Annie's Room

We have lived in our home for about 6 years. For the first 3 or 4 years of it, our guest room was pretty much a wasted space. When we found out we were expecting triplets, we had big plans of it being a "staging" room. Bottles would be fed on a rocking love seat with dim lights and a cute baby changing table in the corner. But reality set in, and we ended up basically camping in our downstairs the first month or so and our kitchen island became our changing table, and bottles were fed... every where. On the couch, the floor, in bouncie chairs, 1, 2 or 3 at a time. Time and money were short, so the room just stayed with white walls and a bed for any guests that wanted to brave our home.

Eventually my cousin Annie started being our most regular guest and our family started calling the guest room "Annie's room". Which I totally love, because "guest room" sounds so blah and unusable. Not to mention we love Annie :).

A couple years ago I asked Don to paint Annie's room for my birthday present. Nothing too crazy, just the same base color as the rest of our house, but at least a start to get some personality in the room. We also got rid of our guest bed, and bought an Aero mattress for when we did get the honor of having someone come stay with us. Without the guest bed, it opened up the rest of the room for useable space.

It is now 75% playing area for the boys and 25% sewing area for me. The boys have their drum set, punching bag, basketball game along with a few of their toys and a television set. It has made for a great room to let them make a mess and still have the ability to close the door on it when the drums get too loud or if they just want to be closed away for a bit. It gives us all a bit of extra space, it is nice to close the door on the boys when they are being a bit loud -or even better- for ME to go in to sew, close the door and lock the rest of the world out.

Do you see what I see?

I know this just looks like a busy picture, right? But it is a picture that so perfectly illustrates another reason I love Don.

It started as the decision was made to put the garden plants on a separate timer. The veggies need to be watered more often than the better established plants in our yard. This means we (Don) has to dig out a path and lay new PVC through the kids playground area.

Just as Don starts digging -you can see from the picture he had only dug out about 4 feet so far- both Wyatt and Jaxon are drawn like magnets to the newly turned up dirt. Joining their already overcrowded party comes Roxy, thinking this digging stuff looks like tons! of! fun! and digs all around the new dirt piles.


Before I even took this picture, Don had to stop digging at least twice to get Roxy out of the way of the shovel and had to tell the boys not to put the dirt back in the hole. BUT HE KEPT ON GOING. Unphased and crowded by little beings hell bent on making his job difficult, he just kept on going.

He didn't even complain that instead of helping him by clearing his path, I left to get the camera and then just stood there taking pictures.

He is so good to us.

To know them...

To know my boys is to SEE my boys. Here are some very short videos of our day to day life. Riding bikes, playing music and giving a little booty shake. A bit of sliding down the slide while riding a truck or just random parts of the day.

Enjoy the movies!

A New Stage (PTMAU)

**See that cute innocent face?**

The boys have reached a new stage in their childhood. It is the one I may refer to "Pray They Make Adulthood Unscathed".

This stage includes trying to ride on their little trucks where ever the fancy strikes them. This could be down our slanted driveway, or even better on their steepish slide. Sometimes they try other things, like climbing on the outside of their clubhouse like spider man, or deciding to go around the top of the clubhouse to pick seed pods off the tree next to it.


**See how he is ready to ride that little truck down the slide?**

When they were babies, I was ready for all this. I baby proofed every room, moved every cord, locked dangerous cabinets, and took every precaution we could think of.


** Here they are on the TOP shelf of the linen closet**

But this little boy stuff they are going through right now... seems the only way to prepare is to PRAY first that they don't get ANY wonky ideas. And I know that that prayer is futile, but what kind of mother would I be if I didn't pray for THAT? I will call it my preventative prayer. And second, I can just pray that that when they do "experiment" they can do it without any long lasting mental effects.


**This one speaks for itself**

I am both a worrier and a mother. I worry about everything from the wind ruining our garden to things like the wind blowing down our house. The mother in me knows they are boys, and this is what little boys do. More importantly, it is what makes little boys grow, feel confident and keeps their bodies busy and strong. But take that little BOY and turn him into a group of like minded BOYS and it always spells trouble around here. And I have a sinking feeling it will only get more worrisome as they get older.


I think they will make me gray by the time I hit 35.

CRASH!

My computer crashed! Luckily I had a backed up hard drive and really didn't lose any of my files, and my wonderful friend restored order back in my computer. Even with all that good news, the issue is that I lost my organizing system for my pictures. It has made blogging and scrapping so frustrating for me. It would be like someone unorganizing your phonebook or photo albums. While you are thankful you still have all the numbers, names and pictures, it is years worth of accumulation all in the air. YUCK.

So that is why I have been absent. But I am back because even though it is frustrating, it should get easier with each and every time I try again, right?

Boo Boo-less!

The boys are 4 years old, almost 5. In the past 4 years, Jaxon has had a boo boo on his forehead for at least 3 of those years. It has not always been the same boo boo, but it is always in the same general area and since he is a picker, the cuts have stayed on his head for more of his lifetime then they have been gone. We tried having him sleep with gloves on during the night, neosporin like crazy during the days (leaving grease spots that have ruined numerous shirts and our couch!), band aids, liquid band aids, but nothing would beat this nasty habit he had.

Except Chuck E Cheese. A couple months ago, we told him once the boo boo was gone, we would celebrate at Chuck E Cheese. But one week dragged to two, and that dragged out to a month. Finally we told him it had to be gone by that coming FRIDAY. No messing around this time. If he wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, it was time to buckle down.

And thankfully, he did.



Way to go Jaxon, we are so happy to look at that beautiful unblemished little face you have.


Now to tackle Luke's night time thumb sucking....

ROXY

Today we picked up our new girl, Roxy. She is an 8 week old labradoodle and we are completely in love with her. She's the runt of her litter, so it will be interesting to see how big she gets, or if she stays on the smaller size.

The boys are completely smitten with Roxy, and ever so gentle, too. She seems to fit right in around here, following us around in the house and checking out her new home. It is really amazing how a puppy proofing is so similar to baby proofing. Letting the boys know that Roxy can choke if she gets a toy or something in her mouth seems to be a huge motivation for them to put away their toys. It is only the first day, I am well aware, but I am hoping it is a start of a clean house as well. *I know, but a girl could hope :)

Here is a video of Roxy's first few minutes in the house.


Another video, but this is when Roxy was taking a nap and Wyatt and Luke grabbed their guitars and sang twinkle twinkle to her!