Summertime...

I don't know who is more excited about summertime, me or the babies. I haven't planned a single activity for anyone this summer and I want be able to go and do anything we want at any time. I have been accused of having on overly fantasized idea of life and it shows in my thoughts for the summer.

Tuesday was wild! We started out by going to the Dallas Aquarium. The kids really liked it this time. On all of our previous visits we just buzzed through, but they were really interested and on the hunt for Nemo, Dory and Gill. Thank goodness those guys were at the end. We finished up by having lunch at the restaurant there. The kids got complimented again during lunch. I won't go into detail, but it is always so nice. We came home for naps and Yates refused. He keeps climbing out of his bed. I put him back over and over but some days I can only do it so many times. We'll figure it out.

The Belf girls came over to swim after the nap battle and they all had so much fun! Right after we finished swimming our builder and a photographer came over to take pictures of our kitchen and master bathroom. He is entering them into some best builder contest and I find it hilarious! These are the 2 rooms he fought me the hardest on. If I said black, he said white. If I said up, he said down. Now look. Michael always tries to diffuse me by saying that I should take these incidents as compliments, but still.

Today, to carry on our summer fun, we went to Coffee Park aaaand the chick-fil-a play ground. S and Y loooove Coffee Park. It is really nice and we were the only people there. Maybe because it was 99 degrees outside. Oh, also today, on the way to Coffee Park, Stella was screaming from the back of the car, "Look, there is that tree that I had a leaf from and Bop was telling me about it when Rex got bathed." What? I had no idea what she was saying, but vaguely remember her having a dried up leaf at church after Rex's baptism. I asked her if that was what she was referring to. She said yes and that Bop told her that the leaf came from a tree that has big white flowers on it, a magnolia. Once she got all of that explained, I looked out of the car window and sure enough. A huge magnolia. Maybe this isn't weird, but I was shocked that she could identify a tree from a dried up leaf and a verbal description. That girl surprises me every day.

I have to mention that I am really happy for Lee DeWyze. Something about him just seems so nice and genuine. I hope he does really well.

Denise's Journey

If you want to know how the recital went... I don't even know what to say. I am honestly blown away by the entire thing. I think I already mentioned that this is the 60th anniversary of City Ballet and this years recital told the story of the founder's life. I cried and I cried and I cried some more. It was so unbelievably beautiful and well done. It rivaled professional ballets I have seen. I'm not kidding. Even the tiniest dancers were perfect. I was expecting a student recital and that is not what this was. It was a full blown production. Loved it, loved it, loved it!!! Don't worry, I bought the video and if you come over you will be required to sit through the entire thing.

ballerina getting her 1st bouquet from Daddy

... and purple tulips from Bop

I had to write to thank Mrs. Brown and I'm copying it here to try to help explain how amazing it really was.

Dear Mrs. Brown,

I wanted to write to thank you for sharing your story with us and for allowing my daughter Stella (a baby chick) to take part of City Ballet and the recital this year. My entire family was so moved by the recital. The content, choreography, costume design and ballet dancers were more beautiful, touching, provoking, professional, captivating, emotional and thorough than I ever imagined. I don’t know if I can put into words how impressed we were with the entire production, how honored and thankful we were to be a part of it and how proud we are to have done so.

I have personally had a life long draw to the Jewish people and their suffering throughout World War II. When other children were reading Nancy Drew and Amelia Bedelia, I was reading biographies of Jewish children who had survived that terrible time in history. Strangely, my grandfather was raised in Emhouse and that is the part of the production that Stella represented. It is so amazing how life works, but it did make Denise’s Journey even more special and a bit personal for us.

We look forward to many more years with you all and with City Ballet. Thank Mrs. Evelyn for always being so kind to Stella for us. Thank you again for the stunning portrayal of your story and for allowing us to also “touch heaven.”

Meredith Grabham

May in a Big Nutshell

5.22.10 11pm

I have been dying to write a new blog and just haven't been able to. I was determined tonight and in the 3 hours its taken to get me here, I have composed several different blogs in my head. This may be a huge jumble so brace.

First of all, thank you to everyone who commented! I love it! Yay! Thank you, thank you. Really.

I have missed so much! I thought that I would just open a word document and leave it sitting on the counter so that when something momentous happened I could whiz by and type it really quick and post it later. That didn't really work out. Typing one handed is a huge pet peeve of mine. Its sooo frustrating to labor over typing when you know you could type whatever it is in seconds if you had two free hands. The only things I managed to type were:

#1 "Who ripped this roly poly in half and put it on the kitchen counter?" I did ask that question out loud and Michael Jr./ Abe Lincoln /Yates said, "I did!!" Ewww, gross. He is completely honest ( just like his daddy) its funny.

#2 The kids are loving the garden!

So, I'll keep searching for a good solution to my blogging dilema. I would like to blog in bed at the end of the day, but guess what... Our bedroom has some sort of force field around it and the internet won't work in there. Of course.

Mother's Day weekend was big. We had all of the grandparents come to celebrate Mother's Day and Rex's baptism. The weekend was great. Rex had a little cold, but he did beautifully. We had Mother's Day brunch at Fearing's at the Ritz and it was very nice. S and Y acted like angels. The sad thing is that the pictures of the day are not so good. Yates was the only one that took good pictures, but if he was posing in a group, he would make a terrible face and ruin the entire photo for everyone else. Ahhh... We also managed to squeeze in a couple of birthday parties that weekend. It was buuuusy, but great!

Rex is a total angel. He had his 4 month check up last week. S and Y sat patiently in the chairs in the exam room and read books and played iphone games. Dr. Neely came and was surprised to see them in the room b/c they were being so quiet. He complimented them for being so nice and quiet. Back to Rex.

His stats were: Height - 26 1/2", 92% Weight - 16lbs 9oz, 80% Head Circumference - 42.5, 55%

He is an amazing little baby. He seems to think that I am only his Mommy. Its hard to explain, but he looks at me like I belong to him. He wakes up in the morning talking sooo loud with his deeep voice and he is just smiling away. We go into the kitchen and start getting breakfast/ coffee going. He'll just ride around on my hip or sit in his bumbo. When S and Y sit down to eat, he sits at the table facing them and watches them from his bumbo. When I get breakfast cleaned up and get Rex out of his bumbo, he makes this noise, like "Ohh-OO-there-you-are!" Again, impossible to explain, but its really cute. He is also so easy. Its like he knows when I need him to take a nap and he just does it! So fabulous!

before school - after school

The next huge event was the last day of school. I built it up and up and up and Stella and Yates were like, "Yeah, whatever." They didn't care at all. They weren't sad or anything. I was sad. I love their school and all of their teachers and I really think I'll miss them.

And finally, this week has been ballet recital week. What an ordeal. We've had 6 rehearsals and a dress rehearsal (in addition to regular classes). Hopefully we're ready. Stella's ballet school is celebrating its 60th anniversary. The founder, Mrs. Denise Brown has an amazing life story. The Dallas Morning News wrote a great story about her this December. You can read it here. Anyway, if you don't read it, Mrs. Brown's family is Jewish and suffered through the holocaust. I have always had an enormous draw to this period of history and a severe hatred of any and all Nazi's, past or present. I will never understand why humans would treat other humans so terribly. Anyway, Mrs. Brown is still involved with City Ballet and she and her daughter choreographed this year's ballet to tell the story of her life. There are beautiful movements from renowned ballets and wrenching ones depicting holocaust scenes. I have cried at every rehearsal and like I mentioned, we've had 6. The real recital is tomorrow at 5 and I can't wait to see the whole thing. Enough about that. Lets talk about Stella Jane. She got to wear full out stage makeup for the dress rehearsal on Friday. She couldn't believe how fabulous she looked. I told my mom, that if I were one of "those moms", I'd sign her up for a pageant tomorrow. She lit up and did look very pretty. Stella is a perfectionist and danced beautifully. She also got a compliment for being the quietest, most still and best behaved back stage! Yay! Nothing makes me happier!

Poor Yates has endured, not only a year of weekly ballet classes, but now all of these rehearsals. He has been very good and patient. He watches the dancers, asks lots of questions and does a little dancing of his own. Pretty cute. He examined the theatre and told me that he "didn't like this place b/c its ugly." And then he decided that he needed to climb to the ceiling to just be up there. You know all of the weird wood work and" decorative goo-gah plastered all over theatres? He just couldn't get past it. As we were leaving the last rehearsal, he managed to rip a chunk of tutu off of Stella's costume and then declare, "Look Mommy, a limo hummer, when I get big, I'm getting on the roof with daddy." That was one sentence. He is such a dude!

Two more things and then I'll stop.

Look at this picture below, they couldn't be more opposite:

Girl / Boy

Straight hair/ Curly Hair

Pink Pony Tank Top / Grey Bulldozer T-Shirt

Disney Princess Panties / Spider Man Underwear

Silver Glitter Flats / Camo Boots

Lastly, I want to be Cortney Novogratz. She is my new hero.

Super Duper Pooper 5.6.2010

So what I get for complaining about poop is a record breaking poop-a-thon. Fortunately, all of the real drama happened two days ago and out of self-preservation my memory has erased most of the gory details. To sum it up, Oscar Butter got the Number 3s and throw ups and I have cleaned up 14 disgusting accidents from him alone in 3 days!!! Some other biggies were: Rex did one of those poops up to his shoulder blades and needed a bath and new clothes. While I was trying to clean him up, Yates threw up all over my feet. The other doozie was the first rattle out of the box, the morning after I typed the last post I was sitting up in bed with Rex. He was just waking up and was sitting on my stomach leaning back on my knees and he pooped all over me and it went in my belly button! I mean! Gag! It hard to get anything done around here with all of this scrubbing and cleaning and sanitizing I’m doing. I’m nearly germaphobic too, which doesn’t help. Most normal people could probably wipe most of this up and be done with it, but not me. I am spraying everything I can find on this stuff and topping it off with some bleach. Eeeewww….

The babies have all been extra good today. I only had to clean up one dog #3, so that was nice. Rex has learned how to put his pacifier in his mouth on his own. He’s not 100%, but it’s a good thing he’s learning. He also is loving his little giraffe binkie that Erinn gave him. He hugs it next to his face and its sooooo cute!

This weekend, we are having Rex baptized and are having both sets of grandparents in for the big day and Mother’s Day. (We also have a ballet rehearsal and 2 birthday parties to squeeze in) Yay!

Lastly, I get very nice random surprise comments from people who have read the blog. Thank you for reading! I love it! But, what I would really love is for readers to comment (if you have a second.) I never know who is reading and would love to. Thanks!

Poop Bloggy Blog

5.3.10

I have said this a thousand times, but the days just fly past me. During the day, I’m thinking, “OMG, I’m not going to make it through lunch if I hear my name one more time,” or “What am I going to do with all of these kids for 12 hours?” or “I can’t even keep my eyes open I am so tired… Oh its only 11am.” I’m trying to say that the days feel like they drag on and on, but then I look up and its May. I swear I missed all of April and whatever those other months were after Rex was born. Are we sure we had April this year? I know we had my mom’s birthday and Easter on the 4th. The rest of the month I don’t think happened. So weird.

So I’d really like to blog every day. And I’m thinking of renaming the blog Poop Bloggy Blogg. Doesn’t that sound fabulous? It does to me, but then I remember a few things. There are a lot of basic, normal things that I don’t do every day like make my bed, take a vitamin, let me think… bathe! I also remember that not everyone loves Snoop as much as I, or deals with as much Poop as do I. It makes sense to me, but might sound atrocious to a passerby.

"breakfast on the go"

On this poop tangent, I wonder every day how blue I would glow if a CSI wanded me for fecal matter. No matter how much hot water, soap and sudsing to the Happy Birthday song I do, I still feel like there is just too much poop around here. Today I made the mistake of taking SYR into a store with no one trapped or tied down into or onto anything. S and Y were on foot (not crammed in a buggy) and I was carrying R. Guess what. Yates needed to tee tee. This is great, but the boy as I mentioned before tries to completely disrobe and touches the potty as you would a steering wheel… all around. SICK! I tried my best to make a toilet paper nest and keep him on it, but it was futile. He also managed to wriggle out of his underwear and shorts despite me squatting there, squishing R, trying to hold Y on the potty and keep his clothes on his foot. I just take a deep breath and think, one thing at a time. We’ll get him 100% perfect with this potty thing, then we’ll work on his form. What’s a little more fecal at this point? I do still get the chilly willys at this thought as I feign stoicism. Its just disgusting and I do apologize for sicking anyone out.

The good parts about this particular errand are:

1. Yates fell in love with this Spider Man book that your mommy is supposed to insert a picture of your face into everywhere Spider Man’s face should be. He carried it around, tried to make me carry it around, but I told him we weren’t buying it. I’m sure we could have, but it never ends. They always want something and have more toys than anyone should have. Anyway, at the door I told him to put it down. I did not want to, but he did it!!! No fit, no tears. Amazing! Yay!

2. As we walked out the door Stella exclaimed, “That store was so beautiful and filled with so many things I couldn’t even choose what I wanted!!!”

We were at Michael’s…