currently, conversations and confessions

 Heyyyyyyyyyy.

The holidaze are upon us and even though there is no snow on the palmy palms, We thought a blow up snowman for our front yard seemed like it would look natural on our front yawn. Yeeees. A legit blow up lawn decor item. Who'd have thought. Certainly not Jake, he wanted the blow up Minions on Santa's Train monstrosity but I'm not there yet, errr yeah ever.

At the end of last year I did a smorgasbord post of things that had slipped through the blogging cracks. Before the New Year is upon us type I wanted to dump a few such items here.  When our hard drive crashed we lost a decent amount that we now only have thanks to this here blog, so while nothing here might be epically interwebs worthy I'm clacking it out. Spirit fingers.

^^^Rad's under that bucket. (Self imposed bucket...not mother imposed) He was raised by a good time.

Here's a nice life event to start.

Deep introspective wisdom: Everyone is in charge of their own life until they have to potty train a child like Rad.

Rad (when naked) is fully potty trained. Which is super fantastic when being in your birthday suit is socially acceptable. It's less fantastic when any sort of undergarment leads to this...

Julia: Rad. Did you poop your pants?
Rad: NO.
Julia: You smell like you did.
Rad: NOPE.
Julia: Well then how did the poop get in your pants?
Rad: (lights up) Poop jump in dhere Mom!
Rad: Demonstrates with bounding jumps.
Julia:

And now that he does use the potty semi regularly Rhett finds it to be another way to show off his big brother dominance, because err-thing is a competition.

Rhett: Rad, my poop is bigger than that so I'm in charge.

I know it will happen before he goes to college. Because let's be honest, basic potty training is actually the easy part. Teaching your kids to not use an entire roll of toilet paper to wipe their butt is the hard part. #truedat

One more about Rad.

This is Breckie. She's adore-a-freaking-ble. And Rad loves her. LOVES her.

Cue the cute puppy love emojis. "Wheres" Breckie?" is the first burning question Rad has most mornings and any outing is interrupted with the same question until either we A. see Breckie the Beloved or B. He rephrases the question to spice it up "Why no see Breckie?" "Breckie where are you?"

Beck's spirit animal...cat. He tries to maul/attack my face at all times. But when I start to get frustrated with the slobber fest, he purrs and nuzzles me and it's so effective! I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with a cat.

Also note worthy! >>>>> New unassisted sitting record: 2 proud minutes and 43 seconds and suddenly turkey-lurkey's got a new lease on life.

The moment you realize your offsprings talents might not be the kind that get you on America's Got Talent. #tigermom

Also...our new parenting philosophy with Rhett: Let him sleep, for when he wakes, he will eat all the food. Must be a growth spurt. One that our budget anticipates will last till he's 18.

He came home from school the other week asking for a wallet. When I asked why he told me it was to go with the bling ring he had gotten from the classroom kindergarten. A wallet/ring combo would mean that Rhett and his girlfriend N could tie the knot.

Some of Rhett's thoughts on marriage and love:

Rhett: Sometimes girls like me.
Julia: That's true. Because you're nice to them and polite and funny.
Rhett: AND because I play the game.
Julia: What game? (worry worry worry)
Rhett: The game where I let them hug me.
Julia: (worry worry worry)

Rhett: When I have my wallet then we can get married.
Julia:
Rhett: But I'm not sure what we do after that.

Rhett: Can I always live with you and dad even when I get married?
Julia: Well don't you want your own house?
Rhett: No. We can just live with you.

Last week we had a bond fire in our fire pit to burn our TV console, one of our very first DIY porjects ever and it was literally falling apart. It was a purging cleanse watching it turn to ashes.

Post fire, as we were cleaning up someone left the porch door open and this little bird joined the family. 

It went nothing like this

 or this.

Shocking I know.

Rad was FREAKING out in terror, but was still intensely drawn to the drama. He would run back and forth down the upstairs hall until he essentially sedated himself by putting a blanket over his head and peeped out every few minutes.

Rhett was both manically laughing at every move the bird made and kept announcing in a baby voice that it was the "cutest bird he had ever seen". He also kept trying to tell us that of all the adults present (2) that he was the real animal expert and that if we would just let him try and catch the bird, it would be a "piece of cake". Yeah.

Our feathered friend was caught by Jake and released hopefully no worse for wear. I can imagine him flying back to his family with tales of his experience. I'm sure he painted us to be much like Honey Boo Boo's family because that's pretty much how our behavior ranked during this incident.

My little sister is super pregnant at this point with her first baby (A BOY!!) and so my mom and I headed her way for her baby shower a few weeks ago.

Jane is a hair curling guru. It's her calling in life. I'm standing strong for all those who haven't found their place in the curl world. Stick straight locks 4life.

Basically it was a magical weekend of sleep and magical food consuption and me wishing I had chased my goal of going to Law School. (Or being a plastic surgeon. I like to imagine had I gone the plastic surgery route I might have gotten a reality show with great parallels to the Mindy Project. I would be very Mindy-esq obvs.)

My brother in law is in Law School (Hi Andrew!) and so I got to pretend I was a student and walk the grounds.

My Elle Woods moment. I'm even using legal jargon in my everyday life now.

Julia: Rad did poop 3 times this morning?
Rad: Sure.
Julia: I object!

Rhett: Can I get a new toy today?
Julia: The juries out on that one.

Beck: Screech!
Julia: Order! Order! I said order!

Nightly traditions. The reading of books, not the Fritos Rhett is eating. We haven't quite fallen into Fritos for Dinners as being a full fledge tradition.

^^^Beckett is to Jake, as Jake is to Beckett.

Jake told me the other day if I was one of the seven dwarfs I would be Snarky.

I told him he would be Chubby.

He said. "Yep. Definitely Snarky."

Touche.

Aaaand that's all she wrote.