Favorite? Yes, Yes I Do

Let me preface this post saying that I equally love all three of my children, but that being said, I like them all at very different levels at this point of my life. I reserve the right to change which child I like best from week to week.

Because of my last post my parents accused me of having a favorite, I will now do a side by side comparison of the children and let you decide for yourself. June will not be compared because for every category she would do the same thing basically just sit there and either smile or fuss, which doesn't make for a very fun blog post.

First Thing in the Morning

GEM - Fairly regularly at 6:30 Gem climbs into my bed and begins to cough on me. I try to pretend it isn't happening for as long as I can until her phlegm, literally, forces me out of bed.

LEVI - He is happily trapped in his crib until I decide to come get him, and he never complains about it.

When Spoken To

GEM - No matter what sentence comes out of my mouth, Gem looks at me and says "But mommy . . . ". I have begun to fear even talking to her, a regular conversation goes like this.
Me- "Gem pick a story for me to read to you."
Gem - "But mommy I need to put my clothes in the hamper."
Me - "K, fine put your clothes away, and then pick a story to read"
Gem - "But mommy I don't want to read a princess story"
Me - "That's fine, just pick a different story to read."
Gem - "But mommy, we should read a story before we say prayers"
Me (in desperation) - "Just pick a story"
Gem - "But mommy. . . "
Me (I cut her off) - "No don't say 'but mommy' just PICK A STORY!"
Gem - "But mommy . . ."
Me - "Gem if you say 'but mommy' again, I am not going to read you a story"
Gem (in tears)- "But mommy I want to read a story."
Me - "Fine pick a story"
Gem - "But mommy!"
And by this point my soul has been sucked from my body. And that is just a short conversation. And that is what happens EVERY TIME I try to communicate with my daughter.

LEVI - When I speak to him, he pays attention, looks into my eyes, and agrees with me by saying "Ta".

When Asked to Do Something

GEM - As you can imagine, Gem replies with whatever I ask her to do with one of these three options. "But mommy that is too hard for me" or "But mommy will you help me do that" or "But mommy when I am done you can give me a snack".

LEVI - When I ask him to do something, he looks at me, interprets it in his little baby mind, and then tries valiantly to do whatever he thinks I am asking him. For example if I say "Levi go get in the car" he toddles to the garage door and really tries to open it. If I say "Levi go get in your chair it's time for lunch", he literally races as fast as he can to his chair. Or when I say "Levi time to get in the bath", he heads to the bathroom and attempts to dive head first into the bathtub.

When Frustrated

GEM - When Gem tries to do something and it doesn't work out for her, she begins to wail as though she just saw her entire family shot down before her eyes.

LEVI - When Levi gets frustrated he makes a frustrated noise, and then goes and does something else.

When They Want Something

GEM - I think Gem honestly believes that I am her personal slave, and when she desires something she sits wherever she is in the house and shouts "MOMMY!". It is irrelevant where she is in the house, where I am in the house, or how many babies are asleep at the time. She will keep repeating her screeching every half second until I respond to it. And when I do respond to it goes something like this.
"MOMMY!"
"MOMMY!"
"MOMMY!"
"MOMMY!"
"MOMMY!"
"What Gem?"
"Give me my milk."
"Gem your milk is on the table, you can get it yourself."
"But mommy!"

LEVI - On the other hand, when Levi wants something he just takes care of it himself, by climbing over any obstacle in the way (including people, furniture, or babies) and he doesn't even alert me.

When I Say No

GEM - This is the only time when the "But Mommy" tactic isn't employed. In most cases when I tell her to stop doing something she employs the strategy of pretending she can't hear me.

LEVI - When I say no to Levi he looks at me and basically employs the same strategy as Gem. Well, he can't be better at everything that wouldn't make sense.

Dinner Time

GEM - Every few nights we put an item of food on Gem's plate that she decides she doesn't want to eat. Whenever we do this it means the entire time we are eating dinner we have to listen to her talk about whatever food item she doesn't like, even while she is eating it. It isn't really worth the trouble

LEVI - He quietly snarfs any food item that comes into his vicinity.


There you have it. I defy you to live in this house for longer than ten minutes and not have a child that you like more then the other child.

Some Reasons We Love Levi

3 Happy Kids

OK, June and Levi can't actually tell me if they are happy. I am just assuming that they are.

The light in this picture makes it look like I planned it :)

Levi is trying to escape into the unsafe grass. He would be very very unhappy if I actually let him crawl out there. It is still very full of puncture weeds. But compared to 5 months ago it looks amazing.

Baby June

She is getting bigger and bigger. She likes to sit in the red saucer, but it is funny because she is a little too small for it, and it looks like she is hanging on for dear life.

A Tale of Three Couches

For those of you who have sat on couch number one, you

can probably understand why we have kept in the back of our minds, for the last several months, that we definitely needed a new couch.

So when I saw the cream leather sectional in the classifieds for $150 we jumped on it (not literally). We borrowed a neighbors truck and headed down to get it. We sat on it at their home and it was pretty comfy, so we brought it to our home. As soon as we brought it in the house I realized we had made a terrible mistake. It was too big, and the color was just sad. I was very upset, because now we had two couches, neither of which I really wanted.

My husband saw my distress and promptly put both couches on the classifieds. Couch number 1 sold within hours for $200, and couch numero dos sold the next day for the $150 we sold it for.

So now we were up $200, but we had no living room furniture. This prompted a Saturday couch sitting spree. We went to 4 different furniture stores, spending literally half the day sitting on various couches. Until finally it was almost dinnertime
and I saw the couch that I wanted. Perhaps it was starvation setting in but I fell in love with the couch from the first glance. It is a beautiful light blue microfiber, it is comfy, and it has silver studs on the front. It has been almost a week and I am still in love with our new couch. All the couch needed was a companion, which my parents generously provided in the way of the "comfy green chair", that has been sitting in their computer room hardly used for years.

And now the saga is complete (except that I will probably make some pillows). The End.

Full of It

We'll put this bluntly. . .

Our son poops a lot.

And by "a lot" we mean half a dozen times per day. We think he is actually breaking laws of physics and creating mass, because he doesn't even eat six times per day.

Yesterday we had an hour and a half drive home from the cabin, and we figured the kids would all sleep because they had been busy all day. Levi remained cheerfully awake the entire time home. An hour into the drive Levi expressed one of the potential reasons he had not fallen asleep.

Not only had he soiled himself for the fourth time that day (so far), he had done so to the extent that it could no longer be contained by his diaper and overalls.

At this point Levi did what any self-respecting 13 month would do. . .

He wiped it on his face.

We love our boy to death, but needless to say he didn't get any kisses that night.