Big Catch-up!

So I'm pretty behind on my updates but . . . well, we have 3 toddlers. THREE. TODDLERS. Think on that for a minute. That's crazy. I live in crazy town. No doubt about it. These boys are in to everything. But I totally stop and take pictures to document it. Because it's hilarious. All I can do is laugh about it. Well laugh, sometimes cry a little, and drink. 

So, anyways, this will be long but lots of pictures so if you do read all the way through you get to see cute babies in the midst of my rambling (I mean this is really for me you know). I don't even know where to start. But here goes. We'll call this the 21 month update.

The boys have all learned so much over the past few months. I know it's developmentally a good thing but they are everywhere! They can open doors, climb stairs, talk (sort of), feed themselves (again sort of but not very well), and they also have attitudes. I'm pretty sure they get that from Brian's side of the family ;) 

Here's a little about each one.

I have current weights for Mason and Logan because they get weighed every month for their synagis shots. (They know what's coming when we go too. Poor guys).  James's weight is probably close to Mason's. I think he's bigger now. But maybe it's just his cheeks. So current weights for M and L:

Mason: 24 lbs. 0 oz. - 27%

Logan: 21 lbs. 10 oz. - 6%

James: close to Mason?

Mason

Mason is very happy and generally a good kid. He's smart, but also very opinionated. He likes everyone. BUT Mason does what Mason wants to do when Mason wants to do it. Ha! He also has a hard time keeping his hands to himself. He's a thief. Thief of toys, thief of food, thief of pacis. And he thinks it HILARIOUS. Mason is also the pickiest eater (even though he may be the biggest). He pretty much refuses to even attempt to eat anything that resembles a veggie. But he'll shove an entire banana in his mouth at once. Oh well. At least he eats.

Mason knows how to talk but usually he chooses not to. He talks when he needs to though. Like he'll ask for help, he'll ask me to open something for him (usually the dr kit or Noah's ark), and he'll ask for more. He CAN say a lot more. And when he does talk he's the most coherent out of all 3.

Mason also got his 2nd haircut recently. I took him out all by himself. We had an hour wait so we went to the toy store. So fun! 

Sometimes Mason helps out with the chores. He also will bring us things that we ask him to bring us. Score! He's obviously the favorite (jk Logan and James!)

Logan

Logan is still the little guy but he's growing! He's in the 6th percentile for his actual age. Yay Logan! He is the best eater out of all 3. He actually does eat his veggies.  Mason steals his food sometimes too (of course). Logan is very silly but he's also pretty shy around people he doesn't know. But he will blow kisses to pretty much anyone. He's a sweet boy.  He still sports the bitchy resting face but not quite as often as before. I see the little smirk like in the picture above very often. He's always up to something. If only I knew.

Mason and James call Logan LoLo so now we call him that too. He's LoLo now. It suits him I think.

Logan babbles a lot but he doesn't say a lot of words. He knows some of his animal sounds (sheep, elephant, and monkey are his favorites). And he'll say his own name (LoLo of course). None of the boys will even attempt to say Mason or James. So weird to me.

Logan has had lots of dr appointments lately because he's had a rash on his face since December. Yep. 2 months now. We've seen several different drs but now we're seeing a dermatologist every week it seems. And it's FINALLY getting better. Yay! Logan likes the dermatologist office luckily. They give him suckers when we check out. And he gets to walk like a big boy.

It is NOT a pediatric dermatology clinic. Logan REALLY wants to play with all of the fun things on this cart every time we go. So far he's behaving.

Logan is also a troublemaker. 

Exhibit A: squeezing his squeezy pouch in my running shoes. Thanks Logan. I really appreciate it.

 And Exhibit B: Painting with yogurt.

James

James has earned himself the nickname Whiny James. Ha! He's VERY opinionated. Example: the picture below of James screaming in the bathtub by himself is a result of James refusing to get in the bath on bath night the night before so I had to make him take a bath the next night. 

And another time James didn't get what he wanted:

But James is also very sweet. He says I love you (sounds kinda like "li luh lo") and it melts my heart. He gives the best hugs too.

James talks A LOT. And of course his favorite word is NO. That explains James in a nutshell. James says lots of words so I can't list them all, but here's some of my favorites: elephant (elfant), butterfly (buf-why), potato (tato), slide, firetruck (only he combines to 2 words so you can imagine what he says), bath, cracker, cookie, medicine (me-me), and the list goes on. Most of his words are probably incoherent to most people but I can mostly understand him. And he gets the biggest grin on his face when I repeat what he says.

Oh and James loves to slide! He requests that we get the slide out almost every time we come home. Sometimes he even starts asking to slide before we get out of the MannVan.

James also still loves his giraffe wubbanub. His name is faff-faff. Well, we had a tragedy about a month ago. The original faff-faff died (the paci fell off of the stuffed animal part). He went to the wubbanub graveyard with all of the others. 

James did not handle it well. So because I'm an amazing mom I got him a new one. But he only gets faff-faff in his bed. We don't even take him to school. So we're making progress.

James also feeds himself now. I give the boys yogurt (yo-yo) every night at the end of dinner. Well recently James started refusing his yogurt and throwing massive tantrums. Then I figured out that in the big boy class he's in now he feeds himself. So I started letting them feed themselves yogurt. James LOVES it. So proud of himself.

Ok enough of the updates. Here's more pictures though! The first set is just a random night at dinner when I happened to catch all 3 personalities in pictures.

The boys also played in the snow for the first time. And I use the word played very loosely. They HATED it. They lasted maybe 2 minutes.

They also weren't too sure about the boots. Logan tried them on the night before.

They do love outside though. That's another word James says. Outside. Ha! We've had a few really nice days lately. One weekend a few weeks ago we went to Brian's parents' house and the boys played outside. Logan of course brought his stethoscope. Because of course.

And we still eat snack in the floor. With bowls of course. James sometimes goes to the other room with his though so no one steals his food. Ha! He doesn't get those cheeks by chance.

And I didn't forget about my other kid. She's just too cool to hang out with me anymore. She does take random selfies on my phone though. Like this one.

So I'm not sure how I'll survive the terrible 2s at this point. But I'm sure my friends will help. 

Cheers to all the moms out there! We can do this! Wine can help.

Why I'm So Behind on My Blog

Ok so contrary to the title of this post, I don't have any big reason for being behind. I just am. That's the reason. But in case anyone needs more details, here's a few reasons I'm behind (in life in general really). I WILL CATCH UP. Someday. Someday I will post about Christmas. And New Years. And the last 3 months. Someday I'll do it. First I should probably finish putting up my Christmas decorations (sorry neighbors!). I put up the inside ones this weekend but my outside decorations are still up (but not on so a little more acceptable).

This right here is the story of my life in a nutshell:

The big reason I'm behind is simply that I have too many kids. Seriously. 4 kids. That's too many. I always said I wouldn't have a bunch of kids like my parents did. Well . . . joke's on me I guess. 

Exhibit 1: Addison. She's pretty self-sufficient, which is great. She does her homework, she gets good grades, she gets herself ready for school (except for casual days. then she tries to wear leggings as pants and I have to make her change). But then there's dance. WHY DID I AGREE TO THIS?!?!?! She has dance 4 days a week! Yesterday, I got to spent my entire afternoon and part of my night at dress rehearsal. Like 6 hours! And on top of that, I had to make her look like this:

Yep. I had to put full grown up makeup on my 11 year old. Black eyeliner. Top and bottom. AND black eyeshadow. I don't even wear black eyeshadow. Who even knew that was a thing? (I did a good job though right?!) And with the smoky eye makeup, you also get this sassy attitude.

That's 1 of 4 costumes this season. And they aren't cheap. So I have no time AND no money. Being a parent is fun. (It is. I'm only joking. Mostly.)

And although she's almost the perfect child, she does things sometimes that makes me question her sanity, as well as my own. This past weekend, I spent over 30 minutes getting a knot out of her shorts. OVER 30 MINUTES! Seriously! Why in the world did she need to tie 35 knots in this pair of shorts is beyond comprehension. And on top of the knot situation, I also have to learn all of the new slang so I can even understand her half the time. I do know that when she said her eyeliner was "on fleek" that was a good thing. And I was proud. Both of the fact that I knew what that meant (sort of) and that I did an amazing job making my 11 year old look like she was headed to the club.

Exhibits 2, 3, and 4: Mason, Logan and James. They're in to EVERYTHING. And that's not even an understatement. They are basically running. And they know how to open doors (I think maybe only James knows how to open doors but he shares the benefit of this skill with the others). This is what happens when I try to do anything in the bathroom:

Sometimes I just need to get ready for work so we can get out the door so I let them play with whatever they find that they can't hurt themselves with. And sometimes that's a bag of empty medicine syringes. I have 3 toddlers. 3 TODDLERS. That's insanity.

They breach every security measure we have in the house:

They want and need things. Like food. So sometimes they get snack on the floor. In bowls of course because I try to keep things civilized (ignore the no shirts  picture above).

 Sometimes I just give up and give them the whole container.

They can talk too. But only kinda. James will say and sign help but only when I ask him if he needs help. Mason will bring me something and say "more" which means "guess what I want mom?! I hope you can figure it out before I have a meltdown!" It's a good thing they're cute. And they look like little men which makes it even harder to resist. Luckily they are easily entertained by simple things like empty water bottles.

Luckily they haven't been sick since November basically. And by basically not sick I mean not in the hospital sick. They've had hand, foot and mouth disease. Which was NOT fun. And they had to stay home for a week (Brian stayed home with them because I can't miss work!). And Logan has had an impossible-to-get-rid-of rash on his face for over a month. Luckily I think it's under control now. Of course after 5 doctor visits including 2 dermatologist appointments and a visit to ACH on Christmas Eve! This was today at the dermatologist. So cute in his little man coat. Why was he crying? Because I wanted to take his picture instead of giving him my phone.

One HUGE benefit of having kids is that you get to dress them however you want. See those Converse Chuck Taylors? Omg I'm so in love.

And don't think Mason is the good one because I haven't posted his picture yet. He only acts sweet and innocent. Don't let him fool you.

 He's sitting there like see I'm just here reading my book. But really he most likely just threw away his sippy cup, some mega blocks and Little People, and maybe James's shoe (because James ALWAYS takes one off. And it's always the left one). Mason is the bad one. And he knows it. He says no and calls himself a bad baby. LOL! Maybe we need to stop saying that to him?

This is more like the real Mason. (Actually this is his cheese face but he looks crazy).

Ok so on top of the fact that I have too many kids, I also have a job so I don't even get to spend as much time with this crazy people as I would like. I have to get up every day and go to work (sometimes on the weekends too). And I have to function like an adult. And present myself in a professional manner. One of my New Years resolutions (which I haven't had time to post yet) was to "dress like a lawyer" Monday through Thursday so that's helping.  I had a trial last week which I did A LOT of work for. I didn't even see my kids for a few days. Luckily Brian is an amazing dad (see Brian I do still say nice things about you) so I am 100% ok leaving him in charge. (ok not 100% ok because I have control issues but I know everything is under control and he's on top of it all). And I really do love what I do. Most days. Can anyone ask for more? Probably not.

AND because I'm a little crazy I still cook ahead for the boys and freeze stuff. When possible I do this on a weekend day. That hasn't been possible lately though so I've been doing a little here and there when I can. Like tonight. Tonight I'm sitting here blogging while I'm waiting for meatball muffins, turkey meatballs, and sweet potato fries to cool down so I can bag them up and throw them in the freezer. And I had to mop because I apparently don't know how to use Pam properly and Brian basically almost killed me when he saw the floor that he just mopped today covered in grease. Oops! I fixed it though. So we're all good. (And for the record I made dinner for the big people today too).

And I also put the boys toys up in a certain order. Every. Single. Night. Books go in the same order. All parts are matched with the right toys. And the flashcards are put in the right box. And in abc order. Again, I have control issues. But those flashcards are in order. Brian even leaves them out for me if I'm not home when he puts the toys up. That's true love y'all :)

So how do I do it? With the help of Brian, my friends, and an occasional glass of wine. Cheers y'all!

I'll catch up on everything else soon I promise!

Family Photo Time - Fall 2015 Edition

I'm so in love with our Fall pictures! I have the best photographer EVER! Thanks so much Miranda! Seriously she's amazing. Logan and James were both sick and super uncooperative. Usually I just have to worry about Brian being uncooperative. For the record, he was good this time ;) Mason, on the other hand, was all about it and we got some great Mason pictures! 

Here's my favorite one to start!

And this amazing one of the boys in their wagon!

This is real life right here. I felt like every picture would look a little like this - like cat wrangling, laughing, and a few tears (James). But I love it too!

Logan and James made some extra mean faces 

And one attempted shot of me with the boys. I'm pretty happy with this one. They're in order and looking at the camera and I look ok. 

Ok so I'm just going to post pictures. You don't have to read my rambling this time (edited: you don't have to read AS MUCH OF my rambling this time). 

So the pictures:

And the giraffe became part of the family for family pictures too. Of course. If you don't know, Addison had a giraffe too when she was little. Hers was a stuffed animal, but still a giraffe. And I still have it because I'm a hoarder.

Miranda also got some great shots of me with each of the boys! I LOVE THESE!

And a few more with Mason because he was loving life that day!

 And this one. This one is perfect. Brian is the best daddy and this captures it all!

And we got some of Addison and me too! And they're beautiful!

And last but definitely not least, Addison took some amazing pictures by herself too. She's so photogenic and I love it!

And one last one. They're out of order. Miranda is good though. She realized it herself and immediately fixed it 

I lied. One more. I took this one with my phone. But James was sooo tired all he wanted to do was sit in the wagon. I love this one too!