Lately. . . .

Life has been quite busy as of late. Do you ever feel like you go, go, go? But then when you sit down at the end of the end of the day and think of all the things you did - you really didn't accomplish much on your list, but yet you never sat down? Craig refers to it as "spinning your wheels". Being incredibly busy, but getting nowhere! Such is life at times :)

Chase is growing like a weed! And he's incredibly smart, but he doesn't want us to know. We recently pulled him out of pre-school because it was outrageously expensive and we felt that they weren't really teaching him the things they claimed to. There were 22 kids in the class and only 2 teachers. It always seemed like the teachers were doing more crowd control than they were teaching. So we pulled him out and I have been working with him at home. When I ask him to sing his ABC's or count to 20 he mixes up all the letters and numbers and says he doesn't know how to do it. Or he can't do it. He doesn't want to cooperate at all on some days! A couple hours later he'll be playing with his toys and I'll just be around, cooking or cleaning or something, and he doesn't think I'm listening. He'll start counting BACKWARDS - perfectly. Or he'll even do simple addition and subtraction with his toys he's playing with. Such as, "Here Mallory, you play with these 2 and I'll play with 3 and then we'll have 5 guys." (Star Wars guys). Or he'll sing the alphabet song and not miss a single letter. He's a really good problem solver and understands how things work. He's got great eye/hand coordination. When we play the Wii with him - there are some games that Craig and I cannot beat him at! He's super smart, but doesn't want anyone to know. So, shhhhhh. We're supposed to think he's clueless. . . . please tell me it's just a phase! And speaking of Star Wars, he has an obsession with the movies and the Clone Wars TV show. All things in life relate to Star Wars. I was dressing him for church this morning - in his black suit and black shoes - and he says, "I'm black, I'm evil!"
Apparently his suit for church now doubles as a Darth Vader costume! He cracks me up! Him and Mallory were playing Star Wars the other day running and chasing each other all over the house. Chase was a Clone Trooper and I'm not sure which character Mallory was pretending to be. But our 5 year old - turned Clone Trooper pro - leapt up onto the couch with Mallory hot on his heels. Just as Mallory stood up on the edge of the couch, the "Clone Trooper" kicks Mallory as hard as he can, and I see her do the most amazing airborne back flip and land in a heap on the floor. She just laid there in shock for a minute and then started screaming! Chase was crushed when I had to break it to him that he isn't a REAL Clone Trooper. He's Chase and it's not ok to kick his sister off the couch. He's fun to watch though. It's nice to see he's passionate about something! He starts kindergarten in the Fall so I am soaking up these last few months that I have with him before he starts his many years of school. I get emotional just thinking about it!

Mallory has become very Jekyll and Hyde-ish almost. She waffles back and forth between wanting to do everything herself and wanting you to do everything for her. When she wants to do it all herself, watch out! Don't cross the line and try to help or you'll hear about it! Our sweet little girl quickly turns into a screaming, tantrum throwing queen! And as far as the other side of her split personality goes. . . . when she wants to do nothing herself she starts making false claims, such as "my legs are broken." Seriously. We never know which daughter is going to crawl out of bed in the morning. Her latest obsession has been earrings. Occasionally we'll all walk the mall together as a family on Saturdays. We just window shop, let the kids play with the toys in the toy store, let them ride once or twice on the little kiddie ride things they have for a few quarters, and then we usually take them to Wendy's for a kid's meal. Nothing too exciting. It just gets us out of the house for a little while. Mallory's favorite store is Claire's. She LOVES looking at all the fun earrings. She always asks if she can have some. We tell her she has to get a hole poked in her ear before she can buy earrings. We tell her it's going to hurt to get the hole and she's probably going to cry. She always puts the earrings back and says, "No thanks." She has done this for months! Well, yesterday we did our little mall walk and she wanted to look at the earrings. She found some frog earrings that she would not put down. We told her she could only get them if she got her ears pierced. We again told her it was going to hurt very badly. But she wanted those frogs! She agreed to get her ears pierced. They had a chair for her to sit in. I kept asking her if she wanted to sit on my lap - because she wasn't allowed to move. I asked her 3 times about sitting on my lap (I was afraid she would freak out and move)and on the third time she got a little mad at me and said, "No Mom, I just want to do it all by myself!"
And she did. They had a teddy bear for her to squeeze. She didn't move. She didn't hardly even cry. She started whimpering a little bit and then 4 or 5 tears fell, but she never full on cried or screamed or even said ouch. She got down from the chair right away and walked straight up to the counter to buy her frog earrings. She was very brave. She started showing her earrings to everyone in the mall. She is loving them! Though she does have to wait 6 weeks before she can put her frogs in.

Clark is growing up way too fast. He's over 17 months now. He's massive to say the least. We weighed him and Mallory last week and both of them weigh 30.0 pounds. They weigh the exact same. There is a 2 year and 3 month age difference. Our boy is a tank! We thought he would lose some weight once he started walking, but so far that hasn't happened. He continues to show no fear in his daily activities. He can now climb up on the kitchen chairs and onto the table. If a little piece of cereal or a grape or any type of food gets left on the table, I find him sitting up there finishing off every one's leftovers that have fallen off their plates! Or in this picture's case, a whole box of cereal was left up there and he was all over that!! I caught him shoveling Captain Crunch in his mouth by the handful! He is Mr. Personality right now. He is a man of MANY facial expressions. You always know what he's thinking and how he's feeling because his face always shows it. He gives the meanest dirty look! He has shocked many a people by scowling and glaring at them for no apparent reason. He's going through the separation anxiety stage. He cries if you walk up the stairs without him. He likes to keep close tabs on us or he gets a little worried that he's been left. So as tough as he thinks he is with the daredevil acts, he's still a softie at heart! His vocabulary is rapidly expanding. He says hi, cat, dog, ball, poop, two, choo-choo, Chase (sounds more like Sase), shoe, eye, dinosaur (sounds more like di-so), etc. He is following simple commands. If we say "Let's go night-night." He walks upstairs and waits by his crib. Or when we tell him it's time to eat he runs to his booster seat. So he's definitely understanding English now! He has attempted to climb up the bars to his crib. He didn't quite make it to the top, but he tries to climb in. Luckily he hasn't climbed out yet. We have been scoping out beds. . . . onto the next stage I guess. Chase was 18 months when we put him in a bed and Mallory was 20. So the time is just about right and there's always the safety issue. We don't need him falling out and breaking something :)

Craig recently finished the Twilight series. I think I get bragging rights for that! My husband has read the most popular book series of the decade written for teenage females! I am still working on finishing the series, I'm finally on Eclipse. He beat me! And yes he liked them a lot! He laughed, he cried, and he said he read them so that he could have something to talk about with me. Because he knew I was excited about them. What a guy, huh? :) We purchased the Twilight DVD yesterday and Craig got to watch it for the first time. He really liked the movie! He cried a couple times. If you know Craig, you know that he cries in most movies. This wasn't a shock to me. He cried in Lord of the Rings, so of course a vampire love story would get the water works going :) He's going to be mad at me for making him sound like a girl! Really he's all male. Let me remind you he did this all for me. My sweet hubby!

I'm just going with the flow. Trying to keep up with the kids and trying to keep the chaos to a minimum. My brother is coming home from his mission in Thailand in just over 8 weeks. We are getting excited for our trip back to AZ to welcome him home! We have missed him! I just got called to be a Primary teacher to 6, 7, and 8 year olds. I haven't been in Primary since we were first married so it's been awhile. They are a good group of kids and they say the funniest things! It had warmed up to the 50's last week and I actually went out in my flip flops! Winter's been fun, but I'm anxious for warmer weather and summer clothes again! That's pretty much our lives in a box right now :)