Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Iowa! We cooked a big dinner here at home but we did cheat a little. We bought a package from our supermarket that had the turkey already cooked, gravy, rolls, pie and cranberry sauce. You had to heat up the turkey and gravy but it was super-easy. There was just no time to do a full dinner and look after a two year old and 6 month old. Here's our tasty dinner (we had dinner rolls and jello too but they didn't make it in the photo).



And here are Rob and Rex enjoying the tasty dinner.



Rex liked it all except the sweet potatoes.



Tomorrow is time to put up the Christmas lights and decorate the house- yay! I love, love, love doing that. I got some new stuff for the outside of the house already. I realized that my decorating inside is going to be sparse for the next few years (thank you boys) and so I should focus on the outside of the house. I'm way excited about it. The holiday season around here is made even busier by 7 family birthdays between November 23rd and January 23rd. It is a lot to keep track of and try to get everything bought/ordered/mailed/shipped/wrapped on time. Anyhow, the decorating hopefully will begin tomorrow and definitely will be done by Sunday night- except for the tree. I don't know what in the world to do to keep Rex away from it. Last year we put the short tree up on a 3-foot tall stand but he is so much taller this year that we need to come up with a different plan. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment with your idea!

The Cutest Boys In The World

I have the two cutest boys in the world and I have proof:



How cute are they in their matching shirts? I love it. I also recently bought them matching Christmas pajamas. I promise not to go overboard with the matchy-matchy because it would make even me want to vomit but a little of it is kind of fun. After I took that photo Rex starting a mini-meltdown but I got another cute one of Wyatt.

Mondays Suck

Today was crazy. It started off with us totally oversleeping. We all scrambled to get in the car and get Rob to work as quickly as we could. He was still pretty late though and he said it was the worst day ever to be late. Crap. Then I fell down the stairs to the basement. I was carrying 3 loads of laundry and I missed the last two steps. Thankfully, all that dirty laundry ended up between me and the floor so it wasn't a bad fall. Wyatt was just spun out all day. He is kind of cranky anyhow but he was super cranky today. I tried to make dinner but he was screaming the whole time so I gave up. He didn't want anything besides attention and Rob was gone to the store getting supplies for Thanksgiving dinner and trying to get his hair cut so it was up to me to give him the attention he was wanting so badly. I got Wyatt to sleep okay tonight but I'm worried how the rest of the night will go... There were other things too but I just want to forget about them. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day!

The (Mostly) Terrific Two's

Rex is a fantastic kid. He is and always has been a great sleeper, a great eater and an all-around happy guy. He's two and he does things you would expect a two-year old to do like have little meltdowns but those times are rare. My biggest problem is usually he is trying to "help" with something which means he is actually making what I am trying to do harder. Not such a bad problem to have. He could listen a little better but he does okay. I love that kid so much and wanted to share some of the funny things he has been doing lately.



He has been picking up on a lot of chicks lately. On Thursday, it was a college girl at the grocery store. I couldn't hear him but Rob told me later he was saying what sounded like, "Car? Eat?" Apparently he was trying to ask her out on a date? Then Rob took him to eat burgers Saturday for lunch and there just happened to be a high school dance team dining there. Rex was talking to the girls and Rob said they were all just eating it up. Attention Iowa- lock up your daughters.

Although Rex was picking up on the local girls, I think his true love is Giada deLaurentiis. He can't say "Giada" though so he calls her "Gia". We watch Giada at Home every day at 11:30. (The only other thing he actually asks to watch is Curious George.) He knows when it is time and starts saying "Gia? Gia?" He also pretends to talk to her on the phone. It is so funny. He has also walked up to the tv before trying to give her a kiss. Rob and I think he has made a good pick- besides the age difference and fact that she is already married, of course. She is a good looking woman that can cook too. Good job, Rex. He also likes to mimic what she does on the show. Right now, he stirs everything on his plate at meal times and says "Quick. Quick." I'm guessing one of the episodes recently had Giada giving something a "quick stir" and now he does that too. For a while it was always "heat it up" when I turned the stove on to cook. He knows what a lot of foods are now too thanks to her. He does like everything to do with cooking and being in the kitchen so maybe he'll be a chef someday.

He is really good about sharing. He even tried to share his fries with an older lady that worked at the burger place on Saturday. He shares with everyone. However, he also expects you to share whatever you have that he wants. He really is a genius though because instead of screaming "I want!" or something most kids do, he just looks up at you with those big cow eyes and says, "Share?" If you don't share with him, you obviously are a bad person because everyone is supposed to share. A career in politics maybe? Public relations? He sure does know how to spin things already.

Like I mentioned earlier, Rex is a fantastic sleeper and even better is how he wakes up- happy and he will wait in bed for probably 2 hours, just patiently waiting, until you come and get him. No screaming, no crying. He just lays there and plays with his stuffed animals that are in his bed with him and talks. His brother does not wake up so quietly and happy so I realize now how good I have it with Rex.

One of Rex's favorite things to do now is say "Are you (fill in the blank)?" He means "Where are you?" but he leaves out the where. So, for example, when he is looking for his cup, he walks around saying, "Are you cup?" It's pretty cute. The cup must not think so though because it never answers.

He is so good with his brother. He loves to give him kisses and talk and sing to him. Rex is pretty gentle with Wyatt and I am so thankful for that. Wyatt just eats it all up. Sometimes he can get kind of cranky but as soon as Rex starts talking to him, he stops and is all smiles again.

For a kid who makes some of the biggest messes I've ever seen, he sure does like to be clean. He always wants to wash his hands if they are "dirtily" and even if they are not. If he spills something on the floor, he'll say "clean 'em up" and find a towel to clean it up with. He announces to the world "all clean" whenever any of us have just had a "va" (that means bath) or "sha sha" (shower). The kid just likes everything and everyone to be clean.

I keep modifying this post as I remember things so check back on this again in a day or two because it may still change again!

Raise the Roof

Rob has been working extremely hard to turn the flat roof portion of our house into a pitched roof. A friend of ours does construction work so we hired him to do the ice shield, paper and shingles and he did such a great job. It was so much work to do all that framing and get the plywood on and we were more than happy to pay someone else to do the rest of it. Rob was pretty worn out and we missed him a lot. But now the roof is all done!



The roof was all done by Sunday night which was cutting it pretty close- it rained like cats and dogs here starting Thursday night. There is still a little work to be done with the fascia and siding which Rob will tackle tomorrow. But we know now that it is water tight. Yay for that.

Rob's parents were here for a week visiting. We had fun and I think they really enjoyed their time here with the boys.





I haven't been up to a whole lot besides being mommy and trying to be a good hostess to my houseguests. I made some pumpkin bread yesterday, mainly to give as a gift to our neighbors for putting up with all our roof craziness for the past two months. We gave them a bottle of wine too so I think if they were put out at all with our project (and I don't think they really were), they probably don't mind by now. We felt bad though and wanted to do something nice for them because they are outstanding neighbors.

I better scoot off to bed now. Wyatt is back to feeding twice in the night so I have to get my sleep while I can- my opportunities are limited these days.

It was a busy month

October was crazy busy and I still don't have much time so I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. Rob spent every spare minute framing a section of our roof that used to be flat. It seemed like it wasn't too big of a job and that he could do it in no time. We were so wrong. And now when I look at this picture I think, "That's a lot of work- what were we thinking?!"



He also has put all the plywood on and now we are going to turn the project over to someone else for getting the ice shield, paper and shingles on. Yay for that because we all miss Rob. We tried giving Wyatt some rice cereal recently. He looks so tiny in the highchair compared to Rex.



It was not the greatest experience ever for any of us. He screamed and cried and refused to swallow it by the second bite. He just sat there screaming with it all pooled in the bottom of his mouth. I don't know what to do. He only wants breastmilk and refuses to drink from a bottle so it's getting tough on me after almost 6 months of it. He needs to eat something else. The one thing he will eat? His foot.



This picture shows his eye color the best but I still don't know what it is. I am tempted to say hazel but they could still go brown I suppose. I think that blue is definitely out now but it could go either way with the hazel and brown still. I have been working with Wyatt for just a few days on the blankets, trying to get him to roll over and today he did it all on his own! He was actually in his crib and I missed it because I went to the living room to get his carseat. I left and he was on his back and when I returned he was on his tummy! Besides eating his toes and rolling over, he also loves to get in his jumperoo.



He is actually asleep in the thing right now. He just wore himself out. He gets bored a lot so it's nice that he is loving that jumperoo so much for now.

The latest Rex news is he went on his first trick-or-treating adventure this past weekend. I got him a monkey outfit since he loves Curious George and all monkeys so much. It was a good choice because the kid loved it.



Rob took him around the neighborhood and he came back with some pretty funny stories. First, Rex would say "trick or treat" to some people but he made monkey sounds for just about everyone. He loves to ring doorbells so he was thrilled to be able to do that for once instead of being told that we can't just ring everyone's doorbell. I think my favorite part though was the fact that he actually just walked right in to a few people's houses. Nice. Rob had to go in and get him out of there. Well, he rang the doorbell but when they opened the door, he just cruised right in. He got a nice little supply of candy. He has never had it before but now he tells us " fun candy" "candy more" and "candy mmm" all the time. Here he is with some of his "fun candy".



Sorry for being such a slacker blogger last month but with Rob so busy up on the roof all the time, I had very little free time. Since that project is wrapping up now, I plan on doing a much better blogging job for November and the rest of the year!