One of THOSE days...Part II

In the last post I talked about a day I had a couple weeks ago where Luke had a string of mischievousness, one thing after the next. I was exhausted, Luke was exhausted, the day had been tough for the both of us. Continuing on with that afternoon...

After lunch I put Halle down for her nap I had a boost of energy. Things were looking up. Luke just needed some one-on-one time with me, I thought. Some special mommy time would help him get out of his funk.

I'd had my cute/creative friend Tamara's blog in my mind for awhile...a post about a fun craft she did with her little girl where you make trees out of construction paper and cut leaves out of felt to glue on. Check out the post here.

This would be perfect! I thought. A fun, calm activity for us to do together.

I had didn't have any felt, but I had lots of construction paper, so I figured I could make it work.
"Do you want to make a tree with pretty leaves?" I asked Luke.

"No!" He replied.

"It will be fun!" I kept saying as I was getting the supplies out.

I knew once he caught onto what I was doing he would get into it.

Determined, I sat down and began cutting out a tree trunk.

"Nooooooo!" He kept saying. "No, no, no, no...."

But I knew once he caught on he would like it.

This is what moms do, I kept thinking. We do fun crafts with our kids and they turn out adorable and we hang them up on our fridge or bulletin boards to admire.

So I kept going at it with the scissors and Luke kept yelling at me to stop, but I ignored him knowing that once he saw how fun it was he'd want to join in.

I finished his tree trunk and handed it to him across the table, but before I could even start explaining to him how to glue on the branches he was tearing the trunk and the paper apart!

"That wasn't very nice," I said in my calm, Love and Logic parenting voice that I learned I should use when I read the book, but have found is very hard to use when you're a little ticked.

"Don't want to!" He said with an onery face.

"Okay, then mommy will make one all by myself. You don't have to if you don't want to." Reverse psychology will work, I thought.

So started cutting out my tree, but didn't get far before he climbed up off of his chair onto the table and grabbed the paper and tree I was in the process of gluing out of my hands and started ripping it into pieces!

At first, I have to say, I was a little shocked. But the shock quickly went away and I remember thinking, "on a day like this, why should this surprise me?"

Then, I started laughing. Hard. Then he started laughing. After a minute of this I told him to hold still while I ran and got my camera.

And then I took this picture...

I just kept thinking of the picture from Tamara's blog in my mind of her beautiful little trees versus my little boy tearing mine to shreds, and I couldn't stop cracking up about it.

So I left the mess, and Luke and I sat down on the couch and watched Thomas the Tank Engine together. Sometimes, after a hard day, the best cure is a cuddle.

p.s. Just for the record, a few days later I attempted the tree making again and it worked out wonderfully. In fact, we have made two more since I took this picture. Luke loves it. Now everyday when Halle goes down for a nap he wants to make a tree. Thanks Tam for the cute idea!

One of those days...Part I

The other day Luke had a very mischevious day. So mischevious that it gave me the idea to start a blog about the life of being a mom and the funny stories about the things we go through everyday being a mom!
Here is how the day went...

Let's start with the night before. First, Halle was up crying for two hours. When I finally had her settled I climbed back into bed. But right as I was at that point between being awake and asleep I heard more hysterical screaming, this time coming from Luke's room. I went into his room to see what was wrong, and he explained he had a bad dream about a bee. Yes, bees are very scary to him lately thanks to Winnie the Pooh getting chased into a tree by a swarm of bees. Who knew the cute old Winnie the Pooh movie could be scary?

Once I had him settled down he wouldn't fall asleep. So I left, he followed me into my room, we went back to his room, then back to my room, etc. etc. Fast forward to 6:00am - he was finally in bed asleep. Whew! I thought for sure he'd sleep in later than usual and I would get a couple hours of rest.

Wrong! At 6:45am Luke was next to my bed for my morning wake up call, his face two inches away from mine, morning breath and all, saying "Man Cub is up mommy, Man Cub wants choco milk!" (he calls himself Man Cub lately thanks to The Jungle Book - we don't watch many movies at all as you can tell ;) ). For some reason he feels the need to let me know he is "Man Cub" every morning as he wakes me up, two inches away from my face.

So I dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen to make his "choco milk". And this is where the real fun begins!

He insisted on "helping" me get the container of Ovaltine out from the cupboard. So I lifted him on top of the counter and let him open the cupboard. He got the Ovaltine out and somehow in .2 seconds opened the lid and half dumped, half flung it all over the kitchen. Ovaltine powder/dust was everywhere! All over the counters, the ground, and that fine dust was even floating around in the air. It was a full, brand new jar so there was plenty to go around. "Sorry mommy!" He said with that raised eyebrow look like "that was so cool"!

I cleaned up and salvaged enough off the counter to make his cup of Ovaltine. After calling him to come and get his "choco milk", I realized he was in the family room standing next to the couch, back to me with his head tilted down looking at whatever he was doing, holding just a little too still for comfort if you know what I mean. I started walking towards him and his head whipped around, and realizing I was coming, he darted away leaving behind a tub of Vaseline sitting on the couch. As I got closer I realized there was very little left in the jar because he had SMEARED the contents all over the couch!

Misdemeanor #3 - After the Vaseline mess was cleaned up (luckily the couches are leather - not the kind that stuff easily wipes off though, but I got it quick enough that it didn't seep in) I walked back to my bedroom. I thought Luke was in his room playing with his toys, but as I entered the room I could hear him making noise in our bathroom. What now? I walked into the bathroom to find him in the shower holding the bottle of my conditioner upside-down, squirting it all over the shower. Now this, I must say, was innocent because as I he saw me walk in he looked up and proudly said, "I help clean up mommy!" obviously thinking the conditioner was some sort of cleaning product. I wouldn't have cared so much if it had been my normal $4 Treseme purchase from Walmart, but I had actually splurged and bought a nice, expensive brand through my friend who's a beautician from a salon product store and I LOVE the stuff. But how could I get angry with him? He was so excited to show me that he was helping me clean up!

At this point I just wanted to get out of the house. We needed groceries, so I hurried and got the kids and I ready and out the door. At the grocery store the kids were completely restless. Luke was sitting in (actually sprawled all over) the cart and Halle in the seat. Luke wouldn't hold still and ended up smashing our carton of strawberries, swashing most of them. Then, somehow without me seeing he got a hold of his "yummy" toothpaste. He did the tricky turn-his-back-thing to me again, got the toothpaste out of the carton and the lid off and began gulping it down. It was halfway gone before I realized what he was doing. So, I resorted to opening a box of fishy crackers to try to distract them. Why I thought this would work at a time like this I'm not sure. It distracted them for about ten seconds before Luke started throwing them and even Halle started throwing them back at me!

I was exhausted and my patience was wearing VERY thin and we all knew it! Luke was emotional and sad, poor guy was exhausted from lack of sleep and all the drama from the day. Needless to say, on the way home we made a special stop at "McDondalds" for our favorite drinks - a special "juicety drink" for Luke (the new fruit smoothy made with REAL fruit...do we believe them?) and a little, oh I mean large, $1 special me.

All this, and it was only 12:30pm!

I am going to leave the remainder of the story for my next post. This one is getting too long as it is, but there is one more tidbit of the day I want to share.

Yes, he was a little stinker that day. Good thing he's a cute little stinker. It's been a couple weeks so I can laugh back on it now...but in the moment, not always so easy :). But really, this is a day to remember, don't you think? I'm glad I am writing it down so someday we can look back at it and I'm sure I'll smile!

Stay tuned for Part II!

Luke's "firetruck" pronunciation

Luke really likes firetrucks. The problem is, he has a hard time pronouncing the word. For some reason, he gets the "uck" sound at the beginning of the word adding an "er" at the end of it and leaving the "f" in the beginning, and puts a "p" before the "uck" at the end of the word. So, the word "firetruck" comes out "_uckerpuck" (with an "f" in the beginning). I am not kidding! We have tried saying firetruck really slow with him so he gets it but we are having no success. If we break it into two separate words and first have him say "fire" and then "truck" he can get it, but as soon as we have him say it altogether it goes right back to "_uckerpuck"!

I thought it was just funny and wasn't too worried about it, I mean, how long can this pronunciation go on? But then in church the other day I had brought a puzzle for him to do during sacrament meeting. The puzzle has all sorts of rescue vehicles like an ambulance, police car, police motorcycle, and, of course, a firetruck. I didn't think anything of it at first, until, in a very loud voice, Luke said, "look, mom, a _uckerpuck!" (fill in the blank with an "f".) I tried shushing him, but he kept saying it over and over! Luckily, there were two teenage boys sitting right behind us and they were getting a kick out of it and laughing very hard. It was loud enough that I'm almost sure other people around us must have heard him but no one else acknowledged it other than these boys. It was pretty funny. Who ever thought you'd heard that word, as plain as day, in sacrament meeting? We'll keep working on it with him!

Grandma Lori says...

Dad and I took Luke and Halle to our “Fall Festival” ward party Friday night because Cory had a work party. Dad drove Luke up on the “motorcyclical” as Luke calls it, and I walked with Halle in the stroller. Jamie met us up there after work. It’s a different experience taking two toddlers to a ward party. You should have seen our mess! They had a soup, bread and cookie contest that Uncle Brent got to judge, so there were several kinds of soups, which the kids liked, but feeding kids at picnic tables takes lots of napkins and lots of spilled food. I can’t say we got much socializing in, but at least I didn’t have to cook dinner.

As for my tending Luke this past week, I have to keep an eagle eye where he is at. One of his favorite pastimes is to go into my shipping room and spread the peanuts all over and knock over boxes of product.

Grandma Lori says...Halle plowing over Luke's things...

So Halle is walking around everywhere and we decided she is like the “Stay Puffed” marshmallow man in ghost busters when it comes to Luke’s little “play world” of cars, trains, toys and little figures. Why? Because she walks around kind of stiff legged and with kind of stiff arms but just plows right through all of Luke’s setup toys cars etc. like an out of control monster just knocking stuff everywhere. Well of course this doesn’t go over to well with Luke. He’s always yelling “no baby, no baby” as he tries to protect or salvage his neatly organized stuff. It’s funny, and they are cute, but Lindsay does have a handful with them.

This boy loves worms!

Luke loves worms lately. Grandma Lori and Grandpa Sheldon have a garden in their backyard that Aunt Jamie has been growing all summer and Luke loves for her to take him out to the garden to pick "carn" (corn), "onins" (onions) "blackberwees" (he calls them blackberries but they are actually strawberries), and all the other fun things. A couple weeks ago Jamie pointed out the worms to Luke and let him put some in a cup to carry around. He LOVED it! He isn't a bit shy about holding them and played with them non-stop, in and out of the cup, and by the end of the night when we "put them to sleep" in the garden they were really asleep... for good (i.e. limp, dead as a doornail...a little too much handling by a two year old!)

Since that day each time we've been to my parent's he has to go to the garden to get his worms. His worm-keeping abilities have gotten better. This last Sunday we were there (the day I took these pictures) the worms survived and made their way back into the ground when I helped him put them to sleep in the garden before we left to come home (Luke: "Bye worms, ni-night, see you later worms, next time!") He talks to them, gives them drinks of water/baths by pouring a little water from another cup into their cup, he just loves them. This boy is a true boy!

St. George trip

We headed down to St. George two weeks ago and stayed for the weekend. While there we had a birthday party for Halle. Dixie got a fun cake and Luke took care of blowing out the candles since Halle hasn't quite caught onto that yet.

Sunday Cory & I left the kids with Grandma Dixie and Grandpa Dave for four days while we went to Lake Powell with my family. The kids had a great time. The last picture is of Luke asleep on their couch, I think he wore himself out with all the swimming and playing and that day we got back he was exhausted!