Dear Mr and Mrs Pottery Barn

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Pottery Barn~
I am writing to tell you that you have falsely advertised your children's room displays. I have purchased the complete bedroom set for my 2 boys and it looks nothing like the room the children are occupying in the catalog. First, my eldest boy's bed now has a obnoxious bed rail on the side of his twin bed, which doesn't match the bedding I purchased. My other son's beautiful crib now has a tent on it due to his older brother crawling in the crib with him. I thought the crib was monkey proof?! Also, I did not purchased the bed skirt for the crib, which now I wished I would have to hide all the crap that I have shoved under it! The closest organizers are wonderful, but don't hold all I had intended to cram into them. Oh, and the curtains! Those curtains are basically transparent, so I have doctored them up myself by placing all different, non-matching, blankets over them to keep my children sleeping in the dark for as long as possible. I am wanting you to display a real child's bedroom in the next season's catalog. Or at least put a warning label on the catalog stating "results not typical".
Thank you,
Disgruntled Mother of 2 busy, messy, boys with way too much stuff in their bedroom

Watch Me Grow

Emmitt's Watch Me Grow chair picture

He popped the second tooth through the day after the first so here is the best attempt to get a shot of them both. He looks a little frightened but anytime you put your fingers near his mouth he tries to eat them.

Parker found these silly glasses and nose and wears them to "work". He packed up his baby's diaper bag and put them on and said goodbye to everyone in the house and off to work he went.

A close up of the actual tonsils! If you look directly in his mouth you can see how huge they are. We had him to the ENT on Wednesday and spent a whole 2 minutes in the doctor's office. He took one look and said those are "medium" sized. For real? we asked...they actually touch the uvula or hangy bally thingy. Nope, medium...not to worry, he is still too young. He also said if we keep getting strep throat this winter, or tonsillitis again and again, just to take him in to our physician and put him on an antibiotic. Unless it gets to be 3-4 times in 6 months we don't need them taken out. So we are "happy" with that and put at ease that he just has medium sized tonsils.

A 6 month pic of Emmitt. We spent the day of his half birthday at the clinic for shots and then me getting barfed on all day and him pushing those 2 teeth up! That was fun.

Through the Years

Well, when I started going through wedding pictures I found a few of my faves and a few I would like to throw away, but they represent the years my Bear and I have gone through. I will admit I have had 800 hairstyles in the last 11 years and we both admit to gaining at least 40 pounds each during college. But we started out on April 3rd, 1997. I was just shy of turning 17 and he followed up with turning 21 that July. He truly didn't know my age when we met, since I was at the community college and still in high school at the same time but age didn't matter-we fell in love-hard-right away. We both remember it so well, it took until the second date when we really knew we were meant for each other. We have been together ever since. We have definitely grown up together and had a lot of good times and some hard times but we always lean on each other and make it through. Enjoy the stroll down photo memory lane...

1997-baby faces


1998



1999-not one of our better moments-but boy were those parties fun!


2001 Engagement


2003-I think...not sure, Mahrya correct me if you will, this is at your wedding.


Christmas in our New House!

2004

Ice Fishing 2005

Our Wedding Day

A New Tooth!

so my weekend away was WONDERFUL! It helped that I was looking at pictures of my kids all weekend...although I gained 3 pounds while I was there! Aren't you supposed to lose weight after you have a baby??? 3 pounds in 3 days! You can't lose 3 pounds in 3 days if you tried! I can't at least.

Anyways, I come home to Parker running up to me super excited to have mommy home. Wrapped his little arms and legs around me and squeezed as hard as he could, grunting and all.

Then I went inside to Emmitt and Bear. I pick Emmitt up and hold him over my head in the airplane position and ask him if he sprouted any teeth while I was gone, he had 2 little buds on Thursday, and I put my finger along his bottom gum and sure enough one was through. So I am writing down in his book and documenting that he got his first tooth on Sunday, August 10 and not Friday or Saturday while I was gone, that way I was still there to witness it! Daddy was with him every minute of the weekend and had no idea he had gotten a tooth!

The boys were great for him, they all enjoyed the "boys weekend" together. And I had a blast at my girls scrappin' weekend. Just for the record I scrapped 56 pages! No idea where the heck I am going to put them all, my sister jokes that my kids will have 20+ books by the time they leave home!

Pics of the one tooth babe to come!

For comparison only-Parker had his first tooth at 5 1/2 months and had 16 at a year and his 2 year molars came through at 18 months! Let's see if Emmitt can catch him!

We go for Emmitt's 6 month shot/check up tomorrow. He has done really well with shots so far. I am thinking nothing of these. I am however taking Parker with us-his tonsils are still super swollen, and after being gone for 2 days from him, I am noticing his speech isn't quite right. He just plain talks funny now and always sounds stuffed up. He also had a little low grade temp Sunday night and part of Monday so we'll see what the family practitioner says. I am going to ask about an ENT doctor coming up north also...

Scrappin' Away

have I mentioned how much I love sleeping through the night? I really love my sleep!

The main reason I really wanted Emmitt to sleep through the night is because I am leaving him for the first time this weekend (sniff, sniff). It is my annual Pequot Lakes Scrappin' Weekend. We head to the ICU-Intensive Crop Unit for a 3-day weekend of late nights, some drinks (okay a lot of drinks) and lots of laughing. Each year I manage to get "caught up" on all my projects. Last year I managed to crank out 40+ pages, Christmas cards and baby announcements. This year, not so sure. I have 385 pictures coming from Shutterfly and Emmitt doesn't have a page in his book yet! We'll see how I do. I am a Scrappin' Machine on a mission.

So, my plan worked out perfectly...get Emmitt to sleep through the night before I go so it is less stressful on both baby, brother and daddy! Plus I am loving my sleep, have I mentioned that already?

I was slightly worried that:
1. Bear wouldn't hear Emmitt cry at night at all
2. Bear would hear him and force him to cry himself back to sleep
3. Bear would hear him, try to feed him a bottle and he would or wouldn't take it
...you get the picture
Anyways, it all worked out beautifully didn't it?

The Bosses

We used to call Parker-"Master P" because he was the baby in charge. Well now he is sometimes the big boy in charge...but mostly it's me (mom). Emmitt has taken on the baby in charge role. Until last Thursday...I decided it was time I took the bull by the horns...I'd had it with him getting up at least once, sometimes, twice a night and needing to nurse to get back to sleep. It just wasn't fair that daddy couldn't take part in this night-time game. And I was getting just plain "tired" of it. I waited until he was about the same age as Parker was when he started sleeping through the night. About 5-6 months. I figure he didn't need to eat so I just wasn't going to feed him. So Thursday night I hear Emmitt at 12:30 am and I go in there to make sure he hasn't crapped his pants, which he hadn't (but Parker had, more on that later), so I sweetly said, it's nigh-night, go back to sleep, touched his belly, kissed him and left the room. I let him whimper and whine for about 5 minutes, which felt like forever...I went back in there, did the same thing, this time he got more ticked off that I wasn't picking him up and screamed louder now that before. So I went back to bed and Bear and I held hands for over an hour...so sweet...well he was basically keeping a hand on me to keep me from getting up and going back in there. Leave him be, he said over and over, he'll be okay...alright! So we woke up Friday and Emmitt had sure enough put himself back to sleep, until 7 am!! He didn't even act hungry. Unreal! Friday night was similar, but instead of 1.5 hours only 45 minutes. Again, woke up not acting hungry the next morning! Stinker...all this time I was feeding him. He just wanted momma. So Saturday and Sunday (last) night he went all night, straight through! Ahhhhhhhhhh...sleep. I love it. Now if we could keep Parker from having the "die-da-rrhea" in the middle of the night we would be in heaven! He is on day 6 of having it off and on, but today stayed home with dad and is doing MUCH better. I love that he "mostly" made it to the potty during this bout...shows me he is a big boy, using the potty and all.

Master P


The Masters together

Master E

I love baby butts...

And again with the foot in his mouth!