The obscession has begun

Today we all went to the Avenue to walk around on such a pretty day. Mr. Genius was very nice and let me go to all the kids stores and Ann Taylor (my fave!).

By the way, did you know that Carter's doesn't carry plan white t-shirt onsies! What is up with that. The lady acted like I was crazy when I asked her where they were. She said that haven't carried them in years, with which I replied

"That's funny I bought 5 LAST year."

Liar.

Whatever.

Anyways.

So as a reward for going to all of mine and the boys stores we took Mr. Genius over to Best Buy.

For now on it will not only be a reward for Mr. Genius but for Wild Man too.

Wild Man LOVED the TVs.

He kept running around in circles says "OH WOW! OH WOW!"

Then he started a happy dance.








Wild Man felt so at home that he put on my sunglasses (to make him look cooler) and decided to chill on the couch they had set up and watch a little Ratatouille.




When we got back in the car. We had to break the news to him that we weren't bringing one of the big, cool TVs home.



He was pretty bummed.

Then for Romeo all we did was put the camera in front of him and didn't say a word. Here is his reaction.



Totally mesmerized.

So I am getting a little outnumbered on the technology obsession.

I see random outings to Best Buy in my future.

Holy Cow, I had twins... just 22 months apart.

You know that when you are pregnant you get this idea of how your child might look when they come out? You know. You think that they will have someones eyes, anothers hair or skin color.

Well as adorable as my kids are they don't look anything like I thought they would. They don't look like me (which is why I think they came out cuter) or Mr. Genius. It is kind of funny.

Well when I was pregnant with Romeo I just thought that Romeo and Wild Man wouldn't look much like each other. I think that my brothers and I look like we came from the same family just not the same. Then I don't think Mr. Genius looks anything like his brother and sister. So we thought the tradition would continue.

Boy were we wrong.

I new that they looked a lot alike but then I found a photo of Wild Man at the same age as Romeo.
So in these picture they are both 6 and a half months.



Isn't it crazy?!

Romeo is on the left and Wild Man on the right. Other then the fact that Wild Man was 5lbs heavier then Romeo, I think they look just about the same. Anyone else looking at these pictures would think that they are of the same child.

My friend Beth told me that I am going to need to label all their baby pictures so as not to get them mixed up. I think I will start right now.

Anyways, thought I would share.

And on the 3rd day... let there be hardwood!

Yeah for hardwood! I know that Mr. Genius is much happier then me that the project is done.

Mr. Genius did a great job, and so did my dad who helped out a lot. Thanks Dad!

Mom also helped me entertain the boys these days. I think she was worn out as much as dad.

It took 3 long days to do this. Luckily I married a perfectionist, so it was done just right. If I had to do this after about 3 hours I would just want to get it done in the fastest possible way. That is also why Mr. Genius and I can't work together on project very often, due to the fact that we want to stay married.

So here are the pictures.

Here it is after day 1.



I can always count on Mr. Genius to be so fashionable. I think that this is a good look for him.


Day 2



Here is the finished product!



Isn't it beautiful!

The boys are enjoying it too. The like the new soft rug I got. I went back to the sixties and got a shag or I think they call it a frizze (sp?) rug.



So glad we are finally done!!


Now on to the Master Bedroom....
HeHeHe

Our Den under construction

Well the boys are down for their nap and I thought "So what am I going to do now?" I could pull the weeds in the front, mow the grass, or dust around the house, or I could just blog. You see where my priorities are.

A couple of weeks ago Southeastern Salvage (a wonderful place) had their hardwood for sale for $1/sq ft! A dollar I tell you! I was so thrilled. Mr. Genius and I have been really wanting to get rid of our carpet in the den. I have tried everything, I vacuum regularly, stream cleaned, spot cleaned. Nothing would get rid of the spots. The price you pay for cheap carpet.

So I went up there to make sure that it would match our existing hardwood. It isn't a perfect match but close enough. So we got enough for our den. Yeah!

The hardwood has been sitting in our garage ever since and has been calling my name to come out of the boxes. So I decided that since we are having a long weekend it was time for another home project! Poor Mr. Genius. I think sometime in July I will let him rest. Maybe for an hour.

Anyways, last night we started moving all the furniture into the dining room. This delighted Wild Man to no end. He thought we were doing this just for him. He kept saying over and over. "Oh thank you SOOOOO much momma. Thank you SOOOOO much daddy!"



Here is Wild Man in his temporary play room. I am glad the dining room is finally being used. Even if it is not for its intended purpose.



Here is our nasty carpet. I told you it was gross. Now I won't have any friends, you guys now all think we are dirty people. By the way that blur at the top is Wild Man running. After he broke himself away from his new play area he came into the den and saw a wide open range. He ran in circles for 45 minutes. Until it was time for him to go to sleep.




See all the running and more of the nasty carpet.



Here is Nate (our wonderful, handy friend) and Mr. Genius starting to put down the hardwood.



Here is dad or Pop working. Or just trying to look like he is hard at work.

Last night after we pulled up the carpet and put down the black paper (there is a real name for it I just don't know it). My mom casually stated "Wouldn't it stink that they couldn't get the wood down and then your are stuck with just the black paper as your floor."

Oh be still my pounding heart.

Well I haven't thought about it til you brought it up! Now I won't be able to sleep again tonight.

Have a mentioned that I am having a baby shower here in a couple of weeks! Can you imagine?! Well I don't won't to.

I will post pictures up when we are finished (hopefully before the shower).

Late Night Blog

So after I put the boys to sleep I was dusting in my room. When I got to my bedside table the was a spider. A small, fat, black spider with yellow rings around his legs. EWWW! So now I can't sleep due to thinking that I keep feeling a spider crawling on me. Yes, I tried to kill it but the bugger was fast and my reflexes aren't what they use to be. So I thought I would blog about what has been going on around here.


Monday:
We went to the park in the morning. This time going to the park was the first time I got to sit down and relax a little while Wild Man played. I am usually running around making sure that he didn't climb up the things that he was too small for. But he is a big boy now and can do just about everything. So it was a nice park visit.



He taking a picture of Wild Man while sitting and enjoying the sun!!!



Wild Man pondering about what he can do that little girl who just walked up looking so cute.


After naptime we went to Kroger and Romeo is sitting up in the buggy now!


Romeo was wiped out after the long day. He feel asleep right after he eat all his food.

Tuesday:
Wild Man last day of Mother's Day Out is tomorrow, so sad. The parents came in to be served a little breakfast snack by the kids and sing then they sang us some songs.

Wild Man was not himself. He was very attached to me. He didn't want to leave my side. He would whisper in my ear what he wanted. This is not like him AT ALL. I thought is was sweet. Enjoy it while I can.

Also while we were eating Wild Man choked on some strawberries and spit them up on his shirt (that was brand new). Oh well, Oxyclean to the rescue. You can see the stain in the second picture.



Wild Man very upset that someone else is sitting next to me. He tries to convience his friend that he should go and play with all the other kids.



He won!

Wednesday:
Today we went to one of the neighborhood playgrounds, well actually it is the neighborhood right in front of ours but what are they going to do throw out a 2 year old.



Wild Man saying "Pleeeeeeeese Swing!!"


Wild Man driving me in the car. A little scary.



Look at that peach fuzz hair flapping in the wind. Isn't it cute.



This is Wild Man saying "No Mama" He didn't want me to embarrass him by going down the slide with him.

Day of Picking

Today before Mr. Genius had to drive to Memphis for work, we all went to a local strawberry patch to pick strawberries. Wild Man LOVES strawberries. So we knew he would enjoy this. He did even better then we thought. He minded us and didn't have any fits. A Miraculous Day in my book!



Wild Man showing me his Pufect strawberry.










Wild Man didn't want to share any of strawberries. He wouldn't let me sneak even one.

After naptime we went outside to pick the weeds out of our mulch. Well I did the picking. For some reason noone wanted to help me. I guess Wild Man didn't see the point when you couldn't eat what you picked.

I had 2 cute supervisors though.









When I asked him to come over and help mom pick the weeds I think he got confused and started picking his nose instead! Well he picked something :)

Updated Pictures of the boys

AS I was coming up the stairs this morning, I thought I would get a picture of our theater seating we have in our house. I bet you guys didn't know we have a theater in our home. Well Wild Man thinks we do.....



Wild Man took a break from his train tracks in his room (why he has on his conductors hat) to watch Diego. He loves watching TV from the balcony. I think it is funny.

My boys in the morning.



Romeo rocking on his hands and knees. Although you can't tell he is rocking back and forth.



Romeo sitting up for his bath now!

Moving fast

I can't decide if Romeo is just very determined or just really active. But this child is moving along very fast.

Last week he started sitting up, a few days ago he started getting on all fours and rocking back and forth. Yesterday he started trying to pull up on things. He isn't strong enough to do too much but he sure is trying with all of his might to.

We had his 6 month check up on Tuesday. We amazed the nurse and Dr. by how attached to me he is. They said that it doesn't usually happen this early.

I guess I am just on of those lucky ones.

I keep reminding myself that one day I will look back at this time and miss it. But we haven't been able to drop him off at church or anywhere with anyone at that for over a month. Mama needs a break sometime. But he honestly is a happy baby as long as I am around.

He weighted in at 15.1 lbs. in the 20% range. Height and Head were in the 50th percentile. Which just thrills Mr. Genius and I considering we have never been above the 30th percentile. (the Dr. is also predicting that Wild Man will be over 6 ft tall).

When Mr. Genius and I were dating we always joked that we would need to have tall kids so that they could reach the top shelves for us. I think our wish came true.

Something to show for it...

Do you ever have those days where you feel like you have nothing to show for your accomplishments for the day?
I feel like this a lot.

Mr. Genius comes home and asks "What did you do today?"

Well I cleaned the house.....



I thought.


I gave the boys a bath...



Now I have laundry to do, not to mention scrubbing the carpets. (In case you ever have lipstick in your carpet vegetable oil and ammonia gets in right up.)

I feed the boys....



despite how they are screaming for food.

But today I have something to show for my day. With Wild Man's birthday being 3 days before Christmas. I try to spread his gifts out throughout the year or his is just bored with his toys after just a month. A while back I got a train table from my friend Beth. Who is having her 3rd baby, a little girl, Hallie, while I type. So yesterday I decided while Wild man was at Mother's Day out that I would put it together. Here it is...





I ended up with an extra screw. Oh well, I didn't say that it would be perfect. I planned to glue the track down but ran out of time. So I just put a little bit of the track together. Here is Wild Man with his conductor outfit too.




Needless to say he loves it.




When Mr. Genius came home we put the whole track together and glued it all down. Now it is even better.

My Love Hate Relationship

If any of you saw my status on Facebook, you know who my love hate relationship is with. TARGET!!!!

I love walking down the aisles and seeing all the cute clothes, kitchen stuff, even the cute little humidifiers. Then you go to the end of the aisles and then there are the clearance items. Oh how I love the clearance items. I love that the store is clean (unlike our Walmart), and that the people out on the floor are friendly and always willing to help (also unlike Walmart).

Then we will move on to the other part of my relationship. It actually started before Mr. Genius and I got married. I had heard rumors that the return policy at Target was pretty strict so I opted out of registering there due to that rumor. No particularly bad run ins with them this time. Just a little annoying I could register there, since I like their kitchen stuff.

Then I got pregnant with Wild Man.

Well there are only 2 choices with registering in the 'boro for baby stuff. Walmart or Target. There is Toys R Us, which I did register at Baby's R Us but the closest location to the 'boro is in Nolensville (30 minutes away). Toys R Us only has 2 very small aisles of baby items that made only 5 items on my registry show up on the Toys R Us registry.

Any who back to Walmart and Target. Well I am not a huge fan of Walmart like I have already mentioned the dirtiness and well... it is Walmart...I didn't want to register there. So I had to register at Target. Which I did, and with my good friend Beth to help guide me through, I had a lot of fun. Then all the great gifts came. Which were so much fun to get, then you realize that you have over 100 bids. 20 bottles and a bunch of outfits that won't fit due to the fact that Wild Man was a huge baby. So Target thinks that the best way to deal with hormonal women, that are scared to death of this cute little body they are carrying around with then will blow at any moment, oh yeah and we are probably going on about 3 hours of sleep. To tell us that we cannot return anything that doesn't have a gift receipt.

With which I say well "I didn't get a gift receipt."

They respond " We ask every customer with every purchase if they would like a gift receipt."

Me "Well that is nice that you ask if they would like the receipt, but that doesn't help them get the receipt in the gift bag."

Target "Well you can always put on your invitations to please put receipt with your gifts."

Ok, in my response, I will admit this was not my most Godly moment and it didn't help with all the fun hormones bouncing around in me. But I do believe that I said something about that was the rudest thing I have ever heard, she obviously has never had a shower of her own or she would not even be saying that, Oh I also probably said something about her being from the north. Like I said... not my best moment.

Then devil Target worker said something about if it was on my registry I would return it with no problem.

*Great idea*

I will beat them at their own game. I grabbed the stuff went home added the stuff onto the registry and went back to Target and I returned it! Yeah I won!

Well for now.

Then I got pregnant with Romeo.

I thought no problem, I went to Target told then that I wanted to register. A different devil Target worker told me that you can't return things that are on the registry now. WHAT?!

Now that is ridiculous. So I ask that worker what I am suppose to do if I get a gift I got multiple things on my registry. She also mentioned that I should put on my invitations about gift receipts. Well all my feeling came back and I am pretty sure I had the same conversation about that worker being from the North too.

So Romeo is now here and my mother in law gave his a cute sleeper for him. When I opened the cardboard package I noticed that the sleeper was torn. So off to the devil Target.

Me: I would like to exchange this for the exact same thing even the same size. It has a tear in it. Here is the packaging it came in.

Target worker: Do you have your receipt?

Me: No I got it as a gift.

Target: Don't you have your gift receipt?

Me: That would be like a receipt, so no.

Target worker: Well i need your license and you will only be able to return on more item this year.

Me: Whoa, wait a minute! Why am I having to pay for something that your company did.

Target worker: That is just our policy, you can always ask for the gift receipt.

OH, these stupid gift receipts.

At this time I wasn't as hormonal so I just walked away. I think I also say a few people from my church too. I found a manager and she gave me the number to corporate to call and complain.

Now we are at today. Since I have been couponing I found out that on Target's website they have their own coupons. Now I just learned this but if a company has their own store coupons you can also stack it with a manufactures coupon to get even more saving. This is not illegal. This would be like it the item was on sale at the store and then you put your manufacturers coupon on the sale items.

Now what I did today is that Pampers are on sale for 2/$17. Great price by itself. Then on Targets website they have a $3 off pampers when you buy any diapers and wipes. So I printed out 2. One for the diapers and one for the wipes. (On the coupon it didn't say anything about 1 per transaction, just in case any of you are asking.) Then I also had 3 $2 off any Pampers products. Which meant I would be getting 2 diapers and a big thing of wipes for $10! I also had quite a few more items that had target coupons.

Also to save on ink I didn't print in the best quality and only in black and white.

So I go to check out. When I pulled out all of my coupons, the check out girl called her manager over. I handed the check out lady my coupons and both of them gave me really dirty looks. The manager then told me that we can't accept any coupons that do not scan. I told them that if they don't scan it if because I didn't print it on the best quality.

They rolled their eyes.

Oh this is going to be fun.

So most of my coupons wouldn't scan. I told them that I got these coupons from Target's website. She said that they should scan if they were.

EXCUSE ME! So she thinks I am a scammer. Ok well then I told her that I would only buy the items that had coupons with them THAT WOULD SCAN!

I didn't help her at all and the line was getting really long behind me. She had to completely go back through my items to see which ones had coupons that scanned. I turned to the people behind me and told them that Target is being stengy (spell?) with their own coupons.

They moved to other lanes.

So I ended up getting only a few liptons to go and a light bulb for .29 cents! But I was so mad. She tried to hand me back the Target coupons that wouldn't scan. I told her to throw them away. I will print more of then off of the TARGET WEBSITE. I wanted to say a few more things, but I was good and I think my tongue was bleeding from holding back.

Oh yeah and she also argued with me about using the target coupon with the manufacturer coupons. The manager came over and told her she was wrong. One little victory.

I came home (Mr. Genius is still home sick) I told him about my experience and he grabbed my coupons and went to the new Super Target in Smyrna. They took it all with no problem. No questions asked.

I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could start up my own Target store but not treat my customers like they are criminals.

Has anyone else had these experiences with Target or am I the only one?

Hope you all have had a better day then me.

The day of milestones

So now Mr. Genius and I are sick. Yuck! I think that this is the first time I have been sick since Wild man has been born. So almost 2 and a half years. All good things must come to an end. Mr. Genius stayed home from work today and we took shifts with the boys.

When I woke up from my nap I came out got Romeo and put him on the floor and he sat up by himself! I knew that he would do things much earlier then Wild Man. Wild Man didn't sit up til 7 month. It was probably close to 8 months actually. He just didn't have the desire to do anything on his own. Then there is Romeo, I don't know if he is trying to keep up with Wild man or trying to get away from him. But either way Romeo is moving along faster. He is also really trying to crawl. I predict that he will be by the end of the month.

So after I realized that Romeo could sit up on his own. Wild Man was sitting on the kitchen table coloring and completely out of the blue he sang the ABCs 5 times in a row! The whole song. Now what is so crazy about this is that he has never even said A B or C to me. He can recognize a few letters, and I have sang the song to him a few times over the last week (just because I thought that it was about time for him to learn). I know that he is probably a little late in this aspect, but better late then never.

You know... he did the same thing with counting to 10 in spanish just a couple of weeks ago. Matt was changing his diaper and out of the blue he started counting in spanish. Now I have never even spoken one word in spanish to him, so thank you Dora and Diego. How says you can't learn anything from TV.

I tried to get a video of Wild Man singing, but my reflexes are a little slow today. We will try again tomorrow.

Getting out of the house!

Since Tuesday, when Wild Man was sent home from school sick, we haven't left the house! The walls were closing in on me.
So today Mr. Genius was able to stay home this morning for a few hours so I could get out! Today I went and helped my mom decorate a table for the Women's Luncheon at church tomorrow. Isn't it pretty.







Our theme was Spring and if you have been in either one of our houses we have more then enough blue and white stuff. So rather then going out and buying new stuff we utilized what we had. I was fun to do something for about an hour that didn't involve diapers or pureed food.

So after I got back from decorating the table, I had an appointment at Wild Man's Dr. He was actually acting fine but we couldn't get the fever to go away. Turns out he has Bronchitis! Who knew! I mean look at him today...





This is Wild Man playing monkey.

Now Romeo apparently knew something was wrong...





Poor Romeo look at the look of "Help me mom" (Wild Man was trying to stop him from swinging to give him a hug. Which I try to discourage the close contact, giving the fact Wild man has BRONCHITIS.

Anyways, I have another story to tell you about how knowledgeable my husband has become.

Mr. Genius called to say that he has about a 3 hour break til he had to go back into start a late night of work. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do for me. Isn't that sweet! Well off course I could think of about 15 things that he could do, but decided on the one that would be the most entertaining. I asked him to go to Opry Mills and buy Wild man some sandals from the Stride Rite Outlet.

This ought to be interesting.

I emailed him the picture of the sandal that I wanted, he downloaded the picture onto this doohickey (that would be the technical term) to put in on his phone to take it into the store to show the sales lady.

Impressed? I am.

He then calls me and says and I quote "K**, they don't have the exact shoe you emailed me but they do have another brown leather sandal with a covers the toe and a Stage 3 heel."

Whoa! I couldn't answer him for a minute because I was laughing too hard. He has definitely passed the test.

Needless to say we got the sandals and they were $15 under our budget! Can't get much better than that.