The rain, the park and other things...

 The Cowsills have it right...  The rain, the park, the flowers...  We have been hitting up the park a lot lately.  And it has been raining a lot lately.  So hopefully all those flowers will be popping up soon.  The park is always a good time.  I'm surprised that Fish isn't as into slides as I would have thought.  Finn & Fish both love the swings.  I think that would be their favorite piece of park equipment when asked (takes after their mama, who if E comes with us, usually lets me swing for a bit -- it's in the family blood).

In fact, I just taught the girl a new thing about the swings.  I taught her all about underdogs.  Do you guys know what an underdog is (well, besides the team you should always cheer for)?  E didn't know what an underdog was either.  But it was something as a middle school girl we used to do with our friends all the time.  An underdog is when you push someone in the swing and run underneath them to get them to go high.  She loves it and requests it all the time now.

It seems like a while since I've updated on how things are going on a daily here.  I'm still a SAHM.  I love it most days, but there are some days where I really wish that I could return to the work force.  I find myself very nostalgic for jobs that I remember not being terribly happy in.  I think that a lot of my nostaglia is the freedom and independence that it gave me, because some of the jobs occurred after I had Finn.  I am trying to make some doctors appointments and would love to travel to visit a friend or two, but am now realizing the constraints of choosing this lifestyle.  I think part of it is also being ready for the day, which in an essence just means getting pretty.  I've tried to incorporate more "getting pretty" days, but some days I'm better than others.

I broke my tooth last week and after visiting the dentist whom I'm quite petrified of, I left with the knowledge of having way too many cavities in my teeth than I care to admit and also an appointment with a consultation for wisdom teeth removal.  THAT should be buckets of fun.  Everyone tells you that pregnancy will wreak havoc on your teeth.  I didn't listen and didn't go to the dentist during either of my pregnancies and I didn't go in between either (because I get hives thinking about sitting in the chair).  The kicker of the visit?  The hygienist decided to lecture me on becoming a regular patient to, you know, "set a good example for my kids".  I was furious and wanted to walk out that second.  But I'll suck it up for a pretty smile despite the lecturing lady.

That kid, right there.  He is going to be a handful.  He is the loudest kid around -- during both happy moments and sad moments.  But his vocals really take flight when he is mad.  He is already mastering the tantrum and the stalk-away-pout.  But his squeals and screams of joy are pretty amazing (even if E thinks that they hurt his ears).  He is also becoming quite the climber and Mr. Independent.  He can get up on the sofa all by himself now.  And he can also climb from a chair to the table -- witnessed that one yesterday.  He is definitely my mischief maker.  We still have no words, but he is quite the conversationalist despite not speaking my language yet.  And I'm getting pretty good at his language -- at least good enough to avert 60% of his tantrums.

And this girl, right here.  She is going to be a handful as well.  She is a nonstop talker, jabberjaw.  She loves all things girly and pink.  And she does NOT like little brother getting into her business.  We are really trying to work past the pushing and hitting of her little brother -- it's not going quickly, but I'm hopeful that by the time she reaches 16, we won't be pushing him down anymore.  Actually looking at their size, he may be bigger than her before his third birthday and then the roles might be reversed. But she is also a lots and lots of fun and her reasoning always makes me laugh (even at the times when I'm supposed to be reprimanding her which makes me have to stop and compose myself so she doesn't see me smiling at her).

These two together can be a gaggle of geese and then the next minute be a murder of crows.  Today, they are being a murder of crows (or at least making me want to murder crows).  Both of them decided to boycott their afternoon naps.  Normally, Finn boycotts.  In the last two weeks, I can get her nap about 50% of the time, which I'm assuming just means that she is outgrowing the afternoon nap.  But Fish is ALWAYS a napper.  I'm not much of a sleeper so I think that Finn gets her sleeping patterns from me. As an adult before children, I was up before 7 on most weekends (and the majority of the weekends as a child as well). E is a big sleeper and used to love to sleep in.  I think Fish will take after him.  But today with both of them not being in the best moods and not being able to stay away from each other, it's a recipe for disaster.  But it also means an early bedtime, yeah!!

The kids and I are heading to Iowa tomorrow for a couple of weeks.  We have a baptism, an Easter celebration, a photo shoot, and a wedding.  It will be a busy couple of weeks, but we are super excited for it all.  My family held off on celebrating Easter together so that the kids and I could make it, which is really wonderful (especially since Finn didn't get to do an Easter egg hunt at the township). Knowing this, the posting may be a little shoddy, but I'll try to do what I can to get photos up.  I know that I can get my phone photos up (so those will be going up regularly), but will try to get the camera photos up as quickly as I can.

Some of my worst mistakes were haircuts...

So last week, the infamous "first haircut" happened for Fish.  And the second for Finn, to which I'm sure you say "What?!?!?!?!  The girl is three years old!"  And I say, "yes, yes..."  She doesn't have much of a style, so I tried to maintain the bangs by trimming them regularly, but they have seemed to have gotten away from me and I needed some professional help.  Before I continue, I must caveat the story with "while I love the cut that he ended up with, I miss my little mop head baby..."  For the first couple of days, I looked at him and was like "that's SOOOOO not my kid."

So we went to Snipits again -- the same place that we went to with Finn's first haircut.  For Finn's first hair cut, she was 19 months old.  My initial plan was to hold out and wait for Fish's luscious locks to appear.  You know, the curls and the beautiful halo glow that would envelope his head in the early morning sun streaming through our bedroom window.  Unfortunately, my kids did not realize their hair genes from me.  Well, in a sense they did, but it's my mother's hair that both of my kids have.  Mimi's hair is wild, frizzy, fine, and untamable.

Fish's before

Finn's before (beautiful eyes & lashes, girlfriend)

While we were waiting, four boys went before us and every single one of them screamed their heads off.  When it was our turn, Finn went first.  You know, "to show Brother how it was done."  She did great, but "the lips" came out.  She does this face when she is uncomfortable and nervous.  Her upper lip sticks out above her lower lip, she gets really quiet and looks like a deer in headlights (I know that I've mentioned it multiple times on the blog).  Well, "the lips" came out and I melted, thinking about that face and the myriad of times she did it when she was a wee one.  But there was no tears and I looked around thinking "yeah, my kids don't cry for piddle little things like haircuts" -- shouldn't have puffed my chest out so far...

She just got a trim -- no dramatic "before and after" -- still beautiful, very Bette Paige.

This one, on the other hand, didn't do great.  He sat in the chair great.  The hairdresser gave him a sucker and he was a happy camper.  We decided to do buzzers in the back instead of scissors because he gets frizzy in the back.  The clippers were no issues.  Finn & I were busy blowing bubbles his way and he was so distracted with the bubbles that he sat still.  Then Finn decided that she wanted to be the one blowing the bubbles and she also decided that she wanted to be blowing the bubbles for herself and NOT for Fish.  Well, the 15 seconds that it took for me to convince Finn that the bubbles were for Brother and not her, was enough for Mount Fish-ious to erupt.

It was on like Donkey Kong then.  No distraction was going to work.  So she snipped as much as she could off the top while I ended up having to hold the kid down in the chair.  His arms were flailing and his head was thrashing.  By the time that we called it quits on the cut, both he and I were covered in hair, as was his sucker which was thrown on the floor.  Even when the hairdresser walked away, there was no soothing him.  He wanted OUT OF THE PLACE that instant.  I tried to snap a photo while in the place, but he wasn't having it.

Our little rocker

I gave him a new sucker for the car ride home.

This is how I found him when we arrived at home...  Sucker suck under the fat of his chin...

In looking at the cut later on, the top is a little haggard, but the hairdresser did great with what she had to work with.

A Week in the Life -- The St. Paddy's-Easter Edition (v.2015.5)

 Celebrating our Irish photo shoot with a meal at an Irish pub

She loved wearing that dress out in public.

Munky getting his Irish on.

An Irish breakfast on St. Patty's Day

This face occurs A LOT lately.  He has quite the tantrums.  This time, he was mad at the truck for not going the way that he wanted it to go.

An afternoon tea party

This kid can have conversations with you without saying a single recognizable word (and an attitude as well).

He learned how to stomp and was so full of himself.

Lucy & Stella snuggles

He grew a 'stache over night!

This was an art project she did for school for St. Patrick's Day.

I was grating beets and she refused to touch my hand.

When asked how to spell Dunkin' Donuts, she spells her own name.

This is usually what it looks like when I'm cooking dinner.

I found him in the tub of playdoh while cooking dinner.

Basement fun!

Finn went on her first field trip -- Daddy was a volunteer.  She is the little one in the red pants.

Daddy headed over to Ireland, so as a good-bye, Finn & Fish took him to Dunkin' Donuts that morning.  She was so excited to get a peep INSIDE her sprinkle donut.

He was all business inside the donut shop.

Like ALLLLLLL business.

Fish's latest obsession is wearing Finn's purses.

Being funny

Lookin' sharp in a Care Bear tote.

Easter baskets

The Easter Bunny left tracks in our house to show the kids where he hid the baskets...

Fish was so excited for the candy inside eggs, that he threw the candy in his mouth -- tinfoil and all!

She was very excited about her basket -- lots of little packages to open.

With E being gone, our Easter was very low-key.  This is how we spent it -- in our jammies most of the day and then on the floor the rest.

Love this kid.

Modeling an orange rubber satchel.

He now knows his nose, teeth, and belly and on a good day, he knows his eyes.  He also has the same sound for cows, dogs, and cats.

Mother of the Year -- The Early Easter version

Did you guys hear something last weekend on Saturday morning at about 11:34am EST?  No, you missed it?  Yeah, well, I totally won the Mother of the Year Award about that time.  See that basket with the lone blue egg in it?  That's what Finn got at the township's annual Easter Egg Hunt.  Last year was a big success.

 Last year's basket after the township egg hunt...

This year -- not so much.  The egg hunt was held last Saturday and the temperature outside was hovering around 26 degrees with a pretty nice wind, which probably brought the wind chill down to about 10 (at least that is what it felt like).  I had some preconceived notions on how the egg hunt was going to go -- like I thought it was going to be held in the same fashion as it was the year before, in which all the kids were divided into their age groups and then the start times were staggered so that everyone could watch each hunt if they so chose.  After being held up by a train, we arrived at 11:33 and by the time that we got the kids out of the car, we saw the kids picking up the last of the eggs.  Finn & I raced out to the big kids hunt (which they moved into a smaller area this year) and I was able to secure one egg for her to pick up.  To say that she was upset was an understatement.  This is coming from a child who for the past 12 months has watched dogs hunting Easter eggs over and over and over and over again.  I'm assuming that the town thought it best that everyone not freeze and so they released all the kids at exactly 11:30am and being that the weather was so brutal they downsized the hunt thinking that not a lot of people would bring their kids out in the misery, so we missed the whole thing.  Epic failure on my part for not showing up early...

Someone still has a Egg-hunt Hangover...

So to make up to her, we dyed Easter eggs later that day.  And being that E was taking off for Ireland and probably going to miss Easter (and the week of eating hard boiled eggs), we only dyed six -- one for each color of tablet (that was left over from last year -- again with the Mother of the Year Award).

To keep Fish from trying to steal the eggs out of the cups, I set him up in the play kitchen next to us.  He decided to become Hurricane Fish and destroyed it.

The egg dying went well.  She had a good time with it and that's all the mattered.  But after the hunting fiasco, E made a special call to the Easter Bunny and he spoke with Finn, telling her that being the weather was so cold, he didn't put out a lot of eggs at the town hunt and that he would drop some off the following morning in our yard for her.  So the next morning was our annual Front Yard Egg Hunt.

The weather was a lot nicer (though not a lot warmer -- maybe 10 degrees, but the wind wasn't a vicious).  And the kids had an excellent time.  Even though he was a first-timer this year, Fish was a professional egg-picker-upper.  And that's saying it professional with a capital "P".  Granted Finn didn't really want to share any eggs with her little brother, meaning that when we told her to leave this one or that one for her brother, she always scooped them up and put them in her basket!  But Fish got enough to make him happy and so it was a success!  I think I might have redeemed myself from the day before.

While I was taking photos, E was shooting some video with his phone.  I merged three of the videos together.

He even knew exactly what to do when we sat down at the kitchen table.