Life is boring when these beautiful people leave town

      It's a little bit of a weird feeling to wake up in our house and have it be (as Elijah is gesturing above) QUIET!

     And let me be clear-- the only reason it's quiet is because most of the inmates have left the asylum.




      That little boy is now delighting his grandparents and (finally) relinquishing his grip on the Queen's leg after a day of clinging to her as if she were going to leave him in the Mid-Atlantic region without warning.

      Elijah is waking up at 4am, ready to play.... I'm honestly not sad I missed that-- that's about when I went to bed the other night!

     This knight-- is realizing that he leads a pretty boring life.

     My to-do list for the weekend:

                           1) Refinish the kitchen table

                           2) Refinish the end table 

                            3) Do a 2000-pc puzzle

                            4)  Retile the kitchen window

                            5)  Trim the kitchen window

                           6) Stay up until ungodly hours of the night because I will never get to again 


                           7) Clean up after myself



             As a brief aside, #7 is far and away the one on the list least likely to get done :)

             Not exactly all that exhilarating... oh well, at least I have these lovely beauties coming back in a couple days!!!

                                         

From the mouth of the LJ

   Well, I'm humbled by the last post that my wife wrote, (http://lifeonkingarthurscourt.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-my-husband-is-amazing-father.html) and not the least of which is that I wasn't going to read the little man anything until I looked in his eyes and saw how much he just wanted to spend some time with me... that sort of sealed the deal, so to speak.  It's hard to resist your children when they're begging for crap like chintzy toys or candy, but when all they want is to snuggle up and read you a book, even Game 6's can't stand up against that.  I am, however, begging that since the Bruins did force a Game 7, the experiment not be repeated tomorrow night (LJ, if you can read this, don't do it).   ;)

 

 In all seriousness, it did get me thinking about all the random stuff that the gentleman grinning above says.  So, in short-but-sweet fashion, here are four head-scratchers straight from his mouth:

      1)   LJ:  "Daddy!  Now I'm a gentleman." (holding a pencil between his teeth)

             Me: (looking up):  "What is that?"

             LJ:  "It's my mustache, of course!"



     2)   LJ: (running around in only a diaper)  "Now I'm naked... until I put my bra on."  (Pretty sure we may have some confusion as to where that article goes)



     3)  Me:  "It's bedtime."

          LJ:  "Now I'm very hungry.  May I have juice and grapes and crackers before bed, please?"
 

   
     4)  LJ:  (Looking down from his pew at church during confession): "What are THOSE??"
                      (Points at the feet of the person kneeling in front of us)  You make them leave NOW!"

 ... Sometimes, there are no words.




       Have a wonderful night everyone!
     

Why My Husband is an Amazing Father.

Hi all! In case the title of this blog post wasn't enough, this is the Queen writing. The eldest knight graciously relinquished the blog tonight so I could write this post and, no I didn't tell him what my topic was going to be, so he will be as surprised as you when he reads it!

My husband is an amazing father for a multitude of reasons including providing for us, taking care of bath nights and bed times, letting me work two nights a week and get out for the occasional mommy coffee and the list goes on and on. He has proven from the birth of our sons that he is capable, loving, and well suited for the job of father. And he strives to be a godly father as well, not just a good one. Tonight, though, something amazing happened. Something totally unexpected and impressive.

Seriously.

Micah is a HUGE sports fan. Like- we scheduled our honeymoon AROUND the church softball league's ball games. Often when he watches sports, it's the one time I'm only comfortable having other sport FANATICS over to the house because Micah is INTENSE about his sports games; walking around pacing during the entire game or setting the rest of the night up based on winning or loosing. Did I mention how INTENSE he is?!?

Well, this afternoon was the Bruins playoffs game 5, an important game for Bruins fans, and we had arranged for me to watch the boys so Micah could watch the game in the basement (we are still working on the younger two knights as currently they don't seem to have much interest in all things competitive). While Judah and I were eating dinner, Elijah had a total meltdown because I said I would not read him Curious George Flies a Kite as I was eating dinner. Total meltdown. In fact, he ended up downstairs, sobbing desperately, in Micah's face, persistently, for him to read the book. I sat on the edge of my seat waiting to see what Micah would do. Send him away? Discipline him? Get angry at me for letting Elijah downstairs in the first place? Guess again!

Micah turned off the TV, came upstairs, sat on the couch, and read one of the longer Curious George books we own to our three year old. (insert picture of me with my mouth wide open here).

Whoa!

Seriously?

Have I mentioned how much I love this man!

And that is one of the many, many, many reasons my husband is an AMAZING father!

Have a great night!

Judah's Delight

Judah is simply a joyful child. He has a certain joie de vivre that is impossible to stifle, which is an excellent trait to have when you are a second child. Much as I wish the stereotype weren't true, it does seem that we have less time for him than we did LJ, and he always seems to have a looming giant of an older brother (sometimes loving and benevolent, sometime not as much) to overshadow him. Maybe that's why it's the more impressive that he seems to have an indomitable spirit of joy. I hope that these pictures give you a little of the essence of our smaller madman's heart.

(*Enjoying himself helping Daddy make coffee)

("Too close! A little too close!!")

(" I do look handsome with my accessory blue pacifier, don't I?")

("A drink! Don't mind if I do!!")

Have a wonderful night all!!

Pride Cometh Before a ... Gymnastics Meet??

Well, only at church.

(If the above statement cleared anything up for you, either you attend my church or you're clairvoyant.)

The slightly abridged version of this story picks up just before the Eucharist / Holy Communion (... slight pause. Is there such a thing as unholy communion? Sometimes the adjectives in church baffle me a wee bit.) at our church, Christ the Redeemer in Danvers. I trotted off to the nursery to retrieve Elijah from the baby mosh pit where Rachel was helping out in her regular rotation.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that in addition to being a 'good' dad, I wanted to be perceived as an AWESOME dad. Those stereotypical dads who couldn't find a diaper if it was taped to their hands? Not this killer commando. I can handle two babies like no one's business -- I do 2.5 nights a week anyway, right? So when I got there, I volunteered to take Judah for Communion as well. Rachel gave me a little bit of hard time about it (which in retrospect was simply the sweet voice of wisdom), and this of course led one of the other volunteers, a very sweet woman in her early 60s or so, to make a comment to Rachel about how I might be getting a little out of my league. Um... does anyone remember the saying, "Don't poke the bear!"

This bear's pride was officially poked. I all but demanded that Judah come with me, and in the end, Rachel acquiesced. I'm pretty sure that she was thinking, "What's the worst that could happen?

Hmmm... I'm just glad she didn't get to see what actually did happen. One of the boys immediately started grousing for food, so while I looked for food, the other one scuttled down the aisle with a speed that flew in the face of his little baby-gut. Right after I corraled him, his brother declared (a wee bit louder than I was hoping that he wanted "different else" (something different) to eat. Being on the losing end of the leverage battle here, I transported him to my shoulders, where he was finally happy, save for the angry whispers that he "was NOT going to take commooon-iyan." Judah, meanwhile, was mewing to get up where Elijah was, which even to my addled brain seemed like a bad idea. Thankfully, at this point Auntie Catherine saved the day by offering to take Judah.

Except-- Judah not only refused to go to her, he started to shake his head violently and get upset at her for offering (agh!) So I did the only thing I knew to do. Since Elijah was now covering most of my eyes, I found Judah by sonar and scooped him up on my hip.

I'm pretty sure this is where Catherine whispered somewhat gleefully, "you look like a human jungle gym."

I'm not really sure how we got through communion... it's all a bit of a blur, but I am sure we didn't desecrate anything holy, for which I am thankful.

And that's how one prideful act can turn church into MallTots. I'm pretty sure it won't happen again; then again, with my ego level, it probably will. Oh well.

Renewing a Tradition

This morning (I know, it's 6am-- but thanks to the miracle of the Internet you can read this whenever you wake up... like 9am)our little brood of boys is about to bring back a tradition-- the walk to the "Dunkin Donuts house", which for those locals is the nice mansion Dunkin Donuts on Cabot Street, not the sketchy plaza one on the other side of Rantoul.

This has been one of our absolute favorite things to do since Elijah was say, three days old... although to be fair back then he was a cheaper date. Judah has never been a cheap date. He eats a lot of everything. Which is good when you're trying to feed him vegetables; it's bad when you're trying to cultivate a savings account. Anyways, it's a special tradition. We wander all around Cabot Street and the surrounding little intersecting streets, listening to Elijah narrarate what's going on.

"What's that, Daddy? ... oh, look at all the cars... who's that man? ... look at the lady's pretty earrings!! ..." Every once in awhile he actually expands my worldview by talking to someone that probably wasn't going to fit into my daily calendar, like chatting up the lady serving us coffee or bellowing out "why is the man is going through the trash cans?" So I love him all the more for it.

So far, Judah has been a silent third wheel on these walks, content to eat his Munchkins or bagel or whatever we're having. I have a feeling that's about to change. But until then, if you see three madmen tramping around Cabot Street at 6:30 in the morning, reeking of fresh doughnuts, you're up too early! (Knew there was a punchline coming somewhere, didn't you?)

Does your family have any early-morning traditions that you treasure??

Burgers + fries + me = bad news

So I was sooooooo hungry today that I convinced my beautiful wife to let me get $10 out of the bank (in case you haven't figured out, I can make a lot of money but impulse control = 0; she works two nights a week but manages to keep our little pile intact) and hit up Five Guys on my way out to my second job of the day. I was really psyched, 1) because I was aforementionedly soooo hungry, and 2) because Cajun fries are the best! At least so I remembered.

Um, not anymore. I have ruined all my favorite foods by eating more healthily over the past year and losing weight. Ice cream? Used to love it. Now, I can tell that it really messes with me because ten minutes after, I feel awful. Dunkin Donuts? The best. I ate one chocolate donut a week back after not having any Dunkins for two months and was ill for two hours. And the latest victim of my stupid healthy eating habits? Burgers and fries. I marched in, got a basic burger with a small package of fries, and chowed down in the truck on my way to demolish a gazebo. The only thing that got demolished was me. It put me in such a bad (and sluggish) mood that poor Elijah danced in asking me, "I go to Ina's now?", waited for one second, decided that the asleep-while-standing giant in front of him needed awakening, and swatted me. Except that today, of all days, I didn't want to be swatted and had lifted him off his feet and swept him into the living room in one quick motion. I think I scared him a little bit.

Thankfully, the Queen was on high alert and quickly translated for both sides (LJ could go over to Ina's, and Daddy is just a tired maniac, but not dangerous) ... anyways, the new rule in this house is-- more greens and less meat!! (I hate my life.) So what are we having for dinner? You guessed it-- steak and onion ring salad!!

No, seriously-- you can't make this stuff up!

Have a wonderful night all!!!