This is a typical morning at my house:

Not even 8:30 and someone is already completely decked out over his jammies. He’s such a silly. Nathan’s new thing is to ask me about 67 times a day: “You happy, Mommy? You having fun?”

On Monday, we had Lunch Bunch at our house. A few of our friends were sick, so it was a smaller group. Such fun still. Love this picture – Nathan is a little out numbered by all these beautiful girls, as you can tell. I spend most of Monday mornings reminding him that we don’t tackle girls. Only, only, only, only, only, only, only Daddy. 😉

We’ve had a few slower days these last two days which has been nice since the rest of this month is SO BUSY. I walked in the kitchen yesterday right before lunch and found this:

Ha! I think it’s hilarious that he picked his two husky stuffed dogs to sit there and taunt Kody. Poor dog.

And I finally, FINALLY finished re-doing Nathan’s letters in his room to match the new baseball theme. Now I’m just looking for some good deals on some old-fashioned baseball posters for his room and I think we’ll be getting close to done…three months later. Oy. 😉

This weekend starts the Balloon Fiesta here! My grandmother is coming in town for it and I cannot wait!! 🙂 Nathan is already talking about the fiesta as well. I told him we could get doughnuts and he said, “FRECKLED DOUGHNUTS??!!” I think he means sprinkled…. Ha!

Yesterday, we went to my favorite little place to visit in the fall, a pumpkin patch here in town that benefits a charity for troubled youth. I absolutely LOVE this place!

 Mom and Dad came with us again this year – we are getting quite the wonderful progression of pumpkin patch pictures through the years!

It was Nathan’s third time to go and he was so funny. It is really geared toward toddlers, so he was the absolute perfect age to play with all the fun farm toys and he was so excited about the animals!

He got to pet a horse. I think a few years ago they did pony rides, but I guess they aren’t doing them this year. So sad – that would have been hilarious!

He was very excited about the Shetland Ponies. I think those are just the most awkward looking animals. No offense to any miniature horses out there. 😉

Is it just me or does he look like he’s about 18 and a wrangler on a ranch somewhere???

I love how serious all of them look while doing the duck races. Ha!

My boys. Cannot even tell you how much I love them.

Me and my baby.

Our little family.

Nathan loved picking out pumpkins for our front porch. He probably picked about eight, but we kept putting them back. 😉

All through the years – oh my goodness, I cannot even believe how big he is now. Sweet, precious, crazy boy!

I was going through my pictures on my phone to write this post and found about eight smudgy pictures of what I assume is a two year-old’s thumb, two four-second videos of our living room ceiling and these:

Oh my. That kid is way too tech savvy already. He moved all my apps around the other day and I couldn’t find the button for my actual phone on my phone (oh the joy of the iPhone).

And yes. I rarely see my son’s head without that football helmet or his baseball helmet on. Today he ran in and yelled, “TOME ON, MOM! TOME ON! TACKLE NANNEN!! TACKLE NANNEN, MOM!!”

We went to Walmart Tuesday and Nathan managed to talk Jon into this cute little Cars lunchbox that was on clearance for $2. So yesterday, he came in holding the lunchbox while I was in the middle of deep cleaning about six months of filth off my oven and declared that it was time to “doe to da zoo” so we could have a “picwic.”

Seeing as how our zoo is about a 30 minute drive and it was nearly lunchtime already, I told him we’d have to settle for something else. The backyard. I finished cleaning, packed him a lunch in his lunchbox and he carried it out to the grass all proudly.

That seemed to be an acceptable alternative.

Crazy cutie head. 😉

Last weekend, Nathan and I accidentally attended a library storytime.

I’m not even kidding about the accidentally. We went to the library to get me a new card since mine apparently decided it was old and didn’t want to be of service anymore. They had me go fill out the paperwork for a new card and since I had a kid who was busy trying to dismantle the checkout scanner, offered to let me sit in the children’s section while I was doing it.

Where about 25 kids gathered as I was writing down my name and address. All of the kids quietly came in, sat down on these little chairs and risers, quietly read these cute little books while Nathan ran around saying, “THIS IS FUN! WOW, WOOK AT DIS BOOK, MOM!”

I turned in my paperwork and the librarian told us that storytime started in five minutes and it was SO fun and Nathan would just LOVE it and so of course I felt pressured to stay and watch my child single-handedly destroy the calm, sweet weekly routine.

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. He did run circles through some of it and he did jump off the risers at least four times, but I only had to pull my whispering, “if you do THAT one more time…” threat only twice. 😉

I think we will be going back. As much fun as it is for me to be “That Mom” with the crazy child, it’s good for him to learn how to sit still and I’m not sure that he’ll learn it without practicing.

Yay.

We had some dear friends in town again this weekend (this fall has so many of my sweet family and friends coming to visit! I love it!), so Nathan got to get dressed up for dinner and model for us:

Bless his heart, he just hates the camera and being the center of attention.

We went over to Gammy and Pops’ house this weekend. Nathan wore Jon’s Vikings jersey from when Jon was a kid to their house. Pops called Nathan back into his room and when Nathan came out a few minutes later, he was wearing pads under the jersey and a helmet. SO CUTE. We were so surprised!! I’m pretty sure Jon teared up. 😉 Nathan said, “I’m a football player now!” So, of course, he and Pops had to play:

He’s been getting one of his two year-old molars, which has just made him cranky, snotty and very prone to diaper rashes, and we started noticing an occasional throaty cough Friday night. By Saturday night, he was having a hard time sleeping because of it and so we had to skip church yesterday and Lunch Bunch today. I’m fairly certain it’s related to the tooth coming in, but better to be safe. We made the best of it this morning – Gammy came over and then we met Cayce at Chick-fil-a for lunch. I figure, they wash the tables and highchairs down anyway, so better to go there than to go see our friends and share our potential germs with them. Gammy and Cayce don’t usually gnaw on things after Nathan has. 😉

Also, our dear friend Sarah, who took our wedding pictures and lots of pictures for us since then, sent me the link to a blog post she wrote with the newest pictures she took of my little family! Her words made me cry – she is so wonderful. I can’t wait to see the rest of the pictures!! 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend!

I’ve done a post like this before, but he is saying SO much now and I just want to remember it!

We passed some sheep while we were in the car and he said, “Oh, they eat the gwass! Gwass yucky. They would wike Oreos.”

I wasn’t driving the way that he wanted me to go, apparently, so he started yelling from the backseat, “No, no, no, no, Mommy! Get out! Nennon dwive.” I said, “No, Mommy is going to drive. We have to go to Walmart.” He said, “But Nennon want to dwive.” I said, “Where does Nathan want to drive?” He said, “The beeball game.”

Along with “ownwy’ (only), his other new favorite word is “realwee” (really). I sneezed in a grocery store and he yelled, “BWESS YOU, MOM!! You sneeze realwee, realwee, realwee, realwee hard!”

This one pretty much made me cry. I’ve shown y’all the mom’s necklace that my mom got for me when I was pregnant with Nathan. We got a little charm on it for the little one we lost and Nathan loves to point to his charm and the “bruber sister” charm. One day I was holding him while he was looking at my necklace and he said, “Bruber sister in a castle now, Mom.” No idea where he came up with that, but I absolutely loved it.

We got him new shoes and when he opened the box, he gasped and said, “MOM. Deese are BEEBALL SHOES!” Ha!

Lately, he’s been running through the house with his baseball helmet on and his football yelling, “FOOTBALL SEASON!” I guess Jon or I casually mentioned one time that it was football season and he ran with it.

We have to be SO careful what we say now! Jon was dialing a number on his phone last weekend and Nathan walked over, glanced at the phone and said, “What the heck??!! It Dr. Cwago!” I am about 96% percent I’ve never said “what the heck” around him. He repeats EVERYTHING he hears from anywhere!! Makes me scared to take him to another baseball game with how many cuss words we heard the one time we went!

If ever you try to throw him a baseball while you are sitting on the floor or the couch, he’ll come over and say, “No, no, no, no. Get up. Stand up. Stand up, Mom.” If he wants you to stay here you are while he runs to get a toy, he’ll hold both hands up and say, “Day der, Mom. Stay der. Don’t move. Don’t move, Mommy.” I have no idea where he gets his bossiness from. 😉 We are working on it.

For a while, he went through a phase where he loved saying, “bless you”. Anytime we would pass anyone in the store or we would leave someone in a room, he would look at them and say, “Bwess you. Bwess you, Guy.” We got some very interesting looks from people. Ha!

He has no concept that other people can hear him. We’ll be walking somewhere and he will loudly proclaim, “HEY! HEY MOM! SEE DAT GUY?? SEE DAT GUY, MOM? HE HAVE GUM?? HE HAVE GUM, MOM!” Or worse…. “SHE HAVE BABY IN HWER TUMMY!” Luckily, he has been right so far. I have nightmares about the day coming when he’s wrong.

He’s so fun and SO exhausting!

Last Friday, I surprised Jon with a night away!!

When he got home from school, Mom and Dad had already picked Nathan up and I had a note taped to the garage door that said to keep his eyes closed. I led him out to the car and then drove him to one of the nicer hotels here. 😉

We had SO much fun! We went out to dinner at one of our favorite places, St. Clair’s Winery.

In the morning, we had breakfast in bed! It was so fun! I’ve never had breakfast in bed before. 😉 We also MAY have gone to Starbucks once or twice (hey, Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back and I was definitely off the endo diet Friday and Saturday). 😉

I love this guy. Just a little bit.

I am so thankful for my parents taking care of Nathan! He had a fantastic time – he even got to help Pops make pancakes that morning. 😉 He gets spoiled rotten while he’s there. I doubt he was very excited to come back home. 🙂

We went back to my parents’ house about one o’clock and then hung out there the rest of the afternoon watching college football. Someone woke up very happy from their nap and had this to say:

Go Lobos from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

I think there might have been some sugar consumed at Gammy and Pops’ this weekend. 😉 Saturday night, we went to a party celebrating my dear friend Shannon and her fiance Eric’s engagement.

What a wonderful weekend! Hope you all had a great one as well!

Yesterday, we finally had Nathan’s two-year checkup. So thankful for our healthy boy! He’s now 37.5 inches tall (96th percentile – good gracious, I think we need to look into basketball), weighs 30.5 pounds (74th percentile – finally catching up on weight!) and he still has a gigantic head (93rd percentile. The C-section is very obvious now).

Big boy!!

He had to get his last shot until he turns four years old and he did great. Nothing like his earlier dramatics when it came to shots, he barely winced. Then he told the nurse, “Dank you for the band-aid. Dank you for the poke.” She was like, “Did he really just thank me for the shot?”

I think he was more excited about the sucker that was coming along with it.

He’s getting one of his two-year molars and his pediatrician said that could easily be why he’s suddenly started getting up in the middle of the night. It might be what’s waking him up. So, I’ve been giving him Tylenol before bedtime and it seems to help a little bit. Poor kid.

We also got to see my dear, dear friend Shannon who is in town visiting her future in-laws with her fiance Eric this week. Finally got to meet him last night! Shannon is the first person who ever took me to Starbucks, so a lot of my life now is due to her. 🙂 Love her so much! I’m excited to get to know Eric better as well.

And Nathan decided to take up modeling. Someone had a big crush on Shannon last night. He came into tell us goodnight last night and said, “I need to give Shannon a big kiss.” I guess I need to teach him to start checking left hands before falling in love. 😉

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Last night, we had our first problem with Nathan getting up out of bed right after we’d laid him down and then he was up about eight times before he finally stayed there.

It was not a good night. I hate disciplining him right before bed. Bedtime is for hugs and songs and kisses, not sad things. But today for nap, he stayed in there, so I guess putting him back in there eight times yesterday made a difference! We’ve been doing a new thing too since he’s been getting up earlier from his naps and I still need writing time – I’ve been having him do “quiet time” after his nap. I’ll give him his milk and a huge stack of books and he just sits in his bed and reads. Today is the best it’s gone so far. 😉 Thank you, Lord!

Today we went with my friend Elisa and her sweet new baby to the zoo. Nathan had a blast. I’m pretty sure he thought he was cool stuff today:

He’s very into pockets lately. 😉 Doesn’t he look like ten years old?? I think his new haircut suits his personality, but it just makes him look so old, I can hardly stand it.

He’s picked up the word “only” lately. Not sure why – I don’t think I say it too often, but everything is “ownwy Mommy’s” or “ownwy Nennon’s”. We saw a patch of dirt today at the zoo and I told him not to go play in it since it was kind of muddy and he said, “Nennon no play there. Ownwy, ownwy, ownwy, ownwy, ownwy, ownwy the birds.”

Silly.

I usually let him watch a TV show once a day while I’m trying to take a shower or do stuff around the house. Lately his favorite has been Super Why. Today, I asked him if he wanted to watch it and he said, “Oh, I’m so texcited for Super Why!” Ha! 😉 It’s the little things, I guess!

A few weeks ago, our friend Sarah, who took our wedding pictures (and pretty much all professional pictures since then!!), had a little contest on her blog looking for love stories and the winner would get a free photo session. I figured, I didn’t have anything to lose, so I sent her a huge long Facebook message with all of the reasons I love Jon and we won! 🙂 I was absolutely ecstatic – we never win anything! Ha! So, on Friday, we had our session and it poured rain on us. 😉 I think we still got a few good ones! I’ll have to post my favorites on here when I get them!

Saturday, we spent a lazy morning at home and then went to watch college football with friends. I had a total and complete cheat day when it comes to the endometriosis diet – I ate red meat, I ate cheese dip, I ate crackers. Pretty much everything I’m not supposed to eat. 😉 I figure every so often can’t hurt! We all had such a wonderful time!

Even after we put Nathan in his big boy bed, he would still wait for us to come get him in the mornings or after nap before he’d get up. Well, on Friday morning, I heard the door click and out walked Nathan, saying, “I oped the door, Mommy.” And ever since that morning, he’s gotten up by himself every time. It’s the end of life as we know it – this morning Jon rolled over and found Nathan standing there looking at him. 😉

Tired boy on the way home from church – he played hard last night! 🙂 He is also doing MUCH better when it comes to church. He used to scream bloody murder for a few minutes (sometimes even seconds) after we dropped him off, but now he just walks right into class. Thank you, Lord! He came home a few weeks ago and told us there was a “sad boy by the wall” who was crying in Sunday School. I said, “What did you say to him, Nathan?” He said he told the boy, “I sworry you a baby.” Compassion might take some work over here. 😉

He’s been talking for the past couple weeks about his hair and how he wants to “fike it up” (Spike it up). Not sure when or where he got that idea, but he needed a haircut today anyway and somehow I got convinced to cut off his hair and turn my precious baby into a big boy.

Here’s our before shot. Look at those lovely baby hair locks. No idea why the whole picture is blue-toned.

And the after. I had a hard time getting him to sit still after having to sit for the haircut, so I had to catch him eating dinner.

It is SHORT. I told Nathan to enjoy it spiked up now because we are growing it back out starting this evening. I need my baby back. 😉

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!

There has been a lot of drama in my house lately.

First off, my sweet Nater Tot has a cold. Which, obviously, means he should be walking around like this the entire time he’s awake:

I’m all about not sharing sick germs.

Second, yesterday I made this delicious green chile stew. Two hours after dicing the green chile, chicken and potatoes, putting everything in the Crock Pot, and putting my son down to sleep, my eye itched, so I rubbed it with my knuckle.

Cue immediate burning. I ran to the bathroom, took out my contacts and thought I had burned my eyes. It stung so bad – I’ve never had my eyes feel that way before. Then my hands started burning. I spent the next four hours trying everything I could think of to get the residual green chile oil off my hands – soap, oil, Dawn, vinegar, milk. A friend told me to try coating them in a baking soda paste, which finally helped at 7PM last night. And the green chile oil got all over my contacts, so I had to toss them. Which is bad, because that means I’ve been wearing my glasses which are almost 10 years old.

I feel like I need to send out some kind of text message alert to all drivers when I’ve recently been behind the wheel with my glasses on.

Add in waking Nathan up two hours early for an appointment I had this morning, waiting an hour and a half for the appointment, a subsequently very grouchy two year old leading to a grouchy mommy, my eye doctor leaving work before he wrote my contact prescription (after giving me a terrible, awful trial pair that made my eyes hurt) and it’s just been one of THOSE days.

After the miscarriage, it has taken me a long time to admit to having a bad day on here. I assume it’s because my standard of “bad days” has changed so dramatically – after all, what can really compare to the loss of my baby? It’s also taken me a long time to realize that Jesus hasn’t stopped caring about the little things because of our loss. My perspective has changed but life still continues.

Hangnails and all.

I have so much more to learn.