Have you seen my keys?

Having three kids does things to you. It seems that every time I give birth I lose a portion of my brain. My thought is that the baby has to get their brain from somewhere, so they just take ours. My children are stealing my memory.

Before Memphis was born I could count on one hand the number of times I had locked my keys in my car. Since he was born it has happened more times than I can remember.

The first time I did it after he was born was especially interesting. He was about 10 days old and I accidentally locked him and Carson in the car while pumping gas. It was a hot day so the attendant called the fire department to get the car open.

In the meantime Memphis was screaming his head off and I was trying frantically to get Carson to unbuckle herself and unlock the door for me. She just laughed and made faces back at me. This is not charades kid!

Anyway, here comes the firetruck; sirens blaring and lights flashing. They stop directly in front of my car and four firemen jump off of the truck, stick a balloon thingie in my door, inflate it and reach in and hit the unlock button with a stick. I wanted to crawl up under the car and die. Thank you Mr. Firemen, but were the lights and sirens really necessary? Now the entire southwest section of town knows I locked my babies in my car.

I have become so accustomed to doing this that when I can't find my keys, I just assume they are locked in the car. There are so many copies of my key floating around now that I might as well just leave the doors unlocked and take my chances.

The point here is that tonight I was at a friend's house and I could not find my keys so I went to the car and searched for them through the windows. I didn't see them so I went back inside and...lo and behold my keys were sitting there in the diaper bag!! I did it! I had a breakthrough! My brain must be growing back!

Memphis is doomed...

Sometimes it is obvious that there is not a man around here very often. I really thought I had been doing well with compensating for that absence. Once again, my children proved me wrong.

Today when we were at my mom's house, Carson came in the room holding a small nerf style football and announced that she really wanted to play basketball. We all kind of laughed quietly to ourselves and I attributed the mistake to the fact that she's only 2 years old.

Cody, being the little mommy that she is, put her hands on Carson's shoulders, gave her a little pat on the head and said, "Oh Carson, you can't play basketball with that. That's a baseball."

Phonetic mishaps

Carson is a typical two year old in some ways. She doesn't always pronounce things correctly, but it doesn't bother me; I know she'll get it right eventually. Cody, however, thinks that Carson's mispronunciations must be corrected immediately lest she become an outcast from society. And by "she" I mean Cody. She is just mortified when Carson mutilates a perfectly good word. This makes what happened yesterday so wonderfully ironic:

Carson was playing with dolls who didn't have any clothes on. She described them as maked (may-ked). Cody heaved an overly dramatic sigh and rolled her eyes in classic Cody fashion and said, "Carson, it's not may-ked! First you make a sound like a horse, and then you say ked. So it's like neigh-ked. See?"

Makes perfect sense to me.

Best of January 2007

January was an especially cold month here. We are used to a week or two of temperatures below about 35 degrees, but it has been over a month now! I mean really, I'm not sure we can take it much longer.

Cody had her 6th birthday at the beginning of the month which makes me feel old. I can't believe I have a 6 year old. On the day of her birthday party, the streets here were the iciest they have been all winter. Poor kid invited four other little girls to her party and only two could make it. Even so, she had a great time and told me it was her best birthday ever. You know, out of 6. She also begged me for a week to take her for a dramatic haircut. I finally succumbed to the pressure and I have to admit, it looks pretty darn cute.

Carson has finally started to go to sleep before 10pm. Before, she would have an afternoon nap and then stay up until I went to bed. Of course, I did my best to keep her in bed. Well, that may be stretching it a bit. Ok, a lot. Alright, alright, it's an outright lie. I would direct her back to the bed, but I didn't really care if she stayed there. I actually enjoyed the company. I know, it's very sad. Anyway, I no longer put her down for a nap and now she is falling asleep much sooner. In fact, sometimes she doesn't get up at all before nodding off. Now if I only cared enough about having my bed to myself to make her sleep in hers...

Memphis is trying really hard to be more efficient in the area of mobility. It's pretty funny. First he gets up on his hands and knees and rocks like a maniac. He then pushes off really hard and reaches his hands forward as if he rocked hard enough that he just might take off. I keep waiting for that to happen. When he finds that all his efforts have only landed him back on his stomach, he begins the army crawl. He uses his arms to drag his motionless lower half across the floor. He's tenacious, I'll give him that. And cute too.

He also sat up for the first time on the 21st, but he doesn't seem to have noticed. He just stares at me with a look that says, "Why are you clapping? I'm always this cute."

Well, the beginning of February brings new hope for warmer weather. Carson will be ecstatic. When she saw the snow on the ground here this morning she told Cody that she would sit by the window and watch her play in it. My sentiment exactly.

The princess on her birthday.

I know, could his outfit be any more mismatched?

Memphis loves to give big, slobbery kisses! So sweet!

Mom, if you don't put the camera away I'm going to gag myself.

See...she really does hate it.

But Cody thinks it's the best thing ever.

We really need a hill.

I have this look too. It means, "Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous!"

Cody hates this picture, but I think it somehow makes all of the snow seem not so cold.

I figured I had better get myself in a picture so that I would have proof to show the kids that I really do love them. Enough to play in the stinkin snow with them.

The kiddos in January