully we'll get more stuff in the ground once he's back from his current travels.

This month we also put the boys on their bikes for the first time and started the process of teaching them how to ride. It was interesting. They kept hitting the brakes then had a hard time starting up again, but I know they'll get it as they practice more and more. Luckily we have a pretty decent parking lot behind our house they can practice on.

This past weekend we went up to my aunt's in the Poconos for a family birthday party. My grandmother and her twin turned 80! My sister, Jenny turned 30! And then other people too, but those were the "big" numbers. This weekend I'll be heading to Jenny's for her birthday party.

And then last night I took the boys for a walk after dinner. We walked by the lake and, of course, threw rocks and sticks and grass and what-not into the water. As we were hanging out, one of the adult swans (there are new babies!) swam over and got quite close to us:

It was really cool. It also did that thing where it flew across the lake, but it skimmed its feet along the water and it did, making a really interesting flapping/slapping sound. I think it was showing off.

And that brings us up to date. Otherwise we've just been going to the playground or doing homework or whatever. Both bigger (I really need to start saying "older" as Finn is RAPIDLY catching up to them) boys are still LOVING school, and are having fun hanging out with their friends. Spring has sprung and we are loving it and just enjoying our time. Until my next "monthly dump". Hahahaha!

Where Do I Begin?

I guess I'll start my story on Thursday. No, no, I'll just jump in on Saturday and do a little flashback action on you later.

So, Saturday night I put the boys in bed around 8:00. I went upstairs and started working on Deacon's birthday cupcakes. I turned the oven on, started mixing up the batter (in the blue pitcher since my mixing bowls were already packed), and getting the paper cups all ready and what's it. A few minutes into mixing the batter, I started to smell something funny. It took a few minutes for me to realize it was something burning. It had almost a flowery-ness to it so I was very confused as to what could have spilled into the oven that would be making that smell as it burned. I opened the oven door to check it out and was shocked to see FLAMES you guys, BIG BURNING HOT FLAMES dancing around the inside of my oven!

I slammed the door shut and stood there frozen for a few seconds as many thoughts raced through my head. Is this going to cause the whole house to burn down? Should I evacuate the children right now? How long will it take for the smoke alar- never mind. What was in there? What do I do first? AHHHH!!

Once I finished this inner monologue I leaped into action. I found my baking soda, tore the top off of the box, opened the oven and dumped the entire box of baking soda on the flames. Fortunately, it worked. Unfortunately I got freaked out (again) by the size of the flames leaping out of my oven and so I dumped too quickly and missed a spot with started burning again. So, I shut the door again and watched to see what it was going to do. Eventually it burned itself out so I started opening all of the doors and windows. I stood on a chair by the fire alarm, and tried to fan the smoke away from it with Deacon's super hero cape (it was the first thing I grabbed).

By the way, our alarm goes DING DING DING DING and then a woman's voice calmly says "Fire." DING DING DING DING Fire. DING DING DING DING Fire. Interesting, no?

Anyhoo...so, once the fire was out, and the smoke had mostly cleared out, and the alarm was done alarming everyone, I looked around my house and saw that it was COVERED in soot and ash. And not just the kitchen. Oh no friends, the soot got EVERYWHERE. It was all over the dining room table and benches, it was all over the couch, it was on the desks, even in the fridge (the call is coming from INSIDE the house!).

Not sure what to do next, I realized my biggest concern (once I realized our lives were no longer in jeopardy) was Deacon's birthday cupcakes. Obviously my oven was out of commission now, so I called Amity to see if she would pick up the batter and the cupcake papers (I had the foresight to cover the cupcake papers with a towel once the fire started - go figure) and baked the cupcakes for me. When I told her what happened she so graciously volunteered to come over and help me clean up. I accepted her offer, and I am SO happy I did.

While I waited for Amity to get here, I called Sara to tell her the story because I figured she'd still be up as she's in California, and she's a supermom, so I thought she might have a useful tip or two of what to do next. As I was talking to her, I looked inside the oven again to see what it was that had caused these MASSIVE FLAMES to shoot out of my oven.

I'm so embarrassed. You see, on Thursday I emptied out the big freezer we have in our basement so I could unplug it to defrost it before the movers came. In order to make sure I had enough room in the freezer upstairs, I took out the bucket that's supposed to catch the ice the ice maker makes. Another aside: I say "supposed" because the ice maker doesn't actually make ice. It makes noise like it's making ice and goes through the process, but it doesn't make ice so the ice bucket doesn't really catch ice. So I took this bucket out so I could put stuff under the ice maker. Not having any place to put the bucket right away, I put it in the oven figuring I'd move it later once I was finished with my current task. /sigh /facepalm /shakes head Yeah.

So, I never took the bucket out, I turned the oven on, and the thing caught on FIRE. In an attempt to see what it was I pulled the rack in was on out about an inch. Sara suggested I let the plastic cool all the way and see if would just separate itself from the metal and just pop off. She's the science teacher, so it sounded good to me. Amity then showed up (it was about 8:30 by now) and she and I got to work dusting and wiping and cleaning up the joint. As we cleaned I realized that, while I had the wherewithal to cover the cupcake cups, I did NOT think to cover the actual batter, and so the batter was ruined as it got a good bit of ash in it.

It took us a good 2 hours to clean up the whole house. At one point, as Amity was cleaning the fridge (both inside and out), the ice maker made it's ice making noise. I explained to her then how annoying it was that it does that and how I've been trying to figure out how to make it stop as I'll soon be sleeping in the living room and I don't want to hear that going off every 20 minutes all night long. With the most serious voice and face ever, Amity said, "You could just set it on fire." Ka-blam!ty!

After we had most of the house cleaned, we decided to try getting the cooking rack out of the oven. You see, when I started to pull it out while it was hot, then decided to let it cool per Sara's suggestion, I didn't think to put it all the way back in and let it cool in a place that prevented me from being able to close the oven door all the way. Sigh. And just in case you're wondering, the plastic did separate itself from the metal in some places. But in other places, it melted around the rack and into itself, making a super plastic when it cooled.

We tried breaking it, we tried pulling it, I unscrewed the heating element from the back of the oven wall. I should say, it's an electric oven and the main problem was that in one spot the plastic had melted in a ring around the heating element and I couldn't pry it free. So I thought if I could get the whole thing out? But nothing was working. At a loss Amity suggested turning the oven back on to see if the plastic would heat up and melt again. Not really wanting to take the chance of setting my entire kitchen on fire again, but liking where her head was at, I decided to get a lighter out and just set the one portion on fire (again).

A few minutes later and presto! the rack was out. And I was filthy.

Once we had that finished and everything cleaned up, Amity left to run to Walmart for some thing (cake batter being one of them now). I then spent even more of my evening sweeping, mopping, vacuuming and showering. By the time it was all said and done 3 1/2 hours were spent on the oven fire. At 11:30 I was SO done and ready for bed, but I still had to get things ready for Deacon's birthday, so it was midnight before I was finally able to literally fall into bed. It was quite the night.

Oh, and if you're wondering what Josh's response was to all of this when I told him about it on Sunday? He said, "Well. I'm really sorry this happened to you. But at the same time, I'm really sorry I missed it because I bet that was something to see." And oh, how we all did laugh.

To The Zoo!

This morning we met up with Amity and her passel of offspring at the zoo. With Grammy here, we just had to go at least once, right? We had so much fun. Zeke was SUPER excited and practically ran amok until I sat him down and had a little chat with him. I mean, it's one thing to be 5-7 feet in front of me, but it's a completely different thing to be on the other side of the zoo from me (he wasn't really that far from me, but you know what I'm saying). But he quickly calmed down and did a much better job staying with the pack.

The zoo had a few new baby animals on "display" including a baby musk ox, as well as the CUTEST baby polar bear ever. They only let her out of the infirmary from 11-12 and from 4-5, so we were able to see her out and about. But since she's behind bars all the time, it was hard to get a good picture, so I'm not going to waste blog space with pictures of animals. Well, I guess these animals are worth posting pictures of.

After spending 2 hours walking around and seeing all there possibly is to see there, we had some popcorn and headed home for lunch and much needed naps (even I laid down for a bit). A very good morning indeed.

Easter 2011: Part Two: Ka-blam!ty

As I mentioned yesterday, my dear friend Amity Ka-blam!ty (it's what I like to call her sometimes) bought colored bubbles for the boys for Easter. Before I go on, I'd like to point out 3 things about these bubbles.

1. The bottle says "spill-resistant bottle". Spill-resistant bottle, my foot.
2. My back deck looks like 2 tiny alien armies waged a massive war back there.
3. I felt like a crime scene photographer taking pictures of it all (check my flickr for more, because oh yes, there's more).

Now, behold what my children did Easter afternoon with their new bubbles. (This is why we had baths before dinner that night.)

As you can see, they were pretty happy with what they did. Zeke even told God all about it when he prayed for dinner. I'll admit that at first I was a more than a little upset with the mess and the colored bubbles in their "spill-resistant" bottle overall. But then, as I was putting those clothes, coats and shoes into the wash I overheard Zeke say to Deacon, in the sweetest voice ever, "This was a fun Easter, huh Deacon?"

So, Amity, even though I still can't get it out of my rug, and even though I'm still finding blue and green smudges all over my house, and even though I'm worried that if it doesn't rain soon the bubbles are going to permanently stain the back deck, thank you SO much for making Easter a fun one for my boys. You totally rock!

Easter 2011: Part One: Amity

I feel like I need to tell the story of our Easter in two parts. Mainly because I have so many pictures from the second part that I want to share, and I don't want this getting too long or overwhelming.

Easter started with Finn still being sick. Therefore, we didn't make it to church (sad). My mom had sent a box of Easter goodies that was supposed to be here on Wednesday for me to give to the boys on Sunday. That box hasn't shown up (it'll probably get here today). Since I was counting on my mom's box, I didn't have anything for the boys myself. And since Finn was so sick, I couldn't get to the store to get anything, just in case.

Cue Amity. I texted Amity on Saturday to see if she was, by any chance, going to Walmart since I needed juice and milk. She was going, and was more than happy to get my groceries for me (at least, I'm assuming she was happy to help). I also asked her to grab some donuts as a special breakfast treat for the boys. When she stopped by to drop off the goodies, she also gave me these colored bubbles. She said they were for the boys, just in case my mom's box didn't get here on time. And since my boys are sweet, bubbles and donuts were a good start to Easter for them.

The rest of the morning progressed like normal (except for the sick Finn and the no church parts). Right about lunch time Amity texted me and asked if her 2 oldest boys could come over and hide eggs in our yard while my boys napped. She even had an extra bag of jelly beans to put in some of the eggs, which was good since Zeke asked specifically if the eggs would have jelly beans. Thank you pre-school for teaching my son that plastic Easter eggs have jelly beans.

So, her boys came over about an hour after my boys went to bed. They went right to work, and the Peavey went right to supervising.

When the boys woke up, I took them outside to hunt for eggs (Finn had to stay in bed and rest). They had such a good time. When I thought we found them all we opened the eggs with the jelly beans and then the boys stayed outside and played with their new bubbles while I got Finn up and took care of him.

When Finn went down for a little rest, it was bath time for the bigger boys, then dinner for all of us, then movie time for the bigger boys and bath time for Finn. Then it was off to bed for all the littles while Mommy rested on the couch watching "Firefly". It was a long Easter, it was a somewhat trying Easter, but in the end, it was a good Easter.

It Was A Good Week

This past week Zeke was home on Spring Break. It was a good week. We didn't do too much out of the ordinary, but it was nice sleeping in an extra 20 minutes every day and just having him home (when he wasn't aggravating Deacon that is). The weather recently has been gorgeous too. The days start out cold, in the single digits usually, but by the end of the afternoon, it'll be up in the mid to high 30's. It's like spring. And it's sunny. SOOOO wonderfully sunny. But once the sun is gone, it cools of really quickly. So quickly in fact, that a friend came over for dinner Tuesday night. In the hour and a half she was here the top step froze and she fell down the stairs. (She's fine...she milked it the rest of the night while we were at Bible study...but she's fine.)

Tuesday was also the day we had a new friend come over to play. Zeke has made friends with this sweet boy at church. They are in the same Sunday school class, and they both are in the same class on Wednesday nights. Last week we sat behind them in church, while Zeke sat with them. So, Tuesday morning, this boy, his little brother (20 months old), and his mom came over and hung out with us for a good hour and a half. Zeke was SO excited, he told Josh all about it when Josh got home from work, as well as my friend when she showed up for dinner. He can't wait for their next playdate (which sadly, most likely won't be until school is over in May).

(I didn't take any pictures during the playdate, so this is a picture from today actually, of the 2 boys not mentioned in the above story.)

Monday, Wednesday and Thursday were normal days, so not much to say about them. Friday, Josh came home from work super early, like 9:15am early, so we all took a trip to Target. We did a little shopping, ate a little lunch, and really had a fun time. At Target, Zeke finally got a chance to spend his birthday money and so he got a nice, big, talking, Spider-man toy. (And since Deacon's birthday is coming up soon enough we let him get a "matching" Iron Man toy.) Poor Zeke had to wait until after his nap though to play with his Spider-man, and I'm pretty sure he spent the whole time sitting in his room just waiting. As soon as I opened his door he jumped up said, "I play Spider-man now?" and was out the door and up the stairs.

On Saturday, Zeke's speech was cancelled, so that didn't happen either. But it was okay because Zeke had a birthday party to go to. A boy in the other preschool class at his school turned 5 this weekend and invited Zeke to his party. This is kind of a big deal as it was the first school friend birthday party he's ever gone to (he got invited to another one earlier this year but couldn't make it). It's an even bigger deal since I didn't stay. I dropped him off at 3 and picked him up at 5, and he had a blast. The boy's dad very sweetly invited Deacon to stay too, but Deacon was at home in bed. Sigh. My little boy is growing up so fast.

Also on Saturday, this happened:

Yep. Since Finn is everywhere and into everything all at once, a gate had to be put up to stop him from going into the kitchen when we're trying to cook or do the dishes. Of course, none of our gates were wide enough to span the entire space that is the "entryway" to the kitchen, so Josh had to move his nightstand there. Eventually I'll hang some artwork on it so it's not so...um...there.

Sunday was church and naps and hanging out. Just how we like our Sundays. And that was our Spring Break. All in all, a really good week.

What You Said?

The other day, when Josh asked Zeke how school was that day, Zeke said, "Good." He then went on to tell Josh how a couple of the other kids in his class had started crying that day. When Josh asked Zeke why, Zeke responded, "I don't know." So I said, "Did you hit them?" (He'd been hitting Deacon a bit more than usual lately, which is why I asked.) Zeke looked at me and said, "No. I don't hit my friends. I hit Deacon." He then patted Deacon on the head and walked away while Josh and I laughed. Well, I laughed, Josh used the opportunity to remind Zeke of the spanking he had recieved the day before for hitting Deacon. He hasn't really hit Deacon as much since then. Hmm....

* * * * *

One day, maybe a week or two ago now, Zeke and I were discussing his day at school while we ate lunch. He was telling me how they had made dog food that day (whatever that really means I have NO idea). I decided to tease him and asked, "Do you eat dog food?" He laughed and said, "NO! I don't eat dog food!" Then he got real serious, looked straight at me and said, "I don't eat play-doh either." I...really wasn't sure what to do with that. He told me later that one of the other boys in his class ate some play-doh. Good job then son.

* * * * *

Here's a little video of Zeke and Josh playing "Ring Around the Rosie". Well, Zeke had made up some of his own words to go in the part he didn't know, which I love since now he sings

Ring around the rosie

Pop goes the weasel

Ashes ashes

We all fall down!

* * * * *

Now for some health related news on the boy. This pretty much involves his bum and rashes and bowel movements, so if you'd rather not read on, I'm okay with that. It's why I put the sweet stuff up front. Come back tomorrow for more cuteness. For those of you that want to read on though, here we go.

Last week, as I was helping Zeke clean himself up after pooping, I noticed there was some blood in his poop. I didn't really think anything of it because this poop was HUGE and so I figured he probably tore a little bit pushing it out. (I tried to warn you this part would involve too much information.) But here we are, a week later, and there is still blood when I wipe him, and he's only pooped twice since then, when usually he goes once a day.

So yesterday I called the clinic to see if I could get a quick phone consult with a doctor. Twenty minutes later (which is a long story in and of itself) Zeke had an appointment to see a doctor this afternoon. My friend, Marci, was gracious enough to come stay with Deacon and Finn (while they napped) so off Zeke and I went.

I told the doctor what happened and what I thought, and she said I was probably right, but she wanted to look anyway (um, yeah, that's why we're here). She took one look at his little bum and said, he's awfully red and raw. I think he has strep. She took a culture, and sure enough, my sweet boy has the butt strep.

I need to backtrack a little bit here for a moment. See, about a month ago, my "friend", Amity, dropped off her two little ones since I was watching them for her that morning. As she was getting ready to leave, she said, "Curtis has a little diaper rash, just in case you have to change his diaper." I thought nothing of this because that's what kids in diapers do, they get rashes occasionally. Fast forward to later that day (or maybe the next day), and Amity calls to say that his diaper rash is actually butt strep. Lovely. Not soon after she lets me know this, Zeke develops a rash on his bum that looks like what she described her son's to look like. But I put some ointment on it, and it cleared up in a few days so I figured it couldn't have been the same thing, because well, how could my ointment have cleared up butt strep and done it so quickly?

Apparently, it was butt strep, and my ointment only cleared up the rash, but didn't get rid of the virus. So now my sweet boy is on antibiotics for the next 10 days. You'd never have even known anything was wrong with him since he's been perfectly fine all this time. Kids are so strange some times.

A Big Morning For Little Boys

This morning my friend, Amity, dropped off her little boy, Curtis, while she went in for an ultrasound (she's pregnant). With Zeke being back at school, it was just Deacon and Curtis, and boy did they have some fun.

When Curtis arrived, Deacon was already engrossed in Sesame Street, so Curtis joined him:

After Sesame Street was over, and while Finn was down for his morning rest time, we read a book until the tow truck showed up. While my neighbor may not fully appreciate this, I totally planned for his truck to break down so he'd have to have a tow truck come out to our street and get him, giving the boys something really cool to watch for a solid ten minutes:

Okay, I really didn't plan that at all, but it was a fun time for the boys to watch from inside the nice, warm house. They really got excited when I explained to them that Mater from Cars is also a tow truck. As the tow truck here, pulled our neighbor's car up, Deacon really got into things and exclaimed, "Mommy! The blue truck in ON the Mater truck!"

After "Mater" left, it was snack time - fruit snacks and cereal for everyone! Notice how nicely Curtis eats his cereal, one piece at a time, while Deacon is shoving an entire fistful of cereal into his mouth (dropping a piece or two every time):

Shortly after snacks were finished, more of the exciting fun that I had planned (not really) for the boys showed up: the big snow plow! So it was back to the windows for another couple of minutes while "Jack" (that's what Deacon has named the plow) made his way up and down the street, making nice little berms of snow at the base of everyone's driveways. Ahh...winter.

The plow didn't take as long as the tow truck, but it was still exciting. Once the plow was out of sight, it was time for train tracks and blocks and the like:

Do I know how to set up a great playdate for little boys, or what? I mean, come on. And because the camera cannot come out anymore without Finn taking notice, here's a shot of him I took this morning. Seriously, the boy is turning into a little ham:

And I love it!

Because It's Too Cute Not To Share

Last week, I was talking with one of the other moms from Zeke's class, and she was saying how she was getting her new stove installed on Friday, and would probably have to keep her little boy home from school because she wouldn't be able to leave her house to pick him up once the installation guy got there. Being ever so generous, I volunteered to pick him up and bring him home, since I was going to be picking Zeke up that day anyway because of MOPS. She said Logan would probably love to ride in the back seat, facing backwards with Zeke, so we set it all up.

Friday morning she sent me a message saying that the installation guy came the night before so she didn't need me to bring Logan home and how sad Logan would probably be. I told her I would still bring him home if she wanted, since I was there anyway and it was on my way to MOPS and we had originally planned on it. She agreed, but showed up at school anyway in case Logan changed his mind last minute.

When the boys got out of school, Logan saw his mom was there and said, "Mom, you can go home now so I can ride with Zeke." Too cute! Also too cute, was the two of them in the backseat having a good time talking about how cool it is back there, and then going through the different books Zeke keeps back there.

It really makes me happy that Zeke is making friends here, and gets along so well with the other kids in his class.