Our Crazy Life: A Nice Relaxing Weekend

It was a nice relaxing weekend. In fact, it was one of the best weekends we've had since December. We've been working on house projects since Christmas, and this was the first weekend we took off. We didn't have anything planned the entire weekend. It was so nice!

We took the kids to a duck park right by our house. Ethan and Mia are fascinated with birds. We brought bread so they had fun feeding all the ducks and geese. It was nice to let them run loose and not worry about cars or bothering other people! We took the triple stroller along. It fits in my van, which I was wondering about since I've bought it. A couple of ladies commented on how big it was. We get a lot of looks when we use it!

We bummed around the house on Saturday. Mike took a long nap with the kids and I went to my favorite store, Target. I could spend hours there looking around. And I only spent $100 that trip. Isn't it sad that $100 is a "good" trip? We did a little bit of weeding on Saturday. We're way ahead of where we were compared to last year. We're slowly adding plants in on our yard. Mike calls our acreage his farm. It does take a lot of our time, but I love it! I don't think Mike loves it as much as me! :) The kids and I watched the second "Transformers" movie on Saturday night. They couldn't keep their eyes off the screen. I could tell Ethan was a little scared at first but continued to watch it. Mia loved all the robots as well. Four o'clock that morning, Ethan woke up screaming. He had a bad dream. I had to get up and rock him. I asked him if he dreamt about the robots, and he whispered, "l-yeah, bot bots." I had to stay in his bed with him until he finally fell back asleep.

My parents came on Sunday for dinner. My dad is very spontaneous and decides the day of that they're coming. We didn't have anything planned anyhow, so it was nice to see everyone. We kind of invited ourselves over to Sarah's house for supper, and she made everyone spaghetti. It's always nice when I don't have to cook.

We went to church on Sunday and tried the nursery for the very first time. I stayed there for ten minutes and Ethan and Mia were clinging to me like crazy. The nursery lady finally suggested I leave because they'll just cling to me the entire time I'm in there. I left and I could hear them SCREAMING down the hall. Mike went and checked on them 30 minutes later and they were still screaming. One of the ladies was holding Ethan and one was holding Mia. The nursery lady does in-home daycare and I was thinking of asking her for her number, but I highly doubt after that screaming episode she would want to watch them! Ethan and Mia were so pissed off that they screamed the entire way home and were still screaming at home. That was the first time a stranger has ever watched them. We usually have family watch them when needed and they never scream like that. I'm sure it was scary for them to be dropped off in a strange place with strange people.

Ethan's bottom two-year molars came in. I'm hoping that's why he's been so ornery lately. I hope he starts being my sweet gentle boy again. Then again, it could be a stage he's going through. I hope it doesn't last. He is so very stubborn. Ethan likes to have control. If I want him to do something, he refuses to do it for 5-10 minutes until he's ready to do it. It really gets on my last nerve. How do little kids know what buttons to push? Mike wants me to set up an appointment with a speech therapist, so I'm going to do that this week. There are periods where I think Ethan is improving with his speech and then he has periods where he doesn't. It's like he's afraid to try and say the word. We'll have to see what the speech therapist says. He's going through that stage where he never wants to wear clothes. The only time he'll get dressed is if we're going outside or going somewhere. Otherwise, if I try to put clothes on him, he rips them right off.

Mia is still my easy-going sweet girl. She has her moments, but she is a really easy kid. She loves to sit on my lap and would do it all day if I'd let her. We're still having problems with her scratching Riley, but I put her in time-out as soon as I see her do it and that is helping tremendously. She's the mini-parent around here. If she sees one of the other kids doing something naughty, she'll say, "Ri-Ri stop. Don't." She's my little imitator. Our cat meows all of the time and it really gets on my nerves, so I'm constantly saying, "shh" to our cat. Now, as soon as the cat meows, Mia says, "kitty, shhh" or "kitty, stop". It amazes me how much she pays attention.

We're at a stand-still for potty training. They both go and hide when they have to poop. It's pretty obvious what they're doing, but they don't want to sit on the potty. I don't want to traumatize them with the whole process, so we're taking it slow.

Mia was pretty cautious around the geese. If they started hissing at her, she backed away immediately. Ethan, however, wasn't bothered by the hissing. He kept right at it.