Tradition

Every year we've taken pictures of Mimi with sunflowers on her birthday.

It started on her first birthday when there was an amazing abundance of sunflower field around our house. And I'm not talking the boring little sunflower "weed-looking" ones, the BIG beautiful, faced to the sun GIANT ones.

So we had a photo shoot in a field of sunflowers with my little one year old:

(woa. I really meant to just insert ONE picture. But they were all so stinkin' adorable!)

Then the next year, on her SECOND birthday, I even brought props:

Then the third year I couldn't find a sunflower field anywhere. I posted a question on facebook and the closest one was apparently in Reunion, near the airport (and don't you think I didn't contemplate going). But instead we settled for the black-eyed susans in our backyard, and got a cute little sassy three-year old pic.

This year, same dilemma of no sunflower field (but not as much time or energy to even really care). But there it was, nagging me in the back of my brain...TRADITION. Listen, I like to live life somewhat flexibly, but sometimes I can be an overachiever too. I started with this idea about sunflowers every year, and by golly, I was going to SEE IT THROUGH! Maybe because of principle (the wrong reason) but maybe also because it's so fun to see these pictures all next to each other. It's such a cool way to see this little girl grow. And because traditions only exist if you carry them on. We miss one year, then the coolness factor goes down. (I'm perfectly okay with you thinking I'm crazy). But I wanted to find a sunflower field, dang it. 

We drove past a few private farms with rows of the big beauties, but I couldn't just stop and hop the fence. I thought about asking at one point, but it was never an opportune moment, you know, with two other kids in the car and all. 

So I was ready to kiss the whole idea goodbye.

Until I realized, "hey, why not BUY some?" Not as fun, but at least we fill in that four year old pic for the whole wall mural I'm planning to do someday in Mimi's future house, much to the dismay of her future husband. ;)

So here they are! A little sunflower shoot so the tradition continues.

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(this one's called, "my mom is crazy, start my therapy fund" ;)

Buds

Last Friday we got to pick up this blonde first grader from the bus stop by his house to spend the night with him while Jeff and Ash were in the "Big Easy"...

You would've thought we told Mimi that she was getting a dog. 

She was SO excited... (every five minutes, "Mommy, is DIS the day that Gent comes?!?!") So when we saw Gent get off the school bus and loaded him up in our car, Mimi officially was having the weekend EVER.

We decided to get a little frozen yogurt and Menchies to kick off our slumber party and Gentry ran into some school friends. How cute is that? He's in first grade and he already has a posse!

Then it was off to our house to play!

Gent is THE BEST fort maker. I was glad to be off the hook and make someone else do the hard work for once. It was so cute the whole weekend to see Gent and Mimi interact. Even though he's 7 and she's 4 (a BIG difference at that age) they acted like equals; he treated her in a sweet way like she could contribute to the projects and have her ideas about stuff, and she really hung with him and held her own.

The best is to hear Gent say, "Tink,_______" (whatever it may be). I don't even really think he knows her real name. She's just "Tink" (short for Tinkerbelle. See THIS post...click on "this" for the backstory). 

more fort making...
at one point the game was to run away from the "stinky diaper monster" (a.k.a. Bode). He's officially the younger brother now...

I loved when we all were sitting around the table for dinner.

Every night we do our "highs" and "lows" of the day. Here's genuinely what Mimi and Gentry's highlights were:

The kids slept so well after wearing each other out.
The next day we played more and watched more Bearenstain Bears, then we took a trip to Loveland to go to Bounce!


I loved watching this boy there!
The last time he was at Bounce he was a month old.
This time, he couldn't get enough...

He didn't stay in the "toddler zone" bounce area for long....

He definitely wanted to jump with these kids!

Bode went down every slide, into every bounce house...you name it! He was hard to keep up with!

And then we met up with Jeff and Ash to take Gent home to them. 

What a great treat for us to have Genchies over!

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Here were some more highlights:
At one point Saturday morning, Gent and Mimi were up in her room playing Barbies. I think that Gent reluctantly started, but it wasn't long before I heard him saying things like, "what about this skirt on this girl?" or "she needs a new outfit." The best was when he nonchalantly initiated a Barbie wedding...! They had GREAT fun (and it was fun listening in)

Here's another gem of a conversation:

MIMI: "these Barbies can be our guard Barbies to protect our fort."

GENTRY: "What, do they have secret powers or something?"

MIMI: "yes, their eyes... they shoot out of their eyes" (Maybe someone's had little too much Austin Powers "fembot" clips?!?! Just kidding! I did watch that movie a lot in high school...it could've passed on to her through her genes)

Then after Barbies Mimi asked Gentry to read a book to her. It was adorable. Considering that we read the Berenstain Bear books A LOT and I know them all verbatim (and Mimi too) I could tell right away that Gent was improvising a little, and it was adorable. Mimi just sat right next to him, hanging on his every word. Cute moment #102... ;)

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In Battle

Apparently it's fall.

And surprisingly it's not the leaves turning a crisp, golden color or the cool air or the fact that my house smells like pumpkin spice lattes and cinnamon heaven that's tipped me off to this fact.

It's because my family is dropping like flies due to nasty germ bugs that have invaded that I know that the season has changed.

Dang. 

And I thought we could at least wait until October. 

I'm becoming more and more of a summer lover as the years go on. Summer's never given us sicknesses, it just gives us warm, sunny pool days and barefoot walking and BBQs. I think that I will take summer as my favorite and skip the pumpkins if this is what fall means.

Sorry fall...you've been booted. I HATE when my family gets sick.

I was up at 5 am this morning lysoling and doing laundry with a vengence because Ben has a stomach bug and I was hoping to wash the little contaminants out of existence. It's not a super bad one (and I wasn't washing sheets for anything but sterilization...) but it's still here, and threatening to infiltrate the rest of the house. You've never seen a mom snap on the yellow cleaning gloves and grab the disinfectant faster. Because to me, it's war. I like to think that by making copious amounts of green smoothies and "virus killer soup" and by making the air reek with fake pine smell, that we can keep the virus at bay. Which, as we all know, isn't always the case. So when the sickness passes from family member to family member in spite of all of that combat, I feel defeated and personally responsible. Super silly, I know. 

Bode's got some kind of cold, so I'm not sure if he'll be dealing with that and be exempt from the tummy bug thing (I don't know if germs work that way...but I'd like to think that they may). And a baby with a stuffy nose is pretty much miserable, seeing as they can't sleep in the sitting up position like the rest of the world if they can't breathe out of their nose. But he is in his crib right now with one of Mimi's HUGE stuffed dogs, laying on that (a trick that got us through Mimi's colds at one and two years old). But he's not doing much sleeping (thanks to the talking Elmo book that I threw into his bed as I was dashing out to freedom, hoping ANYTHING would keep him in his bed and occupied for more than three minutes. Note to self: if you want a baby to sleep, refrain from talking toys in the bed. A big giant overstuffed dog is enough...).

We will get better and maybe actually mama may win this battle with the germs. (I have a genius idea to make a contest out of who can wash their hands the most. I'm sure that my already cracked and splitting hands are really going to loooove that one). Whatever works, right?

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to suit up in my yellow gloves and get back to battle.

*** side note****

Super dad with the bug is actually at Mimi's field trip right now. He said he was feeling better. We'll see. For now, they're sending me cute pictures so that means no one's had any embarrassing projectile vomiting or anything. That could really ruin a trip to the farm.

Table Time

Bode is all kinds of fun right now, busy as he may keep us. 

He just started saying "dada" and along with his sign language (which I'm convinced he does to impress his sister-he looks at her for her praise every time he does it), he's also started raising his hand. As in when Mama says, "who's excited for BSF!?!?" in a rhetorical way, and he shoots his hand up and says, "DA!" :) What an adorable little monkey he is!

Here's him sitting "at the table" with us in a booster seat (we were sick of the clunky high chair and it's horrible odorous smell). He loves to dip things (ketchup, salsa, dressing) and loves to use utensils. 

Now here's some videos of his latest trick: