Actually, they were one month old a few days ago, but I just got around to posting the photos.  Hey - at least I took them on time!  Click the photo above to see lots more, plus a few of Levi.

PS - Reagan's on the left, Sera's on the right.  :-)

So, I finally got around to loading a bunch of photos to Flickr, and a bunch of videos to YouTube.

This is by far the best photo I've gotten of all three kids in a long time:



You can see more photos here: 3rottens on Flickr

And you can see videos here: 3rottens on YouTube

Enjoy!  :-)

Made you smile, didn't it?

We got Jonny's report card in the mail yesterday:

Social Relations with Peers: Appropriate
Academic Progress: Appropriate

Comments:
Jonny has made enormous progress with his fine motor skills.  He recently has been working on the North American and USA regional maps.  He has many friends and is thoughtful of others.  We often look for ways to motivate him in completing and closing his work independently.

PE - great!

Continues to make good progress in Spanish!

Music - Bravo!!


I'm still wondering who this "thoughtful" kid is, but hey... I guess if he's good in public, we're doing a good job, even if he's a total shit at home most of the time.  :-)

So anyone who took the time to read my "50 questions" meme has learned that Levi is in a cast.  He was chasing Jonny and Gracie around the house and totally wiped out in the kitchen.  Poor kid broke both bones in his right arm, just above his wrist.  It was broken badly enough that an orthopedic surgeon had to reset the bones before they could put the cast on.  The entire experience was quite awful, but he handled most of it really well.  After a couple of cranky-ish days, he's back to his usual self.  We go to the ortho clinic on Monday, where we'll find out how long he has to wear the cast.

One of his new favorite games is to whack himself in the head with his cast (on purpose) and say "Ow!" over and over again, because it makes everyone in the vicinity laugh.  Goofy kid.  Great - he's a clown AND a klutz.  I see many ER visits in our future!

Here are a couple of photos I took over the weekend:

   

Sorry you have to tilt your head to the side to look at the second one.  I'm too lazy to rotate it.  :-)

Jonny and Gracie are obsessed with this song:


I think we listened to it seven times on the way to work today.  I don't mind... it's way better than the Halloween CD my mom bought them.  Good gravy that thing is AWFUL.  There is one "song" that goes on for over 4 1/2 minutes, with just one monotoned-voiced man doing nursery rhymes, all with the same bizarre ending.  It goes something like this:

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, so she throwed* it out the window.  The window.  The window.  She throwed it out the window.
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his mincemeat pie.  He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, so he throwed it out the window.  The window.  The window.  He throwed it out the window.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.  The little dog laughed, so he throwed it out the window.  The window.  The window.  The throwed it out the window.
...
...
...
...

On and on and ON it goes, until I want to throw myself out the window.  Of course, my kids can't get enough of it.  Ugh.  So as a diversion, I burned a CD of all the songs I know they love.  It's much more tolerable:

Octopus's Garden - The Beatles
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song - The Flaming Lips
Another Postcard - Barenaked Ladies
Particle Man - They Might Be Giants
Message In A Bottle - The Police
Say Goodbye - The Sun
A Horse With No Name - America
California Dreamin' - The Mamas & The Papas
Wish I Could Fly Like Superman - The Sun
If I Had $1,000,000 - Barenaked Ladies
It's The End of the World As We Know It - R.E.M.
Birdhouse In  Your Soul - They Might Be Giants
Must Be You - The Sun
Stand - R.E.M.
Walking On The Moon - The Police
Yellow Submarine - The Beatles
One Week - Barenaked Ladies
And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles
Lost At Home - The Sun
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) - They Might Be Giants
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
Walk Like An Egyptian - The Bangles
Justice - The Sun

Perhaps a little heavy on Uncle Brad songs, but still WAY better than the deranged Halloween CD.

* I'm not entirely certain he's saying "throwed," but that's the closest I can get.  It might be "flung" or "flew" or "felled."  Despite hearing it over and over again, hundreds of times, I can't quite tell what he's saying, but it sounds an awful lot like "throwed."

On Saturday I learned that Jonny not only knows his home phone number, but can dial it on his own.  He and Gracie were at my mom and dad's house Saturday morning, and Jonny called me.  Mom swears she didn't help him at all.  He's been very interested in phone numbers for different people/places lately... interesting to know that our home phone number stuck without me officially "teaching" it to him.

In other Jonny amusement, Mom called while we were on the way to her house this morning, and Jonny grabbed my cell phone and answered it.  After saying "hello" and figuring out it was his Nana on the phone he said, "We're coming to your house.  Are you ready for some JON-NAY?!" in this psychotic voice that could only come from a five year old.

My child is weird.

Gracie started taking dance lessons a couple of weeks ago.  She's going to Judy Dollenmayer, which is where I took lessons for years, many years ago.  She's taking a tap/ballet combo, and she LOVES it.  After her first class she came out and said, "Mommy, that was AWESOME!"

She absolutely adores her tap shoes and her ballet shoes and her leotards, especially the ones with the little skirts.  After every class she comes home and shows anyone who will watch what she did that night.  She's so damned cute I just want to eat her!

Usually the parents don't get to watch the class, but they left the door open for a little while this week so we could peek.  I managed to snap a few photos and capture a little video.  The photos are a bit blurry because I turned the flash off.  I'll get better ones in a couple of weeks when the parents get to go in and watch the entire class.  Until then...


Gracie fell asleep in the car on the way to class Wednesday night, and was cranky when I woke her up.  She kept saying, "I don't want to dance, I just want to watch."  I told her to go in and tell her teacher that.  This is her sitting on the floor sulking a bit before the class began.  About five minutes after class started, she came out to go to the bathroom.  As I was pulling her leotard back up she said, "Mommy, I was just kiddin' ya. I really do want to dance."  Goofy girl.  I checked with the teacher after class, and she said she participated the entire time.

Click to see more!

Jonny turned five today.  I absolutely cannot believe that my baby is five.  And he is becoming just the coolest little kid.  He's still very sweet and loving... he gives lots of hugs and kisses, and we have this conversation often:

Jonny: "Mommy, I want to tell you something."

Me: "What?"

Jonny: "I like you.  And I love you.  And I like you."

Me: "I like you, and I love you, and I like you, too."

Followed by a gigantic hug, of course.

He loves riding his bike with the neighbor kids, zipping up and down the street as fast as he can.  He gets along well with everyone, and my neighbors all praise him as the "quiet one," which is funny, because the child will talk your ear off if you let him.  But he does play pretty quietly overall, and that's usually what they're getting at.  Although definitely all boy, he's not as rough-and-tumble as some of the other boys on our street.

His favorite movie is Cars, or "Talking Cars," as he calls it.  He and Gracie watch it every night, with only the occasional deviation.  He has pretty much the entire collection of the die-cast Cars characters, and he and his friends will sit and play with them for hours at a time.

He loves to be outside.  The hardest part of any given day is getting him to come in the house for any reason, but especially at night.  His eyebrows and a good portion of his hair have been bleached blonde by the sun.

His insanely blue eyes have only become more startling as he's gotten older, and he likes to put blue gel in his mohawk to match them.

He's very excited to start kindergarten this year, and even more excited that Gracie will be in the same class.  He talks about school often, and has been contemplating whether he'd like to have a Cars, Spiderman or SpongeBob lunchbox.

He is a fantastic big brother to Gracie and Levi.  He's especially protective of Levi, and keeps him away from the street and generally out of harm's way.  He's been even more interested in Levi now that he can walk and is talking a little.  He loves it when Levi says something new, and often translates his toddler babble into something more meaningful that only he understands.  He's gotten a bit possessive of his toys, but manages to share most of the time.  He definitely has the typical "I can pick on my sister but nobody else had better" attitude when it comes to Gracie.  Sometimes he truly just torments her, but the vast majority of the time they get along better than any other siblings I've seen.

He still eats almost anything you put in front of him.  His most recent new food was crawfish.  Within the first three he was pinching the tails and sucking the heads as if he'd been born in New Orleans. 

He can carry on conversations that confound me most of the time, and is insatiably curious.

Tonight he curled up beside me on the sofa and we watched Cars together.  Before he drifted off to sleep, he promised he'd be my baby boy forever.  Part of me wishes that were possible, but it's been so amazing watching him grow into the incredible little being that he's become... most of me just can't wait to see what's next.

The party was a success, but I still can't believe that Jonny will be five tomorrow.  I've been feeling pretty funky and sad about it; much the way I felt when he turned one.  He's quite excited about being five, though, and is already talking about what he wants to do when he turns six.  Whoa!  Slow down there, buddy!  Let's take one year at a time, ok?

The kids all had a blast with the water stuff.  Funny - the baby pool/sprinkler thing was the most popular!  They got a kick out of their goodie bag loot, with the "spider slime" being the biggest hit.  They figured out that if you put it in the water, it gets even slimier.  Lovely!

Jonny was hilarious.  Dad brought him over just before 1:00, and the first thing out of his mouth was, "I am ready to PAR-TAY!" complete with a little dance.  I already had all the Spiderman decorations up when he got there - he let out a big squeal when he saw them.

I was running around too much to take many photos, but I did get some.  Hopefully Sharon and my dad will send me some, too - they took a lot.


Click to see more!

I did manage to capture a few cute videos...

Lots of kids; one cake
The precursor to this video is that my mom always insists on cutting cake with dental floss, because it doesn't mess up the icing like a knife does.  This is true, but generally a bunch of kids don't care if the icing is messed up (and really, do adults?)  In my opinion it takes longer to cut cake with dental floss, and you still have to get a serving utensil to actually serve the cake, so why not just use a knife in the first place?

Anyway, we had this whole discussion, and she still insisted on using the dental floss, but then decided she needed to find a knife to cut some of the pieces, leaving one cake surrounded by several 3-5 year olds.  Did you really think they wouldn't touch the cake?



Car chase
Sharon's oldest, Christopher was playing with Levi's remote-control car.  Levi had fun trying to chase it down.  The extreme close-up at the end is one of our neighbor's kids, Evan.




As I was cleaning up later in the evening, I discovered that I'd forgotten to put out the potato salad.  I called my mom to laugh about it, and my dad ended up coming back over to have another burger and some "tater salad."  He took some home, and I brought the rest of it to work today.

Overall, it was a really good day.  Tomorrow is Jonny's actual birthday, so we'll do dinner over at mom and dad's in the evening.  I'm taking the day off work, and Lee doesn't have to be at work until 4pm, so we'll do something with him tomorrow, but I haven't figured out what yet.  Probably the zoo or COSI.

Prep for Jonny's birthday party is well underway.  All the veggies that need chopping are chopped for the veggie tray, onions are nearly carmelized for the french onion dip (no, I don't make it using a little packet of powdered soup!), potatoes for the potato salad are cooling, freezer pickles are done and sitting on the counter (I usually like to make them a couple days ahead of time, but it was a last-minute decision, and they should still have plenty of time to be well flavored), LTO is sliced and ready to go for the condiment tray, and I'm about to season the meat for the burgers.

Still need to:

- make the burger patties
- cut the chicken breasts down for grilling
- make the potato salad
- make the french onion dip
- make some sort of dip for the veggies... garlic and herb, maybe?
- clean up and put the kitchen back together

I bought a ridiculous amount of Spiderman decorations and other fun stuff at the party supply store earlier today.  Since Jonny and Gracie are spending the night at my mom and dad's, we'll do the decorating in the morning. 

Tomorrow morning, need to:

- go pick up the balloons and ice
- ice down the beverages
- decorate
- fill the pool
- setup the slip 'n slide
- fill the water balloons
- put together the goodie bags (might do that tonight)
- assemble the veggie tray
- assemble the condiment tray

We'll start grilling around 1:00, when the party is scheduled to start.  No one ever shows up on time, so I'm not worried about having food ready as soon as people arrive.

Hmm... I'm sure these lists are missing a few things.  Maybe not.  Guess I'll find out!

Edit: Yep - I was forgetting something.  Ice!!  Need lots of ice!

My neighbor, Jill, babysits my kids during the week while I work.  She has two kids - Josh is a week younger than Jonny, and Skylar is 2 and a half.

Jill sent me this video one morning last week.  Apparently, Levi figured out that if he pushes the button on Skylar's ride-on Barbie toy, it moves!

The day she sent it, I played it nearly every fifteen minutes all day long.  It's just so damned cute - you can't help but smile when you watch it!  Every time I played it, my officemates would say, "Play it again!"

If you listen carefully, you can hear Jonny saying "Levi's driving!" at the end. 

So Jonny will be five(!) next Tuesday, and we're having a Spiderman-themed party on Sunday.  We have a Spiderman slip'n'slide, swimming pool, and a bunch of other water toys (oh how I love having a child with a July birthday!)  Two of the toys are water shooters that are basically giant foam tubes.  Jonny was hoarding them last night, and Gracie wanted one.  After much negotiation and many threats, I finally just took one away from Jonny and gave it to Gracie.  Jonny proceeded to hit me with the other one.

Bad move.

I picked him up, put the toy in the garage and carried him to his bedroom where I deposited him on the bed.  He proceeded to scream - and I mean SCREAM - at the top of his lungs:

LET ME OUT!!  I WANT OUT!!  MOMMY!  MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMY!  I WANT OUT! LET ME OUT!  IWANTOUTLETMEOUTLETMEOUT.

Me: "You can come out when you've been quiet for four minutes."

I HATE WHEN YOU SAY FOUR MINUTES!  I WANT ONE MINUTE!  YOU ALWAYS SAY FOUR MINUTES!  MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMY!!  LET ME OUT!  I WANT OUT!!

Now, I should note at this point that he was not locked in his room.  In fact, his door was wide open.  You would have thought he was locked in a dungeon for all his shrieking, but let me assure you, he was not.

The ranting went on for, oh... 15 minutes or so.

What did I do the entire time?

Sat on the steps and laughed my ass off.

Seriously, it was hilarious.  There was no way I could *not* laugh at him.

He eventually stopped screaming long enough for me to let him come out of his room.  He apologized to both me and Gracie, and life went on as usual.  But man... that was funny.  I wish I had recorded it.

Someone asked me yesterday, "Why don't you blog?"  My response was that I write entries in my head all day long, but never manage to get them down.  With three kids, there are a zillion potential entries a day right there, nevermind the rest of my life.

But then I read journals other mothers keep about their kids... they started them when they were pregnant, and somehow manage to log every milestone, big and small, as it occurs.  And they have pictures to prove them!

Um, Jonny will be five next week.  The last time I touched his scrapbook was on his first birthday.  And Gracie and Levi?  Yeah, right.  Oh, don't get me wrong... I have tons of pictures.  I even have them all backed up in not one, but two places.  Wouldn't want to lose those pictures I keep meaning to get to someday, right?

Anyway, the thing about blogging, particularly blogging about the kids, is that I have this NEED to start at the beginning.  To go back to 2002 when Jonny was born, get all the pictures in order, tell all the stories that go along with them.  And then I get completely overwhelmed and just do nothing instead.

And then stuff like what just happened, happens... Levi, who always sleeps through the night, just woke up.  So I had to go get him, calm him down, fill his cuppy, change his diaper, and put him back in bed.  Of course, when I took him into his room a cat followed me.  Figuring it probably would be a bad idea to shut her in there for the night, I chased her - tiptoeing, mind you - around the room.  Oh yeah, I was quiet as a mouse, and Levi was almost asleep, until I cracked my toe on the damned giant toy-play-something in the middle of his room.  I managed not to yelp, but the giant-toy-play-something started blaring music.  And then Levi fell out of his bed, and I had to do the whole thing all over again.  Well, except change his diaper - that was still dry, thankfully.  And the second time around, I managed to chase the cat out without injuring myself.

Right, so - this is my life.  And I have no earthly idea what I was writing about prior to the Levi-waking-cat-chasing fiasco.  But I'm still writing, anyway, and that's something.  And I'm not going to worry about the fact that I'm not starting at the beginning.

This is it.  This is the beginning.

Hi!  I'm a blogger!