I love reading other blogs. Sometimes I waste way too much time doing that. But I often find myself thinking, wow, they are really together. The blog looks cute, the house in the background looks clean (yeah, sometimes I look in the background of pictures to see what I can find), they're doing all these fun creative activities with the kids, and to top it all off, all the children are fully clothed (sometimes I have a hard time finding pictures to use where both the boys are wearing real clothes and not just a diaper and underwear). I wonder how those people do it. So maybe for those out there who feel the same way I do, or maybe just to make myself feel a little better tonight, here is post about chaos and craziness.
I felt like today was a crazy day, though really I guess it probably wasn't too much out of the ordinary. Probably everything is just getting thrown off because I'm working on painting the stupid bathroom, a project I started back in March but kind of put on hold. Because of the strip of wall paper that was taking forever to get off. So since I've been doing that when I have any spare time, other things are getting pushed to the back burner. Like the dishes. And the laundry. And sweeping.

This afternoon after the boys woke up from their naps we hurried to the library to get a CD book for Brice he's been wanting (and asking every day when he gets home, "Did you get my book?") and I forgot that Cameron's little umbrella stroller was in the car at work with Brice. So I had to lug him into the library and carry him around the whole time we were in there. And then of course he pooped. Jace was picking out a video (yes, here I will point out that he was picking out a VIDEO not a book) and so when I told him we had to go the bathroom to change Cameron's diaper he threw a major fit. And the librarians were having some kind of library personnel meeting in the kid area so they all turned to look. I'm struggling to not drop Cameron and the diaper bag in one arm, my legs shaking with the weight of him, and the other arm is holding onto Jace as he flings himself backward screaming, "But my video, my VIDEO!" like I'm trying to kidnap him or something. I dragged him out of the children's section and against my whispered (actually more like hissed) threats about leaving right then, I still let him go back and get his precious video. We still had to find the book for Brice, and honestly having to carry Cameron and my arm feeling like fire was really throwing me off my discipline game.

Once home from the library I put in the precious video for the boys to watch and tried to start dinner. Spaghetti. With no plan of any vegetables or other healthy side dish. Just spaghetti. But the video was not entertaining enough (I should have known better than to let Jace pick out one) so they weren't really watching the video. Instead they were aggravating each other. And as I browned the meat I kept hearing this, "Cameron!! No! Stop it!" followed by a "Da da da da da da da" (pretty much all Camers can say back). Usually after that there would be a thud and then Cameron would start crying.  And then I would yell, "Sit down and watch TV or you're going to time out!" Great parenting skills, I know.  And both of the boys wouldn't stay out of the kitchen so for their safety (but really my sanity) I put up the baby gate (which doubles, don't you know, as a puppy gate. Because that's how we roll).



Here they are shaking the gate and yelling for freedom.  Already partners in crime.  And you can tell that Camers loves every minute of it.

Don't they both look so precious and unannoying? And if you're looking into the background of these pictures let me help you out. It's kind of dark (because the light was off. I thought that might help soothe them) you will see a laundry basket in front of a fan. The fan is on high because we later discovered this evening that something is wrong with the air conditioner and at that time I was sweating profusely. The basket is blocking the fan because Cameron wouldn't stop climbing up trying to grab the rotating blades. There are clothes strewn all over the living room and they were folded but they were in the basket. And Camers thought he would have better luck getting to the fan if he threw them out.

We ate a successful dinner and then I left the boys safely in their chairs to start the bathwater. Jace started yelling for me, saying he was stuck. I thought perhaps he was trying to get down and got stuck. But no that would be too normal. Instead he got his finger stuck in the parmesian cheese lid.

I had to call for reinforcement because no amount of pulling on my part would get it out. I even tried greasing it up and soaking it in cold water to get it to shrink. Granny and Poppy came over to save the day. They finally got it cut off with a razor and finger nail clippers. I probably would have cut off his finger had I tried to do it myself. Blah.

And yes, underwear is the outfit Jace sports anytime he eats spaghetti.  To save clothes from horrible spaghetti sauce stains.

After baths and bedtime Brice came home and we discovered the air conditioner was frozen. And also, just about two minutes ago I decided to investigate the burning smell I was attributing to fireworks from the neighbors. Not fireworks. No no. It's the hard boiled eggs that I started before I began this post. Now it is a burned pan and cracked, useless eggs. Blah. And now I'm noticing a little red sign at the bottom of this page that says, "An error ocurred while saving". So who knows whether this will be published or not.

Sometimes when I send Jace with his daddy to go brush teeth and get ready for bed he comes back out like this.  Thanks for that, Daddy.

And also I like these pictures because he as a faint chocolate milk mustache and you can imagine what he might look like in fifteen or so years and he first starts getting facial hair and tries to grow a real mustache.  But it will really look like a "scum-stache".  And I will have to tell him, as a loving mother, to shave it off or risk getting pulled over by the cops alot.

And I love these pictures of Cameron because he is so so happy.  I have a lot of so so happy pictures of him in his high chair.  Perhaps that is because he is the most so so happy when he eats.  He also has a lot of cute pictures in that shirt.  I guess he wears it alot.  Jace wore it alot too.  But he was 18 months at the time.  Cameron is ten and a half months.  Jace better watch out for him someday I guess.   And in the one below Cam looks like has a very hickish top snaggle-tooth.  But it's just a graham cracker.  But don't you want to take those cheeks and just squeeze them so hard?  I do.  But since that might hurt him I just shower him with lots of kisses.  Which he probably hates even more. 
 

And both the boys are so so happy to be back with Daddy.  As am I. 

The boys and I went to Texas at the end of May for 2 weeks.  First I would like to give a shout out to Brice, who is a wonderful husband who sacrifices being without me and the boys for two weeks so we can visit my family.  I know he gets pretty lonely and bummed when we're gone, espescially when I call saying things like, "Today we went to the pool, you should have seen how much the boys loved it!" I know he wishes he could be with us.  We wish he could be with us too.  Maybe someday when money starts to grow on trees he can go with us on all of our trips.  Until then  we are very very grateful for how hard he works for our family. 

So the boys were really good on the plane ride to Texas.  I was kinda of worried about it, but not really because I had Fluffy.  Fluffy is Jace's new backpack dog. Fluffy is a good friend.  Fluffy is basically a leash.  I got a lot of smiles from strangers as I walked by pushing Cameron's stroller and dragging Jace by his "Fluffy".  They seemed like "knowing" smiles, but I'm sure some of them were probaby smiles of judgement.  But I love Fluffy.  I will never take a plane ride without her again.   

We had to get on two different planes and Jace did the same thing as we boarded each of them.  He walked down the aisle in front of me with his hands out saying, "Tickets, please, tickets please, tickets please," until we made it to our seats.  People laughed and chuckled at this.  "How precious," one woman said.  I wondered how precious she thought it was after the thousandth time he said once were in our seats.  Probaby not so much. 

And I was really proud of Mister Cam because he didn't poop on either flight.  I have many times been the unlucky one who has sat in front of a poopy baby.

Jace above and Camers below are sporting the official "Summer in Texas" outfit.  I would wear this outfit if I could get away with it.  I always forget how hooooooooooot it is.  And this year it's really dry.  A drought, even.  Usually everything isn't ugly and dead until the end of July and August.  Everything was aready ugly and dead and it was only May.  I hope they get some rain soon.

Alot of our time in Texas was spent in the water.  Jace is wearing a floaty called a puddle jumper in the above picture.  I love it.  It doesn't scratch up arms or give him a rash and it doesn't ride up on his chin and it gives him a lot of freedom in the water and holds him up really well.  He can really swim with that thing on.  Cameron discovered he loves to walk around in the water.  But he just needs to learn to walk because he's a chunker and not so easy to walk around with. 

This is something called a splash pad that we went to and I wish they had these on every street corner everywhere.  It was free and had all these different things that spouted out water.  Lots of fountains and buckets that dumped.  The water would shoot out for 90 seconds and then it stopped and the kids could go push a buttom to start it up again. 

 A sad thing happened today.  Jace found a permanent marker.    I suppose the blame is all on me because I left it in his room months ago after writing on a box for out-grown baby clothes.  I put it on his dresser.  It has been sitting there for months and I had completely forgotten about it.  Until today.  When I came in to check on Jace during nap time and saw this.

And this.

And this.

He also colored all over a couple of quilts that were on his bed.  One from Grandma and one from Granny.  That's what made me the most sad.  But we live and learn I guess.  I'm hiding all the permanent markers on top of the fridge from now on.


And on a curlier note is Cameron's hair.

 Here is a rare family picture of us.  I don't know why but they are sometimes hard to come by.  But we got a shot of us at the branch Easter egg hunt.  And below we got a picture of Jace "showing his teeth".  When you tell him to "smile" he just says, "Smiiile,"  in lame and bored voice.  But he doesn't actually smile.  So that time I tried saying, "Show your teeth," and got a picture of him doing just that.

Here's are some things Jace has been up to:

1) He has been eating a lot of candy.  He got a lot of candy at the Easter egg hunt and then some candy from the Easter bunny (okay not really.  The Easter bunny took his candy from the egg hunt and reused that), and candy from his granny, and his great aunts.  So all I have been hearing for the past two weeks is, "Can I have some candy?" "Where's my basket?" "I want a treat."  "Just let me hold the basket." "But can I just have one more?" "I went potty so how about a treat?"  "Just one!"  "Please?"  "Pleeeeeease?"  "I said please!"

2)  He ate a robin's egg.  We were out in the yard and I was just heading his way to steer him away from the fence (where Andy sometimes does his business) and I got there just in time to hear him say, "Mommy, what's this?" and then bite into a nice looking blue egg.  It cracked and as yolk shot out, I slapped it out of his hand in extreme distress.  Then after we washed his hands and rinsed his mouth we examined the broken shell and it was a really pretty blue egg.  I understand why it was tempting, especially in light of all the candy eggs he's been eating lately.  I'm just glad there wasn't a half grown baby bird in there.  That would have been a little more traumatizing for me. 

3) He has been driving me CRAZY because of all the rain and us being cooped up inside alllll the time.  Yesterday he was supposed to be playing with his trains but really he was throwing them all around the living room.  I think he was trying to aim them at Cameron.  So finally I said, "I guess we should just get rid of your trains then if you don't want to play with them.  In fact, why don't we box them up and ship them to Bowman.  I'm sure he would love them."  I expected this to make Jace a little sad since he definitely doesn't like sharing his trains when Bowman is actually here.  But instead, he looked at me quizzically for a minute.  Then a huge smile spread across his face and he said, "Yeah.  Okay.  That's a great idea.  Let's get a box."

The above two pics are Camers with prett pretty hair, courtesy of Aunt Emily.  He only tolerated them for a little while.  Here some things Camers has been up to:

1) He is finally on the move!!  He can't really crawl normally yet but he does what I call the "push-up crawl".  Basically he does a push-up and then lunges forward onto his belly.  Then he does it again.  It looks pretty exhausting to me but it gets him where he wants to go.  And now instead of just crawling after food he goes for toys, too.  Yay!

2) He has learned to go from his belly to a sitting position.  I discovered this yesterday when I went in to check on him during nap time and found him sitting up, proud as can be.  However, this has put a damper on his easy napping.  At this current moment he is sitting up in his bed even though I've gone in there at least seven times and laid him back down. 

3)  He likes to jabber a lot more and loves to play with balls.  He even tries to throw/roll them back to you when you roll them to him.  And he loooooves to eat anything and everything. 

This is what I discovered one morning when I came out of drying my hair in the bathroom.  At first I was horrified because it was the day we were going to get pictures done with Bowman and McKeanzie and even magic marker is hard to get off.  But luckily it was a dry erase marker and came off easily.   
The photo shoot with the four little ones was definitely entertaining.  Emily took the pics with her camera which was probably better than trying to get them done in a studio because you can imagine what is was like getting two three year olds and two babies to cooperate.  But Emily got a few good shots of them, including some of just Jace and Cameron.

McKeanzie showing off her bling.  I'm sure Cameron thought it was something yummy to eat.  And below is a pic of Jace and Bowman embracing their break of freedom from the posing. 

And because of the rain and me going crazy the boys have had a lot of baths.  Both of them in one place, enjoying themselves, and not making a huge mess for me to clean up.  It's what we do when I'm at a loss and am about to lose my mind.  It's either a bath or I have contemplated bringing in Jace's carseat and strapping him in it.  Would that make me a bad parent?

Heres to you, Cam-Cam!

I let him play with his canister of puffs.  I didn't think he could open it. 

It was a happy happy moment for him.