Birthday Boy!

I can't believe my sweet little boy is 3! And to celebrate, he's even moving up to the 3 year old room at daycare! Of course, this wasn't originally the plan at daycare. I think they thought their 3 year old room was too full. But once we found out that they had promoted EVERY child in his child and he was now left behind, between my tears and pleading and Brian's quiet questions of how much longer, and a very generous helping of Will throwing a temper tantrum in the mornings because he wanted to be in the "Big Boy Room" with his friends and problems with him sneaking out of his room during the day, they finally managed to locate a spot for him. So much drama!

But he's now successfully survived his first week of being 3! He can now hold up three fingers to show off his age. And he survived his annual check-up with no shots! And he even managed to pee in a cup for the dr's appointment! Of course, he was very concerned about this cup. He watched warily as I held the cup for him to pee in and he continued to watch me warily as I went to put the lid on. Actually, about this time he started screaming, "NOOOO! I don't want to drink it!!!!" Weird kid!

Other fun moments with my little 3 year old comic:

Mom: "Will Dr. 'Rel find any elephants in your ears this morning?"

Will: "No."

Mom: "Will Dr. 'Rel find any crocodiles in your nose this morning?"

Will: "Nooo, Mommy!!! There are only boogers in my nose!"

Happy Birthday Buddy!!!!

Three years ago today the Lord blessed us with Will. How time has flew. It seems like just yesterday that Amanda woke me up and told me it was time to go to the hospital. Then like a whirlwind, Will was born and I fell in love with my second child. You always here the phrase "Love at first sight," but you really do not grasp the power of that statement till you look into the eyes of your child for the first time.

Will has been a joy and at times, a test for Amanda and I. He is the daredevil that Ann Catherine never was. He is the rambunctious child that you see at a restaurant and wonder how in the world those parents deal with him. He is also the very sweet boy that takes care of his Mommy.

With all that he has put us through to this point, and all that he will put us through in the future, I would not change a single thing about him.

Here is a picture of him on the day he was born. TIME HAS FLOWN.

Poor Sissy

My son's favorite conversation right now?

"I'm a boy."

"Yes, Will. You're a boy."

"Daddy's a boy too."

"Yes, Will. Daddy's a boy too."

"Mommy's a girl."

"Yes, Will. I'm a girl."

"Sissy's a goober."

"Yes, Will. Sissy's a goober."

Vacation Temptation

It is seriously time to plan our family vacation. We need to pick a date and start thinking of where we want to go and what we want to do. If we don't do it soon, Brian and I are going to give in to temptation and book our next Disney trip!

Last night, I was checking emails and found a new email had just arrived...from Disney...telling me to come visit. Now that was temptation enough. But then, to sweeten the deal, they were offering us 40% off the value resort hotel rooms. Hello! No brainer for someone who's now officially weak-kneed when it comes to the Happiest Place on Earth!

I read it to Brian and I could see the balls rolling around in his head (really, it was quite fascinating to watch!). He was just as ready as I was to book that vacation! I even took a moment to get on their website and price it out to see how much we'd be saving. Looks like we'd go from $500 for a week long stay to about $300. Add that $200 savings to the savings I already have getting my tickets from Mousesavers and I was ready to book it.

OK - honestly, there was only ONE thing holding me back. No offense but it wasn't my family. Well, it was my family but not the bulk of my family. It was a sweet little newborn baby girl to be exact. She's currently not named (at least that I'm being allowed to know) but she'll be here soon! And since I'm making a basic assumption that her parents are going to keep with tradition and bring her to spend a week with her extended Blanchard family, then I think it's safe to say that Disney is probably off limits. Instead, we should pick some quiet lake with nothing nearby to do so all we can do is spend a week soaking up her presence!

Of course, if her parents decide to not join in the fun then I think the rest of my family may be in serious jeopardy of losing my presence to a furry mouse for a week! Unless they want to tag along, of course!

Kill the Rabbit?!

Well, I haven't quite succeeded at the trying-to-write-a-post-a-day resolution, but at least I'm getting better! I've also done really well switching to drinking water only (with the exception of my morning coffee with Splenda and non-fat creamer) and I've managed to avoid eating any sweets at all. The sweetest thing I've had since Grandma's house is an apple! My next step is to get on my bike.

One other thing I've managed to do slightly better at: taking moments to sit down with my children. I tend to get so busy that I let them play or watch TV on their own and I realized recently (about the time where my son was standing in front of me demanding that I play with him as I try to skirt around him while working in the kitchen, or when he climbed up on my lap with a book for me to read even though there was already a computer resting in that spot on my lap) that I haven't just taken time recently to sit down and play with my kids. So that's what I've worked on since returning from our Christmas break up north.

A couple days ago, Brian and I managed to sit down and teach Ann Catherine how to play Monopoly! And, a couple days ago, I even found time to play basketball with Will on his new SpongeBob over-the-door basketball hoop he got from Santa this year. What a way to get a kid riled up just before bedtime! (Actually, it took him an hour to fall asleep so maybe that wasn't my best idea.)

The strangest thing I discovered while sitting down with my kids? Cartoons. I was already familiar with all of their cartoons. However, I made them sit down and watch some OLD Bugs Bunny cartoons that came on a cartoon channel on New Years Day. It was a marathon, so we were able to watch three or four in a row. The kids were amazed - especially when I told them that was my own version of SpongeBob! In the end, though, I was just as amazed. No surprises with the cartoons themselves - I remembered every episode we watched. What amazed me was how violent they were! I always hear people complain about how violent the current cartoons are now. And, to a point, I agree. But after watching all those old Looney Toons cartoons, I was actually more amazed at how violent they USED to be! There was one where Bug Bunny was a concert pianist. However, he kept getting interrupted by some audience person coughing. At one point, he got so frustrated with the coughing that he stopped playing, pulled out a gun and shot the guy dead! (Not that they showed the guy but I'm assuming the gun didn't hit the back of the seat!) After that, we watched another one where some other LT character was chasing Bugs Bunny and singing "Kill the Rabbit." Ann Catherine got upset and actually asked me if they were going to seriously kill the rabbit! We turned it off soon after that, but it did get me to thinking about the difference between modern-day cartoons and my old familiar cartoons I remember watching on Saturday morning. I'm honestly not sure that the violence has increased. If anything, it may have even decreased (at least with the cartoons we normally watch at home!). And, more than that, at least today's cartoons usually have some sort of redeeming quality about it like a good moral to the story! I'm not sure I can honestly think of many cartoons I used to watch where I'd learn to share or be nice to people or clean up the environment or not try to catch jellyfish without some sort of means to protect myself from getting stung. Maybe my kids aren't missing out so much on the good-ole-days!

How Did You Do It?

OK Mom, I have to know...How did you do it? How did you manage to keep our house so clean (with the exception of our rooms of course!)? How did you manage to keep the piles of laundry from slipping out of the hampers and becoming 18 piles on your floor? How did you manage to keep everything fairly clean during the week so all we had to do was mop, dust and sweep on Saturdays? How did you manage to keep from crying when you had finally cleaned one room just to turn around and find out we had destroyed the room next to it? And how did you manage to do all this and still find the time to play games and watch movies with us?

How did you manage to keep from killing us when we asked you the same question OVER and OVER and OVER again - even after you had already answered it a hundred times over (since we apparently never managed to hear or understand a word you said!)? How did you not break down and cry when you had all three of us begging for your attention in 10 different directions? How did you manage not to lose your cool when you had the three of us girls screaming and trying to beat up/kill each other? How did you manage to convince me my bossiness was only leadership qualities as you sat and listened to me boss around my two sisters whom you loved just as dearly?

How did you manage to keep up with not only your own schedule but the rest of the family's as well without totally having us all in the wrong places at the wrong time? How did you manage to juggle being the housekeeper, the babysitter, the cook, the schedule keeper and organizer, the friend to others, the referee, the kind and gentle and loving wife, the patient and loving mother and still not manage to cry yourself to sleep from exhaustion each night?

I was just curious. Not that I struggle with any of this. Of course not me.

By the way, tell Faye Terry I said "Hi" when you call her and read this blog post to her.

Happy New Year!

OK - I know I've been missing for a month. If you can't tell by my absence, our lives tend to be crazy busy in the month of December. I feel like I'm running constantly and collapse into bed at the end of each night (and yet STILL the to-do list runs through my head in my dreams!). But we've survived another holiday season and now I'm ready for our normalness!

So we're on to a new year. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions but, for some reason, I thought I'd give it a try this year - with a promise to myself to not feel like a total failure if I don't succeed.

First, I have resolved to post daily to my blog. Well, I guess I shouldn't promise daily updates. My workload has doubled in the past month because of some changes at work. And Brian does still work nights and AC does have frequent Girl Scout meetings. Plus, this January we're going to start going back to doing Sunday and Wednesday nights at church. So, life will still be crazy. But I've kind of started thinking of this blog as something that may someday become something really important for my kids - and my self - and my sanity. Plus, I've found that I really enjoy it. So, I'm going to make it a priority. Maybe this will actually force me to take a lunch at work now!

Second, I have resolved to lose weight. It's cliche, I know. Everyone promises it. But after the awful shopping couple of days I've had, I think it's time to start making it a priority. This week I had a few left-over vacation hours that I needed to take or I was going to lose them. I decided to take a couple hours off work each day and try to spend some of the gift cards I got for Christmas. Since it looks like many retailers are going to be forced out of business soon, I didn't want any of them to go to waste. Plus, I'm tired of wearing clothes that are 15 years old. So I thought it was time to shop. But my two day shopping trip forced me to come to a conclusion: I'm fat and frumpy. I didn't like how I looked in anything (and refused to go to the Women's sizes to see if things there might look better on me) and I also spent a great deal of time standing in these stores looking at these woman walk past me and realized that I no longer know how to dress. Well, honestly, I'm not sure I ever knew how to dress. But at least I had cool sisters who could help me pick out clothes. Now, I'm forced to realize that I have no idea how to find clothes that will fit me and still look at least slightly stylish. I'd love to steal my boss and make her come shopping with me to help tell me how to dress since I'm so clueless. But I don't see that happening any time soon. And since my sisters are so far away and I can't force them to come visit me, I'm stuck to my own devices. And I'm clueless. But, as I watched the thousands of tiny women walk past me, one thing I did realize would at least help somewhat is if I could lose some weight, then I could actually pick out some clothes that would not only look modern and stylish, but they'd also look flattering on me and stop making me look like a stuffed sausage. So, I'm going to lose weight. I'm determined. My health needs it, my self-esteem needs it, not to mention I need the energy boost to keep chasing after my son!

Speaking of sons, I have to include the following picture. As is Blanchard-family tradition, we always let Ann Catherine wear the tree skirt when we put out the tree at Christmas. But this year, as Brian was putting up the tree, Will decided he wanted to try on the skirt. Of course, as a boy, he decided he had different plans for our tree "skirt"...