Pretty Good After All

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. January has been an insane month for me at work, and I have been working 12 to 15 hour days, sometimes going for several days in a row without seeing the boys because they are asleep when I leave the house in the morning at 6 am and asleep again when I return home after 9 pm. It's not good for anyone. So when I was out of town on a last-minute business trip on my birthday, I was feeling pretty down. After a tough day of meetings, I called home from my hotel room to check in and Joe put AJ on the phone. He said "Mama, I, I, I wanna get you a chocolate cake and, and, and put a blue candle in it and sing happy birthday, dear Mama!" Such simple, sweet love that poured through the phone across all of those miles. It made me realize that as long as I have Joe and these two little boys, my life is pretty good after all, regardless of what is going on at work.

When I got home we did have a cake, and here are the picture of my little guys delighted to be stuffing themselves with some birthday sugar. [Sorry for the lack of pictures, but our main computer is over at the Geek Squad--down with a virus.]

Beep Beep

Bringing the Cozy Coupe from the garage into the house has made an old toy new again for AJ, and to David it is just plain new. David is obsessed. He gets into the car, out of the car, into the car, out of the car all day long. Even falling down while getting out of the car and smashing his face on the floor did not dampen his enthusiasm for his first car. He is starting to pull up to stand on every toy, piece of furniture or set of human legs that he can scoot over to, and this car is his perfect motivation to be standing 80 percent of the day. Could this be the sign of a future gearhead who loves all things with four wheels and an engine?

Words That Tell the Story!

Apologies, dear readers, for my recent lack of posts. I have been just swamped at work and it is hard to come up for air. But I had to share one of my favorite AJisms of the past few weeks. After reading about three books a day to him for two and a half years, he just had the realization the other night that "those are the words on the page that tell the story!" Now whenever anyone sits down to read to him, he explains to them that the words on the page are what tell the reader the story. One of his favorite stories lately is "Pusk in Boots." Somehow whenever he says it, there is a k in Puss the hero's name. He is also a fan of any books with diggers, construction, trucks, heavy machinery or talking animals.

Happy 2010

Grandma Julie came for a visit to help us ring in the New Year. We have a couple of plastic wine glasses for summer picnics that AJ discovered recently, and he loved to drink his "sparkle juice" (sparkling apple cider) out of a wine glass while dinging everyone's glass. I like the fresh start aspect of New Year's and the resolutions. My resolutions for AJ in 2010 are to get him started in preschool this fall, to help him learn how to ride a trike this summer and--the biggie--to help him tackle potty training. My resolutions for David in 2010 are to help him start walking, to get him to sleep through the night (more on that in a later post, but we have not hit this milestone with him yet), and to get him to say bye-bye to the ba-ba (bottle). We're going to leave the pacifier resolution for 2011.

If AJ could make his own resolutions, I think they would be to drive the mini-van around the neighborhood, to build a house (while using power tools, of course), and to have his own laptop computer. If Davey could make his own resolutions (and talk), I think they would most likely be to be able to have a chute from his room that would take him straight into the basement to play with the toys whenever he wants, to have his own telephone so that he can push all of the buttons and to have a set of toys all to himself for one hour a day. Here's to 2010--who knows what is possible?

Davey Bear Turns 1

This is going to be a quick post with more supplemented later. Davey Bear turned 1 this week, which in addition to the start of the new decade was the big event at our house. He thoroughly enjoyed himself with his pizza and cupcake night at home and then an outing to the Choo-Choo cafe on Saturday. (More pictures to come later.) As a quick little tidbit, one of my colleagues at my office who has kids about the same age apart as mine mentioned that she has started to give the younger one things as gifts that she knows the older one will want to play with in an effort to encourage sharing. The idea is that the older kid will want so badly to play with the toy that the younger kid gets that the older kid will be willing to share other toys to get a turn with it.

I tried this out by "giving" David one of the Thomas the Train toy engines that AJ did not yet have--the only red engine, no less--and so far, the idea seems to be working. I wrapped the package with a bit of the back peeking out so that AJ could see it was a Thomas the Train toy. As soon as he figured this out, he insisted on taking the package all the way upstairs to where David was getting ready for bed so that David could open it *immediately*. As soon as the paper was off, AJ said quietly, "AJ play with James??" I told him he would have to ask David very nicely if he could borrow the engine for a few minutes. David, of course, was interpreted to have agreed and AJ was off. Since then, there have been three or four times when David bravely scooted over to the train table, which was previously forbidden AJ-only territory. AJ started out by saying "no, no, Davey, these are AJ's trains." I reminded him that the red one was David's and that he could play with it. AJ immediately offered David one of his older engines, which David happily accepted, and AJ was able to continue with James. So far, so good on this strategy. Once David figures out that James is the more desirable engine-of-the-moment, though, I am going to need a Plan B.