This week

James got a hold of some of my makeup and decided that he needed to powder his face. He also powdered his brother's face :)

 For our family home evening treat, James helped me make brownies. In batman underwear.

 All of his life, James has been very fussy about wearing clothes and hated being naked. I never had to struggle to keep him dressed, in fact I had to start hiding the jackets and the hats in the spring when the weather got too hot for them because he would insist on wearing them in 85 degree weather. Now he has discovered how to take his clothes off himself and loves going around the house naked or in his underwear.

We have had a rough week this week, with a lot of roller coaster emotions, tantrums, and straight up stubbornness. On the flip side, ever since James gave up his boppy, he has been a lot more affectionate than we are used to. He has started actually asking to cuddle and snuggle and crying when we leave or when he goes to bed. It seems like he has a spicy or sweet switch and he can go between either one in seconds. For example, one morning he went outside all by himself (which is unusual because he usually begs me to go out there with him), picked some flowers from our bush outside, and brought them inside just for me!

 While I was admiring the flowers, he saw some DVD's behind the gate in front of our TV and asked me if he could play with them. When I told him no and explained that they could hurt him or break, he flew into a rage, punched me in the arm, and had to go straight to time out! He went from giving me flowers to hitting me in literally minutes. His mood swings lately have been intense!

One afternoon James and I were playing with his toys and he gathered all of his "work" stuff (play doctor toys). He picked up the clipboard, ran his finger down the paper, and said in this matter-of-fact voice, "Sooo, heers the plan. I go to work, and I miss you. Then I come home and I see you. K? Thas the plan." It was so cute!! I got him to say it again for the camera, but it is a little harder to understand :)

Saturday morning James woke up in a grumpy mood and I could tell it was going to be a looooong day. Anthony works until 5pm on Saturdays so I was on my own with James. In the morning after breakfast I told him that he needed to make his bed before we played with toys or did any activities. He is used to making his bed, but usually he kind of hangs around and "helps" (or more accurately plays) while I do it. I've decided to have him start doing it on his own and it did not go over well. I told him what steps he needed to take to do it and that it didn't have to look perfect, he just had to try. He spent over 30 minutes in his room kicking, screaming, crying, basically doing anything except attempting to make his bed. After multiple reminders and check-ins from me, he finally came out and told me that he made his bed. I made a big deal about it and told him how proud and happy I was that he did it all by himself. He just made a face and growled at me. So stubborn! Even when he finally does what he is supposed to do, he doesn't want you to acknowledge it.

Here is the final result of James' bed made all by himself :)

 Anthony's sister Robin gave us this playset that her kids have outgrown and Anthony and I set it up today. James loves it! He was nervous to go down the slide at first, he said it was too high. He finally tried it out and decided he liked it :)

 For some reason, he told us that he can also use the slide for sleeping and wanted to show us what that would look like:

 Rett is pulling up on everything! He crawled right up to James in the bathtub, stood up and checked out what he was doing. Then he started investigating the faucets. This boy is so curious! He gets into everything! We haven't done that great a job of making sure small objects are out of his reach and I am almost ashamed to admit to some of the things we have pulled out of his mouth. It is so much harder to keep things baby proof with a busy older sibling around!

Saturday afternoon I was exhausted and Anthony was about an hour late coming home from work, so I put on the TV for James and dozed rested my eyes on the couch. About 15 minutes later I woke up to find Rett had discovered an open box of graham crackers in the pantry and dumped it all over the kitchen floor. Then he had apparently crawled into the dining room, found a cup of cheerios, and dumped that on the floor. When I caught up to the mischief maker he had his cheeks full like a chipmunk! You would think we never feed him! :)