Getting Creative

The boys have been particularly creative the last few days, getting into more mischief in 15 minutes than they have in weeks... For example, two days ago they decided to dump out all their toys in pursuit of one popular doll (yes, my boys play with a Belle princess, don't ask me why), spreading them all over the main floor of the house. Then they proceeded upstairs where they took all of the sheets off of my bed. While I was putting new sheets on they went into the bathroom and thought it was a great game to throw the shampoo and bubble bath bottles into the toilet and fish them out again. Needless to say I was glad for naptime when all three kids were sleeping so I could scrub down the bathroom, reorganize all the toys and finish redoing my bedroom. So much for my afternoon nap.

Well, today a certain child of mine got extraordinarily creative during the five minutes I was blow drying my hair (see if I ever do that again!). I thought he was being a little too quiet in his room with the door closed, so I went to investigate. I opened the door to find this little man caught red handed with a sort of happily guilty face.That is petroleum jelly all over his hands and, if you look closely, all over the right side of his head above his ear. What a mess. He somehow reached the jar of jelly on top of the changing table in his room, got the lid off and scooped out handfuls at a time.
This is Brennan's bedroom wall with 1/4 inch of vaseline painted on it. Beautiful job Brennan.
Luckily Brennan had taken all of the blankets off of the changing table BEFORE he was a jelly mess. Do you know how much fun it is to wash petroleum jelly off of hands and walls and heads? It is a sticky and gooey mess. The good news is, Brennan has the softest hands and arms on the planet.

The bad news is while I was wiping off the wall (before making Brennan take a soapy washcloth to it himself) the kids went in my room and spread hangers all over the floor (I was in the middle of putting away all the maternity clothes (hallelujah) and getting out the skinny clothes (none of which I fit into...). They soon got bored of throwing hangers, so they moved on to the bathroom. I heard the toilet lid go up and ran in there just in time to see Brennan going fishing with his toothbrush. Disgusting.

Luckily I was able to grab it out of his hands and throw it away before anything worse happened, but he was very upset at the loss of his toothbrush (my kids are obsessed with toothbrushing, wonder why?) Of course, all of this took place while we were getting ready to leave so we could meet Daddy at the bank. Miracle of miracles we were only five minutes late.
Here's our little EmmaRay 10 days old. She's very noise tolerant, which is a good thing because it's often loud chaos in our house... between Cadence squealing (he squeals when he's happy, excited, upset... pretty much all the time despite our best efforts of getting him to make other more pleasant noises), or Cade and Brennan both screaming when Brennan decides to hit Cade (lovely phase we're going through), etc. etc. it can be pretty loud. EmmaRay sleeps right through it. What an angel.
On a better creative note, Cadence is really getting in to drawing the last few days. Here is his portrait of EmmaRay. Gotta love the spiky hair, crooked smiley face and legs with feet and toes. A lot of times he gives his people pants and socks and shoes. Tonight he drew a fish with whiskers, a tail, legs (completely dressed), arms, a shirt and suspenders. He's a funny boy with quite the imagination.

Despite being troublemakers and occasionally being grouchy Cade and Brennan are really good boys and we love them so much! The joys of motherhood. I couldn't even be upset with Brennan and the jelly today-- it was too hilarious to see him standing there with a little smile on his face squishing the jelly through his fingers. What's a little grease on the wall anyway?