Catching up on blogging, dang it!

My Gavers is SUCH a boy! Not only do body function noises send him into a fit of giggles, but we’ve had to ban him from the bathroom while Caleb does his business. Gavi is just a little too up close and personal with the action. One of the cutest things he does though is make fart noises any way he can. The best way he’s found is to use a rubber duckie or whale on his tummy while in the bathtub. He can sit there and do that for twenty or thirty minutes, and the hilarious thing is that he’s cracking up the WHOLE time! Watch out for armpit noises from him in the near future…

This morning, day six of our seclusion, we were reading another fifty trillion books. Gavi, who is way more of a reader than Caleb was at this age, finally got bored, and used me as a ladder onto his brother’s bed, where he would smash his head on the wall and then throw himself over my shoulder to get down again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. (Seriously, it must be a boy thing. Ramming your head into the wall to hear the noise? Girls don’t do that.) Finally, I got a little weary of it, and said, “Sweetie, Mommy isn’t a jungle gym.”

“That’s right,” piped in Caleb. “Uncle Chris is.”

I don’t know where it came from, but the quicker Gavi decides that Uncle Chris is a better jungle gym than Mommy, the quicker I can actually grow my hair without it being ripped out by baby feet.

Caleb used an incredibly advanced word this morning, and I can’t remember what it was. It was “capable” or something of that nature, because it was something he was able to do on his own because he was a big boy. It was his first sentence of the day – which explains why I can’t remember, since it was one of the first things I had to process for the day. Whatever it was, it’s worth mentioning if for no other reason than to show that he’s incredibly smart. Even though we talked baby talk to him. So raspberries to all you snobs who insist that your children are intelligent because you refused to coo at them. = Þ

I’m looking forward to Jonathan coming home. It’s really been difficult for me on this trip because I haven’t been able to go to the library to get new books, and we had a mix up on Netflix so we didn’t get any new movies. Six days of house arrest with only my own books and movies? Sure, I’ve got hundreds of each, but none of them suit when I need a distraction. Wah. I went so far as to work on a six year old cross-stitch project that has been sitting in my closet for five years, eleven months and three and a half weeks. THAT’S how bored I am. Plus, I can’t make myself go to bed when he’s gone ~ how ridiculous is that? My one chance to go to bed right when the kids do, but I refuse to give up my “me” time. Crossing my fingers that tonight is the last night I wallow in my own self-pity!

 Terra replied...

I always stay up too late when Kyle's gone too!

 

Playing catch up!

I thought of dozens of things I’d forgotten in my uber-long post last week, but now that I have time to sit down with them, most of them are gone again. Pregnant brain AND mommy brain ~ double trouble!

My MOPS girls threw me a wonderful baby shower a few weeks ago. Another girl from my table and I are due about a month apart, and the rest of the gals put on a wonderful tea luncheon thing with fun games and great presents. I’m not going to need any more newborn diapers, that’s for sure! What a blessing! People brought packages of diapers, and a couple of them pitched in to make a beautiful diaper cake complete with bibs, onesies, socks, pacifiers, spoons, towels, etc. I do have pictures, but Jonny’s just been so busy that he hasn’t been able to get them loaded.

Gavi has started being very attached to “lovies.” His baby is the doll my First Horizon peeps gave me when they had a fake baby shower for me two years before my first pregnancy. (I just found a stash of newborn diapers from that same shower that will come in handy for Declan!) Her name is Lola Monet, but we just call her “Baby,” and she’s wearing a green outfit. I’m not worried about gender confusion or anything, it’s just that we only have boy clothes! When we can’t find Baby, a bear will do. Caleb has two biggish teddies, and they have pretty much become Gavi’s property. Caleb just never took to stuffed animals or blankets or anything.

Well, he might have gone through a quick phase. This has really only been going on for a couple weeks, and if Caleb did that, I might have forgotten it. It’s just an issue now because Gavi has to have Baby for his nap and night night, and he goes straight to sleep. He still doesn’t sleep long, but he never fights it!

Caleb has just informed me that ALL his friends have chicken pops. So they should all be able to come over and play. He's very concerned about their health, but still wants to play. I let him try power bowling on the Wii this morning, just to have a change-up, but he just drops the ball. Of course, now MY arm is ready to fall off!

Gavi made the elephant “sound” for the first time this morning! He’s got the majority of the farmyard and ALL of the roaring animals down, but the elephant was one of his holdouts. He also correctly identified a mouse when he saw the picture. He LOVES books!

And from that same book comes the reference for my next quickie tale – we were watching Planet Earth on Thursday night when we saw a jaguar hunting. “Oh no,” says Caleb, “that chinchilla is hungry. Poor chinchilla!” Apparently the jaguar and chinchilla are close enough in the picture book to confuse when seeing them out of context. It was super cute though!

Okay, the roaring of the dinosaurs, lions, tigers, bears and even puppies is calling me away. Happy Monday!

Dyeing Easter Eggs

Remember how Gavi likes to crash glasses? It turns out that an egg will make NEARLY the same sound. Dyeing eggs this morning took a tragic turn when my eighteen eggs became a dozen due to my overestimation of Gavi’s artistic abilities. Or rather my UNDERestimation of his love for destruction!

On the flip side, this is the first year that Caleb’s are true works of art. He’s doing watercolor eggs with a paintbrush, and I think they’re exquisite. True works of art from a three year old brush...

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This morning I missed MOPS. Yesterday, I missed a lunch outing with my former co-workers and a much anticipated trip to visit my Gram. Tomorrow, I will miss a baby shower. As I sat around, moping, trying to figure out how to make lemonade out of poo, I realized that it was the PERFECT opportunity to update my blog! It’s been too long!

Caleb has the chicken pox, hence the complete social overhaul. Poor baby – it’s definitely worse today than it was yesterday, and he keeps hollering for a leg-scratcher. I’m actually starting to dread scarring on his face, since I can’t keep him from clawing at himself. And while I don’t wish sickness on my children, I do sort of hope that Gavi gets it now so we can double up on our quarantine time. More bang for the buck, you know?

I’m trying to think of all the things I’ve missed writing about, so please pardon my rambling. First of all, we’re having ANOTHER BOY! Jonathan and I were the only two people in the world who thought it would be a boy. Near strangers were certain we were having a girl, and grandparents galore were POSITIVE. Of course, it was tough to hear the disappointment they weren’t able to hide when they got the news, but still – WE WIN!

It took us a couple weeks to run through our name choices and narrow it down. After much deliberation, discussion and prayer, we have tentatively named our son…Declan Angus Zakai Fashbaugh. We will call him Dex for short. (Although, DAZ has been suggested, and Jonathan and Caleb insist they will call him Angus. As for myself, I suspect I will fall into my old habits and call him Declan Z.) Declan means “full of goodness,” where Angus means “one choice,” followed by Zakai’s “purity.” And Fashbaugh means “breath of life,” so it’s a pretty stinking good name for a little boy!

Let’s see, my boys are still just the cutest, coolest things on the planet. Gavi is growing by leaps and bounds, and is really starting to struggle to make himself understood. He’s big on “B” words – ball, bubble, baby, bath, etc. And even words that don’t actually start with b get the treatment: juice is now “booze.” That’s the funniest example I can think of, but there are many such instances of words sounding like OTHER words.

Caleb is ridiculously smart and sweet. First of all, his favorite book right now is the one that I learned to read on – The King’s Tea. I hadn’t realized how ANGRY that book was until we read it a dozen times and I realized that there’s a lot of rage. Regardless, he now knows every word, and I can stop reading for a minute and have him continue. Which is how I learned to read on the same book. It’s a generational thing! It’s actually Gavi’s favorite book right now, too. Caleb just mentioned it after lunch one day, and Gavi ran to get it off the bookshelf.

The weather shifts wildly between shorts inducing and snow-suit needing! We’ve had some fun in both kinds, lately. Right now, it’s God’s grace that the weather is close to the sixties, because the boys and I can sit outside and not feel quite so housebound. It’s supposed to be giant snow again tomorrow, so we’ll be able to get out for a little snowman building. (Last time, we had to tame Gavi's desire to throw snowballs at every person and animal that passed us!)

Jonathan is out of town on one of his four trips this month. The great thing about that is that I get to go on his last trip with him this month…to HAWAII! I’ve never even thought about being able to go, but his assistant talked us into it and made all the arrangements. Grandma Fashbaugh will come and stay with the boys, and Jonny and I will wing our way to the islands. Ha! What a funny thing to say in my life! (And at 28-29 weeks of pregnancy, I'm not even going to get to go sailing!)

Oh, and we had pictures taken again, so expect to be inundated with images. Seriously, they are so stinking cute that it takes my breath away sometimes. Gavi melted down at the studio when we tried to take one of his three stuffed animals away, so he didn’t get to be in all the pictures. But they still turned out pretty cute!

I’m finding it’s absolutely ridiculous how much damage these kids can do in less than a minute. I would literally have to have eyes in the back of my head AND a bladder of steel to keep up with them all the time. So I just try to limit the chaos, and remind myself that just about everything they destroy is just “stuff.” For instance, Gavriel is a glass-breaking junkie. For a while, I was losing one a day until I figured out that it wasn’t an accident – he was throwing them on the floor to hear the shatter. Now we use plastic cups around him, but I still love glass, so I keep it out of his reach.

He uses my plastic cups to THROW at the glass to knock them over. I kid you not. And we were out with Grandma F, Uncle Chris and Auntie Sisa last week at Beau Jo’s when he got ahold of a glass cup and threw it under the table at the only metal available that would allow it to shatter. He’s kind of a SMART little stinker!

And Caleb recently pulled one of my all time nightmares – my roll of 100 stamps now decorate his cement mixer and recycling truck. Not kidding – I was getting the bills paid and in two minutes flat, the stamps were removed from my sight and plastered all over his toys.

Okay, my duties as a leg-scratcher are being called for again…

 Terra replied...

Oh girl! You have got your hands full and yet maintain such an attitude of gratefulness. I'm amazed! Hang in there! :)