Oh Patrick, my Patrick.

Five things about Patrick

1) This summer is the summer of reading (and a little bit of math).  He's already finished one Harry Potter book and is half-way through another one.

2) He's saving up for a Kindle.  He's been earning extra money by picking up dog poop, cleaning base boards, scrubbing toilets, etc.  He should have it in the next couple of weeks.

3) He's swimming in the "deep end."  Swim lesson success..... I'm holding out for more, he's completely satisfied.

4) Take a look at his eye. Boo!  A stye that has been so swollen and painful for over three weeks.  It is finally doing better... the eye in a picture below is a huge improvement.

5) He's my absent minded professor.  Case in point; I spent most of the day on Tuesday catching up on laundry.  I asked my almost 7 year old to put his clothes away at the end of the day.  On Wednesday, I asked him to ring me his dirty clothes.  What I thought would be a few items (since I had just done laundry) turned into a large pile.  Somehow all of his clean shorts ended up in the dirty pile... head shake.

Lauren is 8 months old!

This girl has had a very busy month!
She's 20 lbs 4 oz.
Even though she still isn't eating a lot of real food, she does enjoy avocado, fruit and MumMums.
She's crawling everywhere (Keith's room and the game room are favorite destinations), the baby gate is coming out today.
She can pull to standing and cruise around the family room. Couch to ottoman to table to brother to chair and back again.
She finally has a don't mess with me schedule in the morning and evening.  What happens in between is questionable but she screams for BNB (Bath Nurse Bed) at 6:30 every night.
She still loves her bath and has even gone in the pool a few times already.  Once she feel asleep in the pool (see above).
She is signing "more"  babies are so smart.
Her tight rolls are starting to stretch out and a few have all but disappeared!
She has one little curl on the top of her head.  More to come...

Day 12

Of Summer Break... only 60 days until school starts.  Here's an idea... let's enjoy it while it is still here. 

Today was the first full day of summer AND it was hot... 107.  We threw out our pool plans in favor of other air conditioned loveliness.....

First of all, you have to have strawberries.  With this heat, these might be the last berries of the season.

Crafts are an excellent indoor activity!  We played with beads and made necklaces. Patrick's had a Harry Potter theme and Keith's were Star Wars.  We were all kind of grumpy so we napped and read books.

Why not turn on the oven?  Made some chocolate cake and licked the spoons.

Decided to have the cake for dinner.

Chocolate Cake for dinner? Yes! On the floor watching Episode II.

Perfect indoor triple digit  day.  Even with the grouchies, bickering, lack of patience, and pee pee pants. 

Summer Missions

Summer is great for a lot of reasons.  For example, last Thursday I walked around all day thinking it was Friday.  When I realized that it was only Thursday it was still cool because summer is cool like that.

My summer attitude is very project based.  Organize this... Clean that..... Lists and to-do's galore.

Remember last summer we created a Summer To-Do List.  We did it again this summer but I also have some personal missions (Target: Keith and Patrick).  We can't start a new school year if we don't accomplish these things!

1) Teach Patrick to tie his shoes
2) Teach Patrick to ride his bike without training wheels
3) Get Keith to limit his finger sucking to sleeping time
4) Get Keith to wear his glasses

If I have 100% patience these four tasks will take up 98%.  Wish me luck.

You Know You are the Mother of Boys if.....

You can identify the exact moment that the screams of fun and delight turn into murderous screams of revenge. 

***Hint: the fun and delightful screams sound a lot like girl screams.  good times.

Dear Summer,

Bring it!

We are ready!

Love,
The Callahan Boys

New additions

The Callahan Clan has expanded!  Patrick is now the proud owner of two crabs.  Feisty and Robin Crab-Callahan.

I cleaned their bowl last week and rearranged their house.  Nobody sent me the memo about the crabs' wanderlust.  Their plant was a little high and Feisty crawled out, jumped off the counter, spent most of the day under the couch and reappeared just in time to freak me out.  I spent the entire day telling Patrick to find his crab and tiptoeing all over the house.
Crunching crabs is not my idea of a good time.  Neither is having crabs climb over my bare feet while I am sitting on the couch.

Lesson learned.

I like to move it move it!

 Hello!  It is official, Lauren is crawling (all over the place).  This quickly progressed to pulling herself up on her knees (usually to play Legos!).  She tried to pull herself up to standing today, it didn't turn out so well.  She is pretty strong and really coordinated but not coordinated enough to climb the couch.

 And she can make it across the room to the tile.  She can follow me across the room too. 

And she can climb on the coffee table and bookcase. 

So things are now being put away beyond her reach.... and so it begins.