At the end of our bedtime routine, I sing a song to each of the boys before I tuck them in and leave the room. They are now sharing a room (yeah, we have enough bedrooms, so we did this on purpose, crazy, I know), so I'll sing to Coulson while we all cuddle in his bed and then I'll sing to Charlie right before putting him in his crib. Lately a favorite request is "Snuggle Puppy" a song from Sandra Boynton. (Sandra Boynton writes children's board books, but they are all very clever and funny, so it's not a drag to read the same book over and over and over again. She has also written some songs which are also very amusing and "Snuggle Puppy" is from the the book/music CD Philadelphia Chickens.)
The lyrics go like this:
Ooooooo, Snuggle Puppy of mine,
Everything about you is especially fine.
I love what you are. I love what you do.
Fuzzy little Snuggle Puppy, I love you.
After I leave the room, I go across the hall to the office to check email and do internet stuff. Sometimes Charlie wants me to keep singing, but I don't want to get stuck in a routine of endlessly singing to him till he falls asleep, so I have to say no more singing. But after I leave the room, sometimes Coulson will take over and start singing to him. So as I have been writing this, Coulson is singing Snuggle Puppy to Charlie and it's just the sweetest thing in the world, so I thought I would share it with you. Little moments like this are the reason we wanted them to share a room!
I just spent almost 2 hours writing a very important blog entry (well, I was watching TV while blogging, so it wasn't like 2 hours of typing) and then the laptop just blacked out on me and I couldn't get it to come back on - isn't it supposed to beep at me when the battery gets low? I plugged it back in, but that didn't help. I lost everything. Ahhhhhhhg!
Anyway, it was a very important blog all about how I decided to train for a triathlon and raise money for World Vision. The bottom line is this - I'm going to do a sprint triathlon (300m swim, 20K bike, 5K run) in September and my main motivation is so I can raise money for World Vision (a great relief organization that I trust and respect, helping people and communities all over the word fight poverty). Here's the link so you can donate:
My first blog entry was much more informative and more eloquent, but I guess no one will ever know...
I love you so much!
I love you more.
More? How could you possibly love me more than I love you?
Because I have 2 hearts.
Two hearts?
I went to the heart shop and got two orange hearts.
Two orange hearts?
My red one wasn't working so I asked for two orange hearts and I threw my red one in the trash can. And then it went to the landfill.
It couldn't be recycled?
No, it couldn't. It had to go to the landfill.
(The landfill part was added while Coulson was helping me recreate this conversation as I typed it on the computer)
Last weekend, my brother and his family came for a quick visit. They live overseas, so we don't get to see them often, about every other year. They'll be moving back to the states next year, so we are looking forward to seeing them more frequently. The last time that we had seen my nieces and sister-in-law was the week before Charlie was born, almost 2 years ago.
When we first greeted everyone at my parents house, Coulson was very shy and secretly confided to me that he didn't remember them. It didn't last long and by the end of their visit, he was lamenting and wishing that their daddy could work where his daddy worked so they could play together all the time.
(Bear with me on this - I try to respect my family and friends' privacy on my blog by not using their names, but I have 3 brothers, so just refering to them as "brother" can get confusing. So brother #3 was visiting, brother #2 lives nearby and his 2 kids are included in all the cousin excitement happening, brother #1 doesn't live nearby so his family wasn't able to be part of the cousin fun this past weekend.)
We had everyone to our new home one night for dinner and it was a lot of fun to host a big crowd (and not have to cram our guests into 2 small rooms like our old house). To Casey's credit, everyone had fun playing the Wii. We were like those happy families in the commercials, laughing and interacting while playing video games together. And it's especially fun because my parents can play alongside the grandkids and everyone has fun. Sure the four-year-olds can beat grandma in bowling, but it's a pretty close game and they all have a great time. You can't say that about most video games.
We took over 30 pictures trying to get a good group shot of all the cousins, thinking that we were bound to get at least one picture that would turn out good. Here are the best ones:
This video has been pretty popular on You Tube with over 37 million views. It's just a simple video of 2 little brothers doing brotherly things, you know, the stuff my life is filled with.
Coulson saw this video and, since he had a baby brother named Charlie, he wanted to make his own "Charlie bit me" video. We did this way back in February, but I am just now posting it to YouTube (unpacking procrastination?). Enjoy!
Casey has passed all his tests on the first try (he had a written and oral test) and is officially board certified now. Congratulations honey!
