Toe Paint and a Birthday

This morning as I polished my toenails, Nathaniel, the birthday boy, watched intently. First it was, "I help?" Then, "paint toes" as he sat down in a chair and held his feet up for me. So I turned it into "you go potty and I'll paint your toes." Off he ran to the potty, peed and came running back to the chair. I would've put a lighter color of polish on if I had one, but I don't think he would've let me, cause it wouldn't have been what I had on. Here's the end result. And he's so proud of it. At least he doesn't wear flip flops, so no one will see unless he doesn't have shoes on. I do have to say that Daddy wasn't thrilled.


Then David had to join in. His didn't last very long, however, he wanted it taken off shortly after I put it on. "Mom, nail paint is for girls, and since I'm not a girl, please take it off." Polish, David. Its polish, not paint. Ah, but what do boys know about nail polish?



Today, of course, is Nathaniel's 4th birthday. I can't belive that 4 years has gone by since he joined our family. Its gone by so quickly! But here he is opening his presents.

This is Sideswipe. This was the gift that David bought for Nathaniel with his birthday money he got from Richard's dad. David could hardly contain himself when Nathaniel opened it.

And some twist-up Crayola crayons. He's always trying to swipe David's, so its just easier for each to have their own set.

And a big bottle of bubbles. He loves blowing bubbles, and it was only $4 for 100 ounces. We're going to use it to refill his bubble sword that he got earlier this summer, which is empty now.

Nathaniel and David love watching Tom and Jerry on Cartoon network, so I knew this would be a big hit. They haven't watched any of it yet, but will on the upcoming trip to Grandma & Grandpa's house.

To go with the twist-up crayons, Nathaniel got a big Thomas the Tank Engine coloring book and some markers (only used under supervision). What Nathaniel hasn't discovered yet is that there are over 700 stickers in the coloring book.

This is another Transformer, whose name escapes me. This is from Uncle Chris, Aunt Heather, Owen and Lily. He loves it! Thank you!!

And now, the pie. I know, we're breaking from the traditional cake. Its a chocolate chip cookie pie. Its yummy, but very, very, very rich. I had a small sliver and could barely finish it. In fact, I didn't.

Blowing out the candle......

All in all it was a good day. So-so on the potty training front, but its going to take a while with him.

Nathaniel, I love you so much! You'll always be my baby, but I promise to try to not to treat you like one as you get older. Happy Birthday, sweetheart! Love, Mom

A fun day at the park.....

until it rained. After church, I took the boys over to a friend's house so I could go birthday shopping for Nathaniel. It wasn't very long, about an hour, but it was quiet. I got back to Shelley's house and ended up eating lunch there and visiting for a couple of hours. Shelley and her family live directly across the street from a park, so her daughter took the boys over to play while I was gone. It worked great until it started to rain. When I got back to their house, they were just starting to watch the live action version of 101 Dalmations. While David & Cassie(Shelley's daughter) watched the movie, Shelley and I had a nice visit & Nathaniel took about an hour nap; I woke him up just as the movie was ending. It was about 4:00 when we headed home, but made a quick stop at a local ice cream shop for $1 baby cones. For a $1, they aren't baby cones at all. They are about the size of a regular sized Dairy Queen cone. And $1 includes tax. So for $3 we all had chocolate/vanilla swirl cones. Yum!

I did get my shopping done for Nathaniel's birthday. A couple of Transformers, a Thomas the Tank Engine coloring book, some markers, twist up crayon (I love these, they are awesome!) a Tom & Jerry DVD set and a Max & Ruby DVD. I also got his school clothes shopping done as well. Except for some new shoes, he's all done. Just have to get him some school supplies now.

The First Official School Shopping Day

Today David and I spent the day together. Richard was working, so I asked our Super Awesome Babysitter, Emma, to come over and watch Nathaniel while David and I went shopping. It was originally just going to be me going grocery shopping, which we desperately needed, but it turned into a school clothes/Sam's Club/Woodman's shopping day, with, after a brief stop at home, another run into town to buy misc. items and school supplies for David.

We got an awesome deal at Kohls for David. Four pairs of jeans for $44 dollars and 4 t-shirts (two for Nathaniel & 2 for David) for $25 and 2 packages of socks for David for $11 for a grand total of $83 with tax. The jeans alone were a great deal. Regularly $24 each, after the sale price & extra 15% discount they were just under $11 each.

Then we went to Sams' for groceries & then to Woodmans for more groceries. I'm not sure what the equivalent to Woodmans would be in the South, but its comparable to Winco in Idaho. Their prices on some things are better than Wal-Mart, but on others, Wal-Mart is actually cheaper.

We headed home about 1:30, since I told Emma the Super Awesome Babysitter that we'd be home by 2:00. We stopped and got the mail on the way down the driveway, and discovered that David had a letter from his school. When we discovered that Emma was excited to find out who David's 1st grade teacher was, and so we had to look his account up on the school district website. His teacher will be Mrs. Lian. Whoever that is. Also in his letter was a school supplies list, and since Richard got home about 2:15, we decided to go back into town to go to Wal-Mart for school supplies and some other non-grocery items.

Since Nathaniel's birthday is coming up on the 12th, David wanted to buy him a birthday present. (a Transformer, of course) He bought the present for Nathaniel with his own money. Money he got from Richard's dad for his birthday. He also has been talking about getting some plastic army men (remember the movie "Toy Story"?) so he got 3 packages of those ($1 per package) and some twist up Crayola crayons that he's been wanting. I swear, that kid is going to be an artist. He'll sit and color for hours.

The list of school supplies was long and redundant. 2 pencil boxes (2? why 2?) 3 packages of Crayola 8 count markers (why 3?) I have to comment on that. The packages of 8 count markers were $2.50 each. OR you could buy a package of 10 Crayola markers for $1 each. Hmmm. Which ones to get..... yeah. You know the answer to that one. Soooo $38 for school supplies. And that was just David. Now we get to do it for Nathaniel, but I think I'm going to take him with me. That'll be interesting.

Somewhere in the midst of the day I ended up with a migraine. About 6 weeks ago I finally went to the doctor because it seemed like I was getting 2 or 3 migraines a week, and because of that I was taking ALOT of Advil. I'd have to take 1000mg just to take the edge off one. Anyway, the Dr. put me on a beta blocker to see if that would prevent them. He also gave me an Rx for Imatrex, which works great when I do get one. So I took and Imatrex when I got home and after dinner I went and laid down and got a nice 2 hour nap. Its still there, just a little, but its pretty much gone, thank goodness. Just in time to say goodnight!