Another Week, Another Black Eye

Brady is at it again.  At least he's trying to even his face out in terms of injuries.  Up until now, all injuries had happened to the right side for whatever reason.  This week, the left side fell victim.  It was the classic case of disobedience and a black eye was the result.  I took the kids to Chapin Station playground on Wednesday and Brady wanted to go up this ladder thingy.  I thought it was a little sketchy for him to go up without supervision so I stood there for a good ten minutes, with Colby in the Bjorn, while he went up the ladder and down the slide.  Again.  And again.  After at least a dozen times of this I told him that he needed to go find another place get up, like some stairs, because I was going to put Colby in the swing.  I turned my back - - I should have known better - - and no more than 30 seconds latter, Brady is screaming.  Evidently he completely disregarded my instructions and must have fallen on the first or second rung and banged his eye off the bar.  I'm so glad I didn't see it because it is ugly looking and I can only imagine seeing it at the time of impact.  As luck would have it, I had Colby's binky in my pocket so a quick pop of into Brady's mouth and a little cuddling on my lap - - as far as it is possible to do so with a baby strapped to your front - - and he was good to go.  This time I made him go with me to the swings.  I put Colby in and in between pushes, I typed up a text with a picture to send to Duncan on what had happened to Brady.  Just as I was about to push SEND, I hear another big scream from Brady.  This time, he was lying on his stomach on the swing and pushing himself with his feet and somehow tipped himself over so that he flipped off the swing, head first. Aghhh!! Fortunately there was no blood and so with that I announced, "We are OUT of here." I couldn't take it any more.  Please Colby, oh please, be the calm/cautious one.  I don't know if I can stand two of them.

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The scene of the crime.

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Right after.

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How it looks today...along with some other junk on his forehead and next to his mouth.

Our week ended last week with a birthday party for Braelyn who turned seven on Sunday (16th).  The gathering was at the Isidro's and the bigger kids first went on a little bike ride and than all convened in the backyard to run around and play on the playground.  We had a delicious meal of pizza and salad (during which time I chit chatted with some adults about how this time of day was such a bad time for Colby but of course, he just sat there perfectly behaved through it all) which was followed by cake courtesy of Jennifer...which goes without saying, obviously.  The theme was Frozen.  Hmm, why hasn't anyone else thought of that?  Ha!  That is clearly the birthday theme of the year as this was the second one this year.  It just came out on "video" (at least, that's what we used to call it but I don't know what you call it now...it just came out on streaming??) so it worked out well with showing it at the party.  My kids have not seen it, maybe the only three in Florida to claim that.  I am not a big fan of Disney, as I'm sure I've mentioned, and I personally think some of their movies are a bit questionnable for little kids, but other parents raved about this movie and that it was fine. Evidently it left an impression on them because Brady has been singing "For the first time in forever..." over and over again all week.  I did not watch the movie with them as I was putting Colby to bed at home and then when I came back I was talking with the ladies but I do know enough to know that the main character is Anna (or Ana, don't know).  Brady will sing that line and then a few minutes later he'll forget it and he'll say, "What was that song Anna was singing?" and I'll have to tell him the words and then he's off singing it again.  But only those words.  He doesn't know the rest of the song.  I don't know if they're even the right words.  Oh well.  I've been enjoying hearing his little voice in song.  

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Amy with Colby and Jennifer with Addison (Amy's daughter)

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All the kids.

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Birthday girl!

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Watching the movie.  Brady seems happy.

Sunday was Duncan's big 100-mile bike race, the same one he did last year.  It's the Tour de Cure which is a fundraiser for Diabetes.  It started at 7:30 so he was out of the house bright and early.  Also joining him this year was Elaine who had thought about doing 100 miles but then ended up doing "only" 70.  How many ladies do you know at the age of 68 who can ride 70 straight miles?  I would be so lucky to do a third of that.  Since Duncan had a new bike this year and he's ridden a lot more in the last year, this year was considerably easier than last.  However, the one thing that stayed the same was him having to dial 911 again. At about mile 90, a guy he was riding with (but didn't know), took a tumble and Duncan had to call for an ambulance.  The guy is okay but it was just crazy that Duncan had to deal with a medical emergency this year like last year.  Shortly after that, Duncan caught on with some other guys that he was following and what do you know but they didn't know where they were going and went the wrong way.  So in the end, he did 110 miles rather than 100.  Oops!


The rest of the week has been the same old, same old.  School, Publix, playground, consignment store.  Oh, and a trip to CVS.  I was so ticked when I left there.  I was buying laundry detergent which was Buy 1, Get 2 Free.  I was using a coupon for $1.50 off two bottles.  Now, some of you may say that it can't be done since I'm getting two free but I assure you, it CAN be done.  I've done it many times and it is, in fact, in CVS's policy. Nevertheless, the cashier, who I think may have been one of the managers, wouldn't let me use it.  And since I had four noisy kids, three of which were already re-arranging all the packs of gum, I couldn't stand there and argue (if only I had the policy on my person!).  So I - - gasp - - bought the bottles of detergent without the coupon since I needed them to get up to the $25 threshold to use my $5 off $25 coupon.  It may be only $1.50 but it makes you feel just dirty, DIRTY, to not use a coupon when you know you should have been able to.  Hehe.  Dirty.  Get it?  I was buying detergent.  Okay, it's obviously getting late here.

Moving on.  So I feel like Colby has turned a big corner with his sleeping situation.  Honestly, this Daylight Savings Time thing was the best thing ever.  Ever since then, he hasn't woken up once during the night (not counting the wake up around 6:00, binky goes back in, and he sleeps until 6:30 - 7:00).  But not only that, his naps are amazing.  He's sleeping at least 1.5 hours, sometimes 2.0 or 2.5 hours, for both his morning and afternoon naps.  Who knew going to bed an hour later would be this magical?  Of course, a few other factors changed about the same time.  Last week I got rid of the swaddle during naps since he kept breaking out (he's been using the sleep sack at night for about 6 weeks) and then he's also upgraded to the bigger sized binky.  So who knows the real reason but whatever it is, I'm loving it.  I wish I could say this extra sleep was improving his disposition in the late afternoons but I fear that it isn't.  I'm still wearing the Bjorn to make supper.  Elaine was holding him over here a few evenings ago and he wouldn't stop crying.  I finally took him and it immediately stopped and he gave her a look that could only be interpreted as "Nah-nah-na-nah-nah, (said in a sing-song voice), I got my way!" But you know, you can deal with things a lot better when you at least have a baby that sleeps.

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Sporting his bigger binky which has caused Brady to steal Colby's EVEN more since they are now the exact same kind of binkies as Brady's.

So..I would be potentially be getting more sleep but this whole Malaysia Flight 370 thing has me completely hooked.  I've always loved a good mystery or true crime story and this is it.  I don't need a movie or a book because this is real life.  I find myself checking my phone the very first thing when I get up to see if I got an alert during the night that it's been found.  I tried to go to bed early on Wednesday night, I really did, but just as I was about to go to my bedroom, I got the alert that Australia had identified some objects that could be the plane so of course, I had to stay up so I wouldn't miss anything.  As we know, they STILL haven't found those objects.  I know CNN is getting some flack for their non-stop coverage of it but I, for one, have been very appreciative because I've been watching it.  I will go on record to say that I think the plane is somewhere in the ocean, which I thought before this possible sighting, and is not been hidden in some remote location for future nefarious purposes.  But why it is there or who did it, I can't figure out.  As I told my family during one of our marathon texting sessions one day on this topic (we are all news lovers), if nothing else, this has helped me brush up on my geography.  I think we're all pretty clear where Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc, are now.  That sounds very callous, I realize.  Obviously this is a terrible, terrible situation for those families.  I kind of block that part out so as not to feel too sad.

Time to wrap up but I wanted to write down a couple of quirks about the older kids.

Brady: He twirls his hair with his finger.  He's done this ever since he's had hair to twirl I believe.  It seems like he does it more when he's tired but even other times too.  A few months ago I saw Aunt Shirley do the exact same thing and it was like "Ah ha!" Apparently this is a Brace gene.

Aubree: She will not go upstairs by herself.  I know it's a big house but still.  She has never said what she's afraid will happen.  If she needs her shoes or something, she'll recruit Calleigh to run up and get them.  And if that doesn't work, she makes Brady go up there with her.  You know how helpful those 2-year olds are when a boogy man jumps out at you!  Brady, for what it's worse, goes up by himself all the time.

Calleigh: One of her favorite things to do is get her Primary Treasure, fold it over to a page, hold it in her hand, and read a story.  Except she isn't really reading one.  She's making up a story that she's pretending to read.  We have old Primary Treasures all over the house because she'll go from room to room "reading" these stories out loud to nobody in particular.  I remember as a kid making up stories while I laid in bed at night - - telling them to myself in my head.  Always looked forward to that when I went to bed.  So maybe she gets this from me.  

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Yes, that is a curler in her hair.  Her new thing is to put curlers in her pig tails even though they aren't heated.

A few quotes from the kids:

Calleigh was very frustrated with Brady because he was wrecking some toys of hers.
Calleigh: "Brothers are the most annoying creatures on this earth!!  Now I know why people say 'Oh brother' when they get frustrated about something."

We were doing one of our art cards for school which is where you discuss a picture of a piece of art.  This one was a self-portrait (take note of that) by Frida Kahlo.  You can see it here.
Me:"Aubree, what do you think of this picture?"
Aubree:"Well, she wasn't a very good artist.  She put the eyebrows touching each other."

A few more pictures...

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Working on some science experiments.  That's a magnifying glass in his hand.

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Never to early to start wearing deodorant.

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The thing on Calleigh's eye.  Hard to see which is a good thing, I suppose. It actually hasn't gotten smaller so I'm not sure how long we'll be waiting until we go back to the doc.

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My little monkey trying  to play with the water.  That's my strainer in their bathroom sink.  Seems like an obvious place to drain spaghetti.

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Working on the letter "F." We are doing no formal curriculum or anything with her but we've picked various things up at yard sales and she loves to work on them.  She gets really mad if I ever say that I can't help her because I have to help Calleigh with her school work because Calleigh's the student.  "I'm a real student too" she insists.

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I was letting them watch a movie we got at the church yard sale on Sunday.  It's the Scholastic movie of "Goodnight Gorilla." We've read the book a thousand times but Brady saw an advertisement in the DVD case for another movie with a monster and he freaked out when we tried to put "Goodnight Gorilla" on thinking it was that movie.  "I don't want the monster movie.  No, no, no!" But Calleigh had me sneak it on (since it was not that movie) and he freaked out.

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I know it's really mean that I took a picture of him crying like that.

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Scored this Lego table at a yard sale table for $10 today.  It also has a covering you can put on it if you want to just use it as a table.

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With the time change, we can now do the food trucks!  Colby has apple/blueberries on his upper lip in case you were concerned about the mustache.

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Love these two.

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Nothing quite says brotherly love like a big 'ole lick.