Haircuts

I finally won the battle with Eric and got the boys little boy haircuts. They don't even look like the same kids. And their hair looks so blonde now. Handsome fellows if I do say so myself!

A boy and his dog

We rescued 2 dogs last week. They, and their mother, had been dumped at a park. The mother, sadly, had to go to the pound - we could not take all 3. We were going to keep both puppies, but were advised it's not wise to raise dogs from the same litter together. And, over the few days we had them both, we watched them already struggling for dominance and having little dog fights, which only would have gotten worse as they got bigger.

And so we found a home for one, and have kept one. Guthrie named him Edward, after one of our favorite trains from Thomas and Friends. Since the girls of the family all seem to love Twilight (myself included), it works that way too, although the dog does not sparkle in the daylight.

It wasn't deliberate, but we have black pets. Ursula, the black stray we started taking care of last fall, is not sure what to think of the dog, especially since he stole her bed. She is trying to let him know who is boss, and Edward is learning to be careful around the cat. So far, this is her preferred position to keep an eye on things.

His name was Guthrie, he was a Jedi

Guthrie totally looks like





a Jedi.

(Because I can never get it to work when I try to embed video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNiOMQZyMT8)

"Not cars, not trucks, not other things with wheels"

(Don't panic. This is a wonderful train museum in Temple, Texas. The tracks are part of the museum, as is the train. It doesn't run. It's not nearly as scary as it looks.)

Guthrie likes trains. The above quote is how he described his love to his Grandma Mac (Eric's mom) before her visit last fall. "I like trains. Not cars, not trucks, not other things with wheels - trains."

He has had this love of trains all of his short life, since he was first able to communicate his interests to us. His first real Halloween costume was a train.

During our brief trip to the Chicago area for a friend's wedding when he was 18 months, we ended up at a hotel in Aurora with a train theme, right next to Walter Payton's Roundhouse, and the train station. We rode a train to Chicago, and this was the highlight of the trip for him.

For Christmas that year we got him a train set. Eric, of course, couldn't wait until Christmas for him to have it, so he ended up with it early. It started out pretty small, and on a table.

When we moved into our new house, Guthrie was 2. We still had boxes everywhere, the beds weren't set up yet, but we unpacked the trains.

Slowly the train table got less and less use, and every time we found ourselves in a toy store a few trains and a few more tracks, or track sets, found their way into our cart. The trains started to take over the house.

He got himself a costume so he could pretend to be a train conductor any time he wanted.

For his third birthday, we rode on a train from Warrensburg to Kansas City and back, and he got to meet a REAL condcutor.

Then when we were back in Missouri last summer, we happened to be in the same town that was celebrating its annual "Railroad Days" and got to ride a miniature train, before going to ride on the real Thomas the Tank Engine and meeting Sir Topham Hatt. Poor thing was getting sick, but we didn't know it until he started to develop a fever while we were on the train ride.

We went back to see Thomas in Austin in October, and followed that up with a night in Corpus Christi, where we stayed in another train-themed hotel, and rode on the Great Ocean Drive Scenic (GODS) Railway.

A few months ago, Eric got the idea to spray paint some of Guthrie's tracks. Guthrie then insisted they do them all, and carefully they worked on this together, taping off places that should not be painted, unscrewing roundhouses to pain inside them, using brushes on pieces that wouldn't come apart. Now Guthrie has beautiful, colorful tracks, and we spend many of our days (like today) building elaborate layouts that do take over much of the house.

We've read books on trains. Fiction - the entire collected original Thomas the Tank Engine stories cover to cover (all 405 pages) at least 4 times. We've read many other Thomas books, those we own and many from the library. We've read "The Subway Mouse," "A Cricket in Times Square" (because they live in a subway station), "Pano the Train," "The Little Engine that Could" with 2 different sets of illustrations, "Choo Choo" by Virginia Lee Burton, and so many other fiction books I've lost count. For non-fiction, we've read children's books that tell how train works, and we've also read much of an encyclopedia of trains in which the second half of the book describes hundreds of the great rail lines of the world. I learned many places I want to visit and ride the trains.

I do wonder just how long this love will last. It is fun, and he learns so much, but oh, I've looked at the hobby stores. I've seen the electric model trains. I know how much they cost and how much room they require. And we have a friend who works with the railroad, and we know there is a term for people like Guthrie. Yes, that's right, he's a Foamer.

Crash! Bang! Boom!

That's what the back of Guthrie's head looks like right now. He has 4 staples in his scalp. Yes, they were put there intentionally. Oh, yes, we paid good money to have a doctor put staples in our son's head.

Yesterday started off normally enough. The house is total chaos, and really has been for weeks, with the girls visits and then the hurricane, so we decided our mission was to get things under control. And to start with the kitchen. And so, we spent hours cleaning the kitchen, and if you looked at it right now, you couldn't tell.

Okay, back up: Late Saturday night I got a call from my almost 17-year-old niece asking me if she should go to the Emergency Room for her injured wrist. Not quite sure how she injured it, but something about a ledge and her cat. She didn't have her insurance card, couldn't get ahold of her grandparents, and so she called me, thousand miles away that I am. And I didn't know what to tell her, so I spent the night worried sick about my poor injured niece.

Ah, yes, the kitchen. And the boys acting insane because we were ignoring them so we could give them a clean house, a hot meal, a nice home. Fighting, tantrums, the normal for 2- and 4-yo boys.

I napped with Turner. Things felt hectic but okay. I was scrubbing fingerprints off wallpaper when I realized it was about 5 o'clock, time to call Samantha.

She answers, says she's home alone, and that it's stormy. I was at the computer anyway, so I pulled up the weather channel for where she is, and - TORNADO WARNING!!! Anyone who knows me knows I HATE tornadoes, and Samantha freaked out (just a little bit) too. Home alone, going to the basement, sirens going off.

While I'm on the phone, Eric's making dinner, and I hear Turner cry. Eric says Turner broke his piggy bank. (This bank - it's a bear holding a honey pot, and I think actually belongs to Rosalind - has become Turner's "lovey" lately. He calls it "Puppy." It's hard and not cuddly, big and unweildy, but Turner insists on sleeping with him.) Fortunately, it was a pretty clean break and fixable, but Turner was pretty upset. He kept kissing it, holding both pieces, and saying, "I sorry," over and over again.

I'm still talking Samantha through the tornado warning. Asking her when her dad will get home, trying to find local (for her) news stations to see what they are saying. And then -

BANG!

Guthrie was playing on the exercise tower I got for my birthday. He was hanging by his legs off the bottom bar, swung backwards, and BOOM! cracked his head on ... something. I'm not sure if it was the bottom bar of the tower or a wooden block on the floor. He screamed and cried, but, you know, little boys bang their heads all the time, so I was still on the phone with Samantha, Eric was still trying to make dinner and comfort Turner with the broken "Puppy." Guthrie climbed into my lap, and then we found the blood.

Oh, the blood.

I've never before seen that much blood come from one of my children, and I hope to never see it again.

I told Samantha I had to go, slipped on my shoes, and we took off for the ER. Eric was in a panic. There was SO. MUCH. BLOOD. We had a wet towel on Guthrie's head, but by the time we got to the ER I had blood all over me (and my purse and my cell phone), and Guthrie's hair was pink. He was crying, more in fear than pain. Eric's crazy driving there and his sense of panic probably didn't help much.

And then, 5 hours later, we left the ER, Guthrie with 4 staples in his head. Yes, staples. The doctor (she was really, really awesome, and really helped keep Guthrie calm through it all) said staples are better than stitches because they are much faster. Guthrie thought it was all awful, and I'm not sure how much the topical painkiller did to ease the pain of his head BEING STAPLED. And the thought of taking those staples out of my son's head? Not looking forward to Friday when he gets them removed.

Today, things are more normal. We didn't get much sleep. Eric fixed "Puppy," and Turner was distraught he couldn't sleep with him, but Puppy sat right next to Turner on the bed, and that's how he fell asleep. Samantha survived the tornado warning without any problems. Stacia, my niece, has some kind of fracture in her wrist and can't work for a week.

It was after 10 p.m. when we got home from the hospital last night, so too late for any treat. But today, to make up for the horrible owies Guthrie had to endure, the decapitated piggy-bear-puppy bank, and the general chaos of the day, I did what needed to be done: We went to Cold Stone. YUM!

And how was your Sunday?

Getting ready

We made a quick run to Lowe's and Target for last minute supplies. I'm following the lead of others in our neighborhood as to what precautions we should take - the only windows I'm seeing being boarded up are those with the huge single panes of glass, and all of our windows have many small panes, I'm guessing designed for this very reason.

Eric laughed at Target when, along with disposable diapers (can't wash diapers if the power goes out, and just don't want to have to deal with it right now), I insisted we get wine and chocolate. If I'm going through a hurricane, I'm darn well going to have wine and good chocolate, gosh darn it!

All of Guthrie's play today has centered around the hurricane. Thomas took shelter in the roundhouse for protection from the impending hurricane. His toy taxi drove very quickly out to South Padre to pick up people stuck on the beach before the hurricane hits. Turner is oblivious.

The clouds are moving in, it's getting dark outside, it's hot and sticky with an occasional wind.

At Lowe's, I thought Eric might be a little crazy when his idea was to buy bags of dirt instead of sand bags - they would work the same purpose, but then we could use the dirt in the garden afterwards. There was one other person in the Lawn and Garden section, a woman buying dirt, and it turned out it was for the same purpose. She said she'd done it before and it worked perfectly, unlike sand which just eventually gets thrown out or makes a mess!

I'd erase all of Turner's toys

We've been reading Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Guthrie loved the poem about the child who uses his magic eraser to erase someone.

Just now, he came up to us in the kitchen, and said, "If my pencil that I bought had a magic eraser, I would use it to erase all of Turner's toys. Then he wouldn't have ANY toys to play with, and he would leave me alone."

I think the logic is faulty, but the sentiment is right.

Thank goodness there is no magic eraser, or brothers everywhere would instead erase each other.

Our lazy Sunday afternoon

We walked out this afternoon and looked at the outside of the bedroom window to see this:


As I have two young sons, they were of course fascinated by the lizard on the window. Which proceeded to be terribly frightened by the two tow-headed two-legged creatures which so desperately wanted to touch it that it jumped right onto Guthrie's head and now his back, only to hide under a table, where it was much easier to get to.

We spent the next 45 minutes or so watching it,

squealing with joy at it,

curious as to what exactly it was

whether it was going to get us,

and why it didn't understand our repeated explanations that we were, in fact, people, and not a predator going to get it, and why wouldn't it just let us give it a kiss or hold it for a minute,

before it finally got away.


And such is life with Guthrie, Turner, and our various and sundry lizards and other wildlife here in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Birthday Boy!

Okay, two days late, here are 4th birthday pics.

(I don't know what's up with all the weird spacing. It does this sometimes with pictures. I'm not going to fight to get it just right.)




Breakfast at IHOP:






Presents:

Making the cake

(No comments about raw eggs. Yes, I'm letting them lick the bowls. It's the best part.)

The Play-Doh doggy doctor set (he got this for another little girl for her birthday a few weeks ago - because he wanted it of course - so we got it for him, too)

Play-doh beard

Cake - he wanted orange icing.

Happy Birthday little boy!

He can R-E-A-D

We don't own a TV. We had one when we moved here, but we never set it up, so we gave it away. Besides, we're not going to pay for cable, and with just an antenna we could only pick up Spanish language stations. (Although I know that would be a great way to learn some Spanish. But do I really want to learn a language by watching Mexican soap operas?)

That said, we're not entirely anti-TV. Guthrie gets to watch movies on a DVD player or the computer, and Turner has been watching with him some lately. Guthrie also LOVES to play on the computer.

A couple weeks ago I started letting him play the games and watch the videos of Word World, a show on PBS. He loves it. And he's started wanting to write his letters and spell out words since he's been watching the show. We have a big table (it was actually a bed frame, but now it's a low table) that Eric and Guthrie painted with chalkboard paint, and we clear that off and take turns writing words. He wrote his name on the Valentine he sent Grandma.

I still wasn't sure how much he was learning, and how much of it was just recognizing the words he'd seen on the show, though, and how much he really "got" sounding words out.

Turner has been in a stage for awhile where he FREAKS OUT if I go to the bathroom. I can leave the house without him, and he will stay home with Eric just fine, but if he hears me saying I'm going to the bathroom he'll start crying and won't let me out of his sight. A little while ago, I told Eric I was going to go off to the P-O-T-T-Y, spelling it out so Turner wouldn't know and would let me pee in peace.

As I was walking that direction I heard Guthrie saying "po-t-t-ee" and sounding it out. "POTTY!" He announced. "You're going to the potty!"

And so, from someone who doesn't even own a TV set, and hasn't had cable in over 6 years, evidence that it CAN do some good.

But I don't want to think about the fact that he's not even 4 yet, and we're already past the stage where we can spell out words when we don't want him to know what we're talking about!!!

Our future chef and baker

All the cooking lessons you need - Guthrie teaches you how to make cookies. Don't follow his instructions too closely, though, or they may be a little ... burnt.

They're yummy. If you listen closely, you can hear Turner humming. It's 8 notes from the Nutcracker.

'Twas the night before Christmas

And Guthrie was sick. 102F fever. Passed out, on the living room floor, at 4:30 in the afternoon, with Christmas cookies waiting to be decorated and left out for Santa, a Santa tracker to track, and all the other Christmas Eve fun waiting to be done.

Poor kid. Turner was sick Saturday, in the hotel in Austin, then while we had to wait for my mom and Samantha's plane to arrive - 7 hours late! The up side of the illness (if there is an upside) is that Turner slept Friday night for a 7 hour stretch, for the first time in his life. His previous record was 4 hours. I knew something had to be wrong, though, and that was confirmed when I felt his hot little belly first thing the next morning.

Hopefully all will be well tomorrow morning, Santa will have come, and we will have a Merry Christmas after all.

Santa!!!

Guthrie liked Santa.

A LOT!!!

Turner ... didn't.

I think we're *almost* done shopping. One more gift to get, and Eric is insisting he get some money to get me a gift (which I'm reluctantly agreeing to, after being unable to stop getting him gifts once I started). Oh, stocking stuffers too - that could get expensive. Maybe we're not quite done after all ...

This was a very good Santa too. Not quite the one I grew up with, who is the *real* Santa I am certain, but he was still very very good. But oh, if only the threat of "behave now, or we'll go back and tell Santa that you are not minding" would work all year long. It works so very well.

Life with Guthrie

'Nuff said.

Maybe Santa's not such a good influence after all

My mom (thank you Mom!) sent the boys some Christmas DVDs - Rudolph, Frosty, Charlie Brown, the standards. Turner still has no interest in sitting and watching a screen (maybe if it was bigger than the 7-inch DVD player), which is not a bad thing. Guthrie has been watching them, though, and even figured out how to put them in the computer and start it up all by himself.

He just walked up to me, holding a little stick in his mouth, and telling me he was smoking a pipe. Now he has hte stuffed Santa smoking the pipe. I asked where he learned that (don't think anyone has ever smoked an actual pipe around him) and he said on his movie Santa smokes a pipe. I hadn't noticed that part, or thought anything of it.

So, what do I do? I remember my older cousin and I used to pretend our crayons were cigarettes and "smoke" them. And candy cigarettes and cigars used to be popular everywhere.

I suppose I just let him keep it up, and the novelty will wear off soon enough. If I don't let him, or make a big deal, he'll just want to do it even more, huh?

See, I knew watching TV taught you bad habits.