Cute, but trouble.

Little Luke has the kind of face it's hard to get mad at. He just has to look at you with those chocolate brown eyes and you melt. That being said, he's trouble. He's the brains of the operation and Jack is the heavy. The other day Jack had done something (I think bang on the table) and I told him not to. So I went about doing whatever I was doing and he started doing it again. When I looked up Luke was shaking his head "No, No, No". As soon as I pretended not to be paying attention Luke started chanting, "Jack Jack, Jack Jack" while rocking back and forth. So big brother wanted to make little brother giggle continued to get in trouble. Again when I said something and looked over, Luke was shaking his head.

Last night we were watching TV and the boys were playing having a good time. Luke started crying and I looked over and said, "Oh looks like Luke is stuck." Zachary, being the over-reactor that he is wanted to break the rocking chair because Luke went in there all crazy. I know if he got himself stuck, I could get him unstuck. He had flipped over the kid rocking chair, put his legs between the bottom supports and slid all the way down til his gourd couldn't fit through. He was wedged in there pretty good. It took me not even a minute to get him out and he doesn't even have a bruise.

Now comes to his biggest problem...dog food. You would think that we don't feed the kid enough. Every time we don't lock the kitchen gate, I can find Luke over at Lilo's bowl munching on some dog food. This has been going on for months and he always has a mouthful of dog food. Poor Lilo has to share her wonderful Beneful Weight Control dry dog food with a 15 month old!!!!

It's fun to watch their daily amusements, but sometimes it can give you heart failure!

What an adventurous Monday morning!!!

For the last month our lives have been crazy. We moved then a week later left on a 3 week vacation. The boys were amazing on our trip. Jack was very polite and Luke was his eyelash batting self. No surprise that as soon as we get home little monster emerge.

So our first Monday back and it's starts off with a few cuss words flying. Zach looked over and realized that he forgot to set his alarm for his normal worktime and not weekend duty time. So I scramble downstairs and get the coffee ready, start the car, get that defrosted and pack a breakfast all on the go in a record 10 minutes! Then Jack and I head upstairs to check on Luke several minutes later and then the real fun began.

Sometime during the night, Luke had taken off his diaper and fingerpainted his crib...YUCK! So I take the icky boy and throw him in the tub. Rinse him off then clean the tub and give them both a real bath. No major mishaps there, so I dry them off and put them in Jack's room so I can run downstairs and get Luke a diaper. I hadn't even made it to the bottom of the stairs til I hear Jack standing at the gate at the top of the stairs yelling, "Mmmmmoooooommmmmmmm, Luke just peed on my carpet!". For some reason Jack doesn't think your hear something til you acknowlege him, so he kept yelling this til I made it to the top of the stairs armed with papertowels and some Lysol and carpet cleaner. Oh and don't forget the diaper. So I clean up that mess and let them continue to play in there while I head over to the real mess.

I strip the crib and start a load of nast crib sheets, blankets and toys. Then start scrubbing the crib and then putting furniture polish to make it shine. As the washing machine gets going it starts squeaking (remind me to call Sears and get that fixed!) and then Lilo starts barking at that crazy mouse running on that squeaky wheel inside the washing machine. The boys start running around and Jack's yelling at the top of his lungs, "I'M RUNNING AROUND! I'M RUNNING AROUND!". Breath in, Breath out. So I was finally able to round up the gang and we headed downstairs to watch some Wiggles so Mama could take a deep breath and wake up. So maybe another year before Luke's potty trained??? I'm going to start and have a countdown because I have a feeling we might need to bust out the duct tape again.

For those of you who don't know, Jack was horrible about taking his diaper off. I tried every trick in the book. He even managed to take duct tape off! In the end we would have a piece that started and ended in the back of the diaper and Houdini managed to get it off. Eventually he grew out of it, but that was a very long period. I think I had scrubbed the finish off of his crib!!!

Oh the joys of little boys!

A normal day in the Snyder household.

This morning Jack and I were watching TV and hanging out in my bed. All of a sudden he had something incredibly important to tell me so he started yelling, "Mom, Mom, Mommy, MOMMY!" I looked at him and asked what he wanted. He looked at me and said, "You're the greatest!". Right there made my day great.

While hanging out in the living room, Jack poured something from one cup to another (not unusual, I'm constantly telling him not to do it), so I grabbed the cups and as I was walking out to the kitchen he told me, "I just peed in the cup!" Like he wanted a prize for that! I tried to explain to him the reason he's peed in the cup in the van was because we couldn't get to a potty right away. I think I'm going to let this one slide and let Zach explain it to him!

Since we're moving tomorrow, I'm trying to get as much stuff ready as possible. So I'm letting the TV run all day with their favorite shows just so I can get some work done. I was cleaning up something then I heard, "OUCH!" I asked Jack what happened (mind you he is naked, because the boy is a nudist!) and he told me that he was trying to get the hairs on his penis. Um, ok. Then he proceeded to tell me that it hurt too much because they were stuck and he'd just get like Papa! OMGOSH!!!!! This is the kind of stuff that nobody prepared me for! They have no filter and just say whatever they think. How did I end up with two crazy little monsters??

While I was packing up Jack's closet, I came across a bag of his old shoes. When I looked in there I found a few pairs of Stride Rite shoes that I totally forgot about. So little Luke has been running around the house in a diaper and Stride Rite leather sandals. And Jack couldn't be outdone, so he was naked with his cowboy boots and newspaper hat. I just hope they'll be ready for payback when they bring home their girlfriends, because this Mama will have stories to tell!!!

How to eat while sleeping.

Poor Luke, we had friends over for lunch so he missed his noon naptime. The video was taken about 1:30 while he was eating his fish sticks. Poor little man!

It's been really busy around our house, we're moving in a week going on vacation in just over 2 weeks and wouldn't you know....the boys and I got sick! Yuck! Luckily it's just snot rockets and a mild cough for Jack and myself. For some reason I didn't have enough on my plate! I have to do it all sick.

The boys have been pretty mild lately, our only incident has been Jack throwing tantrums in the stores. I don't know why they've been happening, but they need to stop before I lose my mind! So if I don't update for a while, you know what's going on.

New use for DVD hole...

If you've ever dropped by our house unexpectedly you know that Jack is a nudist. It doesn't matter if I put clothes on him, he takes them off when he goes potty. So on to the story. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes and Jack went potty. They boys were watching Polar Express and just hanging out. I came out to check on them and find Jack sitting on the couch, naked, playing with his penis. Well, not just playing, he was putting it in the hole of a DVD. I had to look twice, because I couldn't believe it! He said that it's a perfect fit when he "makes his penis big". We have this rule in our house, you're allowed to play with it, just in your bedroom or bathroom. We don't want to give the boys a complex, but when you find your 3 year old sitting on the couch stroking his penis you just have to shake your head. Nobody informed me that this stuff starts this early! I thought I had several more years before it happened. And to think I have another one to look forward to. If it's this bad at 3, I don't even want to know what it's like once he hits puberty!!!

Gatorade bottle has more than one use.

This morning Jack came into my room complaining that his knee hurt and he wanted some water. So I let him have a drink out of the water bottle next to my bed. He climbed in and was kind of restless, next thing I knew, he was sitting up puking in my bed...YUCK! So I moved him to the other side and before Zach could get upstairs with the puke bucket, he got sick again...IN OUR BED! Poor little man. So once we got down stairs, aired out our room, stripped and drenched my bed in Lysol, Zachary made a lemon-lime Gatorade run. At about 10am, Jack started feeling much better, he had gotten sick a couple more times, but once he got some animal crackers and Gatorade in his belly, he was good.

Fast forward to about 8pm, I'm clipping coupons at the kitchen table, both boys are playing and Zach was on the computer. All of a sudden I hear Zach yell, "What do you think you're doing?!?!?!" Jack walks over to me and hands me his Gatorade bottle. Zach says, "Ah, Robin, Jack just peed in that bottle." Um, excuse me?!?! I then asked Jack if he peed in the bottle and his response was, "Yeah, because that's what we do."

Now, let me take you back a few weeks ago. We had driven to Downtown Chicago to go to the Field Museum (our favorite!) and on the way home, Jack had to pee REALLY bad. I finally got up to an exit. Isn't it amazing that when you really need an exit, there's not another one for at least 5 miles?? Pulled into a gas station, ran as quick as possible inside for the key, only to be told that their bathroom is out of order!!! Seriously?!?! So I ran back to the van and Jack was jumping up and down at this point. So we had him pee in a cup and tossed it in their dumpster. My guess is, that's where Jack got it from, but the bathroom was about 15 steps, maybe 25 Jack steps away. Gotta love having a boy, they can pee anywhere AND do it standing up!

Watch out for that....

This morning, the boys and I got up and got ready pretty early this morning. I had some errands to run and knew that if I didn't light a fire under some little boys' butts, I wouldn't get to run my errands. So we head off to Walmart before 8am. That's right 8am! So I'm pushing around the big cart that has the 2 seats facing each other when Jack decides that he needs to stretch his legs. So the little bugger gets out and promises to hold my hand...yeah right! He takes off running. Now imagine a little boy running down the aisles in cowboy boots. Now these aren't any cowboy boots, these are Buzz and Woody boots. So as he's running Jack is watching his feet instead of where he's going. I yell, "Jack Dylan watch where you're going before..." Before I could finish my sentence Jack ran right into the pole. Not a little dinky pole, I'm talking the 1 foot concrete pole that anyone can see. Not only does my little man run into the pole, but he hits the fire extinguisher mounted on the side. The extinguisher catches the side of his head and lands on his shoulder before hitting the ground making a huge noise. I saw the whole thing happening and luckily it wasn't that bad. We could've been making a trip to the ER, but my kids have hard heads. The noise scared him more than the actual hit. There was an assistant manager who came by to see if he was ok. He was fine, so she picked up the extinguisher and put it where it belonged. As we're walking by I noticed that she just placed it in the holder and didn't fasten it in....REALLY???? Are people that stupid? So I fastened the latch so some poor soul wasn't walking by and accidentally hit it. At the check out counter, there were some long lines. There was a little boy 2 people a head of us and him and Jack started playing. The woman in front of us and I struck up a conversation. I was saying that my boys bounce back pretty quickly and gave the example of the fire extinguisher. She looked at me and said, "Oh so he's your little boy! I heard you warning him then before you could finish there was a big crash." I replied, "Yep, that's my boy!" Glad Jack left an impression on someone. There's an adventure with 2 little boys no matter where you go!