Carson

               Feel free to skip this post, unless your family, it's just a really long list about Carson

Man, I love this kid.  It feels good to publicly declare that since I know I worried more than a few people when I first found out he was being added to the family!  And then there were those incidents where we couldn't even get his name right.  Poor kid.

Seriously though, I adore him.  Most of the time.  Since the other two have massive entries about them, I thought I better get on it before he has some serious "third child- you never loved me as much, you never had time for me, blah, blah," evidence to use against me.  Even though I'm pretty sure that's definitely the middle childs role.

So at age 2.5, these are some of my favorite things about Car-Car:

+He's talking a lot. There's a whole bunch of letter sounds he can't pronounce but he's got his L's down perfectly.  Example:  "Lahel, I long." = "Rachael, I strong,"  which he recently declared to his aunt while carrying a child size folding chair, complete with arm movements displaying his non-existent muscles. 

+He's got randomly chipped front teeth.  Maybe that's not a favorite, but hey, it's how it is.  Sometimes, right after a crappy haircut, he looks just like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.  It's pretty much what Steve calls him all the time.

 +He was obsessed with the snow this winter.  On more than one occasion I had to drag him back into the house crying because he was in no way dressed to be out in the frigid stuff.  "But I love low (snow)..." he would cry and then " I leed my lubs?" =  "I need my gloves?"

+Speaking of obsessions, I cannot even guess the number of times he's told everyone, including strangers at the store, "Addie hit me...On my neck..."  We're talking compulsively, almost like he has turrets.

 +He built his first snowman with his dad this winter.

+He has a major obsession with "Mit Mit" or "Mit Mit Lubhouse".  He loved his Christmas Eve 'lammies' so much that I have to hide them whenever they're dirty.  If he spots them, he'll strip out of whatever he's wearing to put them on. 

  

+He refers to Sophie as "Bo Bo" much like the rest of us and calls Spencer "Buh Buh."  Unfortunately that one's all my fault, or maybe Grandma Goude's.  I'm not sure which one of us started it but we referred to Spencer as brother and now we've got "Bo Bo" and "Buh Buh."  We're really working on real names but it's not going so well.

+One of the first things he could pronounce with amazing clarity-  Lady GaGa.  Thank you Spencer.  It's been embarrassing on more than one occasion.  Like when the kids get him yelling it out in public.

+He loves to get out his pillows and blankets when it's time to watch a show.

+He declared to me a couple weeks ago that he's afraid of "Lonsters."  Yup, that would be Monsters.  He tells me different rooms in the house are "Llary" because of them.

+He was super confused the first few times we started hollering at him using his full name, Carson Delmer.  He would yell back, "I not Delmer, I Carson."  He couldn't figure out why we were calling him his cousins name.

+He loves trains, costumes, Batman, the Flash, Dora and Diego, "LoopMan" (Superman), his Ya-Ya (Grandma Goude) and his mom.  He can often be heard yelling " I NEED my mom!"  Especially if his dad is trying to help him.

+He loves to have his feet or back or tummy or head rubbed, scratched or tickled.  He will move your hand around until he's happy.

+He loves to turn the alarms off every morning.

+He's not a big fan of bath's or showers.  Very unlike his brother and sister. 

+He loves his Aunt Lisa, or "Leha."  I may have failed to mention that he's a heavy user of his L's and has a terribly thick lisp when it comes to his S's. 

+He's had some wicked asthma issues.  I sometimes call him Croupy Carson.  He's our first kid (and only so far, let's hope to keep it that way) to have had an overnighter at the hospital,  last June. 

+He's our earliest riser.  Faithfully.  The kid never sleeps in.

+He loves to put his hands in his pockets and his hands behind his head.

+He thinks he always needs his hood up when it's cold out.  He'll start yelling if you forget.

+He's constantly looking for a snack, or 'nack'.  Unfortunately he's inherited my sweet-tooth.  He's definitely the worst eater out of the three of them.  He's also by far the messiest eater out of all his Landoni cousins.  Trailing right behind him in the second messiest spot would be Sophie.

I could seriously go on and on but it's late and I'm not even sure if my parents are still reading at this point.

Our family would be so lame without our Car-Car.

The Suspect:

The Evidence:

More evidence was discovered later in the evening when the mother of the suspect was putting away shirts in the younger brother's bedroom.  The mother was too exhausted to deal with it.

 The Weapon:

The Crime Scene:

No picture exists of the crime scene immediately following the crime.  The crime scene was immediately disrupted by the mother upon discovery.  The suspect was assumed to have been playing properly and peacefully with her younger brother during the time of the crime.  The mother faults herself saying, "Every mother should know better.  Anytime children are playing quietly somethings just not right."

The Verdict:

GUILTY

The Sentence:

Removal of all scissors within immediate reach of anyone under 5 feet tall.  Sophie Scissorhands has been sentenced to a scissor free existence for an undisclosed amount of time.  Use of scissors may be permitted at a later time under strict supervision.

The Slasher was also required to dispose of all her own articles of clothing that fell victim to her actions.  She was heard yelling and crying, "But I love to wear my skirts!" as they were being placed in the trash.

She also received her first spanking from her father when he arrived upon the scene.

I hate to admit it, but...

I wake up every morning wishing I had a left over dessert of some sort for breakfast. 

If there is one, I eat it.  If there's not, I usually skip breakfast. 

Highlights From a Sunday

+Cupcakes for breakfast.
+Sophie as a Sunbeam.  She came out of her class at church in a shirt 3 times too small that had a giant sun on the tummy over her dress, a sun headband straight across her forehead, carrying a mirror with a sun on it.  It was hysterical.  Her excitement was mixed with concern when she asked if she would still be a sunbeam when she woke up in the morning.
+Carson falling asleep eating dinner at 7 p.m.
+Hiding in the bathroom right after church to eat the last cupcake.
+Jason building a ginormous Geo-Trax train set.
+Yelling at Spencer a gazillion times to get dressed for church.  It just wouldn't be a Sunday if it didn't happen.
+Sophie declaring that this was the "worst day of her life!" eight different times.
+Spencer demonstrating how he's going to hide in the bushes and shoot a bird when he's old enough to have a gun.  "Like when I'm ten, right mom?"
+Watching Carson play with his batman guys.

+Listening to Sophie and Spencer sing "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" while cleaning the kitchen.
+Bribing the kids into cleaning up the house with these...

+Arguing with Jason that he should not bake biscuits at 450 degrees like the directions say.
+8:30 bedtime.

My New Year's Resolution

is to blog again.  Just like Rachael.  I'm not even doing it to be a Resolutioner, I'm just motivated my sisterly competition. 

And I've decided I'm not starting today,
I'm starting tomorrow.

How did we do it and Why did we do it?

Our Batman party may seem like it was a little over the top to most people but Rachael and I have a way of feeding off each other when it comes to planning just about anything.  Most of the time we have way more ideas than time, talent, or money, but for some reason this year, things just worked out.  After her amazing Mario party,  I was completely inspired and thanks to Jason and his artistic abilities, Kim and Katie and their awesome painting skills, and Rachael's last minute save on Saturday, we managed to pull off just about everything!

The most important part of the whole experience was how much fun it was to put together.  It was fun to have Jason call me from work with all of his ideas, and then to call Rachael and have her help me figure out how to actually do it.  I really couldn't have, and wouldn't have, done it had I not had a husband who could whip up a cape pattern out of newspaper or draw 4 foot villains on cardboard.  It was awesome.

We used black plastic table rolls to make the city outline on the walls in the back and cardboard in the front (thank you kimmie).  The windows were squares of yellow duct tape.  The bat symbol above the city was made out of poster board and the villains were all drawn by Jason (with a little help from kimmie) and I hand painted most of them.

Jason drew all the patterns/stencils/templates and I got to work cutting everything out.  We made the capes and the belts out of felt and added Dollar Store camera cases as the pouches on the utility belts.
He even drew the tinniest bat symbol for the flashlights, which we cut out of contact paper.

 We held the party at the Mid-Columbia Library on Union.  They have a room you can reserve for free.  I love it.  It's a little hard to decorate but we threw up some posterboard bat symbols and word-art just for fun.  We also put the bat symbols in the middle of the tables with small balloon bouquets on top of them, I didn't get any good pictures though.

There was a small glitch in the cake making process and we had to improvise at the last minute.  Rachael called me at 1 a.m. the night before the party to tell me that the cake simply didn't bake in one corner of the pan.  After a brief moment of freaking out, we decided to buy a white Costco cake and call it good.  Late Saturday morning, I find out Costco doesn't sell plain white cakes.  However, they had ONE undecorated cake left and by some small miracle, they decided to sell it to me. 

We used craft foam for the bat symbol and threw on some lemon heads to tie the look together.  Not too bad for extremely last minute.

We wrapped water bottles with yellow wrapping paper and black contact paper bats ( I am officially in love with black contact paper, I use it for everything, even chalkboards). 

I found all the activity ideas on-line, however Jason came up with almost all the same ideas on his own.  It was great having his creativity and my creativity overlap on this project.  It's been one of the few times that that has actually happened!  We really wouldn't have done half of this stuff had we not been working together.  And a huge thanks again to Kim, Katie (and Megan), and Rachael for all their help.

The villains ended up being my favorite so I can't resist showing a few of them off one more time...

Batman Birthday, Volume 1, Issue 5

Equipped with their utility belts, the Batkids were ready to take on the rest of the villians.

 
Their first assignment was to stomp the villains balloons.  The black and yellow balloons were empty and the rest all had candy inside. They used the pouches on their belts to collect the candy.

After all the balloons were popped, it was time to get the villains in Gotham City.  Armed with cans of silly spray, the kids attacked.

After defeating all the villains, the Batkids were rewarded with their own flashlights.  To finish the party off, we celebrated with some birthday cake and presents. 

Holy Cow, Batman, these birthday posts are finally over (almost).