Little baby...

Sawyer is in a little whinning phase. Well, I guess I am under exaggerating little whinning phase, I mean a BIG whinning phase. The first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is whine.... when he wants juice he whines.... pretty much whatever comes out of his mouth is a WHINE. Now, I can't blame it all on him because my mom said that is how I was when I was a litle girl too, so it might be a genetic thing. "Sorry Mama for putting you through that!!"

Well this morning, Braxton even got tired of hearing his "BIG BROTHER" whine because while we were just sitting there eating our waffles, Sawyer starts talking in his whinning voice, "Mama, I want more chocolate in my milk." "Mama, Braxton is looking at me." "Mama, I want a fork." "Mama, I don't want this."

Well, the frustrated mother in me, whom is trying to teach him to speak like a big boy instead of like a baby says exactly that, "Speak like a big boy, not a little baby!"

Braxton then starts cracking up and starts pointing at his "BIG BROTHER" saying:
"Baby, Little Baby" Laugh...Laugh. "Saw Saw Little baby!" Laugh..Pointing at him again "Little baby, little baby." (As I was laughing so hard I almost peed in my pants.)

This makes Sawyer so mad that he starts whinning even more saying, "I am not a little baby, I am not a little baby."

Although I know I shouldn't have laughed at Sawyer, it helped to teach him a lesson. I told him that even though he is the BIG BROTHER, that his little brother even thought that he was acting like a baby and that is why he was saying that. At that time, it snapped with Sawyer and in his BIG BOY VOICE he looked right at Braxton and said, "I AM A BIG BOY, AND I AM NOT A BABY BRAXTON!"

It worked..... for a little while anyway!!!

When will "the baby" come????

36 weeks pregnant today and counting down the days! I usually don't post any pictures of me, but I do want "the baby" to know that I am so ready to see "IT."

Besides the fact that I have contractions all day long, I feel like I have a bowling ball between my legs (my fault for marrying a big headed husband), the pressure and the jabbing pain, and finally I have developed a RASH all over my belly that itches like crazy.... I really am so happy to be pregnant with this sweet baby!

So if things go as planned... like the past two pregnancies I will be introducing little GIRL or little BOY to the world really soon!!!! Like in a 1 or 2 weeks if things go by the last two pregnancies! Let's cross our fingers!

A little late and little early!!!!

It was Dalton's 7th birthdy on July 29th and I have just downloaded pictures from that night, but I just wanted to make sure that I wished him a HAPPY BIRTHDAY and let him know that we ALL love him so much! Sawyer and Braxton especially love him because they talk about him all the time and copy everything he does. Sawyer wants to play baseball like Dalton, he wants to play with Dalton, he wants to be like Dalton and if I am lucky, he will be just like Dalton!!!




Then here is a blog that is a little early.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARKER! He will be turning 3 Monday the 17th and we are so excited to celebrate with him. Parker is one of a kind!! He is so dag on cute you could just squeeze him with all your might! His personailty is contagious, he can make you laugh at what he does and says everytime you are around him! When he runs around with the batman mask on and growls at Sawyer to scare him, is the funniest thing you will ever see (Sawyer doesn't like mask very much). We are so lucky to have our wonderful nephews living down the road from us and we love ya'll so much!!!






AND LISA, ALTHOUGH THESE BLOGS ARE MAINLY ABOUT THE KIDS.... I WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU KNEW HOW MUCH WE LOVE YOU TOO AND HOPE YOU HAVE A HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY AS WELL!!!!

When I don't have a camera....

When I don't have a camera:

1. Scott's Grandmother's 84 birthday, and she honestly doesn't look a day older then 70!
2. Sawyer decides that he wants to jump off the side of the pool for the first time by himself!
3. Sawyer decides he wants to jump off the DIVING BOARD for the first time by himself!
4. Braxton decides he wants to jump off the side to me or Scott, and then he decides he wants to jump off the DIVING BOARD to Scott!!!!! I was shocked!


Of course I don't have a camera this weekend to capture these moments... but it was a fun weekend! NOW, I am home without the kids for a few days because my wonderful mother in law has taken them for a few days! I have not had any contractions today, I got a massage so my back feels better and I got a lot of stuff done for the baby's room today!!! It is amazing how much stuff you can get done in a QUIET house!! But I miss my babies!

Just a blog about the kids.... figures!

I always get the question... Why did you have all your kids so close together? Or are you crazy to have all your kids that close? Or was that planned????

My answer is "of course" it was planned! I want my kids close in age for many reason:

1. So they will grow up as friends and be able to play together well.
2. So they will support each other in school.
3. So they can back up each other if anyone messes with each other.

There are other reason too, but these are just a few. Now, I know that mine are not as close as some people, but they are close enough for me!!!

Well, this past few months, I questioned myself on why I decided to have a 3rd, or why I decided to have them so close because Sawyer and Braxton have been driving me up the wall! Now, I know they are 3 and 20 months old, and they are just going through a phase, but I just wasn't sure if all the reason's I had planned on having them close together was actually going to happen. BUT, the past 2 weeks I have seen it all transform. Even though the two fight still, they have started playing together well, and figuring out how to push each others buttons one minute and the then the next minute being rolling on the floor laughing. I just sit back and smile when I see this happening, because I can see them actually becoming friends as well as brothers!

Last night we were out to eat with some friends and a lady turned around in the booth behind us and said that Braxton had the prettiest blue eyes she had ever seen. Well, my outgoing little one loved that someone was talking about him, so he started talking back (as good as he could). He started introducing the whole family to this lady. BUT, first, he had to introduce "Saw Saw", while slapping his head as hard as he could. He pointed to me and Scott and introduced us "MaMa, and Daddeee", but went right back to "Saw Saw", while slapping his head and then hugging him around the neck! You can tell how much he loves his big brother! So sweet.

When I get home from work, and Braxton knows that I always bring Sawyer home with me from his school.... he screams when the door opens "SAWWWW SAWWWWW". he is so excited to see him. They hug for a few seconds and the aggravating begins... but it the love and protectivness that I already see that makes me happy with my decsions to have 3 so close together. I can over look some of the things that drive ME crazy when I see this all transforming!!!

BEST FRIENDS... and BROTHERS!

I am going to write my own parenting book!!!

Just joking... but one thing that Scott and I have been doing is using something completely opposite of what all those parenting books tell you to do. Now this may come and bite us you know where before long, but it is so funny for the time being that is it worth it!!!

As all of you know, 3 years olds seem to all go through this rebellion phase. For example, if you tell them the sky is blue, on no, it is red! Or when it is dinner time, they want their batman snack, or something completely opposite of what you have for them.

So, what Scott and I have been using is: REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY


Here is a typical conversation with Sawyer about going to bed now days...

"Time for bed Sawyer"
"NOOOOO, I don't want to go to bed." He then lays on the ground, throws a tandrem, screams and cries, gets up and runs around screaming how he is not going to bed.

So, now, we have started using reverse psychology, here is a typical conversation:

"It is time for bed Sawyer"
"Nooooo, i don't want to go to to bed" (think of all Sawyer's comment in that 3 year old whining voice.)
"Okay, that is fine, you can stay up all night, watch TV, eat cookies and do whatever you want."
"Are you going to stay up with me?" Whinning
"No, we are going to bed."
"I don't want to stay up all night, I want to go to bed!!!!" whinning
"Well, you need to be a good boy then and we will let you go to bed, but if you are a bad boy, you will have to stay up all night!!!"
"I will be a good boy!" NO WHINNING!!!!!

He then walks up the steps, climbs in his bed.... and goes right to bed.

No, chasing, spanking, fighting him to stay in his bed..... just climbs right in!!!


It is working for the moment.... so we are taking advantage and giggling while doing it!!!!

Thank you!!!!

No pictures.... but a big thank you for my friend Melinda, my mom and my husband for helping me alot for my final vacation to the beach this year!!! We went to our cottage at Surf City for a week, the weather was perfect, only had to leave the house to get pizza and to go to dollar general, and relaxed/played with the kids on the beach! It was so much fun to be with good friends and family! It was a real vacation!!!!!

What vacation????

Just kidding... but not really! I decided to take a couple weeks off this summer before I had the baby so I can go to the beach and play with the boys. Well, this week at the beach.... in one word, HECTIC!!!! The boys and I went to Emerald Isle with Brandy, her kids, and mom and dad from Friday to Sunday. It really was fun for the kids there because there was a lot of room for them to play, a golf cart to ride to the beach and a pool!!! It was a lot of work, but it really is worth it to see a smile on the kids faces! Reagan learned how to swim on her own, Sawyer absolutely loved the beach and pool, and Jackson and Braxton played really good together! Besides the kids not wanting to take a nap and throwing tantrum's, it was just dandy! :-) Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that my kids, whom have always slept in past 7:30 or 8:00 have now decided that 6 or 6:30 AM is a better time to get up in the morning!!! So I guess I am going to have to learn how to be an early bird from now on, or either I am going to have to teach them to sleep in again!!! :-)

We tried to get the four of them to take pictures together, but this was the best one I got before Braxton ran to me crying, Jackson ran to the ocean and Sawyer dove in the sand! Our ONLY sweet little girl in the mix loves the camera and does MOST of what you ask her to do!

Sunday, we all went to Surf City for a few days! The weather was absolutely beautiful the entire week, and I don't think that I could have picked a better week for the kids to be able to be outside and play! I even got to see one of my closest friends Charley and her son a couple times! The only flaw there was that Braxton got sick and we had to make a trip to the doctor, but at least he started feeling better after that! Here he was having a blast outside swimming with nothing on!!!

After Surf City, we then went to Brandy's house in Little Washington for a few days, and her house is like vacation all the time anyway! (For us anyway... she might not think so with a crowd all the time!) She has the river and a pool! So nice! I even think that the kids got a long pretty good to be around each other so much!

Sawyer didn't want to get out of the pool! He opened the pool up... and closed it down!

Brandy has a lot of really close friends that she invites over for the 4th of July and they have lots of kids the same age. One of the moms, Carla Mitchell, had hats for all the kids and she taught them a lesson about the 4th of July. I am not sure how much they retained, I was just happy that they all sat there long enough to get a couple of pictures!!!!

I have to thank my in-laws for all the help they provided for me since I am now 7 months (29 weeks) and not quite up to par these days! I am so blessed to have such a great family to be around on both sides and I thank GOD every night for everything he has blessed me and my family with!

Sleeping with the moo cows....

As innocent as this child looks, (Sawyer), he can be a HAND full at times. And one of those specific times is NAP and BED time. We put him in his big boy bed about a month ago. I let him pick out the bedspread, he wanted a baseball bedspread, thinking that this would make him excited about going to bed! BUT, I dread Naps and Bed time every night because he is so hard to handle.

For example, when it is Bedtime, Braxton climbs right up the steps like he is so ready to go to sleep and I lay him right down. He puts his little butt up in the air and falls right asleep. Sawyer, on the other hand, I am dragging up the steps while he is limp and kicking and crying. It really sucks because it also hurts me now that I am 6 or 7 months pregnant to drag a 34 pound 3 year old up the steps struggling with every step you take. I even started throwing tandrums like him, rolling around, screaming, and kicking.... and he starts cracking up laughing at me. I tell him that is how he looks doing that, and he just laughs... but as soon as I pick him up to put him in his bed.... it starts up again. All that "showing" him how crazy he looks, just made me look crazy!!!

Mama, kept them the other night... their beloved Jo-Jo, and she said she would see if he did the same thing with her. NOPE. Went right to bed without a fight! But for Scott and I, a fight everynight!

So the other night we took him for a golfcart ride and told him that if he did not go to bed nice then we were going to leave him out there with the moo cows for the night and he could stay there and let the mama cows take care of him. WORKED like a charm... that night! But, tonight, as I am sitting here writing this blog, I hear him up there calling for me crying! Who said it was the terrible twos.... I am a fan on the terrible 3's!!!!

Fishing

Scott and I decided to take the boys fishing a few weeks ago. We have not taken them since last fall, and Sawyer has really been talking about going for a while. Of course, I just sat on the golf cart taking pictures because it is so muddy down there, but at least I was present. We caught worms at the house and borrow Grandaddy Batten's fishing poles.

Here is Scott baiting the fishing poles for the boys. They caught lots of fish, but the first fish they caught, Scott showed Braxton and Sawyer to see their reaction... and you can see one liked it and one did not!

Braxton whom, last year would touch the fish and hold it, was scared to death and screamed and cried! Sawyer on the other hand loved it, and was giggling and wanted to touch the eyeballs! Now he still didn't want to hold the fish because he said it would bite, but he really enjoyed it this year. In fact, he enjoyed it so much he asked if he could get his own Lighten McQueen fishing pole.... and guess what he got for his birthday? Yep, that is right, Brandy his aunt got him a Lighten McQueen fishing pole. We have not had time to take him fishing with it yet, but hopefully soon!

Braxton looks like he is getting eat by the fish! :-)