New arrival!

I'm going to be taking a brief break from blogging for a while.....to enjoy and lap up every moment I can with my newborn daughter, Marley. She arrived safe and sound at 9:25 PM on Saturday, June 20, 2009. 6 pounds, 8 ounces and 18.5 inches long. 8 and 8 on her apgar. She is a beautiful, healthy baby girl with the blackest, fullest head of hair I've ever seen on a newborn. Pics to follow when I can....but she's safe, she's ours, and she's home. Many thanks for all your prayers and support.

Potty Training Alex

It began with an article I found, "Potty Training in One Day" and we followed that up with the one book I always swore I would never buy, "Everybody Poops". In the days leading up to the big day, we tried talking to Alex about it. He had #1 mastered for many months; our trouble now was getting him trained for #2. Here's how it went.

Mommy: Alex, we need to talk. Tomorrow is going to be a very big day for you.

Alex: Uh-huh.

Mommy: Alex, would you like to not to wear pullups anymore, not like your little baby brothers do?

Alex: OK.

Mommy: You're a big boy now, and you need to learn to not poop in your diapers anymore.

Alex: OK, mommy.

Mommy: Did you know that everyone poops?

Alex: Uh-huh.

Mommy: And grown up boys poop in the potty!

Alex: Yeah.

Mommy: Andrew poops and Austin poops, but they poop in their diapers, and they're babies, and that's OK for babies.

Alex: OK.

Mommy: But you're not a baby, you're a big boy, so you need to not poop in your pants. OK?

Alex: Uh-huh.

Mommy: You need to put your poopies in the toilet, like grown up people, coz everyone poops. Mommy poops, Daddy poops...

Alex: Daddy poops!

Mommy: Yes, Alex, Daddy poops...everyone poops!

Alex: And farts.

Mommy: Well, yes.

Alex: Daddy farts.

Mommy: Well, yes, Daddy farts, but this is not about farting. This is about pooping.

Alex: Mommy? Daddy farts a lot.

Mommy: Uh-huh, OK, Daddy farts a lot...

Alex: And loud. Daddy farts loud, mommy.

Mommy: (Trying not to laugh) Alex, pay attention, we're not talking about farting, we're talking about pooping.

Alex: Daddy farts loud and he farts lots of times, mommy.

Mommy: (Trying not to laugh)...mmhh, OK, I know that, but I need you to put on your listening ears and pay attention. We need to talk about pooping right now. Not farting.

Alex: Daddy farts every day, mommy, sometimes bunches and bunches of times every day.

Mommy: (Trying very hard not to laugh): Alex, now listen...

Alex: Austin farts and Andrew farts, too.

Mommy: (About to bust out laughing now) Yes, they do, but Alex, pay attention.

Alex: Mommy? Mommy? I will fart! I will fart like Daddy and Austin and Andrew fart! I will fart loud! I will fart loud like this (stands up very, very, ramrod straight, arms at each side, eyes wide open, and he opens his mouth, wide, very wide, to where you can see his tonsils and screams, oh, so very loudly: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Mommy: Oh, Lord. (Gives up....starting laughing)

Alex: (Stands up very straight, very erect and at attention).
"Mommy, I will fart LOUD and everyone will say, (he leans forward and to one side, cocks his head and cups his hand around his ear, like he's listening for something, his eyes darting about, and says), "everyone will say, what was dat noise?"

Mommy: (Tears... laugh....) Pete, help me!

Alex: "And I will say...." looking very sweetly, very innocently at mommy and daddy, Alex says, loudly: "And I will say, "it was THE FART MAN!"

Mommy and Daddy: tears, rolling, falling on the floor with laughter, can't stand up, can't breathe, can't stop laughing.

Alex: sweetly, innocently, "Mommy, Daddy, what's da matter?"

February 2008

So 2008 was well underway....we celebrated Valentine’s Day with candy and small toys, and then went on a few days later to celebrate Austin’s 1st birthday. I could not believe it....Austin, a year old already. We kept the celebration small. Pizza with the family at my parent’s house, then with a chocolate cake to dive into and gobble up afterwards. What a crazy year it had been

We got home early from Austin’s first birthday party because baby Andrew was scheduled for surgery the next day. I have not mentioned it yet on this blog, but Andrew was born with Amniotic Band Symdrome. You can learn more about it at

While Casey was pregnant with Andrew, he at some point during his development got his right hand caught in the amniotic sac. The amniotic sac, which is fiberous in nature, wound around the middle, ring and pinky fingers on his right hand, causing a disfigurement. His middle finger is intact, and has full function, mobility and circulation, but looks a little creased at the base of the finger. His ring finger was heavily disfigured, the band having wrapped around the finger at the base and causing it to swell up and look like a small sausage. The ring finger, though, no matter what it looked like, also had full mobility and circulation. His pinky finger, however, was severed while inutero, leaving only the smallest of stumps in place of his finger.

So our task at hand was to find an orthopedic surgeon and come up with a plan to make Andrew’s hand a little more functional and a lot less disfigured looking. The city we live in has one of the top hand surgeons in the country, and we met with him and just love, love, love this doctor. We were given a number of options for little Andrew, and after a few months and making sure he was old enough and strong enough for surgery, he was scheduled for the first of several surgeries on February 21st.

The short version of a long story is that Andrew came through just fine. The surgery took a lot less time that I imagined it would, and he was such a trooper, laughing and punch-drunk from the anesthesia in the recovery room afterwards. That is, after getting his morphine. When we first saw him, he was beet red and ticked off! He wanted his mommy and daddy, not these strange nurses holding him. So after getting tangled up in his IV cords and nearly tripping and killing us both, I settled in for a soothing rock with my youngest. After about an hour of peace and quiet, they discharged him and sent us home, with my baby in a full cast up to his shoulder, to be worn for the next 6 weeks!

And I have to wonder who that 6 weeks was worse on...Andrew, being the one in the cast; us - his parents, watching him learn to crawl all hiked up with that cast; or his brothers, for being the recipients of many, many bonks on the head by their baby brother, wish his very own, built in baseball bat for a right arm!

Kids...making lemonda outta lemons, huh?

A conversation with Alex

So here's another one of Alex's enlightening conversations. It was the day after we'd been to Busch Gardens, and we'd gotten up and gone to church and brunch that morning, so it had been a very lazy afternoon, with everyone napping to catch up on our sleep. We were all a little tired and lazy, and I really wasn't in the mood to cook a lot, or have the boys be fussy about what I cooked, so it was pretty much let everyone eat whatever they want, as long as it's leftovers, or something very easy. Alex is a little grouchy, and it goes like this:

Mommy: What to do want for supper?

Alex (grouchy): I don't want supper.

Mommy: Are you not hungry?

Alex (whiny): Yes, I am hungry!

Mommy: OK, so what to do want to eat?

Alex (whiny): I don't know.

Mommy: Do you want chicken?

Alex (huffy): I want breakfast.

Mommy: Well, that's OK Do you want eggs and sausage?

Alex (grouchy): No!

Mommy: Well, what do you want?

Alex (whiny): I want nuffin.

Mommy: Come on, Alex, tell me what you want...I'm easy tonight. You want waffles?

Alex (whiny): I don't want waffles!

Mommy: OK, you don't have to eat waffles. Just tell me what you want.

Alex (huffy): I want lunch!

Mommy: All right, how about a sandwich, a ham sandwich, and some fruit?

Alex (huffy): No, no samich!

Mommy: Alex, what do you want then, son?

Alex (huffy): I want nuffin!

Mommy: Nuffin?

Alex (grouchy): Yes, I want nuffin!

Mommy: OK, well, let's fry up a great big bowl of nuffin.

Mommy and Daddy get out a big frying pan and pretend to be cooking up a big bunch of nuffin.

Mommy: OK, here it is, Alex, your bowl of nuffin.

Alex: Aaaaahhhhh, I don't want nuffin.

Mommy: Well, remember, you just said you want nuffin. So we fixed you nuffin. Now you don't want nuffin?

Alex: No, I don't want nuffin. I want sumpin.

Mommy: What's sumpin?

Alex: I don't know.

Mommy: Well, what do you want. Just name it and I'll fix it.

Alex: I want dinner!

Mommy: Well, what do you want for dinner....we'll fix whatever you want.

Alex: I don't know what I want.

Mommy: Alex, you have to eat something. Do you want cereal, do you want waffles, do you want a sandwich, do you want pizza, what to you want?

Alex (screeching): MOMMY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT, BUT I WANT IT RIGHT NOW!

Mommy (wisely): Such is life, Alex, trust me, such is life.

God, Backhoes and UFOs

Having a three year old is a lot of fun...one morning, on the way to school, we saw a lot of backhoes at the construction site across from school. So I purposely drove by the construction site and slowed down so Alex could look, and all you could hear from the back of the van was, "Wow! Mommy! Look at dat backhoe! What is dat, Mommy? That a backhoe?", etc., etc., etc. Then, when we got to the parking lot, every hole in the parking lot, which was caused by the recent rain, every cement glob in the parking lot, every crack in the sidewalk, Alex would ask: "That made by a backhoe?" Or "a backhoe did that?" Then, upon seeing the large sinkhole in front of the education building, Alex asked if that was made by a backhoe. I told him, "no, that is part of the Earth. It's a sinkhole. God made that." Alex then asked, "Did God use a backhoe?" ....I told him yes....now he thinks God is so cool for using a backhoe!

That's Alex's new word, "Cool", that, and "awesome!" You hear that a lot now, "wow, that's cool" or "wow, that's awesome". So if he thinks God is cool and awesome, then we're doing something right! I really think we are, because he now can say his own prayers, and, when we do the nighttime prayers and we ask God to bless everyone, he always says, at the very end, "And God Bless Jesus!"

However, one night Alex was playing with his wrecker truck. He noticed where the hook part on the back of the wrecker was missing, so he says: "Mommy, where my hooker? I need a hooker!" I was a little distracted from across the playroom and did not see what he was doing, so I jerked my head up real quick and looked over at him and said, "WHAT?" He saw my reaction and said, again, "Mommy, I need a hooker...now! Get me a hooker!" I could only think to myself, please, Lord, don't let him be saying things like this at school or church! It's so hard when they say funny things to not just burst out laughing! I say again, only Alex!

We had a couple of very gruesome experiences with more UFOs recently. Actually, Aunt Chris saw her first UFO the day of Andrew's surgery. She and dad were watching Austin and Alex while Mom, Pete and I were at the hospital during Andrew's surgery. She found a UFO (unidentified food object) in the play room. She said at first she thought it was a piece of sausage, but after closer inspection, she determined that it had, in it's former life, been some variety of pasta. The jury is still out on that exact determination. Pasta's good enough for me! And then last night, I had all three of the boys in the play room and was trying to turn Austin around on my lap. My hand grabbed his belly to turn him and I felt something around his belly button. I looked at it, and it was either: 1) the biggest, jumbo-sized, greenest, gooiest, stickiest booger EVER KNOWN TO MANKIND; or 2) a chewed-up, spit-out piece of green-grape Fruit Roll-Up. I do not know, but Austin and mommy underwent a sink full of handwashing right then, just to be safe. As anyone who knows me know....I'll trade you 10 poppy diapers to one snotty nose, any day of the week. Anything below the waist, I can handle...it's all the "stuff" from the neck up that I grow weak in the knees at...and with three little boys 3 and under...there's a lot of both!

Life With 3 boys goes on!

So we roll into 2008 in our new house, with our three boys. Austin, in one day, started saying 3 new words: cookie, thank you, and kit-cat. It started one morning, he was looking at the cookie jar and was babbling, so I wasn't paying too much attention, but then, all of sudden, he said, "cookie" and pointed. So I happily gave him one, and said, "OK, Austin, what do we say? We say thank you." And he looked at me and said it. Sort of babbled it, of course, but you could understand him. Then, old Luck-luck came into the room, and Austin is just fascinated with him, and out of the blue, he said, "kit-cat!" Three new words, in one day!

One Sunday, Alex really hammed it up at Sunday brunch himself. We were with Aunt Chris and, as usual, we were the loudest, messiest people there. We always take a table near the back, so people can avoid us if they wish. Well, next to us one aisle over was a group of older ladies, just out of church, too, having a nice brunch. Very sweet, very peaceful (well, as peaceful as it gets sitting near us). Austin is going through a food-throwing stage and Alex is just Alex. Always a puddle around him. He likes blowing bubbles through his straw now. And Andrew dropped his bottle and the top came off and formula went everywhere. Napkins everywhere, straw wrappers everywhere, wet wipes everywhere, juice boxes falling over, food on the floor. A true zoo. So near the end of the meal, Alex gets down from his chair and is standing by Austin's high chair at the end of the table. Alex steps right into all the mess on that end of the table. Alex announces, very loudly, just so the whole restaurant can hear, "good heavens, Austin, what a mess! This place is a pig pen!" (Hhhmm, where do you think he picked up that, huh?)

Then, later that night, our grandson Jared come over to spend the night. Jared was 7 to Alex's 3 years old at the time. Now, Alex had not managed to get a nap in this day, and was edgy and tired. However, he was so ecstatic to see Jared, he got just downright nutty. At one point, Alex and Jared were sitting together side-by-side on the couch, reading (well, Jared was reading, Alex was listening and looking at the pictures). Alex had a dirty (number 2) diaper and Jared smelled it, so he moved away. Alex scooted over by him. Jared got up and moved to the other couch. Alex followed. I finally got a whiff of the problem, and checked Alex's butt. Yep, time for a diaper change. Off to the changing table. Alex threw a royal fit, a real fit, struggling and crying and mad. He thought I was taking him away from playing with Jared. I tried to explain that I just wanted to change his diaper and would take him back to play with Jared, but the conversation went like this:

Me: Alex, calm down, I need to change your diaper.

Alex (crying): Why?

Me: Coz it's messy.

Alex (crying): Why?

Me: Because you pooped in your pants instead of telling your daddy or me that you need to go potty.

Alex (crying): Why?

Me: I don't know why, you know you should tell us and we'll help you go potty.

Alex (crying): Why?

Me: Because we want you to be clean and not poop your pants.

Alex (calming down): What you doing now?

Me: Putting a clean diaper on you.

Alex: Why?

Me (getting frustrated): Because you need a clean diaper on your bottom.

Alex: Why?

Me (very frustrated now): Why, what, Alex?

Alex: Why you puttin' a new diaper on me?

Me (exasperated now to the point of tears): Just because. You tell me why.

Alex: Well, I don't know why. Coz I'm just gonna poop it again!

Welcome to my world!

Back to the Time-Line Driven Blog here - 2008 begins

The year 2008 dawned with us continuing to settle into our new house, recover from the holidays, and pray that I recover from the flu. On January 3rd, 2008, we welcomed a new baby into the family...but this time, our grandchild! Lukas, second born son of my step-son and his wife, was born bringing the current total of little boys in our immediate family to 8! A healthy baby, a happy family, and almost our own baseball team...what better way to start the new year!

On January 8, 2008, for the very first time, unassisted, at 10 ½ months, our middle son, Austin, took his very first steps! What a big boy he was. He really took off after that...by January 13, he was completely walking everywhere on his own, but then it was on to climbing, climbing and more climbing. On his second day of walking, he discovered climbing, and even managed to get up onto the bathroom counter!

January 8, 2008 was a big day for another reason: at 1:45 PM, we had the final hearing for Andrew's adoption! He was now and forever officially ("fish-al" according to Alex) OURS!

A week later it was time to celebrate my birthday, and I must have been really sick for the last few months, because my entire family took enough pity on me to get me almost a year’s worth of spa gift certificates! Oh, the massages I was gonna get with those! Relaxation here I come!

Alex is such a good big brother to Austin (rooti-tooti) and Andrew (mody), his nicknames for his brothers. He used to get a little jealous sometimes, especially in the mornings when we would get the babies up and carry them in to the kitchen. Alex wanted to be carried in to the kitchen, too. But at 43 pounds, he was just too heavy to carry anymore. So I would try to get him to hold hands and walk, but some mornings, he just didn't want to. So he'd stand in the hallway and cry, "But mommy, you have to carry me! I'll fall if you don't!" I'd tell him, "No, you won't fall. You're a big boy!" So he'd take a couple of steps, then with such drama and exaggeration you would not believe it, he'd throw himself down on the hallway floor, start crying and say, "See, mommy, I told you I'd fall down!" And the wailing, sobbing and whining begins. What drama! The Academy Awards committee needs to keep their eyes on him. Where does he get it?

During the first weeks at the new house, we watched a lot of HGTV for ideas on projects for our new house. You hear on HGTV a lot phrases like "3-bedroom, 2.5 bath", or "4 bedroom, 3 and a half bath''; "Living room, dining-room, den, curbside appeal" , etc. Alex really picked up on a lot of these phrases and began to walk through our house counting the bedrooms and bathrooms, saying "curb-side appeal", "large lot", and other real estate lingo. And, at other people's houses, or even just driving through the neighborhood, he'd say, "that house has 4 bedrooms, 2 and a half bath!" Or "that house has play room!" If Hollywood doesn't work out for him, real estate may be his thing!

Along that line, he woke me up early one morning to watch cartoons. It was still very early and the infomercials were still airing on television. He must have seen one about credit counseling, because he woke me at 6 AM, saying "have too much credit card debt? Call us now or apply online!" I was just praying he didn't catch a late-night or early morning Viagra commercial...and then with my luck, start talking about erectile disfunction as church or school!

Yup, 2008 was starting off to be a banner year at our house! The year of the Triple A Threat!