IT TASTE GOOD!

A few weeks ago, I was making the kids pancakes for breakfast and had everything set out on the counter (butter, syrup, pizza cutter for quickly cutting pancakes into kid-sized bites...). The pancakes were finished cooking, the burner was turned off and the hot pan was pushed back out of the reach of little fingers. The kids were happily eating their pancakes and I left the room to use the bathroom. I wasn't gone more than a minute and a half or so, and walked back into the kitchen just in time to see Connor stuff a huge glob of butter into his mouth, and slide back down to the floor (the little monkey climbs up a set of drawers in a kitchen like they're a ladder). I yelled out in surprise, "EW GROSS! CONNOR! SPIT THAT OUT!" He stops in his tracks, turns back towards me and yells (with a mouth of butter and buttery slobber), "IT TASTE GOOD!" and he takes off running. You can see in this picture how deeply he scooped into the butter with his finger (and if you're thinking that doesn't look too bad, keep in mind that it's a COSTCO SIZED TUB OF BUTTER and then notice that the finger scoop goes nearly the entire way across the width, not to mention how DEEP it goes).


And if that wasn't bad enough, I didn't learn my lesson that time, and left the butter unattended for a few seconds a few days ago, and came back in to see him helping himself to butter AGAIN!

sigh...

FLASHBACK

How time flies. This seems like just yesterday, but at the same time, it seems like a million years ago... Connor was an actual baby, and Jared was the baby-faced toddler that Connor now is. Emily looks so much more grown up in this picture than I think of Jared, even though he's currently the same age she WAS here. Isn't it weird how that works?

A laugh for today

Build-a-Bear

Jared has been VERY into putting clothes on his Build-a-Bear, Blueberry, for the last few months. We have Tin Man and Scarecrow outfits from several years ago at Halloween when Emily was Dorothy and Jared was the Cowardly Lion (which I'd forgotten we even had until he dug them out and was playing with them), and we also have a Superman outfit for his bear, which he picked out on his third birthday. When it came time to pass out gift ideas for Jared to family members, I knew BAB clothes for his bear would be a good suggestion, and I knew Superhero themed clothes, most especially, would be GREAT. I was right. Jared got a Spiderman outfit for his bear from my parents and he instantly wanted Blueberry taken out of the Steelers outfit Santa had left:

(Em's bear got a Steelers outfit as well, and Santa just wasn't really thinking Connor would enjoy clothes for his bear yet, but SANTA WAS WRONG!)


The next present Jared opened was a Batman outfit for his bear, and so Blueberry immediately changed from Spiderman to Batman:


Connor's bear got a firefighter outfit from my parent's, and he's been happily hauling around his bear dressed in it's new outfit.

Build-a-Bear can really nickle and dime a person, but those darling little bears (and other animals), and those cute little clothes truly bring joy and fun to little kids! Emily never got as much into dressing her bear as Jared is, so I didn't really understand all the hype, but in witnesses Jared in the recent months, I GET IT. It's truly fun waiting to see what Blueberry will be dressed up as on any given day, and to hear the crazy story-plots that Jared comes up as well.

B is for BALL

From the time Connor was mobile enough to maneuver around the playroom to get to toys, he's been most drawn to balls. As a result, we've accumulated a lot of balls over the last two years or so, and even though it's truly a ridiculous amount of balls, they all seem to get played with at some point or another, on a fairly regular basis.

When it came to choosing just the right gift for Santa to bring Connor this year, the basketball hoop I found at Toys R Us seemed perfect. It adjusts from 4-6ft high, which makes it something all three kids can use, and something that will last several more years before they've outgrown it. We could barely get him to open his stocking or his presents because he kept getting up to shoot baskets. Yesterday (day after Christmas), he woke me up by coming into my room, putting both hands on my cheeks and telling me, "I pway baksetball now!" (and yes, he mixed the s and k up, that's not a typo!).





He also got a football toss game from my parents, which he thinks is GRAND FUN, but I don't have any pictures of him using it yet (I was cleaning up all the packaging garbage and organizing all the new stuff yesterday while Dan played with him with that game).

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from me and MY NEW BEST FRIEND.

Now I just need to play and play and play until I get good at what I'm doing!

Hope everyone has a fantastic day spent with family and/or friends.

Snowman wanna-be

The kids and I tried to make a snowman yesterday, but the snow just was NOT rolling and packing into anything snowman-like. Jared was extremely disappointed, having been really excited to use the snowman kit we were given (floppy hat, "coal", fake carrot, corncob pipe, scarf, buttons). I came up with a quick solution and had him lay down on the ground and buried most of him with snow and then used the snowman kit on HIM. I think it actually turned out pretty cute and Jared was THRILLED. Dan says it looks like a creepy pic a serial killer would take after having posed the dead body. SHEESH!