Release me

Johnny, Hank and I spent nine whole days in the house being too sick to associate with others. We went outside to paint and get the mail and I made a solo trip to the grocery store. That was it. For nine whole days. Now, that may not sound so awful, but we don't have a backyard the boys can play in much, therefore we normally go to parks/other houses/anywhere other than our house nearly every day. Which means that being home bound for over a week was excruciating for all three of us. So by day nine we were feeling like this:

RELEASE ME!!!!! Independence Day anyone?

On day 10, I thought the boys were well enough to go to a park and run around there. Yes, they still had runny noses and some yucky green boogies, but my patience was worn thin and the boys were incredibly bored with our home. So, we left the house.

Once we got to the park (a cool new one we found in North Park), Johnny and Hank were beside themselves with excitement. I let them out of the car and then it was climbing ALL THE THINGS and sliding down ALL THE SLIDES and jumping off ALL THE SURFACES.

FREEDOM! Now where do I go? (this is Hank, BTW)

Johnny climbing the curvy yellow ladder...

Hank climbing the curvy yellow ladder.

Johnny at Hilltop in the afternoon

Hank chasing after Johnny

This is what happens when you are sick and do serious playing outside all day.

 I got a few side-eyes from some of the other moms there because it's obvious Johnny and Hank were still a little sick, but oh well. I tried to keep them away from the smaller children and mostly succeeded in keeping them from wiping snot on other kids. I call that a win.

What could possibly go wrong? (Alternatively titled: Boys are weird.)

Yes, another post about bath time. We were in a bath-loving stage last week... probably because we didn't leave the house for nine days and baths are a good change of pace. Since they spent so much time in the bath, Johnny and Hank had to come up with better ways to keeping themselves occupied than merely splashing water all over the bathroom. So they came up with this lovely game:

(Note: No teeth were lost in the making of this film. At least not yet.)

The Orange Shirt

Johnny, being a 3-year-old, has obsessions over some things. Of course, he is obsessed with letters and numbers, but another, much more visible, obsession is his love of a particular orange shirt. I purchased this orange shirt at Target sometime in September.

The Orange Shirt

Then, one day in October, he decided that it was his favorite shirt ever and he never wanted to remove it. Thus, he wore it day and night, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, excepting the couple of hours that John and I managed to coax it off of him so we could wash it. There was probably a six week period where he didn't wear any other shirt. Evidence below:

October 28th, 2013

November 2nd, 2013

November 6th, 2013

November 10th, 2013

November 15th, 2013

December 5th, 2013

December 17th, 2013

In effort to stem the tears and screaming caused by taking the orange shirt away to wash it, I purchased another orange shirt, though it was different since Target was out of blue monster shirts in his size. This new orange shirt was inadequate because it had a blue car on it instead of the beloved blue monster. Shame on me. So it sat, with the rest of his T-shirts, in his closet unused.

Until one day, he wanted to wear the orange shirt with the blue car.

December 25th, 2013

And now Johnny's obsessed with BOTH of these orange shirts. Which is preferable to being attached to only one shirt. Also on the plus side? Orange really stands out in a crowd; I think I would have lost him at the zoo by now if he had an obsession with black shirts.

Splash!

Both boys go through waves of loving baths and then hating baths. For now, we're in a loving-the-bath stage. Mostly because Johnny has learned the concept of water displacement. Typically in the form of splashing.

Hey, Hank, since I know you hate this, here's a little water for your face!

Ready, set...

Go!

Yay! Gigantic splash! Water everywhere! Whoo-hoo!!

Now, the pictures would indicate that fun is had by all. This is not entirely true. Johnny, of course, thinks his tidal waves are awesome and hilarious, but Hank sometimes gets doused with so much water that he probably thinks he's being water-boarded... I mean, if he had any concept of POW torture techniques, he would totally think that.

I digress. John and I used to freak out a little about getting so much water on the floor since the kids' bathroom is right over the kitchen and the seam between the tub and linoleum lines up nicely with our beautiful cabinets... but then John re-caulked that seam and I don't care so much any more. (Hopefully you did extraordinary job on that caulking, honey!) That doesn't mean that I don't lay down at least two towels on the floor for each bath session, though. Baths create quite a bit of laundry these days.

Maybe he'll be an astronaut.

I hope not an astronaut... maybe a physicist? Or maybe he'll be a biologist like his mama, since he's pretty good at memorizing things. :)

I should probably note here that this video is of Hank. And he's only 19 months.