Back Seat Driver x 3

We went to our church's fish fry on Friday night with Grandpa M. It was a nice event, nothing like Dayton puts on, but nice. Near the church is a weird intersection. And by weird I mean that there are four or five streets all meeting at an intersection, but all coming from different directions. It's very confusing, especially because you have a traffic light just for your lane.

I give you all this background because it is completely understandable why Kevin got confused and (very obviously) ran a red light. I remarked on it immediately because Kevin is a very good driver and it was out of character for him to be so blatantly breakin' the law. As soon as the words were out of my mouth a police car pulled us over.

Grandpa and Kev were sitting up front and the boys and I were in the back. As the sheriff's deputy is walking up to the van Lou is freaking out, "Are we going to jail?!" I told him to hush and we'll talk about it as soon as the police officer leaves. It was funny because the boys are squirming in their seats and Kevin is having the hardest time finding his license and the cop isn't saying anything, just standing there waiting. Kev finds it and pulls the insurance card out and the deputy leaves.

When he finally comes back, we are greatly relieved because the extremely kind officer says that he'll give Kevin a warning because, "No one needs a $115 ticket these days." It probably helps that Kev hasn't had any kind of traffic infraction in a long time (I'm knocking on wood).

As we pull away from the curb we come to the next intersection: a three-way stop. As soon as Lou and Ben see the stop signs they scream at the top of their lungs, "SSSTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOP!" They are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, making sure Kev knows there's a stop coming up, but yeesh, that was a bit much.

And to top it off, Charlie wanted to join in the fun and in the next block, no traffic light or road sign anywhere to be seen, he calls out his version of the word "stop." Poor Kev.

Thank you, Charlie Bear

I have all these amazing friends who are training for some sort of running race or another. They are my heroes. They run at night, they run on early Saturday mornings, they run when the air freezes their lungs, they run when they can't breath, for the air is as thick as soup. I am impressed by them all.

I am in a training of a different sort. I am training to get back in the routine of having a newborn baby. My personal trainer: Charlie. Around 11pm I got home from book club last night and was about to go to bed when he started wailing. I waited, figuring that he was just calling out from a dream. No such luck. The crying wouldn't end and, in fact, got worse. I picked him up out of his crib and rocked him in a chair in his room.

After doing this for about a half-hour, he was breathing quite deeply and I felt it was safe to lie him down and head on in to my own bed. The cries began immediately. I let him go (I'm pretty good at letting my kids cry it out), then realized it wasn't going to end. So I went in to get him, bringing him in bed with us. It's always been my preference not to have kids in bed with us. This is mainly when they're itty-bitty because it scares me to no end. Now that Charlie has gotten bigger, he usually sleeps so well lying between us that I give in every once in a while.

This did not work last night. He was kicking and turning and doing everything but sleeping. Finally, I put him back in his crib and had him put himself to sleep. He woke up at normal time this morning, with a smile on his face, like last night did not happen. So I have no answers, no way to avoid what happened last night. I certainly did not wake up with a smile on my face! The only thing I can figure is that Charlie knows that his little brother or sister is on its way and he's doing his best to help me ease back into the routine. Such a thoughtful kid!

Some much needed fresh air

If you remember from this time last year I got Lou and Ben some rain boots so we could enjoy the outdoors without ruining our gym shoes. This year was Charlie's turn. Unfortunately, we couldn't find boots small enough for him, so I bought these, which are actually the same size as Benny's! I stuffed the toes to help with his balance, but I'm not sure what good it did.

What made it even funnier is that he was plodding around like a big ol' dinosaur, which is what covers his boots. He only fell a couple of times.

Ben was excited to get out his birthday present to give it a go. Poor guy, he put so much effort into the stomping and the rocket barely got off the stand. Something to work toward!

Here are the cool guys in their boots. They were very helpful! We pulled weeds and got the soil ready for planting in the weeks to come. They're so excited for us to expand our garden: spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, jalapenos, green and red peppers, basil, rosemary, dill and cilantro will be filling those beds soon. We can't wait!

Big ol' Belly Laughs

Charlie has found another way to leave us all in stitches.

He's discovered that it's not too hard to imitate the sounds of sleep, even when you're awake. So he makes this snoring sound--with his eyes wide open--and it makes us all laugh and laugh and laugh.

What's really funny is that he does it with this look on his face, anticipating the laugh he'll get from us. It's hilarious.

One of these days I'll get it on camera.

Fat Tuesday Celebration

We've been having a family Mardi Gras celebration probably for as long as we've lived in this house. Maybe longer than that. My memory fails me. Often.

Here's a couple of pictures of Charlie enjoying the festivities:

Before

After

And not all the way after. It eventually got worse. Bakeries must use a whole lot of food coloring to get this kind of icing. Tasty, but boy, does it stain! All he wanted to do was use a fork to get all the icing off. He did eventually eat the cookie, but the topping was the most exciting part.

We actually did more than just eat! Here is a bit of what was on the menu: crab cakes, pizza bread, lava cake, chips and dip, king cake, black bean tortilla soup, cheese sticks...yeah, we went for the theme.

Then we played L-R-C. It's a great game because everyone's in it until the very end and little boys ages three and up and participate without it being too difficult. We had a lot of fun, even if Uncle Nate did go home with all the winnings.

The Heart Rate

The baby's heart rate at the appointment yesterday was 155.

Are you a believer in the old wives' tale about heart rates??

I was thinking that it was 150 and above, but everything I looked up today says 140 and above is girl, below is boy.

However, I also read that there was a study done that said the difference they could find between male and female heart rates was only during labor. At that point I'm not going to be thinking about gender, just getting to the finish line!

The Hunt

Walking out of school today I noticed Ben had some binoculars that he made in class today. When I asked him about them he said, very enthusiastically, "We went on a BEAR hunt today!!"

Lou responds with, "A BEER HUNT?! You went on a BEER hunt today?!"

"NO! A BEAR HUNT!" Ben replies.

(Can you tell that with these guys it's either all caps or muffled, inaudible whispers?)

"Oh, a BEAR hunt. That makes more sense."