Top Seven Reasons

Here are the top seven reasons that I have gotten behind on my blogging. Well, I guess I should say the top seven reasons that I'm too tired at the end of the day to blog. I was getting too stressed thinking of all of the reasons so I decided to just stop at seven. I probably could have made it to twenty easily.

1. Brooke is a very sneaky girl.

Here's an example of that. Yesterday while Lenny was at school, Nathan and Brooke were in the family room watching a movie. I took this opportunity to vacuum the playroom. As soon as I turned the vacuum cleaner off, I heard drum sticks pounding on something. I peeked in the family room to find Brooke quickly placing the drum sticks back in the drawer all the while looking from side to side to see if I was coming. She then closed the door and quickly ran to the window and acted like she was looking at something outside. That girly knew that I would come in there after I turned off the vacuum cleaner so she was hiding the evidence and then pretended to be looking out the window. That's just one of many examples. Sneaky sneaky!

2. Nathan is an escape artist.

Nathan has decided to start getting out of his bed when he is supposed to be sleeping at night or for nap time. He comes out of the room, goes to the top of the stairs and yells, "Mom!". Anyone who has heard him do that knows that it sounds like a yell at me instead of a calling for me. Anyway, I ended up putting one of those child safety knobs on his door handle. Please note that I do have a video monitor on him so I can still see him in his room--just not at the door. Well, one day after putting that on the knob, he was in his room and the next thing I knew, I heard "Mom!" at the top of the stairs. That little escape artist has figured out how to open the door with the child safety knob on it. Some adults have a difficult time opening a door with those. Nothing keeps that kid where he doesn't want to be. There's no reason for us to keep that on his door anymore.

3. Lenny is a computer hog.

Okay, it's not like he is on the computer all the time but it seems like every time I get ready to sit down to do some work on the computer, he is already on it. He does have to get permission before he gets on the computer and he is very good about doing that. He is so very good at using the computer. He even shows me how to do things sometimes. And I can't really complain because all of the websites that he visits are educational and he learns alot from them.

4. Brooke and Nathan are climbers.

They will climb on anything and they are not afraid of heights at all. Months ago I had to start storing their (restaurant style) high chairs in the closet because they would use them as ladders. I would leave the room for a second and come back to find Brooke sitting in the kitchen sink. They think they are acrobats and crawl from one chair to the other while they are supposed to be eating. They are getting a little better about it though.

Just tonight I was making dinner and the kids were playing in the playroom. All of the sudden I heard two little voices saying "Mommy! Mom!" I went to the playroom and this is what I found.

Yes, it is dinner time and they are still in their pajamas. It was just one of those days. They did get a bath after dinner and put on clean pajamas for bed.

5. I feel like I dress six kids every morning.

Brooke and Nathan both love to take their clothes and diapers off. They are very proud and think it is hilarious. Nathan proudly walks in the room all naked and throws his clothes in front of us and runs away. Brooke just takes hers off and then walks in the room with a huge ornery smile on her face. Seriously, this happens several times before we ever get out the door to go somewhere in the morning. I tried waiting until right before we leave but that doesn't make much of a difference because some days they won't strip and other days they will. They like to keep me guessing and keep me on my toes.

6. Clean one room as another one gets trashed.

I know all parents go through this. Please tell me they do. It's so frustrating to clean house with them around. I start on one room and as I'm leaving it and smiling about how nice it looks, I notice that the kids have completely trashed another room. How in the world can they get every toy that they own out in a matter of seconds! And I don't understand how they can move 50 Thomas engines to another room in a few minutes and it takes me forever to get them all back to where they belong. I must say though that a lot of the time they are pretty good at helping me clean up. They are not allowed to leave the upstairs without cleaning up their toys first. We don't have such a rule for downstairs though. I need to work on that.

7. Cleaning up the kitchen.

My most dreaded chore of the day. It's a never ending process. Make breakfast, clean the kitchen, have a snack, clean the kitchen, make lunch, clean the kitchen, eat a snack, clean the kitchen, make dinner---this is where it gets really nice--Dominic cleans the kitchen after dinner. Wahoo!

Speaking of cleaning the kitchen, I had to pull out the manual for the dishwasher today to find out how to use the child lock so that they would stop turning on and off the dishwasher. I never had to worry about that with Lenny. They do like to help me by pushing the buttons but then they think they can always do it on their own later.


So those are the reasons that I'm so completely exhausted by the end of the day that I just want to do nothing at all except for maybe play Rock Band. Okay Gloria, you're right!

Here are a few pictures of my little sweeties! They are really good kids and are so sweet and loving that I feel bad for all that I wrote about above. :-)

Just seconds after taking the picture above, Nathan tried to get out of the basket and he tripped as he was getting out. He fell right on his head. It didn't even phase him at all, he got up and kept going. Dominic, Lenny and I started laughing. Then Lenny said, "I'm sure glad he had that helmet on his head."

Lenny is a very good big brother to Brooke and Nathan. He loves to teach them things and help them learn new words to say. Which by the way, they are doing great with their speech. Brooke has really amazed me lately and Nathan now puts two words together occasionally.

Anyway, this morning Lenny got out Brooke and Nathan's flash cards. He was showing them the card and then asking them to repeat after him. He would say "These are keys. Can you say keys." Well, Brooke and Nathan just love it when Lenny does that and they pay real close attention to him. They repeat after him. And then Lenny reads the back of the cards to them to ask them questions. He amazed me at how well he did at reading the cards. I was very surprised and he didn't need help from me at all. They love their big brother and it just makes me want to cry when I see them doing something like that together.

Lenny enjoyed that green donut that Nunny got for him.



I love my kids very much! They might wear me out everyday but I still wouldn't trade this time with them for anything. They also make me laugh an awful lot every day.