I did it!

$9 for 3 pack of truck, robot, and race car underwear
$6 at Gap for camoflague and robot packs of underwear
$15 dollars in potty prizes at the dollar tree

To have your child potty trained and enjoy a few months of diaper freedom before another baby arrives- PRICELESS!

Yes, I got through potty training round two- that has consumed my life for the last 2 weeks- smart son has been wanting too for a while (I knwo what kind fo terrible mother won't let their child potty train), but i wanted to stall him off until school started and we could be more homebound for a few days doing hourly potty runs. Well sure enough 3rd day of school for smart son, smart baby woke up and told me his diapers "had a problem" and he only wanted underwear- "they are my favorite!" And from then on we've been going strong- days, naps, nights- the whole schebang! I am really proud of smart baby- he's 2 and 3 months! He's been doing great and is totally digging a day with all those sweet tarts, gummy bears, and marshmellows.

trade-offs

so somedays my floor and barstools look like this at 5 pm...

I have to remind myself that is because I am a fun mom and do fun stuff with my kids- sometimes with the endless cycle of clean-up in the "world of mom" you have to remind yourself it was for a good cause, because man i hate sweeping that floor everyday!

today we did:

litmus paper tests (the only fiasco during this experiement was smart baby trying to spraying fantastic (one of the test liquids) into a whistle he found-- he thought it would make bubbles come out when he blew into it) no son- POISON!

Smart son picked out this photo we took while at temple square and wanted to paint it- he worked so hard on it, mixing variatios of greens- he probably spent almost 2 hrs on it! smart baby did his own verison in oil pastels- he spent 5 minutes on his!

oobleck (in their own selected colors no less)

and here is smart son with one of his tall towers (he does them vertically) he also likes to make these thoughtful arrangments from all the random objects in the house: chairs, shoes, diapers, pillows, books, toys, foods, plates-- trouble is you can't lock up and hide everything --at least he is resourceful!

(And yes i have excessive amounts of blocks- It's a disease-I am just a sucker for blocks) water blocks, bead blocks, city blocks, unit block, pb kids story blocks, middle eastern temple blocks, mirror tiles- I know I have to stop.

think blue

yes my ultrasound yesterday revealed- it's boy #3 on the way- I let the boys put together this blue party for dh. It looked great until smart baby found a way to get himself an early serving of cake- it was well out of reach so he went to the playroom- grabbed a lacrosse stick and used it to procure himself a sample of cake and frosting.

smart baby turns 2

Today my smart baby turned two. His favorite thing as of late- robots. He has a pair of robot jammies from the Gap that he begs to wear (here he snuck outside in them). He loves to have you sit and draw him pictures of robots. So I made him this little applique robot t-shirt to wear on his big day. I made him a robot cake (not smart mamas finest, but it will do). I save the really cool birthdays-- where i pull out all the stops-- for the years when they can remember it! We just had a fun family birthday for him. I made him his favorite penne arribiata for lunch and then we had cake and presents. Here he is building with his new bead blocks and playing with his new vehicles.

Happy birthday, smart baby we love you! I think we're going to have to change your blog title I don't think we can call you a baby much longer.

time flies

How does it happen- how did I get so old? how did my kids get to be so grown up?

Here is a pic of smart son with his cake for the 100th day of school- yes kindergarten is half over- he seems so grown up- sometimes it is hard to remember he really is a little kindergartner (they seemed so much younger/smaller when I was a teacher a didn't have kids) and smart baby- well he has never looked his age but tell me does this child look 20 months- He has been hitting all sorts of milestones- He has learned how to walk on his tiptoes and loves watching his shadows. Being a mom is fun- but you have to be careful because if you blink you'll miss 1000 things.

war, famine, pestilence, and smart baby

rt baby

Yes as you can see smart baby has take a place as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse-

The theme of December's blogging that is emerging- catastrophes a la smart baby. Here is smart baby mopping the flour with my bucket of bread flour (I don't know if this is better or worse than the previous mopping episode with toilet water) I had it out to make 6 loaves of homemade bread for the teachers, bus driver, etc) This occurred simply as I turned my back to stir the rice and soup for tonight's dinner casserole- yes only 2 feet behind me! He is one sneaky character.

Then 2 hrs later as I was attempting to wrest the bread from its pan to rush it out for fresh hot delivery to the bus driver- I heard the sound of the bus in front of my house- so I with knife in hand ran to open the front door- to wave that I was home so smart son wouldn't be driven back to the school and in my absence smart baby- went directly to the dining room climbed up in the middle of the table and poked 2 holes in and ate 5 fondant decorations off smart son's birthday cake (luckily i had already taken a picture in case some such scenario took place) Seriously i have exhausted every cabinet lock, and out of reach surface known to man. The family room armoire is the current "safe house" for tomorrows birthday cupcakes for school.

This evening smart baby struck again as I prepared the next round of bread dough- I turned to see something brown in his hand- he had reached up and grabbed a hunk out of one of the cooling loaves of bread-(one of the down sides of having an 18 month old who is above the 95% percentile in height - way too much is in their reach!) so much for that gift. Smart son played accomplice today --on his way out the door to music - as he madly grabbed shortbread cookies set the 5 ton glass cake tender dome on one of the other cooling loaves.

These were the major incidents of the day- in addition he enjoyed dumping a box of graham sticks, dumping out 50 cookie cutter, disassembling the carpet tiles in the dining room and 50 other things.