Garrett's 5th Birthday

Today is Garrett's birthday. And not just any birthday, but his 5th birthday. Half-way to 10, birthday. One year from kindergarten, birthday. It's funny how fast that time seems to fly when you look back over it from this vantage point. But in the beginning, it feels as if your child will never outgrown this stage or that phase. And you'll forever be cursed with a child who plays in their poop (or some other crazy phase that you just have to suffer through with some kids.)

Garrett is smart, loving, loyal, friendly, talkative, stubborn, cautious, persistent, crazy kid. It's awesome to think of how much kids learn over a very short time-span and how firmly developed his personality already is.

I have many stories about him that I want to share. However, we've had a very busy weekend full of partying and presents, cupcakes and little sleep, so I'll share the stories later and just stick with pictures for now.

This year, for the first time, we had a "friend" birthday party. We've always just stuck with family parties and invited one couple who we are good friends with (and they have a son who is close to Garrett's age.) But this year I figured Garrett has some pretty well-developed friendships so it would be fun to invite some of those friends to a party. We had it at a local kids' gymnastics facility and it was a lot of fun. I wasn't sure how many people to expect at the party because I limited the number of invitations we sent out. While Garrett is a people person and loves doing things with his friends, he's not a huge fan of big crowds, so I didn't see any point in overwhelming him with every friend he knows. We sent out 10 invitations to friends of Garrett's from school and church and everyone came except for one. I was really surprised by the turnout, but it was great.

Here are a few of the pictures from the party.

Things that Stay at Home Moms Would Like You To Know

I've read a lot of different articles based on the "Things that .... wish you knew" so I thought I would take a stab at one for SAHM (stay at home moms). This will NOT be an all-encompassing list. Some of the things I list, certainly do not apply to all SAHM and I know there will be things I neglect that others would have the top of their list. I'm also not writing this as a complaint, just an observance after having been a SAHM for a little over 4 years now.

•Our husbands' don't make loads of money, therefore allowing us to stay at home. We cut back a lot in order for this to happen. I could go off on a tangent describing all the areas we cut back in, but I'll save that for another post.

•We do not sit around eating bon bon's all day. If I have a snack of any sort, I would have 2 beggars right at my feet asking for a bite. It's not worth the trouble.

•We don't sit around watching soap operas all day. If I even show an interest in turning the TV on and changing the channel to a non-animated show, there would be lots of cries of "I want to watch my show!" Again, it's not worth the trouble. If I happen upon some freetime during naptime, I might watch a show on my computer, but that's the extent of it. (And it wouldn't be a soap opera. I'm just sayin'...)

•We get asked to volunteer for a lot of different things because everyone assumes we have lots of available time on our hands. If we turn down your request, please know it's truly because we don't have the time for it. We're probably already up to our ears volunteering in other areas and really don't have the time to add anything else.

•We really don't have lots of free time during the day. Lots of time is spent doing the following: preparing meals, serving meals, cleaning up after meals, getting out toys, playing with toys, putting up toys, getting out a game, playing the game, putting up the game, discipline, time-outs, reminders of why we don't jump on the furniture, tending to bumps and scrapes from when the kids don't remember why we don't jump on the furniture, refereeing fights (yes, I'm already there and Cooper is 14 months old), reading books (sometimes many, many times on the same book), chasing toddlers, keeping toddlers out of rooms they shouldn't be in, keeping toddlers off of things they shouldn't climb on, keeping toddlers away from toys and things too small for them to play with safely, arguing with preschoolers, explaining rules and manners and basic etiquette to preschoolers, doing crafts and cleaning up after crafts with preschoolers, answering one million and one questions throughout the day. Notice I didn't even touch on housework (aside from cleaning up after meals and toys). No laundry has been done yet, no bathrooms have been cleaned, no vacuuming, dusting, mopping. Not to mention the volunteering most participate in. The errands to run. The playdates scheduled. The groceries to be bought. Our days really are full. Even if it may not seem like that's possible to some.

•Our homes are not always clean. Very, very far from it. Sometimes we contemplate hiring a housekeeper. Until we remember the fact that we don't, in fact, have any money to pay them.

•We do not have home-cooked meals every night. There are many cereal nights. Sandwich nights. Breakfast for supper nights. Fend for yourself nights.

•We don't love our children more than anyone else loves their children. We don't think we're better than working moms. We get just as stressed out with our kids as everyone else does. Maybe moreso since we rarely get a break.

•We don't constantly go and do things. I personally limit the trips we take to places like the park, zoo, museums, etc. I want them to be special experiences, not routine and expected.

Bottom line, we want people to know that we're just like everyone else who works a "real job". We don't always get a lot accomplished. Our days can be tough and hair-pulling. We sometimes question whether or not this is what we should be doing. But we continue to stay at home with our kids. Not because we don't have other options in the work place. Not because we don't want our kids around other kids. Not because we're "old-school" and think that a woman's place is at home.

But because it works best for our families.

One Year

One year from today, I will be preparing myself and Garrett for his first day of school. Laying out clothes, fixing a lunch, getting his backpack ready, stuffing Kleenex into my purse and all available pockets on whatever I will be wearing that day. Just generally rushing around, trying to make it to school on time along with everyone else.

Can I just say that I'm not ready? That typing this actually gives me great feelings of apprehension and lots of sadness? Yes, I know that's life, kids grow up, they start school, but it really does feel like this has come up on me so fast. I remember when I was teaching school, I used to silently make fun of the parents who would be seen leaving the kindergarten hallway on the first day of school in tears. I always thought those kids looked plenty big to be bringing to school and I couldn't figure out why in the world parents would be sad about this day when they knew it would eventually come. I want to go back to that old me and slap her a little.

Yesterday morning at church our pastor talked about a tradition he started with his boys where they would say a quick prayer when they dropped their boys off at school every morning while they were still in the car. He started this when his oldest son was in kindergarten. His son just recently turned 16 and will now be driving himself to school so those mornings of his dad praying for him in the school parking lot before he walked into the building are a thing of the past. Just hearing that story made me tear up a little. How ridiculous am I.

What I do plan on doing is to attempt to savor this next year. Do breakfast out on occasion, go fun places during the day while school is in session for everyone else, just generally try to soak up these remaining 364 days I have of being the main focus for my child. I will soon become someone on the sidelines along with many other someones: teachers, coaches, principals, friends. I'm just not ready for it yet.

The One With All The Pictures

I initially want to apologize for a lack of pictures being posted lately. I've been doing most of my blogging from my work laptop (not during work time!) and it doesn't have any pictures on it. So now I need to apologize for the inundation of pictures on this post. It covers the last couple of months, briefly.

Back in July, we celebrated Keith's birthday. Nothing fancy, just broiled steaks and ranch-style beans the day of his birthday (on which he didn't get home until 10:30 pm) and then the following weekend we had cake and icecream. So here are "the boys" about to sing Happy Birthday.

This was Cooper's first time to have cake after his birthday party in June. He was thrilled and gobbled up every bit of the piece I gave him. Though he did offer to share a crumb with Daddy. It was his birthday and all.

This summer, we've had quite a few preschool playdates with other preschool families at our church. A different outing has been planned every week. We missed some and made some. Juggling both boys didn't allow me to take many pictures at the outings, but here's one from our bowling trip. It was Garrett's first time bowling outside of the Wii. As you can see from the picture, his technique still needs a lot of work. He looked more like a basketball player throwing a chest pass than he did a bowler bowling a ball. And the racket from the ball being lofted was not pleasant, but he enjoyed bowling. He actually bowled 2 spares. Though they did have pads in the gutters for the kids so that helped.

This is very common around our house. Garrett enjoying Cooper's toys whenever he can. And asking me to take a picture of him while doing so. (Sorry the flash washed him out here. He's not really this pale in real life.)

Cooper found Mr. Potato Head's glasses and had a lot of fun wearing them. I took quite a few pictures of this, but this one is one of my favorites.

A new favorite pasttime around here. Cooper has decided that he needs to color when Garrett does. So far he has actually kept the crayon on the paper and he really likes it. Garrett gets annoyed when Cooper continually tries to flip pages when he's in the middle of an intricate picture. But for the most part he's an extremely patient brother.

Garrett loves playing dress-up with his action hero costumes. Sometimes his ensemble requires a belt, so every now and then one will be laying around in the living room. Cooper decided to do his own dressing up, but figured the belt works better as a scarf. He loves draping things behind his neck like this.

And just to prove that our days are not all fun and games. We see this face a lot. I don't know what he was mad about here, but we've already entered the beginnings of terrible two's at 14 months old. He hits, he throws fits, he throws toys, it's lots of fun.

Cooper "Walking"

Cooper loves walking like this. He won't do it any other way.

My apologies for the lighting and the brevity. My memory card was almost full so I didn't have much room to work with.

Our Weekend

The weekend got off to a rough start because Keith worked until midnight on Friday. It looks like that is the last of his late nights for awhile, but I really don't like staying up that late anymore. I could have gone to bed, but I ended up staying up till he got home.

On Saturday morning, we went out for breakfast. I always enjoy eating breakfast out when we can. It's crazy though that Cooper now needs his own breakfast rather than just eating off of our plates. He has a pretty big appetite.

After breakfast we drove down to Keith's sister's house for a birthday party for 2 of her kids. One has an August birthday and another has a September birthday, so she just has a family party together for both of them. Since Cooper ended up not getting a nap beyond some sleeping in his carseat, he was a bear that evening. Keith and I went to bed by 9pm because we were so tired from staying up late the night before. At 11:30pm, I woke up to Cooper crying. Garrett used to do this when he would get "overtired". I always knew if he didn't get a good nap in, he was not going to sleep good the night either. Cooper apparently is keeping up this tradition. He was up for about an hour before he finally went back to sleep. I tried a few things to get him to sleep, but he kept waking up. Keith held him for awhile to try and calm him down, but ultimately he had to cry himself to sleep.

Sunday morning we both woke up feeling as if someone had ran over us with a truck. Cooper definitely got up on the wrong side of the bed and was throwing fits right and left as soon as the sun came up. We ended up missing church because we didn't want to have to hand him over to the nursery workers to have to deal with an extremely cranky kid. I hate missing church when we don't have to, but in cases like this, I feel like it's better for everyone involved if we just stay at home. I ended up putting Cooper down for a morning nap (which we've done away with for awhile now) and he slept for almost 2 hours.

I was able to get all of the laundry done and mostly put away and Keith worked on putting pulls on our hallway cabinet. Both boys get into this cabinet all the time. On the bottom shelf is all of our games and puzzles and on the top shelves is where I keep all of our craft stuff and office supply stuff. Since Garrett has access to it, he's painted his carpet along with writing all over in his room with marker. I've been wanting to make these cabinets inaccessible, but there wasn't any way to do so. They're right outside of Garrett's room so if I put up a gate, then he wouldn't be able to get into his room (plus he can get over gates if he wants to). So we put pulls on them and then I bought a child-safety latch that goes over the pulls and keeps the doors from being opened. It's so nice! Now I just need to reorganize those cabinets now that little hands can't get in them and make big messes.

That afternoon we did a little shopping. I've been needing to buy Garrett's birthday presents for awhile now, so I dropped the guys off at Sears and then went to Toys R Us. I met the guys back at Sears when I was done and Keith decided we need to get new bath towels. So we picked out 2 new ones for each bathroom (so basically a new towel for each of us). Towels are expensive! But all of our current ones are 8 years old, so I guess it's time to start buying a few new ones here and there. Then we went to another store and looked at new bedding. We've had the same comforter on our bed for years now, not to mention the same pillows. We ended up just buying new pillows because all of the comforters I liked were more money than we wanted to spend.

Last night we worked in the yard, mowing, weedeating and pulling weeds in the flower beds. Even with watering our new grass everyday, it's still dry out there and there are some areas where the grass is looking a little brown. But I'm sure that can be attributed to the 100+ degree days we've had for awhile now. Keith has upped the watering schedule, so hopefully everything will perk up soon.

It's hard to believe that tomorrow Cooper will be 14 months old and in 13 days, Garrett will be 5!

Our Day

Today we had a fun day.

This morning we went to a local kids' gym which is the same place where Garrett's birthday party will be held in a few weeks. I've only been there 2 other times and, incidentally, those times were in the winter and the spring. Not the summer, till today. Turns out the building isn't quite as cool as you might hope it would be given the 100+ degree days we're having right now. So the birthday party will be interesting. On the bright side, she has lots of fans all over the place, so hopefully everyone will find a good spot in order to keep relatively cool.

This afternoon has been spent helping Cooper practice his walking. He and I have walked all over the house with him just holding on to one of my fingers while he led me around. I'm in hopes that by doing this regularly, he'll start walking independently soon. He did stand up in the middle of the floor without holding on to anything for the first time, so that was good.

Something else that he's learned today is how to open the doors in our house. Of course I was expecting this to happen at some point, but I really thought it would be AFTER he learned how to walk. Kind of backwards if you ask me. Our doorknobs have lever handles, so they're pretty easy for little kids to open, unfortunately. He's now tall enough to reach the lever on his tiptoes and he pulls it down and pushes on the door. Of course, if the door has to open by pulling, then he can't open it yet, but of course the rooms I don't want him in and therefore keep the door closed, all open by pushing them from the hallway side. So I've had to bring out my 2 babygates who have been waiting on the sidelines (we bought 3 babygates when Garrett was a baby. That tells you how active that boy was.) Now we get to juggle a stepstool around these gates as well, in order for Garrett to have access to a bathroom and his bedroom. On top of all of this, with the stepstool hanging out in the hallway today, Cooper has learned how to climb on top of it to stand. How the boy is learning all of these things and still refuses to walk is beyond me!

And on a sidenote. There's a stomach bug going around our area right now. Anytime I hear about bugs like this, I always get paranoid. I feel like I'm constantly watching my kids for any signs that they might have it. Constantly checking myself out for any symptoms. I feel like a crazy person and I hate being that way, but in the back of my mind I'm figuring that we'll probably get it somehow and I want to be on the lookout for it. And if I knew it wouldn't send me over the edge, I would probably avoid going out to very many places because of the chance of catching it, but I'm trying not to go completely overboard with my OCD. Please forgive me for being this way! I keep telling myself once Cooper is a little older, I won't stress about bugs like this as much because I don't remember worrying about it before he was born. And Garrett has always been super healthy and I've never worried about it much, but I find myself being more of a worrywart as of late. I'm not sure where that's coming from. Does anyone else do this or is it just me?