Who knew this one little spot of pink in our life would change things so much!?! We went from being a house full of cars and balls to that plus baby dolls and tutu's. Oh, and EVERYONE plays with everything! The boys are loving having dolls and purses around as much as Gracie loves a ball and bat - love it!I guess I'm what they call "nesting", although I really don't do that like some women do when they are expecting but I have been going through closets and cleaning things out and getting ready for consignment sales; going through bags of fall clothes and figuring out what we have and what we need. Yet again my wonderful friend Jen Latham has blessed us with BAGS of wonderful clothes for our sweet Gracie to wear. My mom and I joke that we have no need to sew with such great stuff coming from the Latham girls! As I was going through things I came across this tutu and had to put it on Gracie and see what she would think. Can you tell she loved it :)
I've told many people that when she is 3 I am immediately putting her in a dance class. Not that I'm some great dancer or even took dance as a kid but I figure she's my only girl and she will have PLENTY of exposure to baseball, soccer, football, you name it and will probably love all those sports so before she can tell me "no" I will have pictures and videos of her dancing in a pink tutu :) Which, I really think she is going to love because she loves wearing dresses and twirling around (yay!)
And here they are - our new bunk beds!!! I got a great deal through Craig's List and am soooo thankful. I have been stressing about these for months it seems! Baby boy will be going in to Gracie's room sleeping in her crib and we will be moving John-Mark's convertible crib/toddler bed in there as well for Gracie so I needed to get the bunk beds to start the musical beds in motion and start getting everything ready for baby boy's arrival (which is in only like 9 weeks or something - CRAZY!!!) Now all I have to do is move out the guest bed and dresser from Gracie's room, pull in the toddler bed and paint the new dresser then the room will be ready for a NEW baby!Back to the bunk beds - as you can see the boys LOVE them. They were so excited and we had been looking at pictures of bunk beds for weeks to get them ready. We let James pick where he wanted to sleep since he was the oldest and he chose the top bunk. John-Mark was a little sad but once we told him his bed was like his own little tent he seemed to cheer up. They have been doing great sleeping in them. Gracie loves them too (as you can see her checking out the bottom bunk). We have to keep an eye on her or she will sneak away and climb to the top bunk if no one is watching - sneaky girl :)
Ok, that's it for the pics for now. I know, not too many. My camera is acting up and the flash isn't working so pics are hard to come by. I need to get that fixed before Benjamin Michael makes his arrival. Yes, we finally decided on a name! This was the first name we had decided on before we even knew he was a boy but then we wanted to make sure. But I ordered name art for all the kids for their new rooms last week and Benjamin it is! We will most likely call him Ben. Now that we have for sure decided on a name I love it more and more everyday. Whenever I buy anything for him James or John-Mark will ask, "is that for baby Ben?", sounds so sweet. We'll have to be careful not to be calling him baby Ben when he's 5 considering he probably will be the forever baby of the Allen clan!
There are so many things that happen everyday that I think to myself, "I need to blog about that so I won't forget" but obviously I can't blog our every moments but here are some things that I want to get down to remember.
First, James continues to be a hoot and the older he gets the more confirmation we have that he is not just physically his daddy's mini-me but personality wise as well. He is 100% a sanguine personality. LOVES to talk and ask questions to anyone that will remotely listen. When we go places, if there aren't a lot of kids around he asks, "where are all of my friends". And by friends he doesn't mean kids he knows, just kids in general because they will be his friend by the time we leave :)
As he is about to turn four we are seeing more of I guess a stubborn streak in him. He's starting to challenge things we tell him and basically has to learn for himself some things and just won't take our telling him as the end all be all anymore. Which I know is a great personality trait in general as he goes through life but the constant challenging can be tough and trying to teach him how to be respectful to those older than him and know better is real fun :)
Lately he has developed a smell obsession. He wants to smell Everything! At first it started with wanting to smell food and drinks but now it's everything. Yesterday I painted gracie's toes and he wanted to smell the polish. We walked in to a public restroom the other day and I must admit it was a very clean smelling restroom but James comments right away, "mom, it smells really good I here". Then we were somewhere else that I guess used the same soaps or air fresheners and he commented, "mmmm, this smells like the bathroom at Dr. Jenni's." It cracks me up.
One of my most recent favorite James conversations involves gold teeth, yes, gold teeth. He tells me he saw a boy at the gym that had gold teeth (I have no idea if this was like a crown or intentional gold teeth) and he wants gold teeth. Hmmm. I tell him he needs to talk to Daddy. A couple of days later while in the car I hear, "daddy, I want gold teeth like the boy at the gym". I kind of grin and look to Jeremy. He responds, "you'll have to mow a bunch of grass to buy gold teeth." Nothing more is said at this time. A little while later at breakfast James looks at me and says "mom, who's going to help me mow all the grass to get my gold teeth"' serious as can be, He's obviously been thinking about what his dad told him for a while.
And lastly on James I must post what a great swimmer he has become as well. It seems this summer John-Mark picked up on things faster but James has come along and is right there with him as well. They both love to dive in for dive sticks in the 6 feet and James has finally mastered swimming and coming up for air and swimming more instead of just going as far as he could until he ran out of breath. I think next year we really will put them in real swim lessons just to learn different strokes and stuff since they both love the water so much and it's such great exercise for them. Nothing better than spending the afternoon at the pool, coming home and eating dinner and then having them crash for the night (which is pretty much our routine right now with this heat!!!)
John-Mark is almost 3 and I feel like I don't have as many stories to post about him. His personality is not as clear as James' yet. While he loves people as well and will talk to anyone he's also perfectly content to play alone. He does tend to get angry easily when things don't go his way which I have no idea where he gets that from ;) So much of the things he does is copying what he hears his older brother do or say. It will be interesting to see his personality change and develop over this next year. One thing he does that is so funny to me is he always calls Gracie, Grace. Like she's in trouble with him all the time! I don't know why but he never calls her Gracie unless maybe he's telling someone her name but if he's talking to her it's Grace this and Grace that.
He's also shown us that he really loves to be silly. In fact when he gets in trouble and I am trying to talk serious to him he always likes to make funny noises or dance around to try and get me to laugh. And all the time he'll say, "watch this mommy" and make some face or noise or something and then say "I so funny mommy!" The other day at church a little boy bumped his head on the wall and John-Mark must have thought it was an accident and started laughing to which the boy didn't like at all. But in true John-Mark fashion, trying to make it better, he walked over and hit his head on the wall too and died laughing. Love that kid!
Last week John-Mark was the first to pass the swim test at the Y so he can swim without a life jacket - yay! He had to swim about 40 yards and did it with flying colors. Yesterday he was going in for dive sticks and a little girl came over and told him that it's hard for little babies to do that and she was 6 and would help him to which he responded, "I 2, I get it myself!" and quickly jumped in and grabbed the stick. Jeremy and I couldn't help but crack up.
Gracie, oh Gracie, Gracie, Gracie. So many people comment on what a happy girl she is and how laid back she seems to be. Well, yes she is but she also LOVES to wear her mamma out. Not so much daddy. But she can be pretty demanding on me sometimes as far as demanding my attention all.the.time. She LOVES babies and any time we see one she always beams "baby, baby" and wants to go see it. I hope this translates well when Ben arrives. She can show quite a bit of jealousy if the boys are in our laps or getting our attention so I'm a little worried how she will handle a baby in our house.
She is a little over 20 months and talking like crazy! I think we have another James on our hands. Yesterday we were in the car for about an hour and the boys were sleeping and she literally talked the entire hour! Jeremy and I just kept looking at each other, not believing she was talking. She was basically just singing every bit of songs she knew, saying every word she knows. We would hear, "baby, shhhh, toes, Roll Tide, bubba, e,i,e,i,o" and more just in random order for an hour.
She is also a singer like the rest of her family and she is at that stage where she sings the last word of every line of a song we sing. So sweet to hear her little voice chime in every so often to the Star Spangled Banner,or Zacheus (she loves to say "you come down!"). She also loves hand motions. Any song I can teach her with hand motions she will do over and over. In general she is quite the little copy cat. She will copy pretty much anything we do. In the mornings if she sounds a little conjested all I have to do is give a little cough and she will do exactly the same and clear herself up - that comes in handy :)
One of her favorite things to do right now is straddle our legs or the couch and say "ye haw!" We have no idea where she got this from but it cracks us up all the time.
Ok, the last thing I want to remember to post about is our Summer Songs. It seems every summer the kids and I have a favorite country song that we all sing together. I really love country music but try not to listen to it too much and let the kids listen to their kid song cd's but that can drive me a little crazy sometime. Anyhoo, it seems like the past several summer we have all (probably because I love it) loved a song. Two summers ago it was Taylor Swifts, "You Belong to Me" - I would always sing it to the boys. Last summer it was "Stuck Like Glue" and whenever even the first note would play James would yell, "it's stuck like glue, mommy" and we would sing it all together. This summer it seems to be another Taylor Swift song, "why you gotta be so mean?" we love it. Gracie sings, "city, mean, me, mean".
I think the kids all time favorite song in general is a worship song from our church called "Arise". We have it on cd and as soon as I start it up they all start clapping and yelling, "Arise, Arise". Nothing sweeter than worshiping with my babies in the car :)
