A Dry Day

Coley finally made it an entire day, wearing underwear, staying dry! I'm so proud. He did very well. He spent the morning with Grandma and Daddy, which is usually when he has his first accident, because he's not at home. But he made it all day, including supper out! So when baby brother went to bed, he got to go play with his new Lego farm set.

He was busy analyzing all the little pieces, most of which I don't even have out yet. His favorite part is the grain bin which you can empty into the dump trailer. I'm so excited we are making progress. After he peed on a kitchen chair yesterday, I thought we'd never get here! I'm not sure what to do with him tomorrow as we are going to be gone all afternoon to look at a rotary dairy, but I guess we'll decide tomorrow! For now I'm enjoying the moment.

Not Me! Monday

I most certainly did not hear my three year old repeatedly say "damn it" to then explain to me that he was "just fixin." He also doesn't ask what Daddy's fixin when he hears Pat yelling outside. Nope, doesn't happen here.

My one year old didn't perfect his screeching abilities all the way through the grocery store last week. At least it wasn't Sr. Citizen's Wednesday discount day and I didn't get stopped 15 times to have someone tell me what a good baby he is. Nope, would never happen.

I didn't spend nearly 2 hours putting together Pat's Ertl farm sets without my children around. I wouldn't waste time like that and I most certainly wouldn't be playing with my children's toys alone.

I also did not suggest to my husband that we should turn the dining room into a toy room since we never eat in there anyway. We wouldn't have that many toys for just 2 boys.

The Lake

So here in the land of 10,000 lakes we all refer to our trips as a trip to the lake. You might think that would refer to the Great Lake of our state, but no. It actually means any one of our closer to 15,000 little lakes. I digress.

The four of us, yes, Pat came too!, headed up for a night with Pat's grandparents at their rented cabin. The weather was far from wonderful, but we left Tate with Grandma and headed out with Grandpa John for some fishing. It was cold and wet, but fun. Cole caught a little fish (I forgot my camera) and the rest of us didn't do much better. We had better luck this morning, with fish, not the weather. We mostly caught sunfish, some rock bass, and some crappies (pronounced croppies, although they did give Pat the crappies). It was a short trip, but wonderful to get away from the farm and relax. We took our own sweet time driving home and to complete our lazy day I fed my children apples and leftover chicken. I wonder if that will fly for the rest of the weekend...

I Can't Leave My Children

alone with their father for a second. My sister called the other night and while I was talking to her, Cole came in and said "Daddy's cutting Tate's hair." Wha???
Tate didn't seem to mind. The top was getting a little long, but I was going to let it go. His hair isn't terribly thick. It apparently bothered Pat enough that he decided to cut it. After he cut Tate's hair, and Cole's hair, the boys turned on him.

Yes, we are trying to potty train. Again.

It's Going to Be a Long One

Ok, so this was going to be a long newsy post, but blogger apparently doesn't want me to download pictures for it, so phooey. Frankly, what good is a post without pictures? So you'll just have to wait. In the mean time, I start school a week from today! Aaaack! I am so not ready. I'm also putting my name on the sub list at our local high school. I'm not ready for that either, but financially I really need to. As much as my kids drive me nuts most days, I'm not ready to give them up yet. It's going to be hard enough sending Cole to preschool, although it works out that he goes while I am in class. Thankfully he doesn't start for about another month.

Ok, so if I load the pictures one at a time, it will work. So anywho. My sister came out with her 3 kids about a week and a half ago. The weather wasn't great, but it worked out ok. The kids got to play on their bikes, ride the gator, and ride Cole's little 4-wheeler. We took them to the Y to do some swimming towards the end of the week. It was nice to have them around, but I was exhausted. Cole is a very quiet, cautious, laid back kid. Tate is not, but he's only 1, so the volume level of our house increased quite a bit while they were here. It was fun though. Cole loved having his cousins to play with and Tova loved having Tate to snuggle, although he didn't enjoy that so much.

Cole and Gavin on the Kettler bike.

Cole and Tova on the Gator.

On Saturday my sister headed home and the boys and I headed to Rochester for a wedding reception. Tate was not a happy camper and his revenge for being stuck in the car was to throw his nukkers and blankie on the floor. I guess it backfired so he turned to his toes instead.

My summer project was to do more painting. I finally got started this week. How daring am I to paint while my children are awake!?! Tate thought it was funny and Cole kept wanting to help. I spent my birthday putting the final coat of paint on the panelled hallway that separates our bedroom from the bathroom. My goal this week is to paint Pat's bathroom. He even picked out his own paint color, and it looks pretty nice, in the can anyway.

Thursday night we are heading up to Pat's grandparent's cabin for a night away from the farm. Next week I start school and it's also our community fair. This year I've managed to put myself in charge of our church youth group, which means fundraising. I'm actually really excited to be getting a group of kids to go to the National Youth Gathering but it's worse than pulling teeth to get some of these kids and parents to commit to anything. I'm super excited about it though. I have Pat convinced that we can chaperon. I think it will be really nice to go away without our kids and I think it will be a really good experience for Pat since he never attended one in high school. This will be a first for our church so I'm hoping that it goes smoothly.

Well, that about sums it up for me. I'd say I'll try to update more often, but there are no guarantees at the moment. Things haven't been going well on the farm. We've had some problems with our cows, which means lower production and with milk prices so low it's been pretty stressful around here. We're hopefully getting things turned around, but it's been tough. No matter how hard we work we can't raise the milk price and that's really been stressful. I'm off to finish baking my cookies and maybe type up another post for tomorrow! Wouldn't that be special, 2 posts in one week!

Are You Happy Now, Jenn?

Ok, so I'm finally updating. It's been insanely busy. I called to get the results of Tate's echo yesterday. Turns out they got sent to our former doctor, who of course wasn't courteous enough to pass them along to the correct doctor. Anywho, everything is normal. They were looking for a PDA, which is what Cole had, but didn't find anything wrong. I could have told you his PDA was closed, so I'm hoping they checked around for other things. At any rate, he has to go back at 15 months for another well baby check, so we'll see what happens then. We are also waiting until then before we decide to do anything about his head. I'm not concerned about it. He used to really lag with his left leg, but he's crawling now, so I'm not so worried about it. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures to tide you over until I can actually write a real post.

Tate was not so sure about the feel of grass on his knees.

He uses the potty better than his big brother! This is what happens when you have a child that screams when he poops, before he's finished.

Look Out World! Here Comes Tate!

Tate has discovered the joy of moving! He is all over the place and is discovering lots of places to go and things to get into.

VBS

Last week was VBS. It was incredibly busy, but it went pretty well. The kids seemed to have fun anyway. We had 16 kids, 12 of them under age 8, 4 of them were age 3. Cole did pretty well. He loved the games and even did some singing, which is odd for him. He didn't cling to me, which was very nice. I am glad it is over. Now we are focusing on the youth gathering, confirmation, and Sunday School. Oh the joys of not having a pastor!

Cole enjoying his ice cream cone.

The group, minus 2

Echo Update

Tate had his echo today. It went better than expected, as in he didn't fight the guy for the camera wand the whole time. Actually, he did better than Cole did at that age, but that's because they didn't make Tate lay down. The tech let him sit on my lap and just kind of moved with him. Even better, they got us in early so we were able to be home by lunch time. We won't hear anything until at least the end of the week.

Tomorrow is his last PT session for the summer. He is finally crawling around more than scooting now. He is into everything! He's quickly learning the word no, although listening to it is another story. Today he discovered Cole's toy corner which kept him busy most of the evening. Walking is still a ways off, but apparently his learning curve is steep seeing as how a month ago he wasn't even moving!

Goat Names

and the winner is Rachel, with Bonnie and Clyde. Feel free to brag it up to your friends, family, and co-workers, that you named some pygmy goats! Actually Pat had come up with it Thursday night, before I checked my blog and seeing how that seemed to be the favorite, that's what we went with. I do have to give creativity credit to Kristen for Peter Soil and Maggie Mess. That was my personal favorite. As for Bonnie and Clyde, they are doing well. Clyde has a little bit of a messy butt thing going on, but they seem to be adjusting well. Our chickens will magically disappear tomorrow, or I wish it was magical anyway. Then Bonnie and Clyde will be moved from the back yard to the goose pen until we can make them a little more people friendly. Clyde isn't too bad, but Bonnie is tough to catch. Juno has done fairly well with them the couple of times I've put her in the yard. (Un)fortunately, she is smart, so I know that as soon as I am out of sight she'll go for them. So far she's just chased them a little bit, but listens when you call her off. Once they are bigger we'll let them roam with the dog, and hopefully they can work out a truce.

I will try to update again soon as last week was crazy with VBS. Tomorrow Tate has his echo. Please pray that it is nothing and I can put my mind at ease. It's one of those things where someone says there might be something wrong and I start seeing all the signs, like maybe he naps more than he should and his lips are blue for no reason and on and on. I'm sure we won't know anything tomorrow as they have to send the reports back to Sioux Falls and we are staying in town to have this done. Also pray Tate cooperates. I'm worried we'll have to reschedule and sedate him which I really don't want to do, especially if it's nothing!