Pictures of Our Slow, Not-Very-Interesting Everyday Life

OH MY GOSH Graham is so cute it just kills me. Every day, everything. Chewing on our faces, pulling hair, smiling and sitting up with help. LOVE HIM.

Hello little blue boy!

This is Tommy's life whenever he's home. Graham has started to show signs of becoming very interested in Daddy too... Hopefully soon it blooms into a full-on obsession like Dane's because then I won't have very much to do whenever Tommy's home! 

I was pretty annoyed with them here because neither of them had napped like they were supposed to... but COME ON, how can you stay annoyed with those faces?

HAHAHA Dane's three-year-old dentist appointment. He just hopped up on the chair and calmly opened his mouth and sat there the whole time the hygienist cleaned his teeth. Hilarious.

Graham would be happiest if Dane were always interacting with him, non-stop, all day long.

Before Dane's nap every day, we all lay down on the bed in his room and I tell Dane's bedtime stories with Graham laying in between us. No matter how tired Graham is, he is 100% happy to be laying there with Dane and me, listening to the stories and rolling from side to side looking at his two best friends. It's adorable. Probably one of the most precious things we do every day.

Dane is now totally insisting on choosing his outfits on his own. His first outfit to wear after every laundry day is his football shirt and red basketball pants. Then it's probably his Denmark shirt with his black basketball pants. Today he exceeded expectations with his orange Elmo socks, Denmark shirt, and American flag shorts, then completed the ensemble with an Indian headdress from the Fun Club. He was very proud of himself.

Thinking deep thoughts, pondering in the distance...

We bought a double stroller and are just finally getting to the stage where Graham is big enough to really use it. LOVE it! (Dane was trying to make a silly face here.)

Graham is starting to eat big people food and sit in a high chair! Thank you IKEA for the $20 high chair. 

We also pulled out and cleaned off the exersaucer our neighbors gave us and Graham is totally in heaven playing with it. I can't believe he's really big enough for this!

Hello, CUTEST BABY EVER. I love this cute little church outfit. 

"Mom, this is my sweet little love chicky! Say hi to my sweet little love chicky! Sweet little love chicky, where are you?" (He called it that all day.)

Finally introduced to temporary tattoos and is TOTALLY EXCITED ABOUT THEM.

Dane's quotables

Wearing the Thomas the train hats that Aunt Camille made for them and looking super cute!

In honor of Dane's birthday, I wrote down a few of the cute things he's said lately. At this age, everything that comes out of his mouth sounds cute. Seriously, everything. But some of them are actually quote-worthy, or he says them so often that I wanted to record it. He just cracks me up.

Me: Good job going poop in the potty! I'm so proud of you. 

Dane: It's all in a day's work!

Me: I love you, sweetie.
Dane: I love you too, dear.

Dane: Preston pushed me in nursery. Preston is EVIL.

About twenty-five times a day, Dane runs up to me and says, "Are you happy, Mommy?"

Dane: Trains don't have birthdays because they can't wear birthday hats.

Dane has assigned each of us a car from Cars that we each are supposed to have as our favorite. Probably at least once a day, Dane says, "I like Lightning McQueen, Mommy, you like Mater, Graham, you like Chick Hicks, and Daddy, you like FRED!" Fred is a no-name rusty, nerdy pick-up truck that doesn't even show up in the movie but is in a Cars book we have. Tommy is always embarrassed that he has to like Fred.

And there are so, so many sweet and lovey things he says just randomly throughout the day. He's totally figured out how to manipulate me.

Dane: Mom, you have a cute forehead. You have cute eyebrows.

Dane: You look so beautiful, Mommy! You're so pretty. I love your pretty dress!

Dane, this morning as he woke up: Mommy, I like you. It's so good to have you.

I shut my finger in the microwave and I yelled. Dane ran over and said in a high-pitched sweet voice, "What's wrong, Mommy? I'm so sorry it hurts! Let me give it a kiss!"

Dane's Birthday celebrations

Dane's third birthday was yesterday and we had a perfect, low-key, happy third birthday for him. I kind of feel turned off from trying to do too much for kids' birthdays because of all the over-the-top birthday parties that you see on social media. I refuse to spend hours and hours making a fancy Thomas the train cake (although he would probably have loved it) and decorating and planning a crowded birthday party. Dane was absolutely thrilled with his super not-fancy cake I made and with our little mini-party with his "cousins," and I think it worked out great. I like doing a family outing for us instead of a party--although eventually I know we'll do birthday parties, just not until he knows what he's missing out on.

So for our outing, I found a real, life-sized train that we could ride on for his birthday celebration, a week before his birthday. I thought it would be a huge hit with this Thomas-obsessed boy. We got to the train station half an hour early, right as the train was pulling up, and Dane was blown away.

We couldn't wait to get on...

This is how excited we were at the beginning of the train ride:

And this is how the ride ended:

So it was a total success. Good thing we've got a sense of humor--it could have been really frustrating to plan a really fun outing that ended with both kids crying and whining most of the time, and with a potty training accident in the car on the way home. HA.

Luckily, we had very low-key plans for Dane's actual birthday. I bought some birthday decorations at the dollar store and set them up around the dining room.

We had birthday cereal (Dane picked it out--Lucky Charms!) for breakfast.

The big present of the day was Dane's new SANDBOX, complete with an awesome dump truck. Dane said, "This is the biggest dump truck ever!" (I actually bought the dump truck for him for Christmas and never gave it to him because he got SO many other presents for Christmas, and it's worked out great!) He played in the sandbox most of the day while we hung out at home.

The weather was nice and COOL for at least an hour in the morning so we went on a walk before Graham's morning nap, and Dane rode his trike up and down the street.

For lunch, we went to Tommy's work and had lunch with him. Dane was soooo excited and couldn't contain himself. He got a corn dog, which cost $1. Win win.

We spent the afternoon after naps just hanging out with the sandbox outside. These two sat outside for a while while I was inside doing dishes and I could hear Graham squealing with happiness while he watched Dane playing in the sand. That kid will be the happiest baby once he can move.

Then we had the Warners, our second/third cousins, over for dinner! Dane talked all day about having Cameron and Mallory and Mason come over and play in his sandbox with him.

And we had a barbecue for dinner. More hot dogs, haha.

His cake was basically the world's most ghetto kid's birthday cake ever. I seriously laughed so hard at myself after I finished it. But when I showed it to Dane he was so happy--he said, "Whaaaaat?!! WOW!!!"

So happy having people sing happy birthday to him. 

After dinner, during cake, he opened up a few more presents he hadn't wanted to open in the morning. (He gets easily overwhelmed by presents, I've found. Two or three is about the max he wants to open at a time.)

By the end of the day Dane was conked out. But I felt pretty satisfied that he had a good birthday, although when I asked him at the end of the day how his birthday was he said, "Not good." Haha! He had about 12 requests to Skype from various members of our families, he got several awesome presents, and he got to spend most of the day playing with his awesome sandbox and hanging out with us. What could be better?

Dane turns 3!

I have a friend who does birthday interviews with her kids each year, and I totally loved that idea. This year was the first year that made sense to do it--where Dane could actually understand and answer questions--and I was brilliant enough to do it on video (which I then wrote out here, taking out all the extra talking and prompting, since I can't attach a 10-minute video here). I also took some pictures yesterday, on his birthday, that just PERFECTLY encapsulate him right now. He's wearing his favorite outfit that he asks to wear every day, plus some random socks that he pulled up. So dang cute and perfectly 3.

Dane's Birthday Interview:

How old are you? THREE!!!

What are your favorite clothes to wear? My FOOTBALL shirt and my basketball pants. You like to wear those every day, huh? Yep, I do!

What's your favorite underwear? Thomas. I like blue and red.

What's your favorite color? Blue and red.

What's your favorite toy? Lightning McQueen *poww* (racecar sound effect). He's a fast racecar. 

What's your favorite show? Thomas and Lightning McQueen. 

Who's your favorite train? Thomas.

Who is your best friend? Ben, and Preston (two friends from our ward here), and Zach (his cousin).

Who do you love? Mommy and Daddy! You! And baby Graham. And I love this [the dump truck]. 

What's your favorite food? Boo-boo! A-A! Dump trucks! Do-do! (Okay, moving on...)

What's your favorite book? Thomas and Lightning McQueen.

What's your favorite animal? Dumbo. He's a elephant.

Who do you like to sleep with at night? Snoopy and Charlie. Charlie's a green frog. And my green blankie and soft blankie and brown blankie. 

What do you like to do when we go outside? Play in my sandbox. Play with my dump truck. And ride my trike.

What do you like to do with your family? Play trains.

Where do you like to go? Do you like to go anywhere? No. I just like staying here. [After some prompting...] I like the Fun Club.

What do you like to eat for lunch? PB and jelly. PB and J. Peanut butter and jelly.

What do you like to eat for breakfast? Cereal.

What are are you scared of? Of monsters, and alligators and wolves and T-Rexes. What do you do when you're scared? I can hit everything with swords. Mom, I'm not talking about nice guys. I'm just talking about bad guys and T-Rexes and wolves and the Hulk. So you just hit bad guys with swords? Yeah, and monsters and alligators. What else are you scared of? Diesel. [The bad guy train in Thomas the train.] 

What makes you laugh? What do you think is funny? No bad monsters.

I can't believe he's really 3.

September 11

Dane was watching "The Tigger Movie" today. The climax of the movie is when Tigger almost gets smashed by an avalanche and Roo does a huge bounce to save him. I was washing dishes and watching Dane watch this part, and it was the sweetest thing in the world to see his worried little face light up with relief and joy as he yelled, "Mom, Roo saved Tigger!" He was so sweet and pure in that moment with his concern about his good friend Tigger that I wanted to just rush over and hug him. I loved it.

Then tonight I was putting Graham to bed and the last few weeks he has been wanting us to put him down and let him to go sleep by himself. (Can I get a HALLELUJAH!!) But tonight he fussed and gave some high piercing screams after I walked out of the room (this child has opinions) and so I went back in and held him. After a lot of squirming he finally calmed down and I rocked him in the rocking chair, humming Edelweiss to him, watching him get more and more tired as he stared at the window and at me and while I rubbed his soft little cheeks. Usually I am so happy to let him just go to sleep on his own but tonight I tried to hold him longer than he even wanted just to snuggle him a little bit more.

I forgot that it was September 11 today until I drove past the school district building and noticed the flags at half-mast. I realized Dane didn't know anything about September 11 or what it means or what happened--and I imagined trying to explain it to him. And I imagined him finding new worse, more realistic fears than the monster in his closet, of planes crashing into our house or hijackers any time we go to the airport.  And it made my heart hurt to remember how scary and earth-shattering and crushing that day was for every kid in America in 2001. I don't want to have to relive that for him or explain it. 

But remembering it makes me more grateful for all the little moments and blessings that make up my very uneventful but meaningful life. I didn't do anything to deserve being born into a stable, happy, well-off family in a wealthy and free country. And I take it for granted that I will be safe every day. But I am trying to remember that those are huge, huge blessings that most of the world does not have. 

So I hope I keep on remembering that. And I know eventually I'll need to tell these two boys and hopefully help them learn the right things from it.