The (Very Good) End of an Era

This is the sweet face of a boy who is potty trained.

For many months I have been trying to get Lou interested in the potty and he would have nothing to do with it whatsoever.  In fact, he actively worked against me.  We didn't push it and figured he would let us know when he was ready. About two weeks ago he decided he was ready. He demanded superhero underpants and that was pretty much the end of it.  His teachers at school can't believe he went from zero to 100 seemingly overnight.

There was much celebrating.

We told him that when he was in underpants all of the time he could pick out whatever toy he wanted. He decided he wanted a Dr. Feel Bad monster truck from Mater Tales.  A $6 toy? Done and done.  Of course, come to find out that Dr. Feel Bad was manufactured in limited edition and is now a collector's item going for upwards of $80 online.  Thankfully, Louis believed us that "they" don't make a Dr. Feel Bad and settled for an $18 Franken-Monster instead.
 

I feel like this milestone really and truly gets us out of baby jail.  It's nice to be on parole.

Let It Go

Like most kids on Planet Earth these days, Norah is obsessed with the movie Frozen.  Especially the music.  Our friends were recently in town from London and Norah was beyond thrilled to learn Frozen crossed the pond.

Lou at Three

It has been a crazy couple of weeks around here.  Between Lou's birthday, school, work, PTA, daisy scouts (oh yes, because I didn't have enough going on I agreed to co-lead a daisy scout troop...) it has been a little hectic.  Oh yeah, and BVZ changed jobs.  From private sector law to public sector law.  It is a big, big, BIG change.  It's a quality of life game changer.  He leaves every day at 5:00 pm.  And does not check email once he is gone.  He just finished his first week and despite the fact that he misses fancy coffee and nice office furniture it is so far, so very good.

But back to Lou.

His actual birthday was on a Friday and it just so happened that his school was closed for a staff development day.  I did not realize this of course until the Thursday before (not through any fault of the school's, I just sometimes cannot keep all the schedules straight).  Norah's school carnival was the next day and my plan had been to take the day off of work and do carnival stuff while Lou was at school (PTA is a lot of work) and then hang out with him for the afternoon.  Thankfully, BVZ was able to take THREE WHOLE WEEKS off in between jobs (which is unheard of around these parts) and so did some quality hanging out with the birthday boy.

First thing in the morning we let him open presents, which consisted of a Spiderman dune buggy, book, and beach towel.

He also got a balance bike from us.  He does not love it yet, which has been disappointing but I am hoping that will change.  He just does not seem to get how to make it move just yet.

Norah is very excited that Louie is now three.  She says it makes him "more on my level now."

I took Norah to school and then spent the next 3.5 hours making cotton candy for the carnival.  This was about the 8,000th hour I spent on carnival related business.  Cotton candy is incredibly messy.  It is still made in machines from the 1970's and the floss sugar gets into the air, on walls, in hair, etc.  It is (literally) a hot mess.

Back at home I tried to get some photos of Lou on the recliner for old times sake.  This is what I got when I asked him to smile.

Then this one...

And finally this.

I wanted a sweet photo of us together on his birthday, but I was still covered in a fine layer of sugar and he wanted no part of it so this is what I ended up with.  I'll take it.

We told him we would take him to lunch anywhere he wanted to go.  That never happens (because of Norah's diet restrictions), but if it is just Lou, the sky is the limit.  Despite all of my suggestions to the contrary, he begged to go to "Old McDonald's."  Bubby used to take the kids there for milkshakes after pre-school sometimes and he's been obsessed with it for a while.

As I suspected, he ate up all the apples and fries in 30 seconds and wanted absolutely nothing to do with the hamburger.

He was, however, very interested in the milkshake and pink-eye infested play structure.

We played for the rest of the afternoon and then when Norah got home from school he got to do his favorite weekend activity--hot tubbing.

The family was supposed to come over but the T's got sick.  Thankfully, the S's, Bubby, and Reid still made it and we celebrated with spaghetti, cupcakes, and presents. 

 

Spiderman was the theme of the year and Lou amassed a good collection of books, figurines, and this little gem.

Bubby also came through with a fire chief suit.

He had no patience for me making an "interview" video with him and refused to participate.  This is the best I got from him:

Best friend--Jonah, Andrew, Nani, and Trevor

Favorite food--Bread

Favorite show--Jake and Handy Manny

Favorite toy--My big rig

Thing I like to do best--Play with my big rig

Thing I like to do least--Play with princesses and brush my teeth

I can't believe he is three.  He has SO MUCH personality and makes me laugh (and sometimes cry) every single day.  He has the best sense of humor and can be the sweetest, snuggliest, most endearing kid on the planet.  When he wants to be.  He also frequently punches me in the face, melts down in the most spectacular fashion, and basically refuses to do just about anything he doesn't want to do.  

My sweet baby conked out that night with the Green Goblin watching over him.  Not surprisingly, Lou likes the villians best.  

 

I can't remember exactly why, but he ended up in our bed that night.  And so did Green Goblin.  

The next day was sweet baby Camilla's first birthday.  It was also the day of Norah's school carnival. It was a smashing success.  It was also so much work.  I worked about 8 hours that day and saw my family for about five minutes during the entire event.  But they had a great time.  I got home to find that Norah begged to go to bed with her face painting intact.  BVZ told her she couldn't wear pajamas and had to put a towel on her pillow but said okay.  That's a dad for you.

Now that the kids are getting older we have instituted a chore chart around here.  There are tasks the kids are expected to do on a daily basis in exchange for food and shelter, but then there are extra things they can do as "chores."  All of the chores benefit other members of the family.  For example, Norah's "chores" are to pick up everyone else's shoes at the end of the day and return them to the shoe rack; feed the cat dinner; and clean up the playroom after dinner.  She gets one sticker per chore per day, so has the potential of 21 stickers a week.  If every square has a sticker by Saturday night she gets $2. Norah is bananas for the stickers and takes great joy and pride in completing her tasks.  Louie has age appropriate chores of his own.  He earned one sticker for the entire week.  And told me point blank, "I don't care about stickers."

This is what happens when Lou helps with the laundry.

 

Amy and I decided to throw a joint birthday party for Lou and Camilla because about 85% of the guest list would be the same.  I don't know how long we will be able to get away with it, so we are doing it while we can.  Theme was bubbles (Camilla) and monster trucks (Lou).  Menu was pulled pork sliders on Hawaiian rolls, homemade potato salad, ranch beans, tortilla chips with salsa, and fruit salad.

I took maybe 20 photos of the whole thing and at least 5 of them were of the fruit.  I guess I really liked the fruit.

I failed to get a single close-up of the cupcakes, which is really irritating, since they took for freaking ever and I was really pleased how they turned out.  I did two dozen "bubble" cupcakes, which were vanilla with lavender frosting and white sugar pearls.  Then I did two dozen "monster truck" ones, which were either red, yellow, or green with a tire on top (chocolate donut) and cupcake topper.

I also did a combo gluten free dozen.  Only nine of them made it to the actual plate.

Cake boss (ie, Aunt Stephanie) came through again with a monster truck cake all of Lou's own.  It had an m&m border and cookie crumb road and was decorated with real trucks.  Lou was obsessed with it.

Amy had a rough couple of days and celebrated by shotgunning a beer at 10:30 am.

Beautiful birthday girl!

The plan was to have a bubble wonderland in the backyard and a monster truck rally in the driveway. But then it was cold and rainy and BVZ and I didn't start the monster truck course until 10:00 pm the night before so it ended up being two cardboard ramps in my office.  The kids were crazy for it. CRAZY.  It was a huge hit.

Megan and Trevor are the best big cousins ever.  They ran interference with all of the little kids, helped serve cupcakes, and were all around awesome helpers.  I feel like we could make a ton of money hiring them out to other kid parties.

Louie's two BFF's from school came.  It was fun to watch him in his element.  Apparently he is the "class clown" and "instigator" at school.  But that's a discussion for another day.

Norah insisted on wearing a fancy party dress.

I think we ended up having about 60 people, which was a big group but a ton of fun.  It was wet outside but not raining so bubble-palooza happened after all.

Trevor turned our basic ramp into something more interesting and elaborate.

And then helped all the kids navigate it.

Lou waited SO patiently for that cake and was rewarded with the big green monster truck at the end.

Camilla got some face in cake action.

Everyone seemed to have a good time and the kids all got along.  It was a certifiable success of a party. Hopefully someone will send me photos of the festivities and maybe one of them will actually have me in it.  We have been horrible at taking a family photo at these kinds of events--a practice I need to remedy ASAP or our kids aren't going to believe we were actually present for any of this stuff.

I did get a sweet one of Lou and cake boss.

Three years old is proving to be the sweet spot for cousins.  I would say they are now 75/25 for being best friends/beating the crap out of each other.  They seem to genuinely enjoy each other's company and are getting in all kinds of trouble.  They went missing for a minute as we were cleaning up post-party and I discovered them giggling and hiding in a cabinet in the playroom.  They were quite proud of themselves.  

Lou slept hard for about 3 hours after the party.  Norah and BVZ went to our friend Wyatt's party in the afternoon.  Wyatt had chickens in his backyard and GF mint chocolate chip cupcakes on the table. I am surprised Norah left.

Now starts the planning for BVZ's big 4-0 this May.  I hope he likes fruit salad.

And Then He Was Three

Polar Vortex and Other Goings On

Like in many parts of the country, the weather here lately has been bananas.  It is 70 degrees one day, 30 the next, and so forth.  Everyone has been sick because of the temperature fluctuations and the fact that the cedar count has been out of control.  Norah has had a cough since Christmas so I finally took her to the doctor.  Bronchitis and sinus infection.  Sorry, kid.  School has been cancelled twice for ice and today was another two hour delay.  Last week we were stuck inside several days because it was so.damn.cold.

And then over the weekend it was scooter and shorts weather.

We had planned to have a bunch of people over for Super Bowl Sunday but Saturday night I either caught some kind of bug or got food poisoning (I think the latter because no one else got sick).  I was down and down hard.  For the majority of the day on Sunday I literally could not lift my head off my pillow.  I took a shower at some point and fell asleep for an hour just to recover from the exertion.  Lou tried to be sympathetic and helpful.

He wasn't really, but he was cute.

On top off all the bad weather days, this week was complicated even further by the fact that the school district had faculty development days Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Thank goodness for Childcare by Bubby most days and a job where I could do an ad hoc "bring your daughter to work day."  Norah happily sat in on meetings and calls and played on the ipad while I got a million things done.  You can't tell from this photo but she is wearing sparkly blue eye shadow, lots of pink blush, and a very fancy dress.  She made quite an impression.

Three days off school also meant a trip to the dentist.  One patient got an A+ and the other about a C-. Norah was thrilled to learn she has several "wiggly" teeth and the dentist guaranteed she'd lose one at least one before her sixth birthday.  The dentist was very pleased to hear about Operation No More Paci and reassured me that Lou's jacked up mouth should realign a bit soon and his permanent teeth should not be effected.  Neither had a cavity.  It surprised me a little bit about Lou because most days I pretty much have to tackle and pin him down in order to brush his teeth.

I took off one day of "vacation" and Louie played hooky as well so that we could go to the movies and see The Nut Job.  This was Lou's first theater experience and he did great.  Norah is an old pro and would literally watch anything I took her to, but Lou likes the freedom of walking around.  He did get really antsy at one point and wanted to walk up and down the stairs in the theater but that problem was quickly solved by a $4 box of m&m's.  He happily sat in my lap the rest of the film.  And yes, he wears that damn jersey every day.

I love the bistro table we have in the kitchen but the chairs are high and lately Lou has taken to attempting feats of acrobatics.  He's nearly cracked his skull about 700 times in the past week alone.  A friend is moving and getting rid of a lot of her really nice furniture so I snatched this guy up for a steal.  I worked late last night and BVZ reported that at one point Lou was on top of the actual table.  At least it's closer to the ground.

Louie's class does a lot of crafts and often involve photos of the kids.  Most of the stuff goes immediately into the recycling (sorry, Lou) but the photo ones are definite keepers.  They made these in honor of all of the cold weather.  I died laughing.

This was my favorite from the holidays (now permanently on the fridge).

And that's all for now.