This and That....

More one-liners from our favorite five year old:

-while doing something, told Kyle, "Don't worry dad, I got this."

-Kyle was playing a DS game and couldn't get past one part. The Boy grabs the game and says, "Here. Watch me. Watch the master."

-We were talking about how God makes all kinds of people - some might wear glasses, some have a different skin color than we do, someone might use a wheelchair. He mentioned that his buddy M at school had darker skin and I said, that is because M is Indian. Not like feathers and a teepee, but a different kind of Indian. He got quiet and goes, "Mom, if M is Indian, I'm gonna FREAK."

-Told my cousin Jennifer: "Petsmart is going to start selling tarantulas and scorpions. Everyone is FREAKING out."

-His Brother only recently started walking on his own. The Boy's best pal, Big G, has a sister younger than His Brother who is already walking. Big G asked The Boy why His Brother wasn't walking. The Boy says, "Because he has to get therapy with First Steps, OKAY?"

-If he's not sure of something, will tell me "to Google it."

-On the way to school, we'd always notice telephone lines with birds all lined up on them. We make up stories about how they are having meetings where they talk about bird stuff. Once there weren't a lot of birds and I said, maybe he went to get more coffee and donuts for the meeting. The Boy says, "yeah... coffee, regular and decaf..."

-I sent them to their grandparents for an overnight. Kyle was working so I'd have time to myself (AHHHHH.......) He said, "What are you going to do tonight? You clockin' out?"

-I said, "NATHAN. Come here. NOW." His Brother repeats "NOW." The Boy responds with "SHUT UP DYLAN!"

-I mentioned something to him and he goes, "Yeah... you owe me one."

-We were stuck in traffic on the way to school... under my breath, I said, "this is freaking ridiculous." The Boy say, "I'll tell you what's freaking ridiculous... YOU'RE freaking ridiculous..."

On another note...I've been into reading blogs lately. Hopping around, finding people who have things in common with me and blogs that are much richer in content than simply an online scrapbook of their lives. By doing so, I've realized that it might be very easy to look at this blog and think, "oh look... the Bartlett family went to the Children's Museum... how nice...."

Its not all sunshine and rainbows over here.

And if you know us at all, you know this to be true. We've had our share of ups and downs. And some really bad downs. And we're not the freaking Cleavers. I'm not wearing an apron and baking cookies. We're not all reading scripture at night and singing kumbaya together.

I guess I don't blog about the downers because, well, who wants to read them? Do you want to read about how our Easter eggs caught on fire? How, my third day at my new job in Chicago, I broke my foot? Just by walking? How I ran over something with my car and punctured the gas tank, causing $1,400 in repairs? Hell no you don't. I don't want to relive it, that's for sure.

But I need to start keeping it real.

So please don't read this and think that our lives are just happy and full of sunshine and oh aren't their kids cute and well would you look at that... The Boy started kindergarten...It can be misleading. So this blog, it might start becoming a little more honest. I don't want to use it as a facade to what is really going on in our lives.

And this is MY blog. I created it. It's my little piece of the internet. And how many times do I have to tell you, you're not the boss of me.

I want to remember it all, and I want to read older posts and remember it as it really was.

And here's a picture, just for the hell of it.

Summah Tahm.....

I know. I KNOW. The blog is behind. What else is new. But its summer, and my time behind a computer is limited. We're outside, we're in the pool, we're not hunkered down and hibernating like we do in the winter. See?


And here is His Brother, peeking out the window for The Boy. He doesn't like to be separated from him.




SO until I get my computer back from the kind folks at Net Xcellence (I get 30% off my bill for letting them advertise here....) here are a few one-liners. More to come, I promise, including July Fourth, a weekend getaway to the big city, and a walk in the rain. Exciting stuff, I know.

-He was cold. Asked me to warm up the car. I said I would, and got, “Okay. Go warm that baby up.”

-I said something about His Brother. He goes, “You mean Fatty McGee?”

-I told him I had to take His Brother to the doctor. He goes, “Because he’s such a pig?” No, son. That’s not an official diagnosis.

-On the Fourth of July, fireworks were still going off around 11 p.m. The Boy says, “That has GOT to STOP. Don’t they know we’ve got a BABY trying to sleep?”

-Grandpa was playing legos with him. The Boy says, “Grandpa, JUST SO YOU KNOW, not all of these are legos. Just so you know.”

-He is always curious about the weather. They talk about it at school and have someone is the weather watcher every day. He came in my room to tell me, “Mom, tomorrow its gonna be 94 in Terre Hope.”

-I mentioned something to him and he responded with “Yeah? Good luck with that.”

-And if this one isn’t proof that he’s my son, I don’t know what could prove it. Grandma and I were playing ping pong. He hollers: “Now.... from the east.... over here.... GRANDMAAAAAW BARTLETT!!!!” (Then, pointing to me) “AAAAAND.... over here... from the west....we’ve got.... MOMMMAAAA BARTLETT!!!!”

-He’s been reading to His Brother at night, which is a cool thing to watch. It gives him the time to practice his reading, and His Brother will listen to anything The Boy says. He reads these little books he gets at school and he’s supposed to color each page of the story. One page wasn’t colored and I asked why it wasn’t colored. He goes, “Meh... I don’t know... I was probably jacking around.”

-He’s just getting over strep throat and informed me that he puked. I thought it was current, turns out, he had puked the night before. So I said, wait... you just got up and puked in the night and didn’t tell anyone? He goes, “I got up, puked, and moved on with my life.”

-And this one... yes, this will earn me Mother of the Year: He was telling me about how, when some kids lose their teeth, they have to ask their Dad to help pull them. “But I didn’t have to do that, Mom. I did it myself. I kinda screwed Daddy on that.” Son, don’t say screwed. Just kind of overall... not a nice word to use. Sigh.

News on His Brother - approaching 18 months and still not walking. Through the beauty of First Steps, he’s been evaluated for therapy and will start soon. In the meantime, we’re working with him and he’s made a lot of progress! Really, we’re forcing him to walk and he’s getting much stronger.

So, I’m sure it won’t take much time at all for him to be getting into The Boy’s things. When that happens, I’m expecting this brotherly love I currently see between the two of them to perhaps go south. We’ll see.

Gordon

This poor guy is in a daycare full of girls. He doesn't mind it though, aside from the occassional hair clip in his hair or boa around his shoulders. His nickname is "Heffner" or "Heff," since he's the only male around the joint for the day.

So, he sees the little girls play with the kitchen and play baby dolls, and that is his favorite. Meet Gordon, His Brother's new friend.

Poor Baby Brother

This guy, like his big brother, has suffered from chronic ear infections since he was about 6 months old. So after 10 or 12, or however many we had or however many nights we were up with a screaming child, he got tubes put in a few weeks ago. We're happy to report that so far they are working! He was a little nervous about the procedure...

But after we got home, got something on his stomach and had a nice nap, he was back to his old self...

Look what ELSE I can do.

We took a little mom's getaway (kids included) to a lake house (shout out to Suzanne, Andrew, Nancy, Papa Joe...Grams, Jack, the whole northern gang) for a change of scenery. More to post on that in a bit, but while we were there, look what His Brother figured out how to do. And then when he got to the top, he was mad there weren't any more! And he says "AHP!" (up!)

*no children were harmed during the making of this video. Suzanne is one step behind him to catch him if necessary!

Guess who is ONE?!

Hard to believe it's been ONE year. This guy is the best. Such a good boy (a momma's boy... and I'm okay with that) and a real angel to our family. Happy Birthday to our Dylan Timothy Bartlett!

Two of his biggest fans!!


I'm wondering about a first haircut. Part of me is ready, the other part of me isn't ready to say goodbye to his baby-ness. These curls, included.

Update

Sorry for the delay. Actually, I'm not. Who am I apologizing to? The four readers I have? It's my blog. You're not the boss of me.

We had a whirlwind of Thanksgiving, Christmas, The Boy's Fifth Birthday, His Brother's First Birthday, and some stuff in between. Here are a few one liners to keep you entertained until I get pictures downloaded.

-The Boy handed me something and said, "Can you hold this? Like, sometime today?"

-We were watching American Idol. The Boy looks at me and goes, "He’s not going to Hollywood."

-His Brother is a crawling fool and I have to tell The boy 42 times a day to pick up his stuff. His Brother crawled over to me and handed me a lego man. I said, Natey, look what Dylan has. The Boy looks up and says, "eh...he can have it, I don’t care about that guy."

-He loves his new Nintendo DS from Santa. He was telling me all about it and goes, "That’s a bad guy, he’s got to stand in front of the judge."

-Whenever we see traffic, he points at people sitting in line and goes, "SUCKAS!!!"

-He was telling Kyle about how he's watching alot of TV at school. Kyle started asking questions because considering what we pay that joint every month, he shouldn't really be sitting around, watching Montel. He confessed that he's sneaking out of class to watch his shows, because he doesn't want to miss any of them. "Dad, there is this room with TV's that the teachers use and I watch my shows in there. But don’t tell anyone, I haven’t gotten caught yet.” We don't know which is more concerning - that he's sneaking out of Pre-K, that he's sneaking out to watch TV, or that he knows he might get caught, and he's okay with any repercussions.

-At Christmastime, he made reindeer food. We sprinkled it outside on Christmas Eve and he goes, "Mom, put the reindeer food in the street, I don’t want any reindeer poop in our front yard." (and hypothetically, let's say that happened. As if I'd say, "BOY! Get out here and clean up that reindeer poop!")

-While we were sprinkling the reindeer food (in the street), the wind blew. The boy hollers, "that’s santa’s magic! I gotta get to bed!"

-We took a trip to the CHildren's Musuem (pics to come). I wanted to see the Barbie exhibit. I said, who is coming with me? He looks back at me and gives me a thumbs down. Keeps walking.

-This came out of nowhere: “Who wants a knuckle sandwich? Because I'm ABOUT to deliver.”

-to Kyle:“Dad? What’s with you eating on the bed?”

And by the way, he has decided he wants to be called Bucky. Not sure why, but we're going with it. For today at least...

His Brother gets baptized

We had His Brother baptized on August 9. My sister and her kids came into town because she is Dylan’s godmother, and we had so many family and friends to help us celebrate. I even had two friends from Chicago and friends from Kokomo come! We are truly blessed in a lot of ways.

His Brother was great - smiled at the priest and didn’t cry at all! It was like he knew what was going on and that he had to be a good boy. It was awesome to watch my second child begin his spiritual journey with so many people there to help guide and support him throughout his lifetime.

With my sister being here, that meant all six grandchildren were reunited. Total chaos. They had a blast though and we started referring to them in birth order as numbers. Numbers #4 and #5 (Nathan and Olivia) were best friends and worst enemies, but mostly best friends. #6 (His Brother) held his own and was, most times, best of show. It was fun to have them around and we miss them!







He crashed in the car seat within about four seconds of us getting in the car. Poor guy!

His Brother loves Ice Cream

My first attempt at posting a video. We gave His Brother some ice cream at the state fair... he didn't want to give the spoon back!