The Kitchen + Andrew = Crazy Momma

I know.... it's cute. He's sooo cute. But.... no. It drives me crazy. This kid is too smart for his own good. He finds a way to get to anything he's got his eye on. I'm kicking myself for not bringing out our play kitchen-- we left it in storage. I think he'd love it! ... maybe for his birthday I'll just get him one anyway (can you believe he's going to be TWO??). Today I finally outsmarted him and figured out a way to gate off the tiny (21") entry way into the kitchen. He's not super happy about it, but after a flooded sink and broken plate on the tile yesterday... I'm just done trying to intercept him dragging our dining room chairs in there so he can achieve his mischief. Blessed angel boy that he is. :)

I think this was before he realized he could push the chairs into there. The smartie would even drag the kitchen mat out of there so it wouldn't block his chair.

And my William. He asks me to take his picture every single day. Love him.

Bird Park

I did so bad with taking pictures in November! These pictures are courtesy of Nathaniel. :) He took William and Andrew out to a neighboring bird park to give me a little break (Cameron was napping). This park is so cool! It's free (always a bonus) and the birds are so chatty! Andrew LOVES them.

Ah! He's so cute.

The monkeys at the entrance to the park. It's funny, there are all these signs with visual warnings that the monkeys bite. They're fun to watch though.

My favorite picture. Such a cute kid.

This kid! So silly. :)

William

I feel gypped when it's COLD without snow; my get-up-and-go sorta freezes... for everything: blog, dishes, laundry, mopping (Ugh! Stupid white tile floors!) etc. Snow makes me giddy; cold just makes me... cold. Deep, right? ;) Looks like we *might* get snow next Sunday! I would be so happy!


So. William.




Bless his heart. I love this boy!! He is tenderhearted, and especially loves his mother. Last night I tucked him in bed and he said "Goodnight sweet girl!". He makes me laugh every day, like this morning saying "FELICITY, I'm done with my cereal!"... I guess "mom" wasn't catching my attention. He is getting so much better at sharing with his brothers. Cameron is his best friend and he'll do just about anything to make Andrew laugh. He's a fast learner, he's strong, he's a talented lego builder and artist. I'm so lucky to have this young boy in my life!

Sweet William's ideal is to be in control around this house. Who says the prayer, who is in time-out, what movie to watch, what to eat for breakfast, where people can sit at the table. William is the most adorable little wanna-be-dictator that you'll ever set eyes on. My sweet, beautiful, challenging boy. I make him sound worse than he really is there-- he's actually been making great progress on his flexibility in relation to HIS wants vs what is best for the general population. One of his frequent dictates, that I'm often, but not always, happy to give in to is "Mom! Take my picture!" Haha... I can only blame myself here, for having my camera in his face so often!

"Mom! Take a picture of me sleeping!"

"Mom! Take a picture of me with this picture on my face!"

This is a picture that I colored some time last year (I'm talented, right?!). William found it last week and wanted to color the same picture. He was also greatly distressed that the picture had no eyes (the coloring book has eyes on the back page to go w/every page). Loving mother that I am, I traced the picture for him. He spent an hour and half coloring his picture nearly identically to how I had colored mine. My amazing little artist-- he really is talented.


See? This is a fireman! Check out that hat! And those hands. I'm pretty sure I wasn't drawing thing this... obviously human until well into Kindergarten. haha. I need to scan more of his drawing and put up a full post for the blog. :)

THIS unfortunate face (on such a beautiful child) is William's "Angry Face". Fortunately, it isn't there too often. ;)




My silly boy. Can't resist Momma's tickles.

trunk or treat

When it comes to getting a picture with all three boys-- this is about as good as it gets.

I *love* ward trunk-0r-treats. Especially the chili cook-off part. Mmm-mmm. I love me some chili and cornbread! This year I didn't want to bust out ghetto last-minute costumes for the boys (again), so I ordered them a couple months ago to make sure I could get all three sizes. To avoid brawls, they ALL got the exact same costume. Simplifies my life and they also look so. dang. cute! ... though I have to admit-- looking through all of my pictures of them in costume, I have to really focus sometimes to figure out which boy is which!

Happy Halloween! Love, the three little dragons.

Just wanted to add a full body shot so you can see how CUTE the costumes are. Old Navy costumes for life, baby! The best part is that they are fleece and *warm*-- so no putting out cash for costumes only to cover them up with coats.

Whoops....

My dear sister sent me an email this week:

Sept: 34

Oct: 0

Lost motivation???

Oof. Yup. You could say I lost motivation. October tends to be my Funk Month. That transition to fall/winter weather... it's colder so I have to adjust to being indoors a lot with my energetic monkeys. That... AND I've been spending most of my free time working on my new photography website instead of blogging. I have to do a little public shout-out to my devoted Nathaniel who has been incredibly supportive of my photography AND supportive of my mental roller coaster this month. ;) We also haven't done a lot of traveling this month, which has been good. We're planning something fun for November and December though. Yay!

Okay-- so, just for Vicky I'm going to post a little about my Andrew. This boy is so stinking cute! He is, as N puts it, a ray of sunshine in our lives. 90% of the time he is happy, smiling and talking in gibberish at you (though yesterday and today he's added about 5 words, thus doubling his vocabulary). So, that other 10%... he is an energizer bunny on "Destroy" mode. Seriously, he can trash my entire main floor in about 3 minutes-- thanks to the lack of child-proofed cabinets here in our German kitchen (This mode reminds me painfully of Cameron at this same age. I think I was too sleep deprived to remember William at this age... sad!). Still-- between all three boys, you never know where something will end up in the house. It's not uncommon for me to climb into bed and find matchbox cars or a spatula, to find the kitchen tongs in the bathtub or backyard, or to find everything from recycling (pulled from the bin), shoes, duplos, and movies all thrown down to the bottom level (an especially favorite past-time of Andrew's).
Andrew is at the "helper" age. He likes to dig under the sink to find a dry sponge and then run to the table to try to wipe it off, bring me the broom demanding that I utilize it, and to drag the mop bucket all over the house and yard. With this kind of a helper on hand.... I usually try to do my housework when he's asleep. ;). Alas! One day he woke up from his nap whist I was mid-chores.....

Oh, the joy this boy finds in mopping. Well. His version of mopping, which involves no actual mopping at all. Just dipping the mop into the water, and then getting the excess water of. Repeat. 100 times.

I tried tossing him on the couch in front of some kid show, but no dice. The kid had to be involved.

Mmkay.. have you SEEN pampers new diapers? They're so cute!! They make me never want to put pants on him!

I was holding him trying to get a shot of just him... and got 1/2 his face. Not too shabby a shot though. I really like it. HAHA.

Who needs toys when you have a bucket of mop water to splash in?? Heaven for this 20-month-old!


BONUS: Seriously-- go look at this little clip of my boy. We puppy-sat our neighbors new dog, Falco, a few times (until the dog got big enough to knock over all my boys...). The unfortunate side effect of this was that Andrew learned to follow Falco through the hedge to Falco's yard. UGH. Now I can't just send him out back because he darts right over to the neighbors yard to harass their bunnies. Oh well-- he sure looks dang cute while driving me crazy. See him in action HERE.

Bruges, Belgium

Bruges is called the "Venice" of the north. Um. Okay! I guess they do have a Michelangelo sculpture. It was a lovely city-- but catered to the 60+ tour group crowd, which made it difficult for us and our crew of romping, energetic monkeys. I did love the canals through the city though and there were a lot of interesting things to see.

While N and a friend went inside the Church of Our Lady to see Michelangelo's Madonna and Child I stayed outside with the kiddos to let them run around.

"Mom, we're being snakes!"

N, Andre and my kids.

I just thought this was funny/cool. We saw several nuns right when we got there. I wonder if this is really their place. ;)

Am I the only one who thinks this is bizarre advertising?

This is one of the best street performers I've seen. His face painting was shaded perfectly! My kids were intrigued-- and freaked out. William wouldn't go anywhere near him. haha!

This is the Basilica of the Holy Blood. Inside this church is the Relic of the Precious Blood-- a vial of dried up blood, said to be Christ's. It was brought to the city around 1150, or so and the story goes that the blood would turn to liquid every Friday for 100 years. Fascinating.

Villers-la-Ville, Belgium

Isn't this spot amazing? We had never heard of these ruins before and at N's aunt house we just happened to see a little advertisement for it. I'm SO glad we went. It was a major highlight of the trip (seriously-- way better than Brussels).

It was a community of monks and lay-brothers, but was left to ruin in 1796... I still don't get quite why or how. It's incredible to visit though-- probably more impressive and interesting than had it never fallen apart.

Fall colors, gorgeous light, and a few beautiful boys = one giddy photographer.

The older he gets, the more I feel like I'm looking at a mini-Nathaniel. He'll look just like his father and grandfather!

Checking out the prison. Why there was a prison in a monastery-- I don't quite get, but that's alright. ;)

Big boy! We were nearly the only ones there so Andrew got to have a lot of freedom. He was a happy boy to get out of the stroller!

Hey, good looking.

Ick. I had to put it in because Nathaniel took such care to take a ton of pictures of me-- most turned out horrible (not his fault-- his subject is not as photogenic as he is!).

Our kids were remarkably awful travelers for this entire trip. I guess we were due for this to happen-- they'd been so good and flexible the rest of the summer. Even so, this picture is hilarious.

Remains of the cathedral looking out the back...

... to the side...

... and to the front. So cool.

We've got SPIRIT, yes we do!

Dang it all! We're so cute! ;)

Part of the reason we went to Belgium was to see the US Soccer team kick the Belgium Devil's teams bums.


Only. They didn't. (0-1)


We were disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm on the field, but, even with the rain, it was still a cool experience. Many thanks and bisous to Aunt D who braved our boys so we could go solo! :)

Yikes! A welcome invitation from the stadium for its visitors.

Our view.

Belgium's keeper blocking one of our few attempts at goal. We actually did score, but it was called off-sides. Lame with a capital "L".

These enthusiastic fans sat right in front of us. We felt pretty lacking in our patriotism when we saw them. Even though we lost, and we were freezing from the cold rain, it was pretty awesome to be able to flaunt our USA pride for a bit. Living abroad you have to keep it pretty tame. Safety first-- you don't want to become a target for someone who hates the US for one reason or another.

Belgium's "GOOL".

Bless them. We need lunatics like this at every event-- keeps up the losing teams moral. ;)

It was a "covered" stadium, but we were on the edge of the covering... so the rain blew had no trouble drenching us. I felt pretty good about my decision to bring my German rain pants. These guys know how to dress for weather!

This was immediately after our goal, before it was called off-sides... and our victory dreams were shattered. haha!

After the game. About 1/2 the players strolled part way to our barbed-off section to wave at us. Nice notion guys. Next time, just work it on the field! Give us something to really cheer about. Never fear though, you still have our loyalty. U-S-A!