brimming over

The gift

Wesley has a buddy at church, Mr. Gene.  I don't know exactly what it is that's made Mr. Gene take up with Wesley in particular but they have a special bond. 

Mr. Gene also works part-time at our grocery store.  He's one of those active retired fellows who just couldn't stand sitting at home all day so he went out and got a job "just for fun".  And since we seem to be either at the church or the grocery almost every day, we see a lot of Mr. Gene.

A week or two ago, Mr. Gene told us on Sunday morning that he had a gift for Wesley.  A little while later I stopped by Wesley's Sunday School room to check that he'd made it to class and he excitedly showed me the coolest airplane...a gift from Mr. Gene!

The plane has a propeller that winds up with a rubber band.  It won't actually fly but it will move along the floor a bit.

The little details are amazing!  And the plane is lovingly handmade. 

Wesley just adores it!

But I think more than anything he loves knowing that he is someone's someone special. 
 
 
 

A bigger band-aid?

Just now Craig and I were listening to music in the den and reminiscing about days gone by, having a grand old time.  The kids were supposed to be showering and getting ready for bed.

Suddenly, Wesley came bounding up the stairs.  "Mama, look what I found in the drawer in our bathroom!  It's a giant band-aid!!"

And in his hand he is holding...an ultra-thin sanitary pad.  Zoiks! 

Craig turned to me and said, "A giant band-aid," with barely contained laughter about to come spewing out.

Then Wesley said excitedly, "Too bad we didn't have one of these for my knee!  There's another one down there, too.  I'll go get it!"  And off he ran.

And then we collapsed on the floor, laughing and rolling about. 

I.have.never.laughed.so.hard.  My sides still hurt! 

Well, at least you know if you get a scrape or a cut at our house, we have giant band-aids to fix you right up!

Last year in single digits

I mentioned this yesterday but didn't give it my full attention:

Wesley turned NINE yesterday!

So hard to believe.  In more ways than one.

First, could my little baby really be nine?  That sweet, cuddly monkey with the fuzzy hair?  The one who did me the favor of arriving into this world two weeks early but then tortured me through multiple rounds of shared thrush and forcing me to eliminate dairy from my diet for SIX+ months?  This guy?

  

Then again.  When he's with his 11 1/2 year old brother all the time, it's sometimes hard to remember that he really is younger and not as advanced.  And since he's the size of most 11 year olds it doesn't help.  It's pretty easy to forget that he's just a third grader and treat him like one.  Sometimes it's good for him to get away from Parker and play with Amy Grace so he has an opportunity to just be a little boy and not try to be a grown up kid.

 

Good thing we don't mind making him really look goofy...

  

Hey, he knew what he was getting into when he chose Mexican on his birthday!  Don't feel bad for him.

  

I love you, sweet boy.  Enjoy your last year in single digits.  That second number changes everything. 

And what happened here?

I was making my way through a clean up of Amy Grace's room this week while she was at gymnastics.  You know I can't clean while she's home!  Everything I want to throw out or give away would be fought over, cried about, and hysterics would ensue. 

As I got to the rather GIANT toy box of stuffed animals, I came across this little lady...

 

At first it might appear that she's fine.  Just out of place since she actually belongs with the dolls, under the bed in a basket.  But wait!  Something strange...

  

Gasp!  She only has one leg!  Maybe it's just tucked up oddly into her skirt?

 

Argh!  No!  Amputated!!  But how?  And why?  Who did this?  Oh well, I'll keep moving through the stuffed animals and ask Amy Grace about it when she gets home.  

Nnnnoooo!!  What's this??  Red has apparently been joined by her two one-legged friends Blondie and Whats-her-name.  

  

Three one-legged dolls?  Hey, girls, why so smiley?  Don't you know that you've been dismembered?

Off to question the assembled crowd of suspects!  Who did this and why?  I demand to know!  Confess!  Maybe we can arrange a plea bargain for those who cooperate.  (And by the way, where are the severed limbs?)

Aha!  Boys!  Something about Amy Grace sticking the dolls under the door to their room when they were trying to keep her out and they were pulling the dolls from the other side.  But my question is this:  why did you continue to do it after the first one came apart?  Uh-huh.  Answer that one! 

And obviously, you knew it was a BIG mistake since you hid the amputated legs in your room to avoid prosecution! 

 

And your sister hid the dolls at the bottom of the stuffed animal box as well.  Sigh.  All guilty as charged.  Sentencing will occur after the judge cools down.

For now, think about these poor girls, and how you'd feel if someone ripped your leg off!  I bet you wouldn't be smiling like that!

More catching up!

Whew!  Continuing on with my picture catch up! 

My uncle gave Wesley this t-rex model for Christmas.  One evening after we got home, the boys called Craig down, extreme frustration in their voices.  Apparently, the three of them worked on it a while and got in over their heads until Craig called me in to save them!  (Yes, I normally hide my cape under my regular clothing.) 

It took the 4 of us a LONG time to get this sucker together!  The pieces are numbered but the numbers are tiny and hard to see.  They also didn't seem to fit together well.  And the instructions were just a printed diagram that was pictured as a mirror image of the real deal.  Geez!  So I "read" the instructions, Parker & Wesley put the small sections together, and Craig put them all together into the big model.  Teamwork saves the day!

So here you have a realistic t-rex skeleton in all his gory glory...

 

  

Amy Grace stayed in Birmingham after Christmas at my parents' house to play with my nephews and hang out with her grandparents for several days.  On New Year's Eve, the boys and I met all of them in Montgomery at the zoo to reclaim Amy Grace and bring her home.  We all had a lot of fun at the zoo as it's one of our favorite places to visit.  It's just the right size...big enough to have some great animals but small enough that you can see it all in just a couple of hours.  Just about the time you're getting tired of being at the zoo, you're done!

Four co-operative clowns and one grumpy clown peeking through from behind...

 

ah-ha!  Caught the grumpy guy and brought him into the picture!  Still not happy but at least sitting still.  :)  My parents and their grandkids...

 

We got to PET a ZEBRA!!  That was SO cool!!  It's just something that I never imagined doing.  Of course, it was just like petting a horse.  Except that it was a lot more psychedelic due to the black and white stripes.  LOL!  Pictorial proof that all 3 kids petted him...

  

  

Monkeys watching giraffes...

 

Riding the train...

  

And speaking of monkeys...not so flattering, huh?

  

On New Year's Eve, we did sparklers in the driveway.  It was bitterly cold and windy so they were hard to get going.  And the cold made us not very willing to stick with it!  Amy Grace was afraid of them and retreated inside to color so she didn't make it into the picture...

Pictures from the past

Well, I'm finally, finally getting around to updating things here.  We got a new computer around Christmas time and I have had quite a struggle getting my pictures downloaded from my camera to the computer.  And the longer I go without blogging, the easier it is to put it off.  Sorry. 

We've had a busy month & a half!  Wesley and Amy Grace both had their choir Christmas plays at church.  Parker was in a choir Christmas play at church as well as in a performance at the Family Theatre in December and January that was the culmination of a class he did all fall.  All three kids have been playing Upward Basketball.  And, of course, we celebrated Christmas and New Year's! 

We're back to our studies and trying to get in a groove.  Things are going well although we've been hibernating much of this week due to the cold! 

I thought I'd share some pictures from December and a bit of January to catch up...

Amy Grace painting a piggy bank that we've been meaning to paint for way too long...

 

  

First day of Upward Basketball...Craig took these pics with my camera...they were all fuzzy.  Sorry. 

 

Another interesting puzzle that Parker & I did (with a bit of help from MeeMaw and Amy Grace) that came from Grandmother.  Those curved sides were weird to work!

  

Amy Grace heading out for her choir performance.  I'm not sure why the only picture I have is of her gazing sideways.  I didn't manage to get any pictures of Parker for some reason!

  

And Wesley before his choir performance.  Isn't he handsome?!  He chose on his own to dress up this much!  His brother could certainly learn some lessons from this example based on all his whining about Cotillion!  That Wesley cleans up nicely.  :)

  

Some Christmas decorations...the kids' tree:

  

The mantle...

 

Our main tree...

  

The foyer...

  

We spent Christmas in Birmingham with my parents.  A few pictures from Christmas morning:

Santa brought Legos to the boys...

  

and a customized "art cart" to Amy Grace...

  

Opening stockings...

  

  

Amy Grace models a bride costume that she received.  Sorry for the darkness of the pic but this one had the best grin.  :)

 

One happy dog

Lucy's old bed was worn out and dirty so Craig and Wesley went shopping for a new bed for her.  They took some pics at the store and emailed them to me for my opinion but I couldn't tell the size very well from the pictures.  So I requested that Wesley try them out and Craig send me the pictures!  Wesley is such a good sport sometimes.  :)

This was taken with Craig's phone so the quality isn't that great but here's the bed that Lucy ended up getting.  It has the "Wesley comfy guarantee"...

 

We moved her over by the front window since this bed is bigger and didn't quite fit in the old space...

  

Now that is one contented pup...

  

These guys versus those guys

Wesley's friend C. came to play today and they built a giant Lego Star Wars set up on the desk in Parker and Wesley's room.  And then insisted I come take pictures of it!

First there were these guys...

and they were in a nasty battle with those guys...

  

and the war raged on...

 

The pictures would have looked a lot better if they'd bothered to clean off the desk first.  Boys.

I wonder if anyone has cleaned all that up yet? 

Lessons in lawn mowing

Craig must have been restless yesterday because at some point he decided that despite the 95 degree heat, it looked like a good time to work in the yard.  After edging and mowing most of the yard, he called Parker out to mow a bit.  We joke all the time that the whole reason we had 2 sons was so that we wouldn't have to do yard work once they got old enough.  Apparently, Craig decided that approaching 11 years old is plenty old enough to learn.  After all, being a country boy himself, his memories are that he was cutting the entire yard on his own at that age.  And Grandmama's too.  Anyone care to confirm this? 

Because he's taught me, too, I happen to know he is saying, "Now, just keep the front tire right along that line of grass as you go."

And even Wesley needs a lesson in getting a smooth cut.  Operator error or a leveling problem?  A little of both, I suspect. 

Mowing requires extreme concentration.  Good looks help, too.

And then Wesley found a very, very tiny lizard. 

Mouths, in all their glory

Earlier in the summer we had to cancel Wesley's regularly scheduled dentist appointment due to some conflict.  The hygienist at our dentist's office is actually the mom of Wesley's best buddy and a good friend of ours so she just put us on the call list for cancellations.  She called late in the afternoon yesterday to see if this morning would be a good time for us.  Since we're having a fairly laid back-no plans sort of week, I said "Sure!"  And then she mentioned that it was time to put sealants on Wesley's 6 year molars.  Da, da, dum.  Eeeek! 

This is the very procedure that turned Parker from a mildly apprehensive dental patient into a white-knuckled, stomach-churning, eyes-brimming-with-tears dental patient.  Great. 

But this is at a new office with new people.  We switched dentists after that experience in order to convince Parker that opening his mouth and allowing someone with instruments to peer in would be okay.  He chose Mrs. M. because he is comfortable with her and it's been good so far.  I was hoping our luck would hold.  I didn't even bother telling Wesley about the sealants for fear that Parker would freak him out with horror stories.  Brothers do things like that, you know.

Once she started the procedure, post-cleaning, I knew we were in for a bit of a rough road.  The teeth have to be kept very dry so that the sealant will adhere properly.  That means packing some cotton stuff in your mouth and keeping the suction going...not really very comfy.  Then she put the first stuff on his tooth and I saw "the look".  You know the one.  It's the one that says, "I'm doing everything I can to suppress the gagging feeling in my throat but it isn't working."  Uh-oh.  I'd already mentioned to Mrs. M. that Wesley has a particularly strong gag response and apparently it was kicking in.  Fab-u-lous. 

We went into super-efficient mode and worked to calm him down.  I talked to him and helped her juggle tools.  She worked to keep all the stuff cleared out of his mouth so he wouldn't taste it.  And I jabbered on to keep his mind occupied (I'm good at that). 

Part of the procedure is shining a bright blue light (don't ask me the technical term) on the tooth to harden the sealant and that makes the whole mouth glow bright blue.  Well, that gave me a bright idea of something to talk about.

Parker came home from camp recently with a Flashing Mouth thing that you stick in your mouth and click a tiny button and it lights up your whole mouth wildly with bright flashing lights.  Wacko!  It's exactly the sort of thing that 8 and 10 year old boys really think is awesome!  So I told Wesley that if he could calm down and make it through the sealants, we'd find one online and order one for him, too. 

Just so you can get the full idea:

 

Fortunately, everything went well and we now have 4 sealed molars. Yippee! And I have ordered a Flashing Mouth for Wesley. And one for his buddy C., too.

Here is Wesley, with sealed teeth, and our guinea pig, Oreo, enjoying some carrots.