Squirt-a-palooza

Who knew?  Actually, my mother-in-law did.  The other week when we were at their house visiting, my MIL gave the boys each a squirt bottle filled with water and it blew my mind how much fun they had squirting things on her porch.  They squirted her plants, the back window, the porch itself, etc.  Anyway, if you need to occupy your toddler while you say, make a phone call (ehem... John Michael), try some squirt bottles.

For the record, my mom is a former preschool and kindergarten teacher and it's only now that I'm a parent that I truly know what she was talking about when used to say that she would create lesson plans, but because of the attention span of little children, she would constantly be having to change things up.  I now understand that when I come up with all these ideas for things to do with my kids, sometimes the interest just doesn't last long.  I sure wish I could set my kids down with a squirt bottle or some paintbrushes and water and have them be occupied for time enough for me to say, sit down and watch an entire episode of (cough) Bachelor Pad, but these little small windows with my boys doing something where they are having fun and using their imaginations totally rock.  And, then we're on to the next thing!  You have to have a whole arsenal of these little ideas for the whole day.  So, add squirt bottles to your list!  

Adventures in water beads

After seeing numerous posts from mom bloggers going on about these wonderful things called water beads and how much their kids love them, I decided to buy some from Michaels for $5.  For the record, these are little grape-like beads one purchases in the floral section of a craft store.  They have a texture like a wet grape, with a cool tactical quality that my boys like. If you soak them in water, they expand to the size of a large marble.  Very cool!

If you do a google search, you can find a gazillion ideas for what to do with water beads.  You can paint with them, fill a bin with shaving cream and put some beads in and play with them that way or put them on a lighted table. My boys love taking the bin and sorting their favorite colors out.  But, so far, I will say that I am NOT on Team Water Bead.  Why?

1.  Not 10 minutes out of the box, Noah ate a water bead.  Oh, it's not a day around here if I don't call poison control.  For the record, water beads are non-toxic. The nice lady at poison control said the worst that might happen is that he'd have a tummy ache.  He was fine.  Anyway, they are kind of "gummy" like, so I totally get why Noah did this, but still.

2.  My boys love to tear apart the poor water beads, making a big gummy mess.

Anyway, a lot of people love water beads and if you are looking for a fun inexpensive activity for your kids in a controlled environment where you can make sure they won't ingest them, I say go for it!  Someday soon I will try painting with them, but until then I will send my boys back to the sandbox for their sensory fun.   

Camp Mama

Eeek! We have two more weeks until school starts. All of the VBS and summer camps are over, leaving us the freedom to stay in our pajamas with nowhere to go and, since it's August, possibly losing our marbles (okay my marbles) because there isn't a lot we can do outside in the afternoons (besides pour a large glass of chilled white at 4pm).  Enter Camp Mama, or when I go out and invest in stuff from the Dollar Store and Michaels and we attempt to do craft ideas and fun activities to keep our sanity.  I'll be sharing some ideas the next few posts.  I always see mom bloggers posting these elaborate ideas for crafts that look far too difficult for a lazy simpleton like myself.  I am going to focus on cheap and easy stuff that even this mama can do and that have kept my boys entertained (ages 4 and 2).  Here is what we did yesterday and today:

Free summer movies at Alamo Drafthouse.  Our friend Kim stayed at home with our collective two babies and our two two year-olds and I took our big boys to the movies.  Yes, I got the "easy" deal on this one.  Thank you, Kim.  Anyway, Alamo movie.  Mama gets an iced coffee.  JM and Rhys get root beer.  The Alamo gets $20 of our hard-earned money toward their "free" movie.  Everyone wins!

Genius idea stolen from pre-school.  Foam blocks leftover from a large appliance purchase, $3 worth of colored golf tees and some toy hammers= hours of fun!

What We've Been Up To This Summer

Hello!  I haven't been blogging much.  There are two reasons for this.  One is that Aaron is still not sleeping well at night (boo!  hiss!) and number two is that we have just been busy.  I went through my phone pictures and man, we've been running around a lot lately.  I was worried that three babies was going to make me a total shut-in this summer, but thanks to our babysitter Alex (who comes three times a week for a few hours so I can go to the grocery store and whose departure for college in three weeks will make me sob) and to our pure determination to get out, we haven't slowed down much!

Visiting with our elderly neighbors...

...who hopefully will invite us back.  :)

Riding the Zilker train with Nana (in matching outfits!)

Playing "baby" or rather playing in the crib so that Noah can "visit" Paci during the day

Another day of playing baby.  This time co-ed with Sela!

Going to Southlake to visit our cousins

Painting trains at Terra Toys, also with Sela

Laying under the shady pecan trees at Barton Springs

Aaron is 4 months!

Still such a happy guy!

I love this.  He's so relaxed!

My littles.  Big brother at camp.

Strong like bull!

Well, Aaron, since I blogged about your sleeping the other day, you have been a lot better.  You are still all over the place, but you've been doing some nice long stretches the past three nights.  Two nights of down at 7, up at midnight and down til 7.  Last night you went 7-4.  Bravo, good man, bravo!  Keep it up! Just this week, we've transitioned you from napping in the swing to napping in the bed and I can't believe it.  Sometimes you go down without a peep.  Sometimes, I let you cry a few minutes and you can put yourself to sleep.  A few months ago it was really hard for me to get you to sleep in the crib during the day, so I just gave up and put you in the swing...  Desperate times, desperate measures, people!  Don't judge! 

In the past month, you've hit some big milestones.  You rolled from front to back at 14 weeks.  Just this very morning, we found you on your belly after rolling the other way.  You are very strong and can hold your head up really well.  You are also VERY VERY oral, all of a sudden.  Everything goes in your mouth.  Your favorite things to put in there are your fists and plastic linking rings.  You love all the little rattles and baby toys.  You also love the play gym mat and the bouncy chair in a way your brothers never did.  Does anyone remember how John Michael drooled until he was 2 years old? How he was constantly wet?  Well, sadly, I think we have another drooler.  I may have mentioned that both Michael and I soaked through bibs, so I guess the genetic odds aren't in our favor for dry babies.  Noah was so nice and dry!  Ah well.  Aaron can't be one-hundred percent perfect.

Anyway, we love you, Aaron!  You are a complete ray of sunshine in our lives and are growing up too fast!  

Love, Mama

Rub a dub dub

While I was having some much-needed conversation (and margaritas) with the mamas last night, Michael sent me this picture from his phone: 

 

My first response?  Look at how cute they are!  My second response?  Aaaaaack!  Get Aaron back into the baby bath tub pronto!  He is way too little for the sit-up bath seat.  Isn't he?  :)  Waaaah!  Not yet!!!!! Seriously.  Back in the lay-down infant seat tonight!  No rush for our last baby!

All-night buffet at our house!

"I like to eat at 4:30pm... and at 7... and 9, 12 and 4!"

Aaron.  Aaron.  Aaron.  You are such a joy!  So smiley.  So content.  You just have one small flaw.  Sleeping at night.  You would think that by child number three, I'd have a magic formula to get babies to sleep through the night, but this child has me mystified.  With JM and Noah, if they cried during the night, I'd go in and give them a pacifier.  With Aaron, he spits the paci out, like it's covered in poison.  Aaron's preferred method of falling asleep and being comforted is nursing.  So, at midnight or 4am when he wakes up from a sleep cycle, he wants the boob.  And, because I am dog tired and don't feel like trying anything else, I give it to him.  I feel mostly grateful, because sometimes he sleeps all night.  I know it could be worse.  JM woke up around the clock every three hours until 7 months!  But, Aaron is all over the place.  Sometimes he has a long stretch in the early evenings.  Sometimes he has a stretch in the time between 12 and 4.  The past two nights he wants to eat around midnight, which is really not working for me, since I an Olympa-holic (Olympic junkie) and have gone to bed at 10:30.  1.5 hours of sleep and then waking up to nurse is not fun.

I do know this.  Both Aaron and I need predictability.  Aaron needs to be able to fall asleep on his own.  The time has come.  At almost 4 months into this, Mama is tired and we know that Aaron can in fact go all night!  He has done it here and there, but just not every night.  Mama is counting down the days until we can do sleep training.  Sorry, Aaron, but soon your all-night buffet is going to close!  And, it's going to be painful at first for both of us, but then it's going to be AWESOME!  Sleep training rules!

The Soul of Austin

"Welcome to Barton Springs... the soul of Austin" says the sign.

Observing turtles, runners, people who haven't bathed recently, etc. on the Zephyr

You know the saying, "when the cat's away, the mice will play?"  Well, in our case, when the figurative cat, read: John Michael is away at day camp, us figurative mice do all sorts of things that we don't get to do when big brother is around.  For Noah, this means getting out all of John Michael's favorite toys the second that the door closes.  For me, this means we take outings that I never would attempt with three kids, such as this morning, when we met our friends from around the corner, Elle and Birdie and Mandy and went to Zilker Park to ride the train.

He who wears the concert T-shirt to the concert

Being at Zilker makes me so happy.  The park really is the best our city has to offer.  Swimmers cooling off and doing laps in Barton Springs.  Runners running Ladybird Lake.  The train, so unique and fun.  To think there was a period when I used to run the trail, both Town Lake and also the Greenbelt, multiple times a week!  Those days are looooong gone.  I wonder if I'll ever run that seriously, again.  I have no desire to run these days.  I'm lucky to make it to the gym once a week and that is just fine with me.  Do you know what else is long gone?  The days when I used to think an outing with two kids was hard.  Now, it's no big deal.  Aaron passed out on the train ride and slept in in the Ergo long enough for Noah and I to share an ice cream under the big oak trees and watch the lap swimmers after our train ride.  The ice cream was needed because it was already sweltering at 11am.  But, seriously, this summer has been a dream compared to last, where on the news this morning, they said last year at this time we'd already had 47! days of 100-plus temperatures. I am so glad we didn't move to the 'burbs.  I really would have missed being close to this...