I've realized lately that Ashton is not going to be my most difficult child. Sure he is very over dramatic and thinks his life is over on a daily basis. Especially if someone sits in the bus seat he was assigned to (two hour meltdown over that one), but he is a complete stickler for the rules which makes him very trustworthy. Talan on the other hand is very manipulative and sneaky making him, if not physically, then mentally the death of me. His favorite thing is to argue just to argue. Even if it is something he wants to do, or have for lunch, he will argue about it because he can.

Since Brad has been home we've been working really hard to get Talan potty trained. I know he can do it....he's just stubborn, and realizes it drives me insane. I've been trying to be patient, but it is difficult when we are 6 months past my cut off of 2 years old.

Back to the arguing. Tal and I were at Toys R Us yesterday. We happened to walk past an end cap with a bunch of frogs. Talan was really interested in them and demanded he hold one. I explained to him that it was a potty and what he was supposed to do with it.

His response, "Oh, ok"

He assured me that if I bought him this frog potty he would in fact us it for its intended purpose. My mistake was that I believed him, but being desperate we loaded the potty into the cart. Talan talked all the way home about his new frog potty and became really excited about it....until it was time to use it and he discovered he had to take off his beloved diaper to actually sit on the potty. After a few minutes of me trying to coax him into using the potty only to hear him shout back, "NO!" I finally said,

"Talan you HAVE to start going potty on your frog potty"

He looked at me straight in the eye and said,

"You HAVE take my totty dack tore!" (you have to take my potty back to the store.)


My conclusion after all this is Talan is going to grow up to be a 45 year old man who is not potty trained and he will never get married and move out because who is going to marry someone who feels no need to stop wearing diapers.

Chef Talan

Over the cold winter months, which kept us indoors way too much, we learned something new about Talan. He loves to help cook. It doesn't matter what we're making, he just wants to be a part of it. I love it because when he is sitting on the kitchen counter he's not available to torment his brother, or color on the toilet with a highlighter (which doesn't actually come off very well go figure).

Today the chef insisted on brownies...not going to argue that one:




Note to self: Do not leave brownie batter unattended next to the 2 year old while he is licking the spoon. He decided he needed more and dug right in. Talk about double dipping.

Two months of non-stop Leapfrog Letter Factory is starting to pay off. Here is Talan showing off his newly found alphabet skills. Sure we're missing a few letters, but who needs those letters anyway.

I've got the blues

Jack Black taught Ashton some blues at his last lesson. So far he is a fan...and me too.

He holds high hopes for his old age

If it wasn't for Farley Elementary's 100th day of school celebration I might not have had a glimpse into Ashton's triple digit years.

This is what Ashton believes he will look like when he turns 100:





I have to say though, if at 100 years old you are still standing up right and only have to walk with a cane and an eye patch, you're doing pretty good.

Just when I thought he was going to have an amazing year in 2102 I read the story of his 100th birthday party. Here is Ashton in his own words...

At my 100th birthday party I am planning to have lots of fruit. I will die on my 100th birthday party. I will have no cake. I will only wish for shampoo. I would have it by myself. Those are the things I plan on doing on my 100th birthday party.

Despite being incredibly depressing, it also gives me hope that one day he will actually want to wash his hair, and he will choose healthy foods over cake.

In the past 24 hours Ashton has learned two very important life lessons I hope he will carry with him forever.


Life lesson #1:

Never call a pregnant lady fat. They will most likely be extremely offended and feel the desire to either rip your head off or cry. Neither is good.



Life lesson #2:

Never ever, ever, ever take food out of a pregnant ladies hands and start chomping away on it right in front of her. Horrible decision.


I hope his future wife appreciates the newly pregnancy enlightened Ashton.

It was a fantastic attempt on his part. He almost won just for breaking into a chant, and I guess he actually did win since he was lathered in Aquaphor which is ointment, not lotion. Sadly this freakishly cold weather we seem to be having is doing a number on his skin, so avoiding the nightly skin hydration was not an option.





--in case you can't quite understand him, he's chanting "no lotion"

The gender has spoken...

And it confirms my belief I'm destined to live a life of all boys. We are having another boy. The ultrasound tech told me the baby was a boy and I just started laughing wondering what I'm going to do with 3 boys. The idea of another boy has grown on me in the last couple hours. I already know what boys bring to the table, we already have a lot of clothing and gear (even though it is all in VA still) boy related, and when they are teenagers I won't have the annoying boyfriend coming over. My boys will be going to the girls house and being annoying. The drawback is we're back to square one with names. I've exhausted all my acceptable boy names, so it should be interesting. For now we will continue to call him Smalls.

Here's his little body with his arm above his face. His profile is similar to Talan's.

Here's a look at his face. A little alienish still, but he should be gaining fat soon.

Now I want to know which three of you thought Small's was going to be a boy! Fess up!

Christmas and beyond......picture style...

If you're noticing some extra coloring on Talan's face you are not mistaken. He found my 6 year old nieces purse which contained her precious lipstick. Talan wanted to be beautiful for Santa. As I mentioned last year I really get annoyed with the idea of Santa and all the work it brings for me. So, this year since Ashton is fully aware of the myth of Santa and Tal is still little I elected not to leave out cookies. Plus we didn't have milk in the house, and I wasn't buying any because Tal was having the beginnings of an asthma attack and hacking up a lung and thought water or juice would be a better choice for him. It is absolutely impossible to tell that boy he can't have milk if it is in the fridge. Out of sight out of mind.
I was telling Brad it didn't look like we hardly had any presents in front of the tree. We have a rule that the boys only get 3 presents because Jesus only got 3 presents and they aren't better than Jesus. Only this year alot of things were big things and not wrapped, making the tree a little bare.

As soon as Talan rounded the corner Christmas morning he yelled "Choo-Choo!" It was really hard to tear him away from his train table and he insisted that some of his trains be in the picture as well. Not going to fight with morning Talan.

Wahoo! Guitar picks!

Talan was convinced that Santa was bringing him candy this year. If that fat man didn't deliver we would have problems.

It was a good lazy Christmas day. We had a massive snow storm Christmas Eve which made even going a mile to my sister in law's house difficult. The snow drifts were definitely taller than little Tal, and even Ashton in some spots. Luckily we have a Jeep with 4 wheel drive that can handle the snow.

Sunday, Ashton and Brad went out to play in the snow and made this super cute snowman on our front porch.

And some sort of face plant snow angel.

Talan, being unable to go outside because of his not so pretty asthma attack, (which I would like to add did not result in a hospital trip! yay!) all the sudden he insisted on giving all his diapers to baby Carson and wearing underwear. Weird because previously he was deeply offended if you asked or even mentioned anything having to do with him putting on regular underwear. The only catch is he insists on putting them on himself which most likely ends up inside out. No big deal, but he doesn't quite grasp yet the idea of pulling them ALL the way up his booty. I spared the booty picture, but just FYI his underwear are half way down his booty and if you try to pull them up he once again gets deeply offended. So, we just take pictures instead. Potty training lasted until 1:00 the next day. He is now back in diapers for the time being.

Notice right...

Tuesday is the big day to hopefully find out the gender of Smalls. Vote for which team you're rooting for. You have until 2:00 pm CST on Dec. 29. Sometime after that I'll be making the announcement.

May the best gender win!