My baby isn't a baby...

What happened? All of a sudden I woke up the other day and my baby girl was no longer a baby. She's in a big girl bed, she plays by herself, she TALKS all the time, she uses please & thank you. When did this happen? Good thing I have another one on the way to fill my baby hole. Tatum is turning into such a sweet, loving, demanding, adorable little girl and I couldn't prouder.

Cats Outta the Bag!

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm totally knocked up again!

I am 9 weeks pregnant and due in July with our 3rd spawn!

Despite the constant nausea, migraines, and a bout of the flu so far, we couldn't be more excited.

I guess this explains all of the complaining I've been doing and me being so sick. ;) Hopefully there will only be about 3-4 more weeks of complaints. Then it's on to the fun part! We decided we aren't going to find out the gender of this baby since we already have one of each. So few surprises in life, I think this will be a fun one!

Thank you to everyone for all of your support and encouragement. I can't wait to meet this little, or most likely NOT so little, one come July!

Go green.

I never used to be conscious of the whole recycle thing. I mean, I would return my soda cans, but that was 5 cents a piece I was getting! It wasn't until I got married that my husband made me more aware of my recycling habits and helped me turn them around.

Here a few of the things we do at home to try and do our part...

I NEVER buy wrapping paper, tissue paper, gift bags or ribbons for presents. I reuse all the tissue paper, bags and ribbons from presents we have received.

I use paper bags at the grocery store instead of plastic.

I cut apart the paper grocery bags I have and use the blank side as the outside for wrapping presents. Then I use all of my pretty ribbon or bows I've received to snazzy them up. It's really beautiful, especially at Christmas time with the same colored wrapping and all the beautiful bows!

Lighter.Safer.Greener wants to know what you're doing to help save our planet!

Pumpkin Madness

A couple weekends ago we did our annual pumpkin retrieval trek. This year we headed out to Greenbridge Farm in Jefferson for $1 pumpkins. The kids were ready in their boots and Braeden pulled Ryllie & Spencer nearly all the way out to the field in the wagon...
The kids hitched a ride with the pumpkins on the way back...
There was an entire covered area that had a hay tunnel and a wheatbox for the kids to play in for free. And since there wasn't anyone else around, the kids had free range.
Tate & Connor sat in the wheatbox playing while the older kids played on the hay.

The McIntyres

The Jones'

The night before Halloween we spent the evening carving pumpkins on a makeshift mat on the living room floor. The kids just ran around playing while all the adults did the hard work. I swear, one day, they'll have to do all of this themselves!
L-R Spencer drew 3 silly faces that I carved out, Sheri carved Ryllie's castle & Nathan carved Braeden's autobot pumpkin.
Our house still smells of pumpkin guts.

My baby turned 4.

My son turned 4 & I didn't even blog about it! What?! I'm a terrible mother. On October 125th, my bucket, that's right, his nickname is Mommy's bucket, turned four! It was 4 years ago that I gave birth to my 10 pound 4 ounce Mister man. I can't believe he's four. I know everyone says this, but it went by so fast. So much has happened. He has grown into the sweetest, most stubborn, caring, inquisitive little boy.

He's always been one to just go go go, I suppose that's why I keep asking him to slow down and stay little for me. He says he can't. That he has to grow up to be a Daddy and get his own house. What is that? What four year old wants to grow up and move out?

A few milestones:
First smile: 3 wks old

First laugh: 8 wks old

First word other than Mama & Dada: kitty

Crawling: 7 months old

Walking: 11 months oldTalking in full sentences: 18 months old

Refusing to eat anything but yogurt and cereal: 1-2 1/2 years old
Potty trained: 2 1/2 years old
Complete drop down massive tantrums: 2 1/2 years old-3
Obsession with Transformers: 3 1/2-present

3 wks

1 year

2 years

3 years

4 years old!

I really truly believe that Spencer is growing into a caring, loving, thoughtful little boy. At random he tells me that he loves me and that I'm pretty. What girl wouldn't want to keep that boy forever? Too bad he wants to grow up so fast! I love you Spencer Zane.

The Heart of our Home...

As a child, our family spent most of our quality time together in the "great room." We always ate dinner together and watched Jeopardy afterwards (while my older brother sat at the table yelling out the answers as he ate... VERY slow eater). Another big thing we did together was watch movies and eat homemade caramel popcorn. But times have changed a lot since I was a wee tyke...

Now that I have a family of my own, I've found that we spend a lot of our time together in our bedrooms playing with the kids. I don't remember both of my parents down on the floor playing with us very often. Perhaps it's because there was 4 of us and we entertained each other, but I find that our happiest and most memorable times are spent hanging out on the floor of Spencer & Tatum's room playing airplane or Saturday & Sunday mornings when we all linger in bed tickling, tackling & teasing the kiddos. I never thought that the heart of our home would be the place we sleep, especially since as a child it was the place we never wanted to go since the "go to your room" statement always meant we were in trouble. I hope that we continue to spend a lot of time playing with and enjoying our children while they still want us to.

What do you think? Where is the heart of your home? Leave me a comment & if you do, you'll help me win a new Samsung washer & dryer courtesy of Twittermoms! Then I'll be able to do even more laundry and fold it in our bedroom with the kids! I've recently discovered Spencer & Tatum LOVE to find our pile of unfolded clean laundry in our room and play dress up. Very entertaining...

Spencer's Imagination

So I'm new to this whole preschool thing so I have a couple questions...

A) Is it normal for my usually very outgoing child to NOT want to tell me what happened at school?

B) Is it normal for him to make things up that never actually happened?
First day of school he had yams for snack... not.
He almost got a time out for not putting a toy away... not.
Today he stood on top of the table and didn't get to eat the rest of his snack... not.

So when I ask his teacher, she's is just like, huh? What are you talking about?

I am so confused. I am not really sure what to believe. I don't know why he's making things up... Is preschool not exciting enough that he has to fabricate stories?