15

Sweet Beaumeister,

Today marks your 15 month "smurf day" as your Grandma Cindy called it.  This milestone always reminds me of her as she said it was her favorite age when I was growing up.  I can see why it was, your personality is really starting to emerge and you make me laugh a 100 times a day at least.  You already have a big personality and it's going to be fun seeing it flourish! Unfortunately, you are enjoying this occasion all that much. You are getting over a nasty cold, have a double ear infection and have three molars coming in.   For all I know, the fourth is trying to come in as well but you refuse to let me look in your mouth to verify that.   We visited the doctor today and I know you're a little over 22 pounds but they didn't measure you so I'm not sure how tall you are.  I know you think you're a big boy though.  You are all about keeping up with your sister these days-watching what she does and trying to do the same stuff like, climb up the ladder and go down the slide in your playhouse.  All it takes is for you to see her do something once and you've got to try it.  Your favorite thing to do outside, besides go up the ladder by yourself, is find rocks and sticks outside and put them somewhere else.  You are a very good helper inside the house, by putting things away, sometimes even where they are supposed to go! You love to dig through the kitchen cabinets and steal the utensils and throw them down the stairs to the playroom. Then you hit the floor and slide down the stairs yourself.  A pretty efficient and safe way to transport your toys I guess.  I am happy to report that you continue to be a very good eater. You and your sister both love Stouffer's Mac and Cheese and eat it like it's the last time you're ever going to get it.   You also love apples, pears, bananas and strawberries.  Trying to feed yourself with a spoon or fork has become a favorite activity-one that mommy learned not to do with oatmeal. What a mess that was!  You are such a happy little guy and I love watching you when we are out in public. You love flirting with girls and getting people to pay attention to you.  Everyone comments on your beautiful blue eyes and curly hair. I can see you're going to be a heartbreaker before long!

Some of your other favorite things: taking Lainey to preschool. You walk in there like you own the place and I can tell you're going to be ready for preschool long before I'm ready to let you go.  Baths are probably your favorite thing in the world!  All we have to do is mention a bath and you bolt for the bathroom and try climbing into the tub, fully clothed!  You like to pet Cooper, saying, "Gentle" as you pet him harder than you're supposed to.  Your sister.  You light up when you see her and you're always so excited to play with her.  Your Daddy. You call for him more than you call for me.  I can't blame you. The two of you have a great time together wrestling and running around.  You are  very loving and enjoy a good snuggle but you don't like to give kisses. Instead, you prefer to blow kisses or just smack your lips.

I am so blessed that you are my son Beau.  Not a moment goes by I don't thank God for allowing me to be your  Mommy.  I can't even begin to tell you the joy and sunshine you bring to our lives every day.  You are a very smart, sweet little boy and I enjoy watching you grow and learn.   We can't wait to see what you come up with next!  I love you with all my heart Beau,

XOXO,

Mommy

 It's a good thing we don't have a real cat!

Picnic Table

Beau showing us how big he is.

And how old he is.

Sickies updated

Beau and Lainey have been fighting a nasty bug of some sort for awhile now and to make matters worse, Beau's top two molars have popped through.  The poor little guy is just miserable.  All you have to do is look at him and you know how he's feeling. Thankfully, Motrin seems to be helping him but he's clingy, which I love, but sick, which I hate. There's nothing worse than seeing your babies in pain and being unable to make them feel better. 

You know it's bad if Lainey takes a nap!

All three men of the house passed out cold on the couch. I tried to move Beau to his crib but he cried and reached for his Daddy.

We got a picnic table for the kids today. It's the cutest thing ever and the kids ate dinner on it tonight.  Yes, ON it, not AT it. These are my kids and you don't think they'd sit properly do you?  I'll post those pics tomorrow.

Oh BOY!**

Why do I get the feeling that if he could've, Beau would have said, "Hey Mom, watch this!"  You know it's not good when you see your youngest, who isn't even 15 months old yet, at the top of the slide.  He's already mastered climbing the ladder up into the playhouse and now likes to shoot down the slide like a little greased pig.  He is so different from Lainey this way (well, in every way really).  She holds on with her hands AND uses her shoes to slow herself down.  It takes her forever to come down the slide.  This one is going to give me gray hair for sure!

Is it just me or does Lainey look a little too excited to see her little brother come flying down the slide?  I mean, the girl hardly ever looks directly at the camera, let alone smile!  Suspicious!

Robert swears that if you don't stand at the bottom of the slide that he slows himself down. I can't do it. I have to stand there since he comes shooting down so fast I'm afraid he'll bounce off the ground and then I'll have an ER trip to blog about and I'd just as soon not experience that just yet.

**No children were harmed in the making of these photos. They hurt themselves often enough off camera.**

Bug's Ladybug House

Lainey's ladybugs arrived in the mail yesterday and after I got it all set up, I showed it to her.  They came in a cardboard tube, and inside was this smaller plastic tube that I had to shake into the house.  I could see two had evolved into larvae already but the rest looked dead to me.  

Here it is, Day Zero of our Ladybug adventure.  You can see one crawling out of the "crater" inside the house.  I'll post pics as they grow and develop over the next week or two.  When they are full grown, we're going to let them out into the backyard and start over again. 

If you're wondering why I got her a ladybug house, well, for starters, you should know by now I have a Bug Maniac on my hands.  Secondly, the store was out of my first choice, which was an ant farm. We may be getting one of those if all goes well with the ladybugs.  Thirdly, since the day she arrived, her nickname has been Laineybug and with me unable to resist anything with a ladybug on it, a ladybug house made perfect sense.  And last, but not least, for moments like these.  

When she is not outside being the Ant Bully, she is obsessing over her ladybugs.  I have it so she can see it while she's eating and every meal, she checks on them.  I've already had to clean off the dome from her sticky hands.  She's convinced a caterpillar is going to come in and eat them and was caught trying to stick an ant inside the house yesterday.  So far, knock on wood, I've been able to keep her from destroying it and letting the ladybugs out.  But it's only been a day. 

I love watching her watch the bugs and would love to know what she's thinking about.  Besides how to free them and squish em like the rest of the bugs she comes into contact with. 

 

Meeting Pioneer Woman

I have been waiting for weeks, well actually, months, to meet Pioneer Woman (aka Ree Drummond).  Ever since I heard about her book tour, I kept an eye on when she would be coming to Seattle and today was the day!!!

My sister and I met at the bookstore this afternoon, only to find out that you get assigned a letter and that the line will go in alphabetical order. We got group E. Basically, had I shown up when the store opened, I might've gotten group A but whatever.  We ended up leaving and coming back later, only to narrowly miss our group being called.  I don't know if I would've survived had I missed meeting her.

I was so nervous and excited and not afraid to admit it. I absolutely love her photography, her recipes are awesome and she's just plain funny!  She has inspired me not only to cook more (that in itself is a miracle) but to take more photos.  To top it all off, she's beautiful!  It was so worth the wait in line! I just wish I could've come up with something witty to say to her and maybe make it onto her blog, but I drew a blank and stood there like a dope.  I did tell her we were huge fans and she told us we were "little!"

Mommy can have fun too

On the hunt

Lainey received a big box of princess dresses and paraphernalia.
Yesterday she wore a pink dress while laying flat out in the dirt looking for ants and worms.  

Apparently she's going to be Tinkerbell this morning.  She picked up the fairy wings and asked me to put on her Tinkerbell.  

She stores her captives in the basket of Beau's scooter. I'm guessing by the end of the day it'll be an ant graveyard since most of them seem to be mortally wounded from her holding them.

It's going to be fun documenting through pictures how girly and tomboyish she can be at the same time. I love it!

Fun with Daddy

People ask us a lot why we moved without having our house sold first.  Here is just one, albeit very important reason.  Lainey and Beau get to see their Dad at least 2 hours a day more now than before.  They squeal when they hear him come in the door and attack him with kisses, hugs and plead with him to play chase and wrestle.  So while it was a bit nerve wracking to have two houses and two mortgages, it was well worth it.  We needed to change things for our family. Thankfully, we just sold our old home! 

I love this last one. Beau figured out very quickly to just wait for them to come around the corner and catch them. Such a smart little guy! 

Don't even get me started on what a hands on Dad Robert is.  Lainey and Beau greet him like a rock star every night and rightly so! 

The way to my heart

If only this vacuum really worked!

Pete and Sally

Grandpa Reid created these two characters Pete and Sally.  It started with them drawn on Grandpa's hands.  They talk to Lainey, sometimes persuading her to eat her dinner, other times to get her to listen to whatever it is he's trying to tell her.   Lainey really seems to listen to Pete and Sally and asks where they are every time she sees Grandpa.  She has started to ask me every once in awhile to put Pete and Sally on her hands. They watch movies with her (we are now CRAZY obsessed with Wall-E) and she has conversations with them.  It is a great example of why I write this blog, to document all the precious (and let's face it-not so precious) little things that one day I know I'll forget. 

Good dental hygiene or plain ole silliness?

Hopeful

Lainey likes to watch Zaboomafoo while I shower in the morning. Usually Beau is napping but today we were getting ready to go to the zoo.  After getting him dressed, he crawled up and started bugging Lainey, something one should never do when Zaboomafoo is on. The girl is just a little obsessed with that show these days and doesn't particularly like people talking to her when it's on.  Then, just as I thought he was a goner, he laid down next to her. The next few minutes took my breath away.  They snuggled, talked to each other, and she gave him a hug.  It was at that point his patience with snuggling wore out and he wanted to wrestle with her. I know he kept that hairbrush in his hand in case he needed to defend himself. That is always a smart move with a big sister!  Nonetheless, I have always hoped, even before Beau, that these two would be close growing up, and today I got a sign that I just might get what I want. I know there will be fights and the usual sibling rivalry. But hopefully, there will be moments like this as well.

Chef Boyardee

While Daddy was on his way home and not due back til after bedtime, an easy dinner was on the agenda.  We'd already splurged and had Red Mill burgers for lunch so it was Chef Boyardee to the rescue.  Lainey flipped out when she saw her plate. "Spaghetti! I LOVE spaghetti!" Beau loves anything he can feed himself so he was a happy camper as well.  The thing about Chef Boyardee is that nasty orange color you're left with so I ran a bath while the two of them were still eating.  I had to scrub pretty hard to get Beau back to his normal color!

Crazy clown face

After baths we played "drive thru" with the box the bbq grill came in. Lainey started this the other day and it cracks us up. Sometimes it's a McDonald's and other times it's a Starbucks. I'm always instructed to be in the "big car" and she gives me my order through the window and I am required to eat whatever she hands me, immediately.  

I love that she's into imaginative play right now. Usually she's pretending to be a tiger or a kangaroo so the change is fun. 

Handing me my order

Odds and Ends

We had a visitor the other night, one of six cats that roam our yard.  So far, the other five are too skittish to let us pet them.  We thought we'd give her a little milk in hopes she'll come visit us again.  Daddy liked that idea much better than getting a kitty of our own.

Lainey was too busy being the Ant Bully to pet the cat. That's her head you see in the bottom of the frame.  I just love it when she brings ants in the house and puts them in the cupboard-alive. So fun! 

A couple of times now I've stopped to count the many blessings in my life. One of which is what good eaters Lainey and Beau are.  I'm truly thankful for that! I sure wish I could remember what I said to get her to smile so cute!

First trip to the Dentist

I wish I had brought a real camera instead of having to use my phone.  

Lainey behaved and cooperated like such a big girl, making her Mommy VERY proud!