Mack & Tyler's introduction to shaving cream! 

I asked Tyler how his day was at school. He blurted out "I see my baby outside today." This is unusual, teachers don't usually take the infants outside. I asked Tyler who took him outside. Tyler answered "Baby playing outside," so I rephrased my question to ask if Gavin was outside with a teacher and he answered "Ms. Jaclyn take my baby outside." This morning I confirmed this with Ms. Jaclyn who said Gavin needed a change of scenery yesterday. He's cutting four or five teeth that are all budding in at once so he isn't feeling so great at the moment. Tyler is already looking out for, and keeping tabs on his little brother. How cool is that?!

As I was putting Tyler down for his Saturday afternoon nap, he kept complaining that he had peas in his nose. He's very into boogers and picking the nose at the moment so I suggested we use a tissue to get what is probably a booger out of his nose. He still complained about peas up his nose, "I got pea in my nose." I kept looking up his nostrils but couldn't see anything resembling a pea. So I had him blow his nose and voila! Out came a fully intact pea.

We walked into a pizza parlor to pick up dinner the other night. Immediately, Tyler saw the TVs across the room and declared "Hey basketaball is on. Hey Kings basketaball is on. Go Mike Bibby. De-fense!" God this was so cute I was beaming with pride. My little Tyler, the #1 Kings fan. Bummer that there was nobody else in the restaurant to realize how cute he is.

Tyler is getting quite a social life. Chloe's birthday was on Saturday. She had a big huge bouncy house and big kids to go along with it (she turned 5). So Mama was extra paranoid and worried about Tyler getting hurt. I watched Emma, Chloe's older sister, bonk heads with another older boy and both came out crying and hurt. I hope I'm not doing any long-term damage when I try to instill the fear of God into Tyler about getting hurt. I told him the big kids were doing things that are dangerous and very bad so he can only jump until I tell him he has to get out, and he has to stay away from the big kids. If seven year olds were hurt, I don't even want to think about the damage that can be done to a two year old. So I use harsh words to scare the bejesus out of him. He didn't get hurt so it must have worked.

Mack's birthday was Sunday. Although they only see each other a few times a year, Tyler is quite fond of Mack and based on Mack's reaction when Tyler arrived at his party, I can tell the feelings are mutual. Mack, who was cruising around the tricycle track when we walked in, jumped off the trike when Tyler walked by, exclaimed "Tyler!" and took off excitedly running like three year olds do. Tyler wasn't quite as amped up at that point, so he just watched Mack and took in all the activity of finger painting, sidewalk chalking, sand boxes, dirt boxes, shaving cream, tricycles, big wheels, bubbles and more! This was quite the party, there was something for everyone! Later, we were getting ready to leave when Tyler and Mack got curious about the shaving cream. Dada had squirted some out for them to play with. Tyler asked Mack what he was doing and Mack answered that he was making mountains.

Somehow somewhere along the line, Tyler got the idea (I think Dada gave him the idea but this is not confirmed) to put some shaving cream in his hair. Mack put some in his hair too. Slowly but surely, the boys applied shaving cream all over their hair, head, face, shirt, etc. We parents shouted out a body part "Elbow, knee, tummy," and they would willfully apply handfuls of shaving cream there. Before we knew it, they were literally covered head to toe with this shaving cream. Mack's eyelashes were white and I'm betting he's going to have shaving cream in his ears for a week. Tyler kept giggling his diabolical belly laugh and it was good *clean* fun! The dads hosed the boys off while the moms worried about freezing cold hose water and the fun ended with Mack & Tyler taking a bubble bath together (as if they didn't get enough bubbles at the party)! I really hope Tyler and Mack remember this day when they are older. I know I will!


Head to toe in shaving cream. 


Just getting started with shaving cream. 

We were at Dr. Zubach's office today. His office called yesterday telling me our referral to see the orthopedics specialist was denied and to come in to get a second opinion from another pediatrician for Tyler's in-toeing. After waiting and waiting and waiting, finally Dr. Zubach poked his head in the room we were in and talked to me about what was going to happen next. When he left, Tyler turned to me and said "Where did Zubach go?" This sounded funny I'm still cracking up about it seven hours later.

Always the teacher, I tried explaining to him that the proper way to refer to him was Dr. Zubach, and that another way to refer to him was "the doctor." Then it dawned on me that I was probably confusing the heck out of him. Just recently, within the past couple weeks, Tyler has finally begun referring to his teachers with the proper title: "Ms. Andrea, Ms. Jaclyn, Ms. Julia, etc." Even though Shawn and I have always made their titles part of our dialog, Tyler only recently began picking this habit up and all his teachers keep commenting on how absolutely adorable it is that he calls them Miss Meg, Miss Amber, Miss Shawna, etc. (he sure does have a lot of teachers!) Anyway, now that he's got the titles of his teachers nailed, I'm realizing now that he's like the only kid in the entire school that calls the teachers by this title. It's still very sweet and cute and I think we'll try to carry it over to referring to Mama & Dada's friends this way. (Ms. John and Ms. Gregg will be glad to hear this, haha!)

But in his ongoing quest to get everyone's title straight, Tyler has begun referring to me as Ms. Mama. Yikes. I bet Dr. Zubach would think that was as funny as I think being called Zubach is.

We were walking to school from the parking lot this morning and Tyler tripped. I didn't think much of it, but he stopped, looked up at me and announced "I trip mama." I had no idea he knew the context of that word. That's one big perk of sending the kids to daycare. They keep surprising me with new songs, words and skills.

I feel like a karaoke machine. I sing on command these days. It's the same series of songs over and over. Tyler commands: "Twinkle twinkle, Mama" so I belt it out as he does the hand movements. In the same breath the song ends, Tyler's one step ahead of me issuing his next request, "A B C D, Mama" so we move on to the alphabet, which he is getting amazingly good at singing with me (just like the words: Next time won't you sing with me!). Don't stop now, we're moving on to "Ba Ba Ba Black Seep, Mama!" He's still working on finding the rhythm on this one. Funny how one extra syllable can ruin a whole song.