Arrrr Matey!

Gavin went to his first “themed” party this week at the library.  There is always tons of stuff for girls- princess and fairy tea parties and the like- but not much for boys.  I was so happy to see this event and signed my little scallywag right up.  He had a blast. 

They made pirate hats, got to toss a pirate ship on a parachute “sea” and looked for treasure.  At the end they got pirate treats, a pirate tattoo and all the little boys (and a few girls) ran around shouting “Arrrr, Matey!” with their toy pirates. Gavin and his toy pirate even had matching facial hair.

Gavin got so into his character that when we stopped at Subway for lunch afterward, he kept going up to people and giving them his pirate hello.  I just can’t get enough of this adorable boy, who is growing up faster than I can bear to think about!

 

Pneumonia :(

Last night, just before bed, I started mixing up an overnight muffin recipe to bake in the morning.  All the ingredients were out on the counter and I was looking over the new recipe when that little, hard-to-ignore voice piped up. 
"Hey, I think maybe you should just forget about the muffins for tonight." 
"Why? I have to try out this recipe anyway.  I don't care if it flops, tonight's good."

I argue with myself like this a lot.  I'm pretty sure it's on the safe side of schizophrenia.  Mostly sure.... But that little voice was persistent.
"Just the same, I think you should forget about it for tonight."
"I already got everything out, so I'm just going to do it, ok?"
"Ok, just thought I'd give you a head's up."

Lickety-split, I whipped up the mix, set it on the counter and crawled into bed a mere 45 minutes past my bed time.
 If only I had known that what that little, persistent voice was trying to get through my thick skull was not "don't make those muffins because they won't turn out anyway" but rather "don't bother making those muffins because you're going to be at the hospital right about baking time tomorrow morning, and you're going to lose a lot of sleep tonight so go to bed early." 
I wonder if there will ever be a point at which I hear that little voice, forego the questioning, and say
"You're right, I should go to bed. Thanks for the tip." 
Given my track record, it could be quite a while. 

Around 1:00 am, Gavin came out of his room crying that he needed to go to the bathroom.  I got him by the toilet, pulled down his jammies and pull-up when he started coughing up a lung.  The coughing, mixed with a full bladder, turned him into a 3-year old sprinkler system.  With each cough he was hitting the wall, the shower, my legs, then the wall again...  I hurried and got him on the toilet, dodging the stream long enough to point it down into the water.  That's when the puking started.  My poor boy, half-asleep and nearly coughing himself into the toilet, had the smarts to at least aim between his legs.  That sort of worked.  One hour later, we were showered and tucked in bed, coughing [temporarily] subsided.

4:00 am was more vomiting, more coughing, shallow breathing, and a rather panicked mom.  Troy worked late at the new house and had slept over there, so it was scarier that I didn't have his input.  at 5:30 I called the home teachers to come give Gavin a blessing, as he now had a fever as well. 
I was so frustrated at not knowing what to do.  Gavin handles illness differently than a normal kid, and I didn't want to get all worked up about something that wasn't a big deal.  On the other hand, if he was not getting enough oxygen, that was a very big deal.  So finally, at 7:00, I took Aliyah to the neighbor's (thank you Janel!!!) and headed off for the hospital. 
We're home now, with antibiotics, a nebulizer, and a fancy photo of Gavin's hazy lung tissue.  I think I'll hang it on the wall next to the one we got from last time.....
You know what I love about this limp-lunged kid?  That while he was laying on a bed in the hospital, with a nurse giving him medication and checking his sats, he smiled at me between coughs and said "Mom, that lady is really nice." then closed his eyes, and fell asleep.  That's my boy.

48 Ways to Crack an Egg

Some levels of destruction defy all explanation, and are beyond the reach of verbal or written communication. This morning I awoke to just such a catastrophe. You'll know what I mean when you watch the video.

Rest assured that this video does not convey the entirety of the destruction. I was still half asleep while filming, and had not yet discovered some of the real treasures of their work, like this little gem:

By the end of the cleanup, we had discovered every possible place 48 eggs can be flung, 2 carrots (lightly gnawed), the remnants of a banana, and some empty butter wrappers in their room (if you watch the video again, you can play the "eye-spy" game to find everything) . If you are wondering where the butter inside the wrappers had gotten too, the answer is that a few hours ago I went to grab some USB cables from under my bed, and found an eewie-gooie ball of butter nestled into the carpet there. Lovely.

And the forecast for tomorrow? Cloudy with a chance of Salmonella. Gavin apparently ingested an unknown quantity of raw egg while frolicking. We know this only because his face was covered in crusted egg sprinkled with egg shell, and because about an hour into cleanup, he began puking up egg whites. I now know that the only thing worse than cleaning up egg, is cleaning up regurgitated egg. Does anyone know if it is illegal to put your kids to sleep in straight jackets?

Story Time

Mom, I'm going to tell you a story.

Ok.

Once upon a time, I broke these glasses. But it was an accident. The End. Now wasn't that a nice story?

Hmmmm.....

Also this week:

Gavin learned to put on his own lipstick. Red is definately his color. (I am going to start locking up my purse....)

When it started to snow cottonballs on Friday, I asked Aliyah if she wanted to make a snowman. She said no, she wanted to make a Snow Bunny. (Huh?) so we gave it our best attempt, and I think we did pretty alright for amateurs. Gavin kept tearing his face off, so he was banished to the mud pile at the back of the yard, which he thoroughly enjoyed. The best part was having a Family Kung Foo Fest later that afternoon when Mr. Snowbunny had wilted and was no longer recognizeable as much of anything. All in all, a very enjoyable activity.

Physics

Newton's Third Law of Motion states:

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"

Apparently there are no physicists that live at our house, because if there had been, we might have been properly warned. Make sure and watch all the way to the end of this video, and in our defense, we had no idea how equal and opposite a reaction could be. Really. (Miraculously, no children were harmed in the making of this film, only moderately freaked out :) )



For the record, Gavin took a few minutes to collect himself and then was right back in the game, asking to be bounced. Troy curbed his enthusiasm and no further near-death experiences occurred- at least for tonight.....

Suspicious....

I am under the growing suspicion that Gavin has joined the Mob. There's no solid evidence to really put my finger on, but little things that seem a little too much for someone of his tender years without connections keep popping up....

Evidence #1

He has taken to wearing my mixing bowls Fedora style. He especially likes to stick his bottom jaw out in a toothy under-bite grin and chuckle menacingly with his chest puffed out. He also enjoys using toy cars as guns and pretending to get shot and fall down dead in this getup (suspicious??)

Evidence #2

He has started "sending a message" to get his point across. When Aliyah had taken to many swipes at his head with the plastic baseball bat, we later found that her favorite little Dolly had gone for a fatal swim in a rather full training potty. This, as you know, is Mob-speak for "I'm not as innocent as I look kid, shape up or you're next!"

I could be wrong about the the whole Mob thing, but if so, I think it is safe to assume that with Gavin picking up Mobster habits and Aliyah picking up bronze boyfriends at the Library, Dora the Explorer must be broadcasting some wicked subliminal messages undetectable to the adult mind. I've got no other rational explanation :)

Not Your Average Family Photo

Troy and I took a big step in our relationship this year. We reached a compromise on the dreadful topic of........ Family Photos (duh duh duh duuuuum). In a nutshell, I love them, Troy hates everything about them. So after 8 years, we finally compromised: We will alternate every other year with serious and silly family phots. Troy's dream is to photograph our family in full get-up for every major holiday, then move on to lesser holidays when we run out of the big ones. (He got his inspiration from the Ramptons awesome St. Patricks day family newsletter) So, thus began year 1 of silly family photos, and I must admit......I'm sold. This was waaaaaay more fun than traditional photos, and I can't wait to see what we're gonna do in 2011! My amazing and wonderful sis-in-law Angie braved the cold and took our pictures, then I spiffed them up in photoshop. Whattaya think?

Mine and Aliyah's costumes were from Walmart, Troy's was already in his closet, and I made Gavin's. FYI: Not only did Troy do his own makeup, but he even went as far to super-glue the earplugs-turned-neck-bolts to his neck. Thats dedication.

Understudy

As pointed out to me by Joanna (my mom-in-law), Gavin has become somewhat of an "understudy" to the diva of the blog (aka Aliyah). Unfortunately, this is very true, so I thought I'd give my toothy boy some screen time.

He is learning to "smile" on demand, but as you can see, we are still awaiting the arrival of bottom tooth number 4. It drives Troy crazy that his pearly whites are incomplete-looking but I think it gives him personality :)

He LOVES his dad, and is constantly mimicking him and trying to be like him. It is impossible to keep Gavin out of the garage when Troy is working on his bus, and sometimes his perserverance pays off. He'll be welding and grinding in no time! He also loves to sit wherever Troy is sitting. He will go and find himself a chair, drag it next to where Troy is sitting, and try and "hang" with his dad. So cute!

No matter what Gavin thinks though, he's still my little momma's boy!

Starting the Week Off Right

I was going to post about the revolutionary new Time-out method Troy and I discovered this weekend (see above), but upon getting out of the shower this morning, I found that my kids had served themselves breakfast. They are so wonderful and independent! It looks like it's going to be another week full of surprise and adventure!

*Disclaimer: Troy and I don't really leave Aliyah on top of 7 foot high armoirs on a regular basis (although sometimes we'd like to) so don't bother calling social services or anything. But do feel free to apply our methods in your own home :)

Seriously Blown Away!

Ok so this cruise was amazing! Troy's mom treated us to 8 days of incredible fun in honor of Grandpa Moss and to celebrate what a fantastic family he and Grandma Moss have created! We had so much fun and were blown away in more ways than one. I'll spare you the details to avoid incurring unnecessary jealousy :) and say that the ship was awesome, the islands were beautiful, and the food waaay waaay too delicious.

Our most memorable adventure was on St Maarten, where we rented scooters with Angie and James and rode around the island. We stopped at the famous Airport Beach to watch the planes fly in ridiculously close to the shore and have a dip in the ocean. We enjoyed ourselves immensly......until we got caught in the jet stream of a 747 taking off a stone's throw from where we were sitting on the beach. Angie literally lost some of the skin off her back from the sand pelting us at a few hundred miles per hour. Aparently we missed the 10 foot signs warning of injury or death from the jetstream. Now we know. I found some videos on youtube that are not us, but gives a good demonstration of our predicament. It was also on St. Maarten that we ran into a highschool friend we havent seen in about 10 years! What a small world!


Landing:



Takeoff:

Puerto Rico was historic and gorgeous, Haiti was breathtaking and we had more fun than we could have imagined. What a trip!

The Wonder of Discovery

We took the kids to Discovery Gateway this last weekend for the first time. It was such a fantastic place and I really think we enjoyed ourselves as much as the kids. At least I know Troy did . . .