Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'...

I can't believe how quickly babies grow. Especially after your first one, the next kids fly by. I don't even remember Raymond as a baby. It seems like he has been two for an eternity! In a week, Judd will be five months old already! Crazy huh? He is almost half way to his first year of life!

He is the most active I think out of all of my kids as babies. He LOVES to play on his belly, he LOVES to grab things and is exceptionally good at this. He has been able to grab a toy and play with it since he was right at two months. He's also been able to get his own binky or toys into his mouth since about 2 1/2 and has been able to roll since 2 1/2 months. Now he can hold his head up really well, he can almost roll from his tummy to his back again, he has been rolling onto and sleeping on his tummy for the last few weeks and it's just crazy how big he's getting. He has SOOOO much personality too. He loves to joke, he loves to smile and laugh and play. He thinks it's hilarious to change his diaper and he laughs everytime. Even if he is really mad, tired, or hungry right before a bath, as soon as I get him naked and lay him on the bathroom floor to start the water, he is so excited and happy to play in the water. In the tub he kicks his legs and flaps his arms like he is trying so hard to swim and he floats all around the tub on his back in a happy trance!

He is so dang cute, and I couldn't ask for a more perfect baby. He has even been sleeping through the night since he was two months old! My other two boys still don't sleep through the night! -HA.

So I took a little video of Judd playing on his favorite quilt with his favorite rattle. This was taken this morning after he had been playing on the floor for about an hour, so he is starting to get a little tired. Right after I took this video, I picked him up and he was asleep in two minutes! So enjoy. I think it's a couple of minutes long. (Okay so as you all have probably noticed that there wasn't a video on here for awhile. That was because I couldn't get it to upload. So this is a different video, but essentially the same thing. It is still Judd playing on his favorite blanket and getting frustrated when toys roll away from him!)

Aaarggh!

Okay, so I am sitting here right now, at 10:30 pm, waiting for my evening daycare kid to get picked up. It is storming like crazy, continuous sharp lightning and never-ending thunder that shakes the house and torrential rain. I am so ANGRY because while I sit here, my basment is flooding for the third time this summer!!! There is nothing I can do about it either. I go down there, lay towels out on the edge of the carpet to try and keep the damage to a minimum, but it's so irritating because I get it all cleaned up and then it happens again. The other frustrating part is that I called the sump pump people to have them come do a maintenance on ours and they were supposed to do it on Monday, but it cost $89.00 and we don't have that right now, so on Friday I canceled it, thinking we probably won't have as much rain as we did in June. So now here I sit like the idiot I am wondering if that $89.00 would have fixed the sump pump problem to make it pump more efficiently. Right now I can look out into my driveway, which is a hill leading down to my basement, and the water that is waiting to be pumped is half way up my driveway about shin deep. The poor little sump pump is pumping it's heart out, but that water that is waiting is not so patient and it is what seeps into the living room down there, plus into the garage under the door, plus the sump pump starts to overflow. So as I begin my post I'll end my post with an Aaarggh!

Love Hate Relationships...

There are many things that people have love hate relationships with. I do too. One of the things that really frustrates me is yard work. For some people it's relaxing and something to do to get away from stress, etc. For me it is stressful. The actual work and keeping up of a yard is extremely stressful and frustrating. The only time it's calming and relaxing to me is when all the work (or most of it) is done and you see the outcome. But even then you have to get ready to start all over again of maintaining what you already did.
No matter how hard we try, we can't get certain spots in our backyard to grow. It's irritating. Then other spots grow jungle grass or something that we can't keep cut enough. Then we have stupid tree sprouts that pop up everywhere, and you have to be hercules or something to get them pulled or cut out of the ground and inevitably they will come back again someday. Then we have the neighbors that don't clean up those saplings that grow just outside of our fence but dangle in our yard and look like garbage.
Then we have a permenant path in our front yard where everyone decides it's more convenient to walk then to come up the stairs by the driveway, so our grass is dying there. I tell people to please not walk there as you can plainly see it's killing the grass.
But right now my biggest complaint is our evergreen hedges that line our driveway. The annoy me to no end. Tony likes them, I would LOVE to pull them out and put something nicer and easier to take care of there, but I'm not willing to fight about it. However, he loves them but doesn't ever trim them or clean leaves out of them, etc. They collect garbage from the neighborhood when it's windy, they collect all the leaves of the year and that makes it a good home for garder snakes and spiders, which are in abundance, and ants! So yesterday I got out my electric hedge clippers and hacked away. I cut them into seperate bushes, because they had long since grown together, and I cut them down to not much. They look pretty pathetic right now, but I am hoping they will recover and look good and then we can keep them maintained. But I left the clean up mess last night and now I have to deal with it today. It will probably take me a couple of hours to do, and it's 90 degrees outside and I'm putting it off, but I gotta get it done today because I have daycare tomorrow! Aaargh. Once I am done though, I know that I will feel that sense of accomplishment and that feeling of stress free bliss that some people feel over yard work. I can honestly say though, that no matter how much relaxation I may sometimes feel over my job well done, I'd still just rather pay someone else to do it! :) So I guess my hate wins out!

Minnesota and Back

This weekend we left our boring stressed out little lives in Omaha to the great wide open spaces of Minnesota for a little R & R. Both of Tony's grandparents have lake cabins in MN, one in Detroit Lakes and one on Elbow Lake. Both lakes were beautiful and a lot of fun. Tony and I agree we had a great vacation. We spent most of it at Lake Melissa, which is Tony's moms parents' lake, then Sunday we spent the day at Elbow lake (his dad's parents lake). All of Tony's mom's family was at DL and we did a lot of different stuff.
Tony tried water skiing, the boys tried to learn to swim with Aunt Patti, we swam and fished and just hung out. As tradition Uncle Gene played his guitar and sang, which he is amazing! We tried to have a bonfire to do smores but it was so hot that night and the fire was so smokey, that we put it out not too long after we started it, besides which the mosquitos were bad too. I have put this slide show of pictures on here for everyone to see, there are a lot of pictures, but bare with me they are fun pictures! So enjoy...

Gang beatings...

HA HA! I just reread my last post and the part about Owen and Raymond ganging up on the daycare kid and I started cracking up because I pictured them "beatin' down" that thug 3 year old in her dreds and flashing their gang signs! :) Now I am really laughing. O-dawg and Dr. Ray. My thugs. Now I feel like I need to dress them up like a gangsta just to get a picture for this post! :)

Now what would be even funnier, is if while you are reading this post, a hip hop song comes on my little music player!

Trends, Traditions, and Communication

I love family. I love my family. I love the dynamics that families have and now with my own kids I get to see how those dynamics, trends and traditions evolve. Ever since Raymond could start to talk a little, one of my favorite things to do has been to eavesdrop on Owen and Raymond "chatting". Now they have their little secrets, their little adventures and their own sayings that no one else knows! For example, the boys have a book called the Belly Button Book, which is a recommended book to all parents. The hippos in that book call their belly buttons Bebo's. This has long since been a word that my kids have used to name that particular body part. In the last couple of months though, Raymond has rediscovered that word and uses it whenever he doesn't know what to say - and he knows it's funny. That's another amazing thing, is how kids his age know how to use sarcasm and words to make people laugh. So now this word is a common word again between the boys. They use it as their every word. If you ask them a question like, why did you do that...they respond, bebo. It's very effective of getting them out of trouble because the way they screw up their faces and say it, makes Tony and I laugh.

Their new brotherly thing to do is to say "Um...bebo?" and they say it back and forth forever.

I love that they have started this trend because it shows how close of friends they are. I love the sibling dynamic, because no matter how much they may diss each other from time to time, if another kid in the play room makes them mad, they immediatly band together to gang up on that kid....I know I know...not good behavior, but I still like to see them working together and being friends. That sibling bond is one of the strongest. They are tied together forever.

This weekend we are heading to Lake Melissa and Elbow Lake in Minnesota on vacation and this is another trend and tradition that I enjoy and want the boys to make a part of their lives. Holly's family is very much tradition makers and trend setters. Every year at least once they all go up to the lake cabin and have fun. It's tradition to help prepare meals, clean boats, help put the dock up and take it down, and to in general take care of the house. Every one chips in and no one complains about it. My family has many traditions and fun trends and we do lots of fun stuff, but we don't have a place like this. A central location for everyone to meet and assume responsibilities and just hang out. I wish we did...(mom and dad - lets buy a place that is assumed the families!) It wouldn't be my mom and dads alone, my sisters and I and husbands and kids and their kids, etc. would pitch in and keep the place running and it would be a place we could go to at any point in time. A general meeting place for fun and family.

I love traditions, I love trends of families and I love to watch my boys secret communications. They don't know it but I hear them in their room too, with the baby monitor and I could sit for hours and listen to them tell each other stories and make each other laugh.

P.S. If you look closely at the picture - my boys are Wyoming Cowboys!!! GO POKES and they are eating a delicious treat of "Moose Poop", provided by their eclectic Aunt Kimmy. :) (they are chocolate covered nuts)