I Have Some ‘Splaining To Do

I don’t even know the last time I’ve gone this long without blogging. There’s lots of reasons, but the main one is that things have kept breaking. Big things like cars and computers and lots of smaller things as well. It’s been kind of weird how many things have gone out of commission right in a row. As far as our computer goes, I had backed up most of the important stuff on our external hard drive as we’ve gone along but there were a couple weeks of current pictures that were lost. Spencer’s co-worker was able to recover them and I was going to post some of those, and then lo and behold the (brand new) external hard drive she saved them to stopped working. So I lost them again. Not to mention this computer is so old it doesn’t deal with the big pictures my camera takes and uploading takes forever if it’s able to do it at all. I don’t mean to sound like a whiner, it’s just stuff and not really a big deal. But by way of long, boring explanation, that’s the reason I’ve fallen so behind on documenting our recent adventures. At least on here anyway.

So, where to start…

We got a new (to us) car. For the first time in nearly six years of marriage we are technically a two-car family! I say technically because we’re not sure how long we’ll end up keeping our old car since it’s not very reliable. But Spencer has been using it to make the short drive to work and back, and though it’s not the kind of car we want to transport kiddos in, it gets him where he needs to go (and hasn’t actually given him much trouble since we got a second car). Some people have wondered how we’ve gone as long as we’ve had with just one car, but for the most part it hasn’t ever been all that difficult to share. In the past when M and I’ve needed the car we’ve just dropped Spencer off at work. And Spencer works such an odd schedule that even when he and I were both working, we could easily get where we needed to go with just one car between us. 

But I’m not gonna lie, though we didn’t anticipate having to buy another car at this time it’s been pretty convenient to each have our own means of transportation. And we really like our new car at lot. Maybe if I’m feeling really ambitious I’ll have to try to post some pictures of our new ride.

In other news, M seems to have developed into a full-on two year old overnight. Though he’s still my cheerful, sweet, little boy he has been working more and more on asserting his independence. He will frequently do things I JUST told him not to do (while looking my direction with a big smile on his face) just to see if he can get a reaction. Stinker. He has also developed a certain fondness for the word “no” and will often tell me no to things I KNOW he wants or would enjoy before eventually changing his answer. 

Just the other day he was doing something naughty (I can’t even remember what it was at this point) and I told him that he could either stop right now or go to time out and he calmly requested, “time out” with a big smile on his face. Aggg kiddo, you’re not supposed to LIKE time out!    

Even though he seems to enjoy testing the limits, in other ways he is less “two” than I would have expected given his current independent streak. He doesn’t throw a lot of tantrums. We can usually take things he shouldn’t have away from him or correct his behavior without a lot of hysterics on his part. He accepts when we tell him “no” pretty easily and moves forward without a lot of fuss. I know that this can and probably will change at any time, so we’re enjoying it while it lasts.

Overall, I know I’m really lucky to have such a happy kid. He’s such a sweetheart and I sure do enjoy spending my days with him.  

Some more funny stories about M:

I’ve been trying to help M sing the alphabet song with me. He does a good job recognizing a few short sequences of letters in the song, so we’ve been singing it lots lately. Last night we were singing in our usual way where I would say a letter and pause for M to parrot back, only instead of M repeating after me, he would yell “NANA’ instead. He did this over and over laughing hysterically. I was so surprised that he came up with that all on his own, that I started laughing too. Now he REFUSES to sing the correct way instead singing “nana” after every letter hoping to coax another laugh from me. He thought it was the greatest joke.

Every night when I go to check on M, I discover that he has slipped a whole pile of library books into bed with him. Usually several will be open and I’ll have to pull several more out from under the covers/a sleeping boy. It makes me so happy that he falls asleep reading. I love that he sneaks books to bed with him. I love being able to share something I love so much with my little boy.

Sorry this is such a word heavy update. I shall leave you with the few photos I managed to finagle onto this post.

I give you M and Mom’s matchy matchy day: