Agony on me

For your viewing enjoyment (if I did this video thing correctly)!  You will have to excuse their very dirty batman pj's - we did bath time while mommy was making dinner last night so they ate dinner in their pj's!!  This is the song they sing to squeaky, they call it a lullabye (grandad taught them).  Squeaky likes to be all crooked in his bumbo.. I swear!!

Follow the leader

Yesterday the monkeys had their first ever day of vacation bible school. They had to walk the 1/2 mile there with the babies in the double stroller and water bottles in tow since it is about 150 degrees outside. The oldest boys hold onto a follow the leader rope pictured above from the Oriental Trading Company. Big monkey gets to be the leader at all times because he gets easily distracted on their walks and we are afraid he will just walk into the street while chatting away.
They all ended up in different classes for the bible school. I just figured they would be together and was happy with that because I could tell little monkey was a bit nervous. Apparently they were all a bit nervous at drop off time and asked the nanny to please stay with them. She of course could not with the two babies, so they were on their own. Big monkey and Little monkey did so well. Big monkey said he was a little bit nervous and worried but not too much because he was there to have fun! Their buddy that went with them cried and cried until the teachers put him in with Big monkey. They kept telling me they had to calm buddy down. I was so proud of them for being big boys and for helping their friend feel better.
I asked them what they did and the first thing they mentioned was watching a movie, go figure! It was about a squirrel and some mean crocodiles, not sure what the message was there.. they missed it. They also said they did not like the snack, it was vanilla pudding and they only like chocolate! I can just hear them now.
Big monkey said he was a very good listener and was not the one talking when the teacher had to raise her voice to be heard! I was floored by that one. He is a chatty little thing. He was convinced all night that he had been to kindergarten that day and liked it so much he was going to keep going. I was glad to hear this since he will be starting K4 in August.
Little monkey said he heard a story about Moses and a fire and that God asked Moses to take his shoes off. I am going to have to look that story up.  

The way home was uneventful other than a skinned knee, but nothing some smarties could not take care of and make a little boy instantly feel better.

They are growing up so fast, in just a couple of months I will be dropping Big monkey off for his first day of big school!

TGIT

Yay! I am so glad it is Thursday and my weekend will begin in about 2 hours! I am wiped out. I still have to get used to being back at work. I am going to get my hair done tomorrow morning. It is in desperate need for highlights and a good cut. I keep going back and forth as to whether I should cut it all off in anticipation of the great post-partum hair loss or leave it long enough to put up in a pony tail during our horrible summer heatwave. Guess I will decide tomorrow. I am dumping the older monkeys on the nanny and taking littlest monkey with me, hopefully he will take a nice nap during the whole process. He has his 2 month check up afterwards so he will probably be angry with me tomorrow evening.
It has been a stressful week and I am looking forward to taking it easy this weekend.
There were a couple of great posts I read this week that really got me thinking and hit a nerve. Check out Sarah's ideas on taking time for yourself and Jennifer's post.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Stick a banana in it

Lately, big monkey has been getting into ALL kinds of trouble because of his mouth and attitude. It has been a constant struggle to figure out how to correct this before it gets completely out of hand. I swear he is a 13 year old girl trapped in a 4 1/2 year old boy's body. He has my attitude mixed with his dad's moodiness, lethal combination.
Last Friday he threw one heck of a tantrum. I have been lucky so far and both the older boys skipped the lay on the floor while kicking and screaming bloody murder tantrums. Well I got a taste of it Friday and I was not pleased one bit! Let's just say we were at a public place, nanny and other children in tow, and I ended up with sand down my shirt with a hungry baby in the van. I have never been so embarrassed or mad in my life with any of my children. So, he had to stay in his room the rest of the day, no movie night for him, and no swimming the entire weekend. I could not stop laying on the punishment. He was crushed and I nearly felt bad for him until I had to wipe the sand from myself to feed the baby.
The rest of the weekend he was a perfect angel. The sweet little boy he used to be. And then Monday he was yelling at the nanny and lost swim time again! I am at a loss. I really work with him on how to talk to people and when to shut his mouth, but I feel like we are going over the same things over and over again. I am tired of constantly getting on to him, we are not having fun anymore!! I am open to suggestions.

Working on it

In case you are wondering, I am trying to get a new background, etc for the page! Hopefully I can finish it up today!

Taking a poll

So I have to admit I have a facebook page.  I don't have a lot of friends on it, and I like it that way.  I really just use it to post pictures and keep up with some family members.  My husband has a page as well, and we never arranged to be friends.. until this past weekend. 

My husband was bugging me about inviting him to be my friend.  I just really had no desire to do this.  He uses his to keep up with his high school buddies and keep his youth (my interpretation).  I did not like a single one of his highschool buddies and had no desire to see stupid comments made by them or him thinking they are still 17 and cool like that!  But I had a moment of  weakness kindness Friday and invited him... big mistake.  Yes, there were stupid comments, mostly harmless.  Then there was a post by him on Friday stating that his wife asked to be friends with him and he was taking a 24 hour poll to see if he should accept.  Yes. Really.

So I took it in stride, as a joke at my expense.  And I commented back.  All I said was "I guess this is your feeble attempt at humor!  Funny how you forgot to mention that you kept bugging me to invite you as my friend"

He has since removed me from his friend list.  Apparently 30 is the new "terrible twos".

Prefontaine Classic

Yesterday big monkey and I watched a bit of the Prefontaine Classic.  It was amazing watching these magnificent runners doing what they do best.  I was thrilled that big monkey had no desire to change the channel to a kid's show, he was really into watching the track and field events.  

I was inspired and decided that today was going to be the day for me to get my sneakers back on and jump on the treadmill.  I brought my gym clothes and ipod and low expectations.  I was nervous.  Mostly I knew I wanted to be at the fitness level I was when I ran my half marathon in the middle of my pregnancy and I knew I would be disappointed.  

With no excuses left, I pumped some milk for littlest monkey so I could fit into my sports bra, and left for the gym with the girls from work.  It was amazingly better than I thought.  I wanted to just get some running in so I started off at a slow jog and ended up running 20 minutes at a slow pace.  I am very excited and could feel the energy and excitement building during the run.  I kept pushing the speed up a level every 2 minutes and felt great.  I could feel the fatigue and strain on my muscles which was exhilarating and at the same time worrisome because I know how sore I am going to be tomorrow!

Smiley faces

Look at this sweet baby boy!  I had the best time taking some pictures of him yesterday (after complaining that I can never get any good smiley ones of him).  He has so much personality already and I think I am going to be in trouble in a few months with his charming self!  So far at two months we get some good nights where he only wakes up once or twice.  This is so different than the other two.  He is really vocal now and I think he realized that he was going to have to speak up to be heard.  His favorite things are baths, being outside, eating, watching his big brothers, and swinging.  

I am happy to show you that he has really started filling out those legs! 

2 months old

I got a few good shots of littlest monkey, aka squeaky, last night before he started screaming at me to get rid of the camera!  I can't believe he is 2 months old this weekend already! 

Doesn't it look like they are having a regular conversation!?

So sweet.  Yes, he still has a mohawk.  I don't even try to tame it anymore!  It has started to curl over so I do believe he will be curly like big monkey.

This is as good as it gets with the smiling/laughing on camera.  Every time he sees the camera he stops!  Such a shame since he is usually smiling/laughing/talking most times.

And this is what I get when he gets really tired of the camera!

I plan on having more pictures of our time at home and in Indiana and Georgia next week when I am back to work full time.

Belly pic 8 weeks post partum

Okay, this might be a little weird but I am planning on using this picture as part of my motivation now that I have the go ahead to start running again.  I decided to talk about this new struggle/goal instead of the fact that I am back to work today.  I will save the fact that I had the sweetest little baby sleeping in his bassinet this morning when I had to get in the van to cry myself to work for another post.  He was even making those sweet little baby sighs.  I won't go into how much using a pump sucks... plastic is not nice to bewbies... but I will continue to use it for the next year or so like I did with the other monkeys.   

Nope, instead I will talk about how much baby weight I STILL have to lose!!  I saw some people out running this morning and I was so torn.  Part of me wants to get up and go and  the other part is apprehensive about how I will feel when I can't just get up and do 7 miles without much thought!  I can't even remember where I put my ipod!  I am going back and forth about going at lunch today, simply because I want to get home as soon as possible to be with the monkeys.  I was spoiled spending eight weeks at home with them all!

I did do Jillian Michaels 30 day shred over the weekend.  It was a great workout.  I was sore from just the level one session and I did not even put forth all of my effort.  I think it will be great throughout my training for the ZOOMA run because it has so much strength training and I am lazy when it comes to doing that on my own!

Being back to work should help with my diet.  I plan on stocking my office with healthy snacks and lunches and hope they don't give littlest monkey gas!  So  hopefully my next "belly pic" will be much better looking.

I plan on posting a recap of the fun things we did during my maternity leave soon.  I forgot my camera cable so I can't get the pictures up today.