Princess Party (and Prince)

Cameryn and Luke were invited to a Prince and Princess party this past Saturday by a girl named Casey (her mom is Lori) that we met going to reading time at the Library when Cameryn was only 6 months old. I could have dressed up Luke since I do have his cute little Easter suit but I didn't want to go through that hassle and have him get all dirty. But Cameryn sure LOVED getting dressed up in her Princess dress for the party. She was so excited.

Cameryn's dress isn't technically a Disney Princess dress but she's none the wiser and I told her she was dressed as Aurora (Sleeping Beauty). I was glad too for this dress because every other little girl was Cinderella and there were like 6 or 7 girls there. Cameryn just loves her little brother!!
Luke and Cameryn eating their heart shaped baloney sandwiches at the Royal table.
Lori had even hired a professional face painter (if that can be a profession). Cameryn absolutely refused to sit and get her face painted but Luke was an absolute angel. I wasn't sure how he would react so she only did something small to start with. She showed him his face in the mirror with the spider web and spider on his face and he loved it. I asked him if he wanted another picture and he nodded his head. So she drew a Spiderman face on his other cheek. She showed him his face in the mirror again and then we got down. There was one other little boy there named Dominico and he had half his face painted like Spiderman. When Luke saw him, he smiled and pointed to his own cheek to show Dominico that he was Spiderman too. He babbled something which I didn't understand but I understood the pointing. It was so cute!!

After all the kids (except Cameryn) had their faces painted, we all went outside for a treasure hunt. There were tons of these plastic gold coins spread all over the back yard along with a few other "treasures". Luke was so cute running around not really spotting anything (unless I showed it to him) but shouting "Money!!" the whole time. He would laugh with delight every time I showed him another gold coin and put it in his little bag. He didn't want to go back inside for cake but it was getting a little chilly with the wind so I dragged him in anyways. He was fine once I showed him that he was getting cake!! They all got really fun little goddy bags when it was time to leave.

This is after we got home and I was about to put him down for a nap. The Spiderman is a bit smudged but still looks pretty good for being on a busy little boy. I had to go wash off the face paint before nap so I had to get a picture of the Spiderman.

I just had to make this picture larger cuz of his sweet little innocent face. Just look how adorable my little man is holding onto his Curious George and all ready for a nap. I could look at this sweet picture all day!!

Update

I wrote earlier this month (I think) about my weaning Luke. Well, I was kinda complaining and saying how long it was going to take to finish weaning him. Boy was I wrong!! The day that I wrote that post was March 7th and that ended up being the last day that I nursed Luke (sigh). The next day, he was so good at nap time and bed time and I haven't had a problem since then.

I am happy about this of course but also miss my special time with my little boy. It was time though. And he is an angel about going to bed. It used to take me so long to get him to sleep and Mike was always done putting Cameryn to bed so quickly. I would be laying in bed wishing that I was done and that he would just go to sleep!!! Now all I have to do is tell him it's time for bed and pick him up with his stuffed animal Curious George. He tells everyone, "nighnight" and then lays down cuddling with George. This is so much nicer from the earlier days of me having to spend what felt like hours putting him to bed at night and nap time and then sometime he wouldn't take his naps. I definitely don't miss that.

He is like a thousand times easier to put to bed than Cameryn now, who finds every reason to get back out of bed, she's thirsty, she has to go potty, she needs to brush her teeth, and my personal favorite, "I need you". That's not even a reason! It is really quite frustrating. I make sure that we do all those things before we put her in bed so she can't have any excuses. We even got her a light that she reads book with in bed after we have said prayer and read both kids a book. For some reason, she just feels compelled to get out of bed every night. I have told her that if she gets out of bed she gets a smack on her little butt and yet she still gets out of bed and when I go to smack her butt, she yells, "no, don't do this". It is annoying and funny at the same time. The spanking seems to usually work for her only getting out once but if Mike goes out to put her back and not me, she doesn't get spanked so of course she gets out of bed again. I have told Mike over and over that he needs to be consistent with me and follow through on this, but he goes out there and it never happens. Dads are too soft. I don't like to be the mean one either, but I'm not going to put her to bed 10 times just to avoid spanking her or give in to letting her have sippy cup in bed or let her read even more books after she's done with the two small books we give her in the first place.

Anyone have any other ideas? We got her a new twin bed, decorated her room, give her lots of her stuffed animals to sleep with, read her stories, let her read more stories, gave her the light to read them with, got her her Princess bed set, and we are just out of ideas. I really think if both Mike and I got really strict with the whole spanking if she gets out, it will work. It's not like I'm asking him to beat her bottom, all I do is give her a small swat on her bottom and she gets more offended then hurt, but hey, it works. I do that then I tuck her back in bed and leave. No talking, no promising or bribing, I just leave. I just need to get dad on board.

Odds 'n ends

Cameryn has said some especially funny and weird things this week. Unfortunately I lost the little piece of paper that I had written them all down on. Yes, I wrote them down because she says sooooooooooooooooooooo many things now that I forget a lot of the really funny ones. I can only remember two of them right now.

I was working up at the Prop Shop (I work at a friends golf course for those of you that didn't know that) and Cameryn was being an especially big punk. She wasn't listening to what I was saying and was running amok in the pro shop. I told her that she needed to behave (being the key word here, I'll put it in bold) or she was going to go in time out and that she wouldn't get any fruit snacks (yes, bribery folks... what?... I'm up there for 5 hours with 2 kids on Wednesdays and I was getting really frustrated). She looks at me and says, "But mama, we are being have!!" I guess she doesn't quite know what behave means yet if she thinks that you can "be have" I just thought it was so cute!!

The other time, Mike was giving her a bath and she was using the lufa thing to "wash" the bath tub. Mike told her to stop since that is for washing bodies and not the tub. She said, "I'm just washing it a little bit so I can do two more lickings. I just want two more." Mike left the bathroom so we could laugh quietly together about how silly our little daughter is. She says so many weird things I wish I could remember more of them.

I took this next little video while at my parents house on Easter Sunday. The kids were playing with one of those Darth Vader masks and they looked so cute. Enjoy!!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

P.S. I miss hearing from all my friends and family in the comments!! (hint hint) (except of course Jessica and Gina, who I hear from quite regularly- thank you!!)

Good things are good things to do...

"Good things are good things to do and bad things are bad things to do" Words of wisdom from Cameryn given to me and Luke while eating lunch the other day. That girl is so funny. Everytime she does somethings nice she looks at me and says "Mama, I'm a good grrr (though she is saying girl it comes out sounding like grrr), I'm so nice to my brother, I such a good grrr". She can be very sweet some of the time, though I think Luke gets a little sick of her picking him up and smothering him with kisses and hugs. She is getting better at not grabbing every toy away from Luke and asking him first to have it or just trading with him.

Luke can stick up for himself though or at least he's getting better at it. There is plenty of smacking going on on both sides. He really loves his sister though and is very protective of her around lots of other kids. He gets very upset when someone tries to take a toy or food away from her.

They are so cute playing together. We bought a lightsaber for Luke so they could each have one and play with them together (yeah, I know we're just asking for it aren't we but we couldn't help it; besides they fight constantly over Cameryn's). So Luke was playing with his in the living room and hitting the dog and his daddy and most everything in sight. Cameryn had ran to her room to get her lightsaber so when Luke goes to try to hit her with his, she blocks it. It was so cute and then he started getting upset because he couldn't hit her. He wasn't swinging it around really hard so no one think that I let my kids hit everyone and everything for fun. I'm just glad that they like to spend so much time playing together and that they make each other so happy (mostly).

Here's art and crafts time with watercolors:

Luke painted mostly in that same spot the whole time and then after awhile only wanted to "paint" with the water.

Cameryn is a very good little artist so far and colors very well between the lines. She likes to color all the small things first though like eyes and parts of the face. She can paint or color for hours though. We have tons and tons of her artwork just laying around the house. I hate to throw it away but what do I do with it all.

The new thing

A few weeks ago I saw a video on my friends blog with a video from these guys, Flight of the Conchords, called Business Time (check it out here). Mike and I have been obsessed ever since. We downloaded a ton of their songs and have been watching them on YouTube almost everyday laughing at their hilarious songs and comedy. This video (Bret, you got it going on) is probably my favorite along with "If you're into it". I love these guys!! I'm trying to rent their show they had that played on HBO over the summer.

I have also noticed in the past two weeks that so many people are talking about them. I just want to throw in my two cents about how hilarious these guys are. Hope you enjoy the video. Let me know what you think.

Update: Okay my links don't seem to work because when I try to edit this post in Blogger, the video disappears. So I've got to just post this through YouTube and you'll have to check out those other videos on your own if you haven't already seen them before. Sorry.

Blue and Gold

Yesterday was the Blue and Gold banquet and since Mike is a cub scout leader we were all there as a family. Their theme for the year is Chinese New Year and it is the Year of the Rat, so we had a Chinese food buffet and they had up some cool decorations and had spelled out all the boys names in Chinese letters. We also had the cake decorating contest. Every cub scout and leader were supposed to bring a decorated cake to be judged and everything on it had to be edible. I had tried to get Mike to make his own the night before but we got too busy so I ended up having to do it.

Luke and his daddy. Cameryn impatiently waiting for food.

Devon, Kathryn, and her friend Maddie.

Mike had already bought a mix so I was thankfully spared from having to do one from scratch. I had wanted to spend a good part of the day reading as I also had my book club last night and had about 150 pages left to read of the book. (I hadn't gotten it till recently because it had already been borrowed from the library and I had to put it on hold) I hate going to these things without having read the book but I had chores that needed to be done and I also had to make and decorate a cake. I had no idea what to put on it do I just went and bought a whole bunch of different goodies to play around with as decorations. I had M&M's, Hershey kisses, chocolate chips, sliced almonds, walnuts, raisins, marshmallows, black and green decorating icing and sugar cones (for ice cream). This is what I came up with from all those things:

The first one is mine and the one next to it is Devon and my dad's cake. I personally think that my dad's rat looks a lot better than the one I drew, I mean it actually looks like a rat. Whereas mine looks like some weird, fat rat that some little kid drew. Hey, I never said I could draw.

These are just two of the other cakes that I thought were really cool looking.

So they called each of the tables to eat and as they were walking up they were supposed to vote on which of the cakes they liked best and that cake would get the "People's Choice award. I voted for my dad's cake cause I like chocolate and I thought it was a really good drawing with icing of a rat. After quickly eating though I had to leave so I could go to my book club. Mike called me later on his way home with the kids and told me that I had won this:

Pretty cool huh!! Hey at least I at a good excuse for not finishing my book on time for book club.. I was baking an award winning cake- haha.

I really enjoy going to the Cub Scout activities. The boys are so fun and they really like Mike and I think that he really enjoys himself. I took all the pictures cuz I knew that I wanted to do a post about it but it was an added bonus that I also got to brag about my awesome cake decorating skills (seriously kidding- I think people only voted for it cuz I had so much candy and color on it. They seemed to like the end of the ice cream cone for a nose too).

Poor kids

Cameryn

Cameryn has started to watch the Star Wars movies (the original ones only). One Saturday Mike watched Return of the Jedi with her and since then she decided that she likes them. She calls them "the one where they rescue Leia", "the one with all the snow" and "the one with Jabba the Hutt". I would have thought she would call it "the one with the Ewoks", but guess not.

So Wednesday, I let her watch Empire Strikes Back while Luke was taking a nap. I was talking on the phone to my sister, Lindsey, when she starts calling me from downstairs. I go down there and she is very sad (not crying, just upset) because "Han's gone mama". She kept saying it over and over. I told her that his friends would rescue him so she didn't have to worry, but she was still a little bit sad.

It was so cute. She has watched it before and never really said anything about it but this past time, I guess it got to her. It was just too adorable. Lindsey thought it was so funny and cute too.

Luke

I've been trying to wean Luke for a while now. I have only been nursing him at nap time, bedtime and if he woke up in the middle of the night (also sometimes in the morning if he woke up to early and I wanted to get just a little bit more sleep). So I started with putting him in his bed while still awake; yes I know I should have been doing that for at least a year already, since he is 19 months old, but he would NEVER cry himself to sleep and I could only listen to so much screaming and crying and choking before I would give up and go in and get him. That was very slow going but he was getting better about it at least at bedtime. Nap time is a completely different story with him.

Then he was still waking up at night which I thought ridiculous since he is old enough to sleep through the night. Well, that it turns out is because he is getting his second molars in on the bottom already so he's been doing better now. Plus, I won't nurse him at night time if he wakes up. I will go in and pick him up but I'll just quietly talk to him and give him a drink of water if he wants one and wait until he calms down and then he'll quietly go back in his bed and sleep again.

All this was very slow going until he suddenly got attached to this Curious George stuffed animal that Mike bought for Cameryn at the hospital when she was born (we joked that she had monkey toes). One night he was hugging it and kissing it and Mike asked him if he wanted to take it to bed and he definitely did. Since then it has gotten easier and easier to do this whole weaning thing. It also is so cute to see him holding tight to this little monkey when he goes to bed and then when he wakes up. I've now stopped nursing him at night since Monday this week. He was okay with it until last night when he really freaked out and was crying and throwing himself around and pointing for me to lay down on my bed with him so I would nurse him. It was so sad and I wanted to just give in but I also would really like to be done at the same time. I didn't give in though and I gave him some water and got him calmed down finally by telling him that George needed to go to sleep and so did Daddy. He let me put him in his bed then but I still stayed in for another minute or two and patted his back.

He absolutely refuses to give up nursing at nap time though (at least right now- I will wear him down in time- haha). He will not calm down at all and doesn't want anything but me. George is a little bit helpful in at least cutting the nursing time down to only 2 or 3 minutes but I can't seem to get any farther then that. But I've only cut out the nursing for bedtime for not even a week so I'm still willing to give him more time for naps.

This was so much easier with Cameryn!! She weaned herself at 17 months and I didn't have to do anything. I guess they all can't be that easy.. to bad though.

It's finally gone!!!

I have been trying to get rid of my mom's old black upright piano for almost 2 years now (I think- but it feels even longer) and finally IT'S GONE!!!!!!!!! I put it on Freecycle.com back in December or early January and had a few responses that came to nothing. One guy even said he would take it and then came and looked at it and said no. I was so frustrated. I placed a new ad with even more info about the piano. It's old, black and ugly but it plays well and can be fixed up easily. Finally I had another response and then a phone call which turned into another person coming to look at it. His company was looking for a very sturdy piano to give to a handicapped man who liked to play but could be kinda rough. I told him this piano would be perfect for him. He looked at it and then said they would take it. He was going to talk to his company and they would hire some movers to come pick it up from me within a week or two!!

Well, that was on January 23rd or 24th. I sent them an email two weeks after to see what was going on and never heard back from them. I started to get upset that they had changed their minds and no one was ever going to take this thing off my hands. Finally this past Monday, I got a call from a different guy who was making the arrangements with the movers to come get my piano. He said that they would call again in a week or two. I stopped him right there and said that I hadn't heard from anyone in over a month about this and would prefer that they picked it up this week since I had already been waiting too long in my opinion. He said he didn't realize it had been that long and that they would come get it this week.

They came yesterday right around 11:00 and took it away. Cameryn was very upset that they were taking our piano but I told her she could always play with the one at Gramma's house. Mike called while they were moving the piano and asked if they were still in the house. I said no that they were in the yard trying to get the heavy piano up to the truck. He said good and to quickly lock the doors so they couldn't bring it back. Of course I couldn't do that since they still needed to take the bench but I was tempted.

It's so nice to have that big space open again in my kitchen. Of course now I have a ton of work to do. We are now going to move our computer desk and a small two drawer filing cabinet into the kitchen from our bedroom and then we will be rearranging our room. But I'm happy about having to do those things. I need to work on making my room nice and livable since I have already done that with Cameryn and Luke's rooms. So YAY for me (and Mike)!!