sweet dreams....

This morning at the crazy hour of 5:30 am, Logan yelled out for his dad. I lept up to investigate. As I entered my son's room, I hear him sweetly singing his ABC's, in his sleep. It was the cutest thing. He is learning so much at school, and he really loves to sing. (his current favorite song is Real Gone by Billy Ray Cyrus and he calls it the Lightning McQueen song. He also loves Whatever, Cotton Eyed Joe, Time is Running Out (Muse), and Ice Queen (Within Temptation) He's the guitar, Madie's the drummer, and I'm the vocalist. Unless it's Real Gone and then you better not make a peep because it's all him baby). He's also doing pretty good at writing. He can do his name. These are his very first papers that he did a preschool a couple of weeks ago. Not to shabby for a boy who just barely turned 4.

xoxo always,
Amber

Tyer Tuesdays....smurfs, ladybugs, and James Bond

They had the very best toys. Coleco Vision. Which included such addicting games as Lady Bug, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Smurfs, and James Bond. There was a drawer in the sewing room filled with treasures. One was an old checkbook. I loved playing with it and writing out pretend checks. Mom's old barbie doll with the pink plastic ski's. She had those old plastic eyelashes, the ones that were part of the mold for her head. And curly dark hair. Once I tried to curl her hair a little bit more with the curling iron and she suffered a severe case of alopecia forever more. In the closet was a puppet on strings that refused to be untangled. A thin clear plastic oval that contained water, and blue and white sand inside that swirled and made cool designs as you moved it around. An oversized stuffed alligator that eventually came home with us. I remeber having left some toys out during one visit. Expecting them to still be in the same place when we returned I was surprised to find them put away. Instead of simply assuming that grandma had cleaned up, I imagined that she must has some other grandkids that I wasn't related to and didn't know about that visited her when I wasn't there. (not that she had another family or anything, I just didn't understand about genetics and such I guess.)

So now I will remember to keep a few important toys from my children. So that their own kids and play with and love them as much as I loved playing with toys at your house too.
xoxo love always, Amber

Thoughts on potting training

Thoughts on potting training. When potty training Madeline, she would pee in her underwear. So I took them off, and she walked around in a darling little shirt, with her cute little bum cheeks hanging out the backside. We put the potting training toilet in the front room so we could have quick access. It worked like a charm. I think she may have had only one or two accidents. After two weeks of that, we put on the panties and she was good to go. A few months later we started on the night time training and it went very well. Although I did feel bad waking her up in the middle of the night to go potty. Especially since it was in the winter in West Virginia and we had one meezily little heater in the bathroom. It was the only vent in the entire upstairs. Still, I think she may have wet the bed only once or twice. Potty training was such a breeze. Oh how naive I was.

Logan helped dispelled my confidence and ability to easily and calmly train my child to use the potty. He is 4 and has no desire to use the toilet. He will if we remind him, every hour. Left to his own devices he has more important things to do. Which includes pretty much anything and everything outside of the bathroom. Two nights I accidentally forgot to put a pull-up on him at bedtime. I woke up in the morning to a perfectly dry son. I am proud to report that it has been over 2 weeks and not one single bed wetting accident to date. I wish I could say as much about the day. Never-the-less, I keep hoping that one of these days the light will turn on and he will suddenly say "mom, I have to go potty!".

One thing Logan does very well is sing children's songs. He sings them so well that when we sing them, we sing them his way. Fast like lightening. It is funny. And we laugh and laugh and then sing some more. I really love my son.
xoxo,
Amber

So tonight my children and I were eating our lovely dinner, (actually it was terrible, really really terrible. I didn't even make the kids eat ONE bite of fish it was so bad) and watching an old Newhart episode. It's one where some grandma lady gets thrown in jail. So my daughter Madeline turns to me and asks, "mom, has anyone in your family ever been to jail or broken out of jail before?" To which I reply a resounding "no.". "Neither do I" she replies and I burst out laughing because she and I are in the same family. Kids are so cute.

Luke's latest move is to throw both arms straight up in the air and shout with glee. He does it many times a day. It is adorable. I would show you but my dear husband is in Utah with both the camera and my camcorder fixing up the new digs for our arrival in a few weeks. Wish I was there too.

Originally Tom and I had planned on making a little trip out of moving home. We were going to take some "scenic" route and do a mini vacation/moving home trip. Well, his schedule became so that it was just a moving home trip. And one day last week I had a moment of terrifying enlightenment. We were driving home in a Subaru wagon with a newly potty trained four year old (and I use potty trained loosely here, it really means taking him to the toilet once an hour and teasing/begging/bribing him to go potty), a still-nursing 11 month old, and not one but TWO Siamese cats that HATE THE CAR. Seriously, they cry for hours on end. And so do we. So I calmly sat down with my husband and begged him to let me fly the kids home. I would gladly fly for 1 hour and 40 minutes all alone with three children than take a drive like that anytime. We would probably not make it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make it.

Tonight we watched my favorite Baby Einstein. For those of you who don't know we love all things Baby Einstein. Seriously, it's the bomb. Madeline who's 7 still watches it when it's on. And I don't even count it as tv time because it's classical music (mostly) and images. Which is great because no matter how many times we've seen it (not in a row of course but over the years), I'm not sick of it. I'd have burn any other movie by now after that many viewings. So the point was that we are watching my favorite one, Baby Einstein Santa. I love Christmas. And Thanksgiving. And snow. And I get to be home. Alleluia amen.
xoxo always, Amber

Tyer Tuesdays....better than the zoo.

I think that the animals came because they knew how fun it was to be at the Tyer house. For a while there was a chicken that made a home somewhere in the scrub oak. She had free run of the grounds, and Gramps would get fresh eggs for breakfast. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. There was some rusted out car next to the shed. Never even noticed it until some cat decided that it was the perfect spot to have some baby kittens. I'm pretty sure I remeber rumor of a skunk that stopped by temporarily too. But my favorite one was a particularly spunky racoon. One of the special nights we got to stay at their house, a racoon that had been visiting decided to come indoors for a bit. He found gramps' lighter and scurried under a bed. I remember peeking under it with gramps and you could see the tiny sparks as he was playing with the lighter. Not a good combo. Don't really remember how they got him out, guess that wasn't the fun part.

At the back of their house was this awesome covered deck. There was an apple tree that grew right next to it, and some vines that grew around the railing. It always felt a little like a hint of a cool jungle oasis there. And in the dusk of the summer day there would be a faint blue glow on the tiles, a soft melodic electric hum, that is until the bug zapper went zap and then the soft hum continued. Funny thing, I actually love the sound of bug zappers. It reminds me of summer evenings with gramps and grandma. (I know insects aren't animals but figured that this was as good as any time to reminisce about them too.)

xoxo always,
Amber