Another Week Zips By

Warning – It’s a long post. It's been a crazy week, full of freelance work, Ben being out of town for two days, and my deciding to paint the basement on a whim (it's not done yet, but hopefully we can work on it at night this week and get it done - I'll post pictures eventually).

My current phase of life has lots of highlights and lowlights, as I have mentioned before. I love my little boys and have so much fun with them, but the ups and downs require a lot of energy!

Some of the recent highlights:

1. Charlie is getting better about sleeping at night. Though he was on this weird schedule this week where he would wake up at 5 a.m., eat, and go back to sleep until 8 a.m. Eli was sleeping until 7:30 or 8 a.m. too, which is a little later than normal. I’ll take the extra sleep though!

2. Charlie’s sitting up better means he can sit in the front of the cart without too many problems, and Eli sits in the back. This means more room for the groceries, since I don’t have to lug Charlie’s car seat into the cart.

3. Eli says the cutest things. He pretends to cook and will share his food with me, usually in a very serious, hushed tone, “It’s pasta. It’s very, very hot.” We have conversations and sometimes I’ll ask him a question and he’ll say, “I don’t remember?” which sounds funny out of his little mouth. He was playing with his toy dinosaur today and said, “I saw a big dinosaur one day – it was crazy!” Eli says new and funny things every day and it’s neat to see his vocabulary explode.

4. Eli watched the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD over and over while we were driving around Yellowstone/Idaho last month, and now knows the letter sounds. He constantly walks around the houses singing the song for various letters: “The N says nnnnnnnnn. The N says nnnnnnnn. Every letter makes a sound, the N says NNNNN!” I give all credit to the video.

Some of the recent lowlights:

1. Every day from 5 to 6 p.m., my kids turn into their worst selves (and I probably do too) and it is the LONGEST hour. I often have a kid holding each of my legs, crying, whining, etc. and wanting different things at the same time (and it’s usually when I’m trying to make dinner).

2. We’re still in the “one store” phase. We can only go to one place in between Charlie’s naps, because he gets tired again after just a few hours of being awake. If we’re going to Target, I have to feed him as soon as he wakes up, then we zip out to the store, then zip back home before he melts down. There is no room for stopping at one other place, even if it’s really close.

3. Charlie crawls all over and gets into everything. He is constantly trying to chew things he shouldn’t – cords, paper, etc.

4. Eli is more daring now. And gets into more trouble than he used to. His little attitude has emerged and he can throw a pretty major tantrum when he’s in the mood. Once he’s in “NOOOOOOOO” mode, it’s hard to snap him out of it.

My mom came over this week while my dad went in the city to pick up his custom suit from the Father’s Day contest. It was a warm day, so he didn’t try it on, but the suit looked very nice! I’ll have to get a picture of him in it sometime soon.

Eli was playing peekaboo -

Funny brothers -

Charlie with his hot pink/green sippy cup :)

Crawling around -

And sitting up!

Here’s Eli, very grouchy on Saturday morning. He threw a HUGE tantrum after breakfast and it was a miserable couple of hours trying to snap him out of his bad mood. Ben was on a fishing trip on Friday and Saturday, so I was on my own.

And a happier scene – Charlie and Eli took their first bath together! It was really cute seeing them play and splash in there.

I love that Charlie is big enough to sit in this seat! It makes bath time a lot easier (though I’m paranoid about it not suctioning well to the bottom, so I stay really close to the tub just in case).

Charlie chewing one of his favorite things – paper:

Sippy cup boys on the couch, watching a show after Eli took a nap one day last week. I can’t believe how big Charlie looks in this picture!

And finally, Charlie’s first haircut -

He was VERY wiggly/squirmy. Ben had to be super fast and he used scissors and the clippers.

I have more pictures from today to post, but I’ll post another tomorrow or the next day. I figure this is enough for one day :)