End of the Week Ramblings

*First of all, my niece Violet is due exactly 2 weeks from today!! I won't get to meet her until the beginning of July, but I'm stoked for her to be born nonetheless!

*Brandon and I are going on a date tonight! The only bad thing about dates is that the babysitters will see how dirty our house is so I've been cleaning all day long! Normally it wouldn't take somebody an entire day to clean a small apartment like ours, but I have two little destroyers who are very good at their job and who follow me around as I clean. As soon as I've put a clean shirt in a drawer and turned my back, Cullen's pulled it out and dashed across the room to throw it in the dirty clothes hamper. And Jack tries to steal the broom and mop out of my hands while I'm still using them! He grabs on with both hands and pulls as hard as he can, and he seems genuinely surprised that I won't let him have it.

*We gave the boys a haircut earlier this week, they look so old now! They're definitely more like little boys than babies :-( Well, you know, apart from the fact that they don't speak and that they throw tantrums left and right. Here's a video of Cullen getting his hair buzzed off:



*Speaking of speaking (hehe), they actually are making a little progress lately. They've been showing me that they understand a lot of what I say lately. Before, when I said, "Jack, go get the ball," I would get a blank look. The past few weeks, though, he's been getting huge smiles on his face and runs as fast as he can to get the ball. And it's not just with toys either, twice over the past two days I have asked them to go get their sippy cup and hand it to me so I can refill it... and they've brought it! When I ask them "Where's the kitty?" they immediately start looking all over for the cats and they'll point to them when they see one. Cullen often says 'mama' when he wants my attention, both boys say 'dada' though not always to Brandon, Jack says 'ba' for ball, and I may be hearing things, but I swear Cullen says "ow" when he wants to go outside.

*They've been a lot more interested in reading lately. Well, not so much me reading to them, but more them sitting on my or Brandon's lap and reading to themselves. It's the funniest thing to watch them! They go get a book, walk over, turn their backs to us and start doing a quick little backwards shuffle until they run into us and then plop down. Then Cullen points at all his favorite pictures and yells 'ba' or 'da' or 'oo.' Jack does this really fast quiet murmer where he says "bwee, wee, wee, whoah, whoah, bee bee." It sounds almost like he's really reading aloud to himself, only in gibberish. It's so. funny. Also if I'm reading with Jack, Cullen comes over and tries to plop himself on top of Jack so he can read with us too. Nevermind that I have another leg for him to sit on, he wants to sit right in the middle. Jack of course gets furious and starts screeching and punching him in the back. I just laugh and rearrange them so we can all read together. And then about 3.5 seconds later, one of them decides he's over it and gets up to play with something else.

*By the way, both boys do this awful high-pierced screeching sound when they're angry now. It's the bane of my life. If they're both screeching at the same time, I just want to run into my bedroom and slam the door. It doesn't seem to bother Brandon that much, he just ignores it. Maybe it's because I hear it a lot more often or maybe something about it just especially bothers me, but it drives me crazy! I hope they stop doing it soon!

*Jack hasn't sat down in the bathtub in over 2 months, crazy huh?!? One day in March, he just suddenly decided that he didn't like bathing anymore. He doesn't mind baths if he can walk around the tub playing with toys but he absolutely refuses to sit down and usually hangs over the side of the tub the whole time. This makes it extremely hard to wash him and results in a lot of the dreaded screeching when I have to rinse the shampoo out of his hair. (And no, he's not afraid of the water because he still loves pools just as much as ever and doesn't mind being up to his shoulders in water then. It's just something about the bathtub.) Cullen on the other hand is still happy as a clam during baths. His favorite thing to do is steal the washcloth when Mommy's wrestling with Jack and suck the water out of it. Gross!!

That's about all I can think of for now, besides the babysitters will be here in an hour and a half. I better go finish up the cleaning and make dinner for the boys!