Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Tis the season...

Well we are in the midst of the Christmas season, but unlike the retailers or radio stations (96.5...I'm talking to you!), I will not forget about Halloween or Thanksgiving! Which makes me realize that not writing anything down for two whole months is not only bad but may require multiple posts.

So I'll just jump in where we left off, October. James left the Sunday before Halloween to go on a week long hunting trip in Sioux Falls, SD. It was one of his bucket list items. Rumor has it that one of those birds is at the taxidermist waiting to be mounted and relocated to our home. Awesome!


Lucky for me, Hayes picked that exact time to break free of the crib. Our world as we knew it was about to change.


He's upset because I would only read him three books as opposed to the 10 that his daddy reads him every night. Also, apparently he's got mad navy seal skills when he gets upset. (Just so you know, I did catch him the first three times he scaled the crib. The last time, I decided to get it on video so James could see how fine everything was while he was gone.)

Thank goodness for our dear friends who came over toot suite (at 9:00 that night) and converted his crib to a cute little toddler bed...that he would stay in for one whole night.


Hayes learned quickly that in the middle of the night, I am terrible negotiator and I'll cave at any terror request. Which is how I ended up with a two foot tall bed mate for a whole week!


In late September, Hayes decided that he wanted to be a cow for Halloween, which was hard for me to swallow. I had already purchased a cute little giraffe costume from Pottery Barn Kids and couldn't wait for him to try it on. Granted the giraffe head was a bit too big and too top heavy, but it was still cute and did not require me to bust out a glue gun or my sub-par craft skills.

After about 20 unsuccessful minutes of Hayes trying to raise his head to lift up the giraffe head, I realized that this costume was dead to him and tried a new angle. "Don't you want to be a penguin for Halloween?" (I had just received a hand me down penguin costume that was just darling. It was black and white like a cow and had these cute web shoe covers.) I pointed out all of the cuteness of the penguin, while trying not to "oversell it", to which he said, "Ohhhhh! Okay!! No thank you."

It appears that the Halloween gods were smiling down on me because my friend Jackie just happened to have a cow costume and it just happened to almost fit which is how we ended up at a fall festival, the week of Halloween, dressed like the love child of John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever and a cow. As the night wore on, the zipper got lower and lower. At one point, he had that costume unzipped past his belly button!




 

And just like Hayes's zipper, here is where Halloween started to go south and my love cow decided he wanted to be a fireman. 



Which is when I put my foot down and informed him that he could be a fire cow, which is exactly the same as a dalmatian, but not. And lucky for me, he bought it! Which is good because after a week of being a single mom, my nerves were shot.




And then daddy came home!


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Friday, October 24, 2014

Home Sweet Home

We recently got back from our annual trip to the mountains and I'd be lying if I didn't say that I live for this trip every.single.year. I think it's because by the time it hits October in Alabama, I'm officially OVER the heat. I need to wear boots, drink hot coffee by a fire and feel the warmth of a sweater around my shoulders. (Apparently I also turn 80 in October.) So you can imagine my disappointment when we hit the open road only to  hear 12,582 words from Hayes and discover it was a crisp 77 degrees...in the mountains!


Yeah....that was 26 seconds of a four hour act.You're welcome!

But we made the best of the warm weather and hiked, shopped, met up with long time friends and watched both of our football teams lose their games. Actually I just watched James's team lose since Auburn really had a better chance of actually showing up to play football as opposed to my team, which has decided to only play three minutes of every half....with the same quarterback. I hope that Muschamp's head is on the chopping block. The quicker he and his grey sweatpants can get out of Gainesville, the better.

Back to things that will not ruin a perfectly good Saturday! Here are a few pictures from our trip:



 







Clearly if we want a true smile, he needs to be sitting on Posty's lap.



"Better is a one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere." Psalm 84:10

The day we left to come back home, it was finally below 60 degrees. When we arrived back in Alabama it was a balmy 82 degrees and the air-conditioning was out in our home. Lovely! On the bright side, it was just the unit that cools our bedroom. On the downside, we actually enjoy sleeping in our bedroom. The next day the repair man came and discovered that the flux capacitor was out and replaced it within an hour.

Clearly this was too easy and good to be true and two days later the unit shut down again. We were told that the motor had completely disintegrated and we needed a new circuit board. I don't even want to think about how much all of that will cost. So like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow.

(I just realized that me discussing our air conditioning woes was not as riveting as I thought because James just said, "You are actually blogging about that?" You're welcome. It gets better.)

A week and 32 loads of laundry later, James and I ran off to New Orleans for a quick weekend away by ourselves. We basically ate Cajun food for 48 straight hours and then came back home to our son who, according to his grandmother, "was a complete angel, ate everything in sight and was so polite and sweet".

As soon as we walked through the door Hayes started running around and screaming, "Mama and Daddy are Home! Mama and Daddy are HOME!" about 100 times. As we waved good-bye to James's parents, it was clear that the "angel" facade was beginning to crack and we were about to pay dearly for two days of uninterrupted conversations. For the next four days, Hayes was frustrated about anything and everything. (The smoke detector that I accidentally set off three weeks ago is too loud and "needs to get out!". The fact that I can't play the drums to the skill level of his liking or that I'm not serving fried chicken and mashed potatoes every night for dinner. You know...the harsh life of a pampered two year old?) I'm happy to report that things are back to normal and the two days away were totally worth it!

Side note...the fire alarm incident needs it's own blog. I'll get to work on that. Tomorrow. :)




On a completely unrelated topic, Hayes's teachers are working on potty training so I guess we now need to give it some kind of effort at home. I'm a little stressed about this and have avoided the soul draining task of potty training since Hayes give us about ten seconds before he says, "Mama/Daddy...I pooping!" and stops dead in his tracks and does his business.

Lately he's figured out that we will give him some privacy when this happens, so he'll say it just to avoid taking a bath, brushing his teeth, or getting dressed. (Now that I think about it, he'll use this trick to get out of any form of basic personal hygiene that will eventually get him a job and a wife.) So the other night when he said, "Mama...I pooping", I said "Are you really?" And he looked right at me like I might be a little slow and said very deliberately, "Yes, I really pooping."


Also this year, Hayes is participating music class that's held every Wednesday afternoon. He loves anything related to music. He would play his guitar all the time if we let him. The thing I enjoy most about watching him play music is that he tends to get a little carried away watching himself in the mirror and quits paying attention to his surroundings. He head-bangs, smiles, puckers his lips, and twists around so he can admire his backside, which makes me laugh.


I have to admit that the beads are a nice touch.

And in the two days since I started this post, Hayes has informed us that "I not go to music anymore!" When I asked why, he went into some rant about butter crackers. I decided it wasn't worth the brain cells so now we have a music school drop out and a $25 tee-shirt that says, "Magic City Kid's Music."

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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Expect the Unexpected

As is typical with The Barnett's, we've had a ton of "stuff" (both expected and unexpected) going on the past two months.

Expected:
Hayes turned two on July 6th and since most people are either at the lake or the beach for the 4th of July weekend, we decided to push his party back a week. I just knew we'd scar him for life if we didn't do a little something on his birthday, so we celebrated by having the family over for dinner (if you consider hot dogs and tater-tots dinner). I baked homemade cupcakes (because apparently I morphed into Martha Stewart overnight) so that Hayes would be able to blow out candles on his actual birthday.

Honestly it was totally worth it based on the look of sheer joy when we sang Happy Birthday.







James and I got Hayes a playhouse for his birthday and he was so excited! (I should mention that he gets equally excited over a bag of Cheetos, but whatever.)



Unexpected:
We had a bad storm last week and now the playhouse looks like this:


I'd be lying if I said I didn't die a little inside. All Hayes could say was, "OH MY GOODNESS MAMA!! Oh.my.goodness." So, I'm not sure if he turned two or eight two.

Expected:
The next weekend we had a water slide party because if you live in Alabama and have a birthday in July, water must be involved. Anything else is inhumane. As you probably already know, the Barnett's never go overboard on anything and the water slide that we rented was a life sized whale.


Unexpected:
Two men with questionable personal hygiene from the party company showed up at noon to set up Orca. After tripping the circuit breaker a few times, she was fully inflated and ready to party! The only problem was that when the wind would blow, you could detect the unmistakable smell of a petting zoo on a hot summer day. I really have no explanation for this phenomenon and honestly didn't want to give it much thought since we were about to throw a bunch of  small children down her back for a couple of hours. Luckily we (James) had time to give Orca a good bath before people showed up for the Firetruck themed party. (I know....what does a whale have to do with firetrucks?Well, you get what you get when you request a water slide that is suitable for an age range of two to forty.)

Unexpected:
When the party company said, "Yes ma'am, we have inflatable water slides." What they really meant was, "Yes ma'am, we can tell you're a novice at this whole birthday party thing, so we're going to send you our circa 1990 Orca whale that is technically a water slide as long as somebody is standing there with a hose spraying the ol' girl down. Oh and PS...you are also going to have to push the kids up her back in order for them to slide down, because she has no stairs. And ma'am? One last thing...she smells a little funky."

All I can say is thank God for my husband, my daddy and my father in law!











The party started, the kids slid for what seemed like hours, and then it was time for candy and birthday cake.






After everyone was all hyped up on sugar and food coloring, it was time to send them home.

Expected:
Our nephew, Graham Campbell Ruth, was born July 21st at 12:19 PM. He is perfect and weighed in at 7lbs 10oz and was 21 inches long. He was born with a head full of dark hair a nice looking tan.





Unexpected:
One week later, my sister's husband was working out and tore his right bicep. Chrissy was in the high risk unit for almost a week after Graham was born so when I got a call at 5:15 in the morning, my head already went to that bad place. You know the one where you are already starting to hyperventilate?

Is it awful that when I answered the phone and screamed, "What's wrong?!" I was relieved when Dan said, "It's Dan...I just tore my bicep and I think I'm about to pass out!"  

Dan asked if I could go to their house and watch Graham so Chrissy could take him to the ER. Bless his heart. He's obviously new to this whole newborn and how they get fed thing. 

James ended up taking Dan to the ER and lucky for me, I got a play by play (plus pictures) on how the conversation at the triage station went down:
Nurse:  "How did the accident happen?"
Dan:  "Lifting Weights"
Nurse: "Are you training for something?"
Dan:  "Training to look good."
Nurse: "Seriously...what were you doing?"
Dan:  "Preacher curls."
Nurse:  "You a preacha?"

No ma'am he's not, he just plays one at the gym.



I'm thinking he's clearly a five on the pain scale.


Dan had surgery a week later to reconnect his bicep, so my sweet sister started her maternity leave with a week stay in the high risk unit of Brookwood Hospital and a husband who has no use of his right arm. 

Expected:
Hayes "graduated" from room 105 last week and the class had an end of the year party. Since I am one of the room mothers, I helped plan the end of the year party, which consisted of ice cream and water play. While PTA is not my thing, I love Hayes's teachers and was really excited about this party!




Unexpected:
The day of his party, Hayes tripped while passing out cups and face planted into a chair. When his teacher called me at noon, I immediately knew something was wrong. James and I went to the school together to take an assessment of his face. I know that seems strange but together we make one rational parent. I would have called 911 and James would have said, "Shake it off...you're good!".

It looked bad enough that we took him to Children's ER for what we assumed would be a few stitches in his lip. After cleaning up the blood, the ER doctor gave Hayes a dose of Motrin, a Spider Man sticker and a trip to the pediatric dentist. The verdict was that Hayes hit his front tooth pretty hard, which caused it to push up into his gums and become loose. I think the doctor said that this may or may not fix itself, but I'm not 100% sure because Hayes kept crying and saying, "Mama hurt, Daddy hurt".

Since I was worried they were about to call social services, I just kept nodding and saying, "I understand" as I backed out of the office as quickly as possible.


To add insult to injury, the bump on his forehead happened about an hour after we left the ER. I wasn't about to head back to the hospital. I'm fairly sure I'm on the list of "parents who should not have more than one child". 

Expected:
We finally took a much needed vacation to the beach. I grew up at the beach so I was hoping Hayes would love it as much as I do. He did!







Unexpected:
Apparently swiming all day gets Hayes's insides moving. This is what we heard for four straight days:


Let me translate:
Hayes: "More cupcake (blueberry muffin) more..."
Loud toot that should not come from something that small.
Hayes: "I tooted on the table...I tooted"
Me: "What do you say?"
Hayes: "Toot...excuse me!"
James: "What do you say?"
Hayes: "Excuse me!"

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