I have an 18-month-old little boy, and the other day, he tried cheesy fiesta potatoes from Taco Bell.  I think the title of this blog post pretty much says it all.

Our new bird is so cute!  Not having parakeets for years has made me forget how pleasant they are to have around.  JJ chirps and sings, and even when he’s quiet, he’s adorable to look at.  My husband (who is not known for his patience anyway) mentioned the other day that he’s having trouble with his temptations to reach into the cage and grab the bird to play with him.  It’s partly his impatience, and it’s partly because he’s used to just reaching out and grabbing his obnoxious parrot.  But my husband knows that if he is disruptive to the training process I’ve chosen for JJ, there will be big trouble!

I’m having trouble being patient too, but I understand how innately nervous parakeets are.  Once you build their trust, they can make wonderful interactive pets – but the key is taking it slow and being consistent.  As much as I want to cuddle my baby bird, I can respect his need for space right now too.  But try telling that to my excited kids.  The older ones (ages 10, 5 and 3) are ok about it; for the most part, they’re content to just stand there watching JJ and talking to him.  But my 18 month old toddler is another story.  He is fond of banging on metal cages because that’s what makes the most noise, and the rats don’t really mind.  My poor little baby bird, on the other hand…  We usually shut the door to our bedroom since that’s where JJ lives, but the other day, we forgot.  I figured shutting the gate at the bottom of the stairs would keep the dog away from our bedroom, but kids opened the gate.  While the dog was fine (I don’t think she even realizes there is another bird in the house), I  found little Beeber (that was our then-2-year-old’s nickname for her baby brother) next to JJ’s cage, and he hasn’t been the same since.  He still chirps and acts happy, but he now tries to fly around the cage whenever I come near – he used to let me put my finger right up next to him…  He was doing so well with the training, we were bound to take a step backward.  I still have confidence that I can train JJ to be a nice family bird, or at the very least, a little buddy bird for me.  We just need to have a little patience.

Just a quick note because I’ve been too busy, and I miss blogging!  I had started two posts about last weekend, but haven’t had the time to finish either one – hopefully I will soon!  It’s been really difficult to blog with a 17-month-old who only wants to climb on me and bang on my keyboard when I actually do have the time to sit down!  So then my computer will reset, and that’s the end of that…

More later – I’m hoping!  STAY WARM!!!

Made you look!  Did you think I was going to say we were awaiting the arrival of our 5th child?

No such luck – probably wouldn’t declare it for the first time on a blog anyway.  I just wanted to share my son’s first professional haircut that made everyone joke about him being a different baby – although “toddler” is a much more appropriate word here than “baby” – my son is all over the place, and the haircut made him look SO MUCH older!  He’s really cute with the haircut, but why do they grow up so fast!?!  These pictures were taken only 4 days apart.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

My almost 17-month-old son has started using “tools”.  When we put up the Christmas decorations, he started pulling chairs away from the table, pushing them over to the bookcase to try to climb and get at the nativity.  Yesterday, he took down a wall hanging and began to use the hanger rod as a spoon for his mashed potatoes.  When I told my dad about this mischief, he said that this behavior seems pretty smart.  Yeah, I replied, smart like a chimpanzee!  I really don’t remember the girls doing so much climbing, tool-using, or just general sabotage!

And another thing about little boys – the parental chasing.  I always see moms chasing their little boys; running after them around the store, the zoo, wherever – and nine times out of ten, the kid being chased by the parent is a boy.  I had a little boy almost a year and a half ago, and I’ve been wondering when my turn would come.  Yesterday I got my answer.  While I was getting my little boy dressed, he said an emphatic “NO!”, then turned around and ran from me.  He dove under the dining room table, where I had to drag him out, kicking and screaming.  So yeah, the chasing of little boys by their parents begins shortly after they learn to walk.

Ah, the toddler days again – feels like it’s been awhile, probably because the toddler in our family before our son was Disney, who is an almost perfectly behaved child.  We often joke that Disney is D.A.R.Y.L. – remember that movie from the 80’s about a boy who is actually a robot?  And she is a quick learner!  We’ve been doing “sight words” with our Kindergartener Sammie, which are flash cards with words on them, like “orange”, “the”, “purple”, “my”, “I”, etc.  Disney, who just turned 3, has been picking up the sight words as we practice with Sammie!  She knows all the ones I listed above and is also starting to work on letter recognition – 3 years old is pretty early to start reading!  I just feel badly for Sammie, who has her own gifts but is also very competitive by nature – it might be difficult for her to see her little sister learning certain things faster than herself.

But the point is, Disney’s toddler stage was barely noticable, which is probably why her little brother seems like more than a handful – and I hate to tell myself this, but I think this is just the beginning!!

My son will be 15 months old on October 11, which makes him due for his next check-up with the doctor.  I made the appointment today and found out that all 15-month appointments are made with our pediatric nurse rather than our regular pediatrician, whom we really like.  We like the nurse also, but some of her ideas about health care are a bit extreme for our tastes.  For example, she thinks sippy (sippie?) cups are just about the worst things ever invented.  Her opinion is that a child should be weaned off the bottle around 1 year of age and that he or she should be given a regular cup with just a little bit of water in it.  No juice, nothing but water and milk with meals.  Ok, that’s fine, but once the baby becomes a toddler, the nurse teaches that they should only be given a glass of water at the sink, several times a day.  No bottle, and certainly no sippie cup ought to be carried around the house or elsewhere.  I personally don’t have a problem with my kids drinking (especially if it’s water!) away from the sink or out of a sippie cup – I don’t really have the time to be cleaning up even more spills around here, which is what would happen if my kids didn’t graduate to sippie cups from bottles.  I have three kids who have weaned off of sippie cups just fine.  So anyway, the nurse is nice but can be kind of a stickler about certain things…

And as for the newest milestone – he’s walking!  He’s been walking for awhile now, but before Sunday, it was only a few steps at a time.  Then he started walking with little push-toys, and he was really good with those; he would make push-toys out of things that weren’t even supposed to be push-toys, like my daughters’ step-stools, strollers, etc.  He’s gotten so good at maneuvering the push-toys that he can practically run while pushing, and by now, he’s also great at steering them.  We took a walk today, and instead of putting him in his stroller, I let him push his push-toy down the sidewalk, and he was off and running!  He got so excited that he took a hand off the push-toy, raised it in a wave, and yelled “Hi!” to the kids playing in the schoolyard we passed.  But aside from all of these awesome first steps (pun intended), he really officially started walking yesterday.  Yesterday was the first day he began to take lengthy jaunts across the house on two legs without the assistance of a push-toy.  He was on a roll;  he’d walk over, pick something up, and then straighten up to throw or pass the object rather than flopping down onto his knees and going into a crawl  as he would have done weeks ago.  So, my son is taking baby steps to learn to walk, haha.  But we think that yesterday was a big breakthrough, err, a big step for his learning to walk, and I would bet that by this time next month, he will be walking and running around just like a full-fledged toddler…  wonder what the nurse will say about that when she has to chase him all over the room?

My son is crawling – uh, oh.  I don’t remember what his 3 sisters got into when they started to crawl, besides trouble, but my son’s favorite things seem to be dog toys (and the dogs’ food and water bowls, what a mess!), tablecloths (which he yanks on – I’m going to have to remove the one in the living room before he yanks it and pulls the heavy computer right down on his head!), and wires (I don’t think I need to explain why he shouldn’t be pulling and chewing on wires.  If I do, let’s hope you don’t have any kids of your own).  He smiles so sweetly when we say no-no; I think he likes the attention.  A more stern NO just makes him grin widely and start waving at us.  So how do you discipline someone so incredibly cute?  I can’t help but smile back when he grins – he’s so cute with his little toothies sticking out from his bottom gums.  Could you say no to this face?

We took the kids to see the Pixar movie Monsters VS Aliens last Sunday after church.  The good news is, we didn’t end up with any nude children running around the theater (see a previous post of mine; I forget which one, but I think this happened more than once so take your pick – we haven’t been to the movies in months, and now you know why!).  The bad news is that I didn’t think this movie lived up to the hype.  But I couldn’t be sure; I didn’t get to see much of it.  It seemed to me like they showed all the funny parts in the previews, but then again, once you read what I was doing instead of watching the movie, you’ll see why I could be wrong…

Our family now takes up an entire row at the movie theater.  Our oldest starting pouting because she was stuck on the inside and complained that she couldn’t see.  To her credit, she got over it right away and ended up being the one kid of the four who actually stayed awake for the entire movie.  The movie was about to start, and I felt something pelt my back – HARD.  I turned to my husband and said, “I think someone just threw something at me, intentionally because it was hard and it hurt!”.  He said, “It probably was intentional – turn  around and see who it is!”  Duh – why didn’t I think of that?  I’m not the type to want to draw attention, so I figured it was some poor kid who was going to get in trouble if I turned around or something…  so I turned around and saw some game-nighters grinning at us.  “Good thing you finally turned around, ” they said, “we were almost out of Junior Mints!”  Haha –  that was funny, and I learned my lesson, if you get pelted in the back at the movie theater, you should turn around to see who would actually throw candy at the movie theater – you might be surprised to find out it’s NOT  kids!

The lights dimmed, the previews came on, and my son dirtied his diaper.  By the time I got back from changing him, I had already missed a preview – my husband and I love the previews.  Oh well, better than missing the movie, I thought…  little did I know we would be missing that too.  So my son, who is 8 months old and just starting to crawl, didn’t want to sit still for a movie.  He was happy munching on things, but he was pretty rambunctious when I was holding him.  So I spent most of the movie trying to calm him down and keep him busy.  My 2-year-old daughter, who is usually the problem (and the nudist) at the movies, actually fell asleep.  My husband went to put her in her seat to sleep so we could enjoy the movie, and there was a horrible gushing sound followed by gasps from the people behind us.  Apparently, my husband’s pop had gotten knocked over, and wouldn’t you know it, it was almost full and of course it poured directly into the lady’s purse who was sitting behind us.  OOPS!  How can you possibly apologize for something like that, especially while trying to be quiet so others can watch the movie?  All the commotion of course woke up my daughter, so now we had her to deal with again.  Not more than 20 minutes later, my son made a lightening-fast grab for my drink, and I didn’t catch him in time, so SPLOSH – another one bites the dust.  At least this time it was in MY diaper bag and not the woman’s behind me again – that would have been lawsuit-worthy!  But now we were drinkless, had 2 rambunctious kids, and were only about halfway through the movie!

Well, we made it through, my 2 youngest daughters fell asleep before the movie was over, and my son was out about 10 minutes before it ended – he waited long enough to keep me from seeing the movie, and long enough to wake up when we left and screw up his nap cycle.  But I guess I  learned yet again that my kids are too little to go to the movies – at least all 4 at one time.  And the lady behind us didn’t say anything when she left, thank goodness.  But I wouldn’t take my word for it that Monsters VS Aliens isn’t anything special – I didn’t see most of it!

With 4 kids, many of them small in years, we are at the doctor’s office lots.  We are so lucky to be really happy with our pediatrician, especially since we see him often.  Today was another such visit – time for our 2 year and 4 month check-ups for the little ones.

Disney (2 yrs. old) liked the fishies in the waiting room and the Dora sticker she got at the end but that’s about it.  She didn’t want the doctor near her, she didn’t want to be weighed, measured, nor have her heart listened to, and she didn’t want to walk in front of the doctor like he asked.  Best we could tell during all the kicking and screaming, she is 2 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs 25.5 lbs.

On the other hand, Disney’s baby brother Christopher seemed to love the doctor’s office.  Then again, he smiles all the time, so it’s hard to tell.  He smiled when they measured his head – both times, since the nurse forgot the measurement from the first time (43 cm).  He smiled when he was weighed (15 lbs. 6 oz.), and he smiled some more when his length was measured to be 25.5 inches.  He’s a really good baby – the doctor says he acts more like a 5 month old than a 4 month old because of the strength in his limbs and how he uses them.

Disney’s a great kid also, but she is two years old.  And “terrible two’s” is not just one of those sayings; it’s based on truth.  Disney was the sweetest baby and toddler you could imagine…  then she turned two.  And she’s still sweet, she just has a miniscule amount of patience and tolerance for things that don’t go her way.  She could be chatting happily about doggies one minute, and the next thing I know, she’s melted onto the floor into a puddle of two.

But there must be something going on with the body chemistry of two-year-olds.  Everyone knows they’re like that, and it’s not just an unearned bad reputation.  If it weren’t for the “terrible two’s”, I think I would want an even larger family – but it’s the dreadfulness of the terrible two’s that give me pause – only one more bout of terrible twos to battle, if we can survive Disney’s, of course!

I just might have to start calling myself a Kid Rock fan…  ok, no not really, that’s going way too far.

It all started when I was able to catch a few minutes of country music radio – a rare treat for me because when I’m doing errands in my car every day, I’m usually forced to listen to Kidsongs, VeggieTales, or the like while the kids are watching the car dvd player.  But lately, I’ve been able to catch a few songs on country music radio…  I guess it’s because my youngest daughter has been refusing to nap at home during the day, therefore she can’t help herself from napping once we get in the car, giving me control of the car stereo, even if it is temporarily.  But anyway, country radio has been constantly playing a song that I really like – I heard it again the other day while my husband was getting a haircut, and that’s when I decided I needed to look it up, find out what it is and who sings it so I can get it for my own enjoyment.  Well, I looked it up, and what I found is that my new favorite “country” song is Kid Rock’s latest single called “All Summer Long”.  For those of you who don’t know, Kid Rock is not a country artist – not in my book, anyway…  Seems he’s been trying to cross over to country for a couple of years now however.  His duet with Sheryl Crow called “Picture” hit the top of the country charts a few years ago when it came out.  But Kid Rock is most famous for various tabloid fodder; including his relationship with Pamela Anderson and the public brawls he’s engaged in.  But I think Kid Rock’s normal style of music is hard-core.  There is a song called “Warrior” by him that is played before movies in the theater, and that song is very reminiscent of 80s heavy metal – I think that’s a taste of his usual musical style.

So why the switchover into country?  I have one guess – money.  It’s no secret that country music is the most popular music genre in the United States today.  Kid Rock’s new song doesn’t quite have that country sound, however, but I wouldn’t know how else to classify it.  It reminds me of late 70’s or early 80’s classic rock, ala Lynyrd Skynyrd – there is even a tribute to the song “Sweet Home Alabama” in “All Summer Long” – it mentions the song and even replicates its famous guitar lick.  But nowadays, I don’t know where a song such as this should be catagorized, and apparently the music industry felt the same way, so they stuck it in the country genre.  It’s a really great, feel-good, care-free, summery kind of song…  don’t know why they didn’t rush to get it released at the beginning of the summer.  But it’s here now, and I’m enjoying it, even if it is sung by Kid Rock.  I just wish he’d make up his mind about where he wants to be musically.  Being a country music fan, I despise “posers” and “crossovers” who try to take advantage of country music fans just because they’re seen as loyal and dumb.  The bait and switch didn’t work with me this time – I like the song, but knowing it’s Kid Rock did take a little out of it for me.  I have a big problem with crossovers – I don’t like accepting them into the country music family.  I feel that country music is something you either love or you hate, and if these crossovers weren’t already involved in country music, chances are they’ve hated it in the past and should not be allowed to crossover when the time or price is right.  You are either a country artist or you’re not.  Which is why it is to my dismay that this new Kid Rock song is so good.

But all things aside, check out “All Summer Long”, it’s worth a listen, and let’s hope Kid Rock doesn’t steal too much thunder away from the real country acts come time for the Country Music Awards that will be airing in November.  Judging solely by how much air time he’s getting on the radio, I think he has a shot to win some awards for this one – he’ll at least get a live performance.  I just hope he can behave himself.  Surprisingly, given the red-neck reputation of country music’s fan base, the annual Country Music Awards is not a place where there is usually scandalous behavior such as fighting or swearing, and let’s hope these fly-by-night country crossovers don’t ever bring it to that.