A taste of life with 3 kids

I am not too proud to admit that my son just may love his cousin, Brina, more than he loves me. Very rarely does he squeal with delight or chant my name as he does when he sees her or hears her name. Lucky for him, she reciprocates his affection, maybe not to the same degree, but there is occasional squealing when Brina sees Kyle as well.

You can imagine the delight and joy expressed in our house when I told Kyle that Brina would be coming to spend part of the day with us. I had Jessica drop of Brina's car seat when they came over so that I could take all 3 kids to the library for story time. They arrived shortly after 9, giving us plenty of time before we had to leave to make the final session that started at 10:30, or so I thought.

After gathering sippy cups of water, making sure there were dipes and wipes in the diaper bag, and that all three little ones had clean, dry clothes I headed out to the garage to put Brina's car seat in the truck. Attempting to proactively prevent pouting, crying or other unpleasant foolishness I moved Emily's car seat base to the third row seat and placed Brina's seat next to Kyle. I was back in the house in less than 10 minutes, but little did I know what I was to find.

What? You don't really see anything picture worthy? Ok, how about this one

All I have to say is this, while lotion may be super moisturizing on your skin, it does nothing for your hair. So instead of jumping in the truck for a ride down to the library Brina and Kyle spent some time here:

Miss Em supervised the whole time. Once she realized that she was not next, she expressed her displeasure by sitting on the floor by the tub and crying. Hard. I didn't happen to capture the moment on film, but it looked a lot like this:

All was not lost as we headed to the play land at Gateway Mall where the two naughty mischievous toddlers ran, jumped and squealed their little hearts out. Emily boycotted sleeping in her stroller, I'm sure she was worried about missing some of the action. She did fall asleep on the car ride back home where we had lunch, and Kyle and Brina kicked back to relax and wait for Jess to come rescue me.

Three kids, one adult? Nothing a little shampoo can't fix.

PBS programming: The mis-education of today's youth

Kyle has picked up a phrase or two from some of the shows that he watches. One of my favorite moves he has devised comes from a combination of two of his favorites: Pocahontas and The Lion King. It involves marching around like the hyenas while chanting "Savages! Savages!" Luckily it sometimes comes out sounding like "Sausages! Sausages!" so when he begins chanting and marching around in a circle while in public people don't give me the stink eye. He also loves Dinosaur Train which is on PBS. It is from this show that Kyle learned the song/dance "great big stomping dinosaur feet". Harmless little song and dance, right? Wrong! Usually when I hear Ky singing and stomping away it is no big deal and I usually pay little attention beyond glancing up at him for a quick giggle. Today he was helping me sweep up all of the puffs that Emily had thrown on the floor when I heard him start stomping around and singing about "dinoswar feet". Something caught my attention, an unusual sound accompanying the usual song and dance. 

As you can see my little man abandoned his broom and dustpan to don his snow boots and dinoswar stomp the puffs. In Kyle's defense, he loves to help me do all kinds of cleaning around the house. He jumps in to help whenever I am sweeping, doing dishes, throwing laundry into the wash or vacuuming. Taking this in to consideration I can choose to interpret his actions in one of two ways:

1. He so loves sweeping that he was saddened when the job was completed, and wanted to make more work for me himself; or
2. PBS is actually an evil station that subconsciously brainwashes susceptible little minds into doing evil little deeds.

The jury is still out.

My creativity has it's limits

This is the post where I admit to having a slightly addictive personality. For as long as I can remember I have had a tendency to become slightly obsessed with things I am interested in, making hand crafted items for instance. When my mom taught me how to crochet in high school I made a couple hundred afghans and delighted in giving them all away as gifts. Ok, may a couple hundred is a slight exaggeration, but for many years I made blankets, keeping only one or two for myself. I also tried scrapbooking many moons ago, and even though my efforts produced one book (that I gave away), to this day I have enough scrapbooking supplies to make a scrapbook for everyone I know. This is not an exaggeration.

After Emily was born I began making flower clips for hats and headbands, thanks to my friend Nikki, who I fully blame for introducing me to these totally trendy fashion accessories for diva babies! Anyone who knows Nikki knows that she is a pretty fashionable lady, and that her baby girl, Kaiya, is following in her footsteps and is always sporting a super cute flower on a hat or headband. I also began crocheting baby beanies to go along with the flower clips I was making. Lucky for me I was able to sell my flowers, hats and headbands through my mom's jewelry business Cherishables. She sells her beautiful jewelry and other hand made items at Pride of Dakota events, Urban Harvest, craft shows, and at The Memory Shack, and has been selling some of my items at various events over the course of the past few months.

There has been enough interest in my flowers and hats that I decided to expand my product line to include more unique, fun flowers that ladies of all ages can wear. The slogan for my shop is Simple. Fun. Unique.

I have many other colors of flowers in various that I will be producing and selling. As much as I love photography, I am a total amateur so these pictures don't do the new blossoms justice at all! I am going to open an Etsy store, which is an online community of artisans who all produce hand made items. As the title of this post implies, my creativity does not run along the lines of being able to produce a witty shop name and so I need some help! I am looking for suggestion for my shop, and if I chose your suggestion, you will be rewarded with some of my hand made items. Not the flowery type? These make great gifts so let's hear your best! I'm also looking to partner with a photographer who is willing to trade services, so if you have any names for me I'd love to hear them as well.

Conversation with a 2 year old

Kyle was a very quiet baby. He not only cried rarely, but he really didn't do much babbling either. In fact he was well past a year old by the time he said his first intelligible word. Now Travis would argue with this and say that Kyle was a child genius, speaking his first word well before he was a year old. Of course the word that Travis would be referring to is "dada". I just roll my eyes and fire back that all babies can say simple things like "dada" because it is a word made of developmentally simple syllables, and any one who knows anything about the development of speech knows that it takes a higher level of motor control to create the "m" sound so of course dada is going to come before mama. Besides when Ky was a baby he could ramble off a hundred "dadadadada"s but until he actually made the connection between that sound and Travis it really didn't count as his first word. So there.

Kyle's cousin Brina is almost 14 months older than he is, and so it was easy to compare his speech development with hers. I should have known better than to do this because by the time Brina was 18 months old talking to her was like talking to a little adult. Conversations with Kyle when he was 18 months old consisted of a lot of nodding and general responses such as "oh my goodness" and "wow, Kyle". Luckily for me he is so easy going that even when he would say a word and I would say the wrong word back he just smiled, shook his head and said "noooo, mama" and tried, tried, tried again,and he got good at showing me what he wanted when I just couldn't get it right.

Fast forward to an almost 3 year old Kyle. I invite you to ride along to daycare with the Livesays and share in a conversation with a 2 (almost 3) year old Kyle (I apologize in advance for all of the exclamation marks, but Kyle really does talk like that):

K: "Tractors moving snow! Mama! tractors moving snow, I see it!"  3 second pause "Mama, my talking to you."
L: "I see the tractors Kyle. Look, there are some geese flying back, that means the snow is going to melt soon and the grass will be green again.
K: "Ooo, birds flying in the sky. Way up high in the sky! Where's the erpane (airplane)? No more snow mama? The dirt all gone?"
L: "Yes Kyle, the snow and the dirt will go away and the grass will turn green, the flowers will grow and the leaves will come back to the trees."
K: "I want leaves."
L: "Me too baby." 20 seconds of silence
K: "My eating the waffle all gone! Savages, savages" (Kyle has been watching Pocahontas. A lot.)
 "Mama, watch this!"
L: "I'm driving right now, Kyle, I can't watch you. Is Emily awake or is she sleeping?"
K: "Ahmie is awake, hi Bells! Mama, my see Gage?"
L: "I think Gage is already at school honey, but he'll be home this afternoon."
K: "Savages, savages!"

You get the picture. Quite babies do not quite toddlers make.

And little Miss Em? Well she just quietly hangs out in her car seat and plays with her toys, content to listen to all the talk of erpanes, birds, tractors, and of course savages.

The bug strikes the Livesays

This past Sunday was supposed to be relaxing and fun. A weekend off from work, and hopefully a little extra sleep, with a lot more fun time with my family. Kyle crawled into bed with us early Sunday morning, and Emily woke up by 7 so I brought her into bed with us. Little did I know how much of a mistake that was, with poor darling Emmie paying the price. I was in bed with the itty bitties, watching Kyle doing his best to teach Emily his best wrestling moves after Travis got up to get some breakfast. Emily was laying on her back with Kyle sitting by her head and he started coughing. Instinct kicked in and as I was reaching to grab her Kyle leaned over and threw up. Unfortunately my protective instinct was still waking up and I was too late to save Emily from being the victim of her brother's upset stomach. Kyle spent the day laying on the couch, watching movie, faithfully carrying his bucket around with him all day. While Emily got sick that night, it was short lived and I am happy to say the itty bitties bounced back in no time.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning Mama and Daddy realized they were not so lucky. I'll spare you the details, and instead share with you some of the chaos that ensued while Travis and I were for the most part incapacitated on the couch or the floor.

Kyle took advantage of the lax security to try his hand at film making, his skill far out shines mine as he knows how to add a soundtrack to his clips!

By the end of the day Kyle and Emily tried to make Mama and Daddy feel better by putting on a show

Since it is a rare occurrence for mama and daddy to both be home, at the same time, for the whole day, you might expect for Kyle to become a little miffed at the fact that it was a completely boring day. I'm not gonna lie, with the way we felt the poor kids were lucky to have eaten most of the day. I will admit that it wasn't the most nutritiously sound day, but he did eat pancakes with blueberries in them as well as 1.5 baby carrots so it wasn't all that bad. I wouldn't have even blamed him for engaging in some inappropriate attention seeking behavior. The only melt down of the day happened at naptime when "daddy turned off naughty!" (naughty is what Kyle calls Star Wars, which he had been watching after lunch time). In a show of true compassion my little man ended the day by taking all of the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and stacking things neatly on the counter. Such sweetness was a wonderful way to end a not so pleasant day.

Peanut Butter

It is amazing to me how something so simple as a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich can inspire so much joy. This week I am grateful for PB & J, because without it I wouldn't have experienced this:

and as a well known duo from the 90's once crooned, "more than wooooorrds is all you have to do to make it reaaaaaal"

The best "thanks" a mama can ask for!

Happy Thursday!

Just a little bit of happiness to brighten your day!

The return of the duck

One of the gifts that I got for the baby shower that my OT classmates threw for me was an inflatable rubber duck bath tub. This picture pretty much sums up how Kyle felt about the duckie once he was big enough to sit in it:

The duck survived months of baby-Kyle-love and 2 moves to re-emerge once again, but I think I'll let the next series of pictures speak for themselves:

Even though Kyle won this battle, in the end Emily emerged victorious

......or did she?

Tweet! Tweet!

Every so often I hear "Lisa, there's a (insert animal, tree, fish, actually you could insert anything to do with wild life and/or nature), do you know what kind it is?" Ahhh, the life of a wife of an outdoor enthusiast/biology major/big game hunter. Quite honestly my answer is usually a blank stare or "uhhh, no." after which I generally resume the task at hand, be it sweeping or driving down the road. One such conversations a few weeks ago lead Travis to inform me  that we have chuckers living in our back yard. I had seen the fat little birds waddling around back there, and Kyle always races to the widow if anyone mentions the birds in the back yard, but that's as far as my interest went. Kyle is well on his way to following in his father's nature loving footsteps, so off to Lowe's we trekked to buy some bird seed, only to be faced with about 10 different options. Now I'm all for options when it comes to most things like types of salad dressing, styles of shoes, or lotion scents, however is it really necessary for there to be 10 different combinations of bird seed? Who gets paid to sit in an office and devise these combinations any way? Probably the same people who come up with different flavors of Gatorade. Despite the absurdity of being faced with so many types of bird seed, you know I whipped out my smart phone and googled "what do chuckers eat?" Snicker if you will, but you know you would do it too. In the end we chose a tasty looking mix and back home we went to feed the birds. Kyle helped Travis spread little piles of our tasty choice from the greenway at the far back edge of our yard all the way up close to the house to see if we could entice the chuckers to come up close and personal like.

As much as Kyle loves to see the birds eating food, he just can't help himself from screaming "Tweet! Tweet!" at the window whenever he sees the fat little things, which sends them scurrying off over the dirt hill. Emily loves to see the birds as well, but she has a slightly different reaction when she sees them out the patio widow.

You'll have to decide for yourself whether she is trying to kiss them, or help them eat their food!