Too many chefs in the kitchen

The other day I decided to make Evan’s favorite food so when he came home from a long day of work he would be greeted by the wondrous smell of chocolate chip cookies. (Yes, I am really that amazing wife that you should be jealous of)

Liam wanted to help so I decided to pull a chair up to the counter and show him how much fun it is to bake. I wasn’t about to forget that Liam is not even 2 and that all “helping” would be done with my hand still in the mix. (haha, I really make myself laugh)

I was showing Liam how to put the ingredients into the bowl. Thinking I was so smart I told him it was like we were a dump truck, dumping our load and going back for more. (This is a rhyme that we learned at our library story hour)

I put the cup into the sugar, grabbed Liam’s hand so that he could dump it into the bowl and......I pulled Liam right off his chair resulting in me holding him by his arm, midair, while he dumped sugar right into his face!

He of course was crying and screaming because I probably just scared him to death and also due to the fact that there was sugar in his eyes and all down his front. To make matters worse as I was trying to clean him off in the sink (that was surprisingly not filled with dirty dishes) Butters was licking the sugar off of the floor. So while I am trying to calm and soothe my frightened child I am also yelling at the dog to go away and stop eating sugar or you might die!

Liam did finally calm down, the dog did not die and Evan probably ate 7-8 cookies that night. I think that we can still call that a success. A.K.A I am the best mother, wife in the world!

Us against them

I have decided that Butters really doesn’t care for Liam. Sure during mealtimes Liam becomes her best friend but if we were to honestly ask her (and if she would be able to speak) I know that she would tell us to send him back to the hospital.

Good thing Butters has no say in our family dynamic.

Liam really tries to play with Butters. He will go get her toy. He will say “Chase me dog!” He will go and hide and wait ever so patiently for Butters to find him so he can run out and throw her toy for her.

Butters? Not interested. We literally have to tell her to go find Liam, and then push her body towards where he is hiding. Sometimes repeatedly. I tell her she’s a brat.

Now it’s possible that Butters feels that she cannot truly play with Liam for fear of getting yelled at by Evan or myself for being too rough. Knocking Liam down. Making him cry. These are all true fears and have definitely happened in the past. I’m not sure really what to do to help Butters see the light. That a boy and his dog are truly the best partners and friends one could ever have.

Aha! Now I see after typing that sentence! A boy and his dog....Butters boy is Evan! Oh how silly of me, how could I have missed this. Of course it all makes sense now! (I am truly having a revelation at this moment)

So now I have decided that in Butters eyes Liam is competing against Evan. Forget about me, she only views me as the one who takes her out to relieve herself and feeds her. Oh man, how could I have been so dumb.

Ok, Liam and I will just have to come to terms with 'us against them.'

Happy Halloween

This year was the first year that we took Liam trick or treating. We went to about 10-15 houses in our neighborhood and he had so much fun! Only thing about our neighborhood is every house has at least 4-6 steps before you get to the front door, so he was a little tired once we were finished.

Liam did say ‘Trick or Treat’ even if Evan and I were the only ones who knew what he was saying. And his Peter Pan/Robin Hood costume got many compliments.

I even let him have an Almond Joy after dinner. (I may have given him Almond Joy because I don’t like them and I wanted to see what he thought of coconut.) He loved his little candy bar and definitely wanted more! Of course I said no.

Surprisingly Evan and I have not finished off his candy....yet!

Another epic fail by me

Two nights ago Liam's eye was watery and I was concerned that he could be getting pink eye. Yesterday morning Liam awoke unable to open his left eye due to it being crusted over. But it wasn't that bad and his eye didn't look that bad to me so off he went to daycare. I know, I know we are those parents who sends their kid to daycare with a disease. I was fully aware that we would be getting a call at some point during the day asking us to come pick him up.

At 10:00 am our babysitter started hinting that we should pick him up so I took off after the morning to get Liam and hopefully get him to a doctor. Can I also say it was only at this point our babysitter told us that there has been 3 other kids with pink eye in the last week! Some information I would have liked to have known before this moment.

Liam not only has slight conjunctivitis but he also has an ear infection! Our doctor said it was bad enough that there was even a little pus pimple inside his left ear. He continued to ask me "Has he been unhappy? Not eating well? Waking up in the middle of the night?"

Well let's see, Liam is in the midst of throwing tantrums, screaming and crying over anything and everything, but that's normal for us. I guess he hasn't been eating that well and there was that night where he woke up twice in the middle of the night. He usually will sleep from 8 pm-8am the next morning.

Now I realized that I have none of that 'mother's intuition' that everyone always talks about. Does Amazon sell any of that???

Storytime

Last night we went to our first class of Storytime at the Normal Public Library. We get to sing songs, read books and at the end of class all the kids got to play with toys.

Liam LOVED it!

Although he may be slightly confused as to which class we were at. During one of the books that the librarian was reading he did a somersault.

The elusive squirrel

We bought our pumpkins awhile ago and Evan went to work right away on carving his. I will admit that his pumpkin was pretty amazing this year. I wish I had taken a picture of it so you all could see how brillant it was.

Here's why I cannot show you what it looked like. We have a very hungry squirrel in our neighborhood. The day that we bought our pumpkins we left them outside and this squirrel ate all the stems off. He then started in on the pumpkin itself. Since then he has taken the tops off, at first ate half of Evan's pumpkins face off, and now the entire front of his pumpkin is gone. When Evan found said squirrel gnawing away on our pumpkins he tried to scare it away, which did not work, and then he started throwing sticks at it to get it to leave. The squirrel slowly scampered up the tree with the pumpkin top in his mouth.

This is the same squirrel we believe that gnawed on our front porch post all summer long. Digging into our wood post so badly that Evan finally tried to repair it. With Liquid Nails. Now I'm pretty sure that wasn't the best material we could have used and I did try to voice my opinion, but at least the squirrel hasn't tried to eat the liquid nails material yet.

So I have no amazing pumpkin pictures this year. And I have yet to get a good picture of Liam all dressed up as well. He has been in his costume at least twice and all of my pictures are horrible. I've got one more night to get at least one good picture. Wish me good luck!

Tradition

It is a tradition in the Fink family to carve pumpkins at Halloween. When Evan and I began dating I thought he was so weird because he had never carved a pumpkin before. Now of course, with Evan's artist background, his pumpkins are pretty amazing, about 100 times better than the ones I do.  So, this year I wanted to really introduce Liam to this family tradition.

There is a picture somewhere of me, when I was probably 18 months old and my father is placing my hand inside a pumpkin while the whole family is pulling out the guts of their pumpkins. I look terrified, I think I was screaming while the photo was took. And yes, I wanted that picture of Liam this year.

Unfortunately this is the picture that I got instead. Liam wanted nothing to do with the slimy insides of his pumpkin. My rough and tumble, messy boy refused to even touch a pumpkin seed. To say that Evan and I were shocked would be an understatement.