Laundry Matters

Last week, I talked about a pet peeve I didn't even know I had-- well, before I found out about that pet peeve, there was a GIANT, and I mean

GIANT

pet peeve I did know I had.

It has to do with laundry, and it goes something like this:

If you stick clean clothes back in the hamper, or in a pile in the couch  and leave it there for an extended amount of time where they will surely wrinkle...

I will kill you.

No, okay... I'm kidding. I won't kill you, but you might just wish I did.

I don' t know when this started, I mean I didn't even start doing my own laundry til I moved out of my mother's house, which was when I was 19. I had to ask my first college roommate how it was done (true story). But it doesn't matter, because the point is... when I discover that this has happened, my chest gets tight, my face gets hot, and I want to explode. Yes, seriously. 

I can't control it.

I'm a woman. and a mama. 

Laundry matters, ya know?

Instead of exploding, I have somehow managed to convince myself to take 10 deep breaths (and we need every single one), and RE-DO the laundry. But you know what, I hate doing laundry, and enough is enough!

So yesterday, after the Hubs spent his afternoon doing this:

and then left this:

I had a slight meltdown. 

I had every intention of calling the Hubs to simply and calmly remind him of my OCD/Anxiety/Panic attack about laundry, but it came out more like this:

The fiesty came out.

I tried and tried to suppress it, but I just couldn't control it.

So this is my public apology:

Dear Hubs,

I'm sorry. Don't hate me :)

Love, 

Me

What's yours is mine, baby :)

As most married couples learn over the course of marriage, there are perks of being married...and there are, what we're going to call "downfalls". One of the things I wonder a lot, is why we marry the people we like? Once you're married you never get to see that person! Okay, so that's a downfall of marriage. You miss your spouse. 

But one of the perks, and my personal favorite:

"What's yours is mine" 

(Men: don't forget--this only applies to the women.)

So, Alex.. is actually Eric's friend. or was. But I like Alex too, so we're going to call him OUR friend. Because we're married, and we share everything.

You know who else really likes Alex? 

This little guy.

My favorite memory of Alex (and probably when I decided that he was my favorite of Eric's friends) was one night back in our apartment on Capitol Hill. Eric and I were having a dispute. Ok, a FIGHT. Like a real pretend fight. One where we would argue about something that neither one really knew what we were arguing over, but whatever it was... it was to be taken seriously. We used to argue a lot and then I'd sometimes throw belongings out the window or do crazy psychotic girlfriend type things. But this night, I think we were just really tired and didn't want to actually hash it out. So we agreed to take to our own belongings. Since the bed was mine, I got the "bedroom"* and Eric got the couch. 

*We rented a "One" bedroom apartment but our bedroom had CLOSET doors that led to the living room, so there was no privacy really and no such thing as sound proof*

Our first apartment :)

To my surprise, Eric actually asked me if he could have Alex over. I agreed and Alex came over. 

So here's when I decided I liked Alex. You know how when you're a kid and your friend's brother is being a jerk, so you're not allowed to talk to said brother because he's the "enemy"? Well, for some reason a lot of people carry this false sense of loyalty with them into adulthood. But not Alex. He said Hi to me and talked to me as if there wasn't a giant elephant in the room. 

And then he made me dinner. 

That was all it took. 

I bet you didn't know I was so easy to please.

( Eric will be silently disagreeing as he reads this...)

Date Night with a 2 year old.

We've been dying to take the kids to the Children's Museum since my friend mentioned it to me...oh, a year ago. She did also mention that it was kinda pricey but well worth it. And well worth it, it was...but pricey? Not for me.

Want to know why? Because I got in for free. Oh and so did the rugrats.

First Friday of every month from 5-8pm is FREE. Yes sir. I am glad I called first though to verify (I wanted to find out what the catch was-- THERE ISN'T ONE!) because the lady did tell me that at about 5:45pm is when they start a waiting list and there is usually a line to get in. I was there at 445, no line, no wait, no money. 

I love free things.

Before I can go on with this, I have to tell you about one of my biggest pet peeves that I didn't even realize I had and how it happened, and also how I almost crawled out of my skin trying to contain myself...

The downside of this free event is that of course, I had to fly solo in the parenting department. The Hubs works a terrible swing shift and I never have a Friday night date. This isn't new, it's been going on for almost 3 years so I'm pretty used to it. I'm also pretty savvy in human tetris. I can carry two kids, a diaper bag, and 4 bags of groceries AND open the trunk all by myself. I'm not going to be modest, I handle my own pretty well.

 I strapped Ryan in the Baby Bjorn and off we went.

Tristan was over the moon with interest at all these things that I was allowing him to do. We pressed buttons, pulled knobs, yelled crazy gibberish at perfect strangers, splashed water, made loud noises...etc. All was well until we found the train table. We literally spent about 45 minutes at the train table. Ryan was bored, I was bored... it was time to leave. Knowing full well that this wasn't going to go well, I tried to gently tell Tristan that we still had other things to see. Of course, this makes no sense to him because as far as he was concerned, this was why we were here. I finally had to pry the trains from his hands and drag him out. I don't like to baby this kind of behavior and I've learned that the best way to deal with this (with Tristan of course- every child is different) is to ignore him...I have in the past, tried to nurture and baby and talk him through it but as harsh as it sounds, the best way to handle things with Tristan is to rip him from the situation. Out of sight, out of mind. 

Sooo... naturally my child is literally flopping around on the floor like a seal kicking and screaming. It was the most epic tantrum I have yet to see. I stood there and watched him waiting for him to calm down. I did have Ryan strapped to my body afterall and I didn't want to throw my baby in the Lion's Den by picking Tristan up off the floor. But again, not that I couldn't have if I wanted to. Anyway, the point is that I didn't want to. This is where the fun part of parenting comes in; I'm the parent and I make the rules.

So when this woman, who I assure you was really just trying to help, comes over and picks my 2 year old up like he is a baby and tries to rock him and coddle him... I wanted to run screaming from the room. At first, I was too shell shocked to do anything for about a minute. And then I recovered and tried desperately not to freak out. I calmly pried my 2 year old from this woman assuring her that he was fine and that I did not need her help...but I did say Thank you... although I felt that was very unnecessary. When I say PRY, I LITERALLY had to PRY my child from this complete stranger. 

Did I mention that Tristan was completely terrified when this strange woman picked him up. He went from freaking out to pure panic. I think I would too if some random person tried to hold me. This is another one of those "Before I had kids" realizations that I'm fairly sure most parents go through. Before I had kids, I would get really irritated when kids would be freaking out in public and parents were just standing there... and now I completely understand. So the moral of this story is: before you judge, you should have kids :)

And also, don't touch random people's children unless they're dying, you're asked to, or it's the apocalypse.

I assure you, that over time my screaming child will have figured out that Mommy ignores screaming children and favors well behaved ones. 

The Little Farm

Last week we went to...

... A PETTING FARM.


Is this not the cutest little barn you've ever seen? Yes, that's because you can't smell it through the computer. No, but really...it was super cute and just $3! You can't go wrong with 3 bucks. If your kid is anything like mine and hates trying anything new, it doesn't even matter because 3 dollars is the cost of a coffee I don't need.

The fun part about living in a new area is that I have literally no idea where anything is, so everything seems new to me. It's like Christmas morning every time I make a wrong turn! So really, this place was 15 minutes away. On the downside...who knew Auburn was so close :/

One of the lovely ladies from our church organized this whole little play date for all of us to attend together. We got the whole farm to ourselves. Which is a good thing, because all the kids decided to park themselves in a mud puddle and I don't think people who weren't accustomed to families with 5 kids would have appreciated this.  They just don't know how to have fun like us Mormons ;)

He was a skeptic on the pony.

Soft fluffy baby bunny? NO THANK YOU!

Ryan, on the other hand, tried to squish tiny baby bunny.
We'll have to keep an eye on this one...

This darling little girl is Emma.
Eric tried really hard to capture her face
but he claims he didn't want to be creepy about it
(although I think this might just be more creepy.. :/ ).
He adores this little girl and hopes that one day
Tristan will be dateworthy material for her. lol.

Matching. I didn't do it, I promise.

Where there's wheels, there will be feuds. And so it begins...

donkey. 

Ryan is wondering, Is this bunny fatter than me?

T's Big Boy Room!

Okay guys, I need some FEEDBACK.

I've been planning this bedroom in my head for almost a year now and I'm kinda stuck. I FINALLY learned how to create a moodboard so bear with me, because these two are my first creations.

Ok, so here's the situation:

My mother and grandparents gifted the boys matching bed sets that I really wanted (and it's a good thing too because it's completely sold out now)... so we already have the bedding. We also already have the gray bean bag, and we're creating a "reading nook" in the corner. Hoping it will look something like this (but in the corner with a beanbag):

Right now, we're just upgrading Tristan's room and Ryan's going to get all of Tristan's old stuff until he's ready for a twin sized bed. (I know, hand-me-downs already but I promise you, he won't even know!). Later on, the boys are going to probably share a room and we'll make Ryan's room into either a playroom...or a nursery ;)

We know which pieces of furniture we want but we can't decide on color.

This is what I originally had in mind. I need to take a visit to IKEA soon because the Expedit pictured is actually a high gloss gray, although I don't think the picture does it any justice. I think seeing the gray colored expedit in person might help me to make up my mind.

Ok so below is what became kind of an afterthought. I like the clean feel of white, although I'm afraid to use white  in the bedroom because I like white for playrooms and I intend to use this furniture until they're ready for "Teen" rooms, so I need it to last and I don't want them to outgrow the color...

Anyway, tell me which colors you like best!! :) 

UP

Well it's safe to say that today was NOT my day. My alarm is set for 3:55 AM (GROSS, I know). Ryan woke up at 3am and I hardly fell back asleep when the alarm went off. Before I could feel too bad for myself, I realized that Eric still wasn't home from work. Oy. 

Needless to say, Daddy was tired and so was I. 

The rest of the morning didn't pan out well either. 

Sometimes the only cure to a stressful day is to cave and watch "Up" with your boys ;)

From there, we gained perspective and things started looking up for us. (pun intended) 

Somebody made a friend in the mirror....

and that same somebody learned a few things this week. Among those things is his new favorite thing: JUMPING. He looks soooo funny doing it but it is great and he loves it...so yes, we jumped a lot today.

And how could I forget our HUGE milestone that my baby boy reached this week.

This little crowd pleaser is now crawling...EVERYWHERE.

So proud of my boys!

Bloggy blog. mushy stuff.

Oh blog,

I miss you.

I miss spending my mornings with you, sipping my coffee over the course of several hours while I blogstalk every morning. I miss sleep too, but I miss you more.

We're going to have to figure out a new meeting time. Maybe naptime? Does that work for you, dear little blog? I hope so, because I have a strict 10pm bed time now and I also have to spend some time with Hulu, and Facebook. I am sure we can make something work, it will just take a lot of dedication and no naps, but we can do it.

I hope you miss me too.


Love, Ashley