RazNoggle

I know I’m way behind on the Lad’s 4 yr old portraits, but it’s about as behind as I was last year, so they’re still a year apart! Ha! We had a fun little photo session yesterday and he was thrilled to have a picture with “the big four.” I saw a shot online that someone did with a child surrounded with matchbox cars and I just KNEW I had to do it with Qade since he is SUCH a car man! I think it’s my favorite of the session though I really like the “grumpy” cowboy and the dandelion as well!

Enjoy!

The big FOUR!

Love this!

One more….

I had to share this one!! Ha ha ha ha! All mom’s do this to their kids, right?

Qade has become quite the little man. Very opinionated and not shy about expressing himself. I was telling Stu the other day that it seems as if Qade suddenly hit a huge verbal milestone recently where he can now express exactly what he is thinking. Communication has reached a whole new level. It’s fun and challenging at the same time. Fun in that we can now have great back and forth conversations. Some are quite funny! As we drove home on Tuesday night there was lightning in the distance. Qade piped up that the lightning was “talking” to him. So we asked what it said and he told us, “The lightning is telling me, ‘you are going home’.” Then he proceeded to have a conversation with the lightning.

Qade doesn’t like to hear Ella crying at all! He gets a little hyper when she is. The other day she was fussing in her swing as I was getting dinner on the table and Qade tried to calm her down by saying, “Don’t cry, Baby Sister, we love you!” Ha ha ha!! That made me laugh! I’m sure she wasn’t crying because she felt unloved, but it seemed to make sense to my big boy!

Potty training… wow, what can I say about this?! I was completely bracing myself for a HUGE digression once the baby came along. However, our little man has instead stepped it up! I’m sure having my mom here, and she being much more relaxed about it than me, helped him along. He has been accident free pretty much for 2 weeks! He now takes himself to the potty without having to be reminded all the time. And it’s not uncommon for him to stop what he’s doing and spring up with a, “I need to go potty” as he runs to the bathroom. Yay!!!! He has also been dry through naps very well!! I’m so pleased! I was starting to feel like I would have a child refusing to go potty till Kindergarten, or later!! But he has done so well, and I’m proud of him! The only trouble with it now is that he uses his “I have to go potty” excuse to get up after bedtime 2 or 3 times. Hmmmm…. not quite sure how to deal with that, because I DO want him to go to the bathroom rather than in a pull-up, but I also want him to stay in his bed after we put him down.

Qade is all boy! He loves his cars and trucks and wrestling with Daddy! He’s not as kamikaze as Myles is by far, but still likes to have adventures! He’s just a bit more cautious which shows up in the fact that Myles is constantly scraped and bruised up while Qade has relatively few “owies.” He’s into dirt and digging, but likes to be clean as well. Right now he’s obsessed with his “blue jeans” and wants to wear them CONSTANTLY! If they end up in the wash he asks where they are and still wants to wear them. Too bad he only has one pair! I may have to break down and get him another so he can wear them more.

He loves to read books and currently his favorite story is a Seusse story called “Mulberry Street.” How this particular story became so beloved, I have NO idea! You should read it if you get the chance. It’s about a little boy with a pretty vivid imagination, but it still seems rather flat of a story for a 3 yr old. BUT he loves it and we read it on a daily basis. Qade is a thinker, and I love to see the wheels turning in his little head. He has learned, Ephesians 6:1 and we quote it often to remind him that he is to obey his parents! (Thanks mom!!) Qade knows the vast majority of his alphabet, thanks to Letter Factory, knows his shapes and colors and can count, mostly, to 10. Sometimes we forget 4. I know that I underestimate the amount of information that he absorbs because he still astounds me with things that he’ll bring up that I had no idea he was even paying attention to.

Qade is already asking for ANOTHER baby sister. He seems to think he needs 2. Ha!

Our first born is a very special part of our family and Stuart and I get plenty of kicks out of the things that come out of his mouth! He’s a good big brother/buddy to Myles and of course is totally crazy about his little sister! And we’re pretty crazy about him too!

Happy Lime Green Thursday!

Wearing shorts on your head is the NEW “in” fashion!!

The other day I finally got around to actually taking Qade’s 3 yr old portraits. I was originally going to take him to Sears or JCPenny one last time, but it kinda rubbed me wrong. I don’t like dealing with them and HEY I am a photographer after all!!! I was just hesitant because I wanted for their b-day pics to have a number in them. At least till they are 5ish. And at the time of his b-day we didn’t have anything like that nor any money to invest in those kinds of props. Well, I found some number props at a great bargain, and so we decided to wait for his pics until after camp and such and we’d get the props. Hopefully I’ll be able to use them a bunch anyway as I would like to do more kid’s portraits as well.

Last week the numbers arrived. BUT my studio was still a disaster because of relocating stuff and making room for baby. It’s amazing that one such teeny tiny person can cause so much upheaval especially when they aren’t even HERE yet! Ha ha ha! I’ve also been struggling with a severe case of non-motivation to clean and organize and so on. Pretty much everything. I had no excuse this week however because Mom has been here helping me, and there’s no newborn to care for yet. Finally I got my rear in gear and got it done. Then once the clutter was cleared out it was amazing how excited I was about actually doing the photo shoot!!

*Let me take this brief moment to encourage you to declutter the ‘junk’ that’s keeping you from your full potential. Stu and I have been trying to simplify our lives for awhile now. The theory that less is more is really true. I find myself harried and stressed out when there is visible or even invisible (can we say junk drawer) clutter around me. It truly does make a difference in your mental state. So ditch the junk, even if it’s not really junk. If it’s not something you use on a REGULAR basis and it doesn’t have an organized place in your home, ditch it and see how much better you feel! *

Comercial over….

Anyway, here are some of my favorites from our shoot. We had fun! Both of us!! And the best part was it took probably less than 20 min. He did a great job! I still can’t believe how big my baby is!! He hasn’t seemed much “baby” for a long time, but now he really is my big boy. Conversations, and some of the stuff he comes up with, are just hysterical. I love talking with him!! We’ve been working through some tough stages recently, but there have been some really encouraging days recently. He’s a lot of fun! Enjoy!

It took him a couple tries to get 3 fingers!

This pose was Qade’s idea. He asked if he could “hold the big three”

This one might be my fav!

Well, the party’s over, the presents have been opened and in some cases destroyed, the cake had been devoured along with the yummy steak and fixin’s, guests have departed, and suddenly I feel like bursting into tears???? What’s that all about? Ha! Must just be the after party let down. Plus now I have a few moments to really think about how quickly my little Monkey is growing up! Everyone says it goes fast. Some days it doesn’t seem like it, but looking back it always does. I nearly can’t believe that it was 3 years ago that we brought home our lil baby boy to a half-packed apartment in Greenville. So much has happened since then, and he is so much of a big boy now. Makes me realize how fast the next few years are going to go. There’s a line in the movie “Hook” that pops into my mind frequently when the mom is talking to the dad about their kids, and she says, “We only have a few short years where they’re the ones who want us around. After that you’re going to be running after them for a bit of attention.” Makes me want to make the most of all the moments in those “few short years.”
My camera was behaving very badly so many of the shots I took were blurry and that’s aggravating. *sigh* I need to learn to plan better… or just do the party at Chuck e Cheese. Maybe next year! Anyway, I was disappointed in the pictures, but I’ll post a few so you can see how much fun we had. Cause it really was fun. Now that Qade kind of “gets” what’s going on, it adds a whole new dimension to the great times!

I like for the lads to have a birthday balloon, and this year I totally forgot! Thankfully Stu’s mom went to town early this morning and found this amazing “Cars” balloon! So cool!

This shot is blurry and it upsets me, but I’m keeping it anyhow!! This was the look on Qade’s face when everyone was singing “Happy Birthday” to him. He loves that song!!

Delving in! He’s a pretty good gift opener by now.

Thought this was too cute, him “reading” his card!

His “big gift” the new bike!! We’re probably the most excited about it. After nap we all get to go outside for it’s first trip!

Testing out his new cot and sleeping bag.

Myles trying out the bike. He was pretty enamored with it actually.

Candles on his cake! Qade was very excited about this part and has been telling me for days that he was going to “blow candles” on his birthday cake. He got them all with one little puff too.

Eating with a fork. No more stuffing cake in the face…. in fact…..

He asked for a napkin for his hands! Ha ha ha!!

Today our darling child, Qade, displayed several talents for us. One was his amazing ability to figure things out, and the other was his artistic and interior design bent. Oh yes! Firstly he found his little stool (which I’m seriously considering banishing to the back room permanently!) and used it very cunningly in the kitchen to reach the top drawer. Now there are all kinds of no-no’s in this drawer. It has the cutlery in it, including steak knives. It also holds a box of matches, but none of those things were the object. No, he went for the Sharpie. He deftly pulled the cap off, and “experimented” with how it worked a little bit, right there on the counter.

Seeing that it did indeed work swell, he proceeded to mark on several cabinet doors, (yes, the cabinets are dirty, don’t look!)

the dishwasher,

one arm of the rocking chair,

Rody the poor defenseless bouncy horse,

and his masterpiece, the end table.

Now when I came upon the scene I wasn’t paying that much attention to the jabbering that was going on around me, until it finally pierced my consciousness that Qade was, very happily, saying, “Qade draw!” and even pointing out his doodles. I realize that he must not really have known that it was “not okay” to draw on all this stuff, but when he heard my very surprised gasp, he figured it out in a flash and started to high tail it away. I called him back because I thought this rogue Sharpie was still lurking out there somewhere. So I asked him where the “pen” was, and he very mater-of-factly told me, “It in the drawer.” Like “duh”. Ha! I looked in the drawer and sure enough, he had put his weapon of choice right back where it came from. Presently Qade did learn that it was not okay to draw on anything but paper. He has been informed of this before, but I’m not sure it has sunk in yet.
I have on my shopping list for tomorrow, a “magic eraser” because I have been told, by MANY sources that this thing really does work magic at getting stuff like Sharpie off of stuff it’s not supposed to be on. I’m not holding my breath however, but I will give it a whirl. In the mean time I will be relocating every writing instrument, the matches, and probably the steak knives to an even higher location. The stool is already banished!