Talia the Vampire and other Scary Stories

So hey look we are still around. I have tried to peruse other blogs of relatives and although I am not the only one who has been super crappy at updating I still feel the guilt of not completing my goal of blogging regularly. I love looking\reading everyone else's and am not on Facebook enough to keep up with whatever is going on there. I need an outlet that gives me days and even weeks to get to versus the daily check-in. I send this challenge out into the family\friend Cosmo- I miss hearing about your lives please follow my lead and write something new soon. I just read Heidi's blog about her new baby and realized I didn't even remember that she was already due.

Guilt ridden lets begin:
My latest endeavor is to somehow get Talia to want to read. Do you know what it is like to have a child who is so against reading that you are scared that you will never find anyway to connect with her in any areas? I love to read and if we don't have even that in common how will we get through the tweens and teenage horrors that normally occur between mother and daughter? So when my lovely imaginative daughter picked out several books (that her grandmother graciously purchased for her) entitled, "Vampire Weenies" & "My Sister is a Vampire" I thought we must have them. They were from the Book Fair at school so I thought great no problem. Then I start reading Vampire Weenies. It was not funny nor was it anything a little kid (5th grade or below) should be reading. One story was about a ghost who tricks a girl down a hole and causes her death so she can have a ghost friend to talk to. It only got worse from there. Now I have never thrown away a book. I have this standing rule that one must finish a book and all books should be treated with a certain level of respect (we did burn that Judy Blume book at the beach one year but it deserved it); Talia went to take a rest one day and I found the book and threw it away. Great job Mom! I felt very "Footloose" about the whole thing and yet relieved to have it out of my house.

Still Talia has this obsession with vampires. She even plays good and bad vampires. I have told many this story but she was a vampire puppy the other day. She says to me, "I am a vampire puppy. A vegetarian vampire puppy." I look at her waiting for an explanation and of course she continues, " I only eat lions though. And only the daddy ones, not the mommies or the babies." I acted like that was great news and she continued with her game. She is something else.

Tristan and Tyler continue growing. Tristan loves preschool and Tyler grunts a lot to get her voice heard. I have done all I can to teach her some sign language but whenever I sign to her she acts like I am this crazy person. Today she put a plastic container on her head and laughed uproariously for 3 minutes while I tried to get her out of it. She is her own woman is all I can say.

Just to prove my point at the "scary" nature of my children, the pictures at the top are of Crazy man Tristan splashing it up, Talia and Tyler tetter-tottering (notice Tyler's legs, does she have a zest for life or what?) and Talia in yet another outfit of her own design.

I just realized my blog is so on point with October! Man even subconsciously I am able to bring a theme together!

Justin Bieber is My Hero

A favorite show of mine is Fantasy Factory. Rob had Justin on as a guest star and I couldn't help but think about it and smile because my little girl is a Bieber fan. That show brings such joy to my heart and I will remember to buy my "Do Work" shirt soon but what I loved about the show is its fun loving nature. TV is supposed to be fun and so is life. Don't think me lame (or do) but I hate when my life isn't fun. My kids took showers tonight, racing to the "Baby Baby" song from Justin Bieber and it was so fun. Tristan added more Transformer stickers (they are actually bandaids that he had lined up on his leg and proceeded to transfer to the section of wall just outside the shower-he did the same thing last night) the whole time bebopping to the song. We totally completed showers in 3:43minutes and my kids were di-rrtttyy from the shark game they were playing outside. I also took the kids to Moo Creamery all by myself and only had to ask for help from near by customers one time (I totally lucked out there since my cousin and his kids were there by chance and offered to watch my food because Tristan had to go to the bathroom, which meant we all had to go leaving my delicious sweet potato fries unattended). Short story long-life should be fun. I can remember thinking of ways to make dishes fun or promising my self that when I had a family we were going to make dishes a group activity so that the work didn't seem tedious. I become too bogged down sometimes and am missing life and the goodness it has. Good thing I have kids; they always remind you how fun life can be. I would never have the appreciation that I do for JB if I didn't have a 5 year old daughter who screamed when she heard\sees him and really shouldn't we all have something we get that excited over every time it happens?

Tyler's Tricks

Looking back at past posts I realize I haven't done enough justice to Tyler and my blog reporting. The following is my efforts to give props to the girl who has many tricks. One has to watch her very closely to truly grasp her greatness. Below is her best trick, we will call it "Wipe-out" (I am so clever).

She stalks the wipes and if I ever leave them unattended she is all over them. Her second trick is called "find the most unsafe place to start climbing and then climbing it". She decided to crawl up the mini slide we have in our family room. Luckily when she fell backwards she fell on her bum first before her head. Still the kid is 8 months old and made it halfway up the slide. I am just waiting to see what she climbs next. Her third most mentionable trick is crawling. I document it not because it is some astounding trick but because she has been doing it since she was 5 months old so she is really fast and determined. She follows Talia, Tristan and I through our whole house ( and there is a lot of ground to cover) just as fast as she can. Now if I could just get her to stop bumping her head every time she goes and hides under the coffee table she would be bumped to Amazing Status in the baby record books.

Oh and Tristan is still a pirate (he changed the name of the book"The Sailor Dog" to "The Pirate Dog" and each time I say sailor instead of pirate he corrects me) and Talia cries each time that I mention that on Saturday we have to cut her hair (because she doesn't want to look like a boy) and she still loves Justin Bieber. Shoot me in the foot.

The Mighty Mighty Bumbo and other Quick Thoughts

I did not keep my resolution to post once a month. What a loser am I? So this will be a hodgepodge because I really did have great ideas for posts but did not get my act together and post them. The following are my post ideas:
1) All my children love(d) the Bumbo. It is such a useful seat to be had by any who desires a seat. It is like the Snuggie for my home. Unfortunately Tyler now hates it as much as Tristan and Talia enjoy playing with. Luckily I was able to only pay $10 for it.

2) The 80's Should Stay in the 80's-Talia's 5th Birthday was Jem inspired (look it up if you don't know what I am talking about). We danced and ate tri-tip, grilled cheese and special sauce.

3) Being Old is like Being Young- I saw this old man picking up trash and thought I so want to be an old person who gets stuff done. You know the stuff that people should be doing but make excuses for. I want to be a positive influence on society by doing the small stuff like taking meticulous care of my flower beds on my huge expanse of property. Or driving to every grandkids moment because I can (shout out to Grandma and Grandpa Nichols).
4) Breakfast of Champions-Okay it was really dinner but Tyler had her first people food and her facial expression were priceless. She has been trying to eat our food for quite some time so she was all about grabbing the spoon and feeding herself. She did not however enjoy the rice cereal and honestly who would? It tastes nasty. I quickly went out and bought some butternut squash and roasted\pureed that for her and I think it is going better.

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5)Talia (who last week was requesting I call her by her Native American name Rainbow Breeze Flower) continues her love hate relationship with school, while Tristan can't stop talking about seeing his friends at the bus stop. My favorite question right now from him is "where my friends mommy". At the dinner table we talk about 3 wonderful things that happen to us during the day and Tristan always says "the bus mommy". Gosh he is cute.

Lobster Mac and Cheese and Other Fancy Things

Have you ever read those Fancy Nancy books? If not check them out; if so you will have an almost perfect picture of my daughter Talia. She is my fancy girl and I aspire to be fancy just like her. This past month has been a big one for her and our family. She started kindergarten and even though she said it was only "sort of fun" she made it through the day and I did too.
She is pictured here before leaving to school (brother has his backpack too).
Tristan cried but that is because his favorite person to pick on\play with\follow around would be present in our home only half the time. He has quickly figured out that he gets full run of the TV and selection of Scooby Doo episodes without the helpful hints from Talia and is settling in nicely.Other fancy things that have been occurring include Tristan taking his first ride in a power wheel courtesy of my friend Maren's cool toys. He could not figure out how to make the miniature John Deere Gator reverse so every time he would run into things he would honk the horn and wait for it to move. Patio posts don't move, nor do play structures so it ended up being a funny thing to watch.
Tyler, my darling dragonfly, is just fancy because she is beautiful. She smiles just because which makes life in general seem fancy. She is pictured here in her fancy bathing suit.

We are still working on Jacob being fancy. Talia did tell him yesterday that he wasn't as "pretty as Justin Beiber" so I think he is going to try and up his game.

I feel the fanciest of all because I conquered Lobster Mac and Cheese. We had Wayne and Sheryl over for a late birthday celebration for Wayne and I decided that the Barefoot Contessa couldn't be lying about the deliciousness of this dish. Luckily Candice came to play that day because the start of my day was not going so fancy. I not only forgot my Talia at the bus (it was an early out and I didn't realize it) but I was stung by a bee. Candice's arrival saved me from under destruction; I was able to wipe away my tears and enjoy Sleeping beauty while making chocolate chip cookies. My fanciness reappeared and the dish was completed and let me tell you it was super fancy. We followed it up with homemade ice cream sandwiches and rippeted to bed- all in all a fancy end to a fancy day.

Hip Hip Hooray! The 4th of July!

So the 4th of July was swell. We had hamburgers, homemade ice cream and good times. It was getting rather late for my kids to be up so Jacob took them out front to do fireworks. It wasn't dark yet but we decided to ignore that fact (Jacob had work the next day and I was tired) so we started lighting things. To make the evening more enjoyable Tristan and Talia ran across the lawn, holding hands, over and over again cheering. They also decided to grab the flags that I had stuck in the lawn and were boldly waving their arms back and forth to make our American flags very triumphant.

I wish you all could have witnessed my cute boy Tristan enjoying the fireworks. He was not at all afraid of the sparklers and flung his hand about almost lighting himself and his dad on fire. And once we started lighting the "big" ones he would jump up and down each time and say "Hip, Hip Hooray". Literally his jumps were threefold, each jump occurring in unison with his hip-hip-hooraying. Tristan also had to keep saying, "Look Mommy\Daddy Fireworks!" in his cute voice. He has a hard time pronouncing "Thanks" it sounds like "Hanks" but he can say fireworks perfectly after learning the word 30 seconds before. Tristan's excitement was so great that we brought the kids inside after a bit and bathed them and put Talia to bed and secretly took Tristan back outside so he could watch more fireworks. Our neighbors had begun shooting theirs so he watched those.

Isn't it amazing how our kids can make something so much more fun because of their exuberance?Unfortunately, I was holding Tyler (our new little gal) so no pictures are to be had of the evening. Yeah America!

Tristan and Talia -the update

Well my babies are growing. We have had many adventures over the past month and a half. The best and worst is Tristan moving into Talia's room in preparation for the new baby. Jacob and I check on them each night and both of them end up in the strangest positions. I tried to take a picture one night but they both woke up. One was leaned up against the bed post asleep and the other was totally out of bed but asleep. Those two crazies...

Here are some pictures because all the magical things I had planned to say have left my brain. I blame the pregnancy (3 weeks to go)