Welcome to My Nightmare.....

You may want to avert your eyes from the scene of this lego-tastrophy......

This is my darling husband's childhood collection which he has been longing to introduce the boys to pretty much since they *mostly* stopped eating their toys.  This is not to be confused with his other unopened box of young adult legos which includes, but is not limited to, one giant submarine and one giant lights and sounds ship.

I've held him off opening this pandora's-box-o-legos for quite some time, precisely because I did not want the above to happen inside of my house (this disaster is in the garage).

Am I the only one with an aversion to legos?  Piles of wooden blocks strewn about the floor don't bother me.....well, they bother me a little but they don't lego bother me......

Plus look at all of the fun things you can make .....

You can even bring in the catapult into the mix for added block fun.....

....and *bonus* babies won't choke on giant blocks of wood and you're a lot less likely to inadvertently step on a big rainbow block than a microscopic piece of plastic.

But of course David loves the legos--especially since they were his daddy's.  Chris maintains that legos are not toys, but building supplies, the first step towards geometry and and physics and carpentry skills....really they are a homeschooling requirement.


I am not convinced.

I am outvoted.

I am in need of a lego storage plan.


Maybe this, or this?  I refuse to buy a bunch of plastic bins to store a bunch of plastic nonsense.  That's right, I said it....ridiculous amounts of legos = nonsense.  Has anyone done babies and legos before?  Once John Michael's mobile I'm thinking I may need to baby gate off the boys' room to contain the choke-able toys and still leave the door open so I can hear them.......

Dinosaurs, Parties, and Thing-a-ma-jigs....Oh, My!

Our zoo has a new dinosaur exhibit with very lifelike animatronic dinos.....

I tried to get a picture of the boys and the dinosaurs but they were a little too lifelike for their taste.  And loud.  David ran away from the T-rex with his hands over his ears.  Later he informed me that he "didn't care for" the dinosaurs.

After a morning at the zoo I had the good sense to also take the children to our neighbor's Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party.  David picked out the most Mad Hatter's tea party-ish outfit he could think of, complete with a pocket watch a la the White Rabbit.  This was really cute until about thirty minutes before the party when he began running around the house yelling "we're late, we're late, we're late!"  Precious.

Once we arrived, our friend asked if David dressed up like Doctor Who for the party.   Well he isn't wearing a Fez but, yes....yes apparently he did come as the Doctor.  What can I say, the boy loves his bow ties and bow ties are cool :)

The boy also loves having his picture taken......

.....unlike his brother who has developed a serious aversion to mommy's camera......

David has also recently begun insisting that he and Henry wear matching outfits whenever possible--a desire which, let's face it, I hope lasts forever :)

The men folk also had time to work on David's "thing-a-ma-jig."  It has been added to and subtracted from for the past few weeks and  is now sporting a dashboard with various really important functions......

....my personal favorite is the toast option.

There are also plans in place to add wheels and a pulley system.....I'm really not sure what's going on....thing-a-ma-jig creating is not my area of expertise.  All I do know is that David really thinks it needs some wheels and was pretty insistent that we should give him the wheels off of our wagon and two tires from daddy's car.  I told him daddy needed all his wheels so he could drive to work.  David thought for a moment and informed me that he would drive daddy to work in his thing-a-ma-jig.  He's a problem solver :)

But he still can't have the tires......

When Daddy's Home

Sand tables will be flooded and castles will be built.

Moles will be found and examined.

And best of all, little boys will have their daddy there to build whatever their little imaginations dream up.  In this case I believe it began as a "machine to chop down grass and scoop up poop" but in the end turned out to be a train and/or boat with movable brake levers and/or oars--depending on who's driving.  Oh, and also a bit of a teeter totter.

I love that I have a husband who will stop what he's doing (and disassemble his beloved raccoon platform to provide spare wood) just so that he could work together with our boys on a project that might not have seemed very important but gave them such a sense of pride and accomplishment in a job well done.    

I'm sure one day this little man will be only too happy to join in with his brothers on similar adventures with daddy.  In the meantime he's content to just sit outside with his pensive face on.

And his regular old adorable face.....

It's been so wonderful to have Chris home on paternity leave.  I keep thinking that adding a third little one into the picture hasn't made things more difficult at all.....then I remember that I've only been taking care of the baby while Chris handles everything else--playing with the children, bringing me water, making me take my vitamins and pain meds, and taking the baby in the morning so I can sleep an extra couple of hours.  That all ends tomorrow, so......I wouldn't turn down any prayers you may want to send my way.......mostly for the safety of the baby once his brothers don't have dad around all day to distract them from their quest to find out who can shake the bouncer seat the most vigorously while the baby's asleep in it.......

Trespassing

The one perk of having the street in front of your grandparents' house completely dug up is the presence of more diggers than you could ever have hoped for in your wildest dreams.  During our visit we may or may not have spent several mornings frolicking near/around/on said diggers........

Daddy Day Care

I ran out to a Dr's appointment this week and came back to find Chris had turned our living room into this:

The boys were understandably impressed.....of course all that changed when they came downstairs the next morning to find it dismantled....oh it's so hard to be little...........

Just Like Dad

Every time we go outside to play in the backyard we have to do a quick clean up.  This time Henry decided he wanted to help too, so he grabbed a shovel out of the sandbox and went to work!  I'm pretty sure he had no idea what he and dad were actually doing!  Don't worry, no babies actually came into contact with anything unsanitary during the taking of these pictures......

It's so sweet how the boys want to be just like their daddy!  And I know Chris can't wait until he can officially turn over this particular chore to the boys for real!

Saturday Chores with Dad

I woke up the other morning to find this going on outside....

Hopefully the key to getting the boys to do their chores is to start early....of course when the chore entails one on one time with daddy, a bucket of soapy water and a hose it doesn't take too much convincing.........

When Mickey Attacks

When mommy is in charge David and I do things like puzzles or play doh or painting or reading a story.....when daddy's in charge we get games more along the lines of this.......

Sorry the pictures are fuzzy but I was under attack!