meet me at the fair

run, don't walk to the utah state fair.

we went with our besties to the state fair on saturday and a good time was had by all. trevan made a lifetime friend, the kids ran crazy, and i ate until i could eat no more.

jude was 100% smiles about riding a pony.

(we figured they make at least $960 every hour with this little pony attraction)

b.f.f.'s and the hitler youth all in one. they will never cease to amaze us.

i am not sure about the KKK goats.

can someone (farmgirl) explain this to me?

greta loved the moo'ing at all the animals. all farm animals moo, including the new pants she got today.

i want 3 piglets of my very own to snuggle with.

i won't lie, one of the #1 reasons i wanted to go to the fair is for the food i knew would be there. it didn't disappoint.

fresh funnel cake? to die for.

even the prets could not resist a little funnel cake. wait, hold the phone, she can't resist anything edible. its a wonder she is not an exhibit at the fair herself by the way she eats.

these 2 are best friends these days. i kind of love it.

jude at the lego table with a boy with his pants pulled up EXTREMELY high. he was however, a very nice boy.

the big yellow slide? worth all 400 pennies.

fyi... the utah state fair ends the 20th. giving you ample time to enjoy classy people, deliciously disgusting food, stinky farm animals, and a few rodeo queens.

2 things....

1. these kids are really, really cute.

bad angle for trev (sorry).

take a closer look at greta's fangs, she is a cullen in the making.

2. we got a new car. (for real this time)

my own grocery getter....

i love having more room and trevan loves that this wagon will be his car to drive in a few short years. he is a station wagon man, what can i say? i still want my giant gas guzzler but i don't quite have the numbers (ie. kids) to win that battle yet.

the kids like having more room and because it wasn't too much of a change from our jetta they seemed to warm up to that passat just fine.

i love new cars and cute kids.

skeleton jammies

our house has been ready for halloween since september 1st but our real halloween experiences never really start until the skeleton jammies arrive. well, they are here and a certain 3 year old could not be more excited about the pj's and halloween in general.

hil.ar.i.ous.

jude is trying to be scary.... he's too cute to look scary.

i officially love the fall. its sort of in the air but i think by us being amply prepared autumn will get here sooner.

let's hope.

tv'less

its been over a week with no television at the gregory household. we are t.v. free.

it was a long hard week but i am proud to say we made it. the first 2 days were the hardest. getting up at the butt crack of dawn with kids without t.v. is something i have never done in my 4 years of parenthood. usually, we get up and jude chooses a channel he wants to watch, i get him juice and cereal, and then i lay on the couch for about an hour until grets gets up and then i am finally ready to be awake for the day. needless to say our mornings without t.v. has been our biggest obstacle.

besides our morning t.v. ritual we really don't watch that much t.v. lately if jude is extremely tired i will lay with him on our couch down stairs and turn on something that he is not too interested in and after about 20 minutes he is out and its GREAT. please, jude nap time is heaven sent. if i am cleaning the house, on the internet, folding laundry, or just being a lazy mom the t.v. is usually on. {sidenote: jude doesn't really watch the t.v. he just plays along side it.} back before we got a DVR we rarely watched t.v. at night, between me working and other nightly outings we could not really watch a series without missing weeks, so we didn't watch it. not so much these days, every night we have at least one show that we {trevan and i} like to watch and hate to miss. jude has wound up loving top chef as much as we do! through out the summer we would let sir jude stay up with us and he would fall asleep on the couch watching our shows. i loved having my snuggly buddy next to me keeping me warm while watching our shows. it turned into a nasty habit. our once perfect sleeper who would go to bed after a few stories and some snuggles was now a terrible sleeper who could not fall asleep on his own, he needed the t.v. as a bed time story.

when dr. cramer told me that he thought we should cut out t.v. i was taken back. how could my babysitter {the t.v.} not be a good thing for our jude, for our family? i agreed to try it because i was at a breaking point and needed an intervention. i went all in in my efforts and decided that if it was going to work it had to be done all the way. the first day was hard, jude asked to watch it but reminded himself that dr. cramer said no t.v. and went about his day. he had tantrums that day and they were doozies. i mean a lot of the time when jude is upset or throwing a tantrum he will sit on the couch with his "silk" and watch t.v. to calm himself down. this was not an option anymore. there was a lot of holding on my part and a lot of screaming on his part. day 2 jude had 4 tantrums and still wanted to watch t.v. but we carried on. by day 3 jude's tantrums count was at 1 but without quiet time/naptime in 5 days he was really REALLY grumpy. greta had her physical therapist over that day and she was so exhausted that by noon she was down for her nap. i knew jude needed a nap and knew that there were 2 ways to get that done, a long drive{which was not an option} or some boring t.v. watching. that day he fell sound asleep on the couch after about 15 minutes of paula deen. i was a little disappointed that we had to resort to that but it is what it is, we made it through that day. days 4 &5 saw few tantrums about bedtime but other than that he was fine. today we are virtually tantrum free and with a very very few moments of t.v./movies i am proud of us.

the best part about this whole thing has been what it has done for our family. we talk more, we play more, we arge less, and laugh more. trevan and i talk more and go to bed much earlier than before. jude's imagination has taken off. he and greta actually play together. they played spongebob for 2 hours the other day and it may have been the cutest thing. ever. we listen to a lot of music and dance our long mornings away. jude has learned to make the most delicious scrambled eggs and has become an excellent helper. all because we turned off the t.v. i have no bad to things to say about not having t.v., it brought nothing to our family that we can't replace with laughter and love.

i think you should try it. if we can do it, believe me you can. its hard but well worth the reward.

let me know how you do.

p.s. i may be singing another song when the fall line up starts. we kind of can't live without 30 rock.

for my mother

happiest birthday wishes to the most beautiful woman i know....

my mom.

if i could grant my mother some birthday wishes they would go as follows....

-to have her health

- a cabin

- her baby to move back home

- a better husband (not a new one, just that the one that she has would change a bit.... or a lot)

- lots of laughter

- a vacation

- financial freedom

- and more grand babies to love

(that's my mom and her high school boyfriend darryl, turns out he would still like to marry her. he contacted her and told her that a few years back... kinda creepy)

happy birthday mom!

thanks for being everything

oh and check out her new blog here

bare with me

{its quite personal and dear to my heart}

i am struggling.

these past two weeks have been my worst mothering days yet. i have been wanting to "blog" about them for sometime but can't find the words {or the energy} to write about it. so here it goes.

my heart is breaking, i feel like i am failing. i have chosen the career path of mothering. it was my choice. i eat, breathe, and sleep parenting. my kids are the first thing i think about when i wake and the last thing i think about before i drift off into my happy place. i love them with every single thing that i am. i strive to help them succeed and to help them feel loved.... but i think i am failing in my attempts with my first born.

jude went to pre-school 2 weeks ago and 9 days later jude was done. jude cried at preschool and wanted his mommie. after 4 attempts {2 successes and 2 failures) his preschool coordinator told me that he probably wasn't ready for preschool and handed me papers about a child wellness center that deals with autism and other disorders. this lady spent 20 minutes with my crying 3-year old and decided that because he didn't fit into her preschool he was autistic. needless to say i pulled him out of that preschool right then and there. i was beyond offended. however, i was a little embarrassed. whether i should have been or not, i was. how was is that every other kid in his class didn't cry so hard they had to be sent home? how come all of my friends and families children can be okay with preschool? i thought i had prepared him. i thought we were ready. how was i to know?

for the record, i am a first time mom and i DO NOT know what i am doing. i don't know what is considered normal and what i should be concerned about. poor jude has to be the guinea pig {i am so sorry jude}. i know that this preschool woman had no business saying anything to me but what she insinuated cut me to the bone. as i said before, this is my career, this is all i do. i can't fail at this, what would that mean? i did not know this would be this hard. i clearly would not have signed up for this had i known..... but i did.

jude is jude and he is wonderfully handsome, intelligent, and delightful little boy. that being said, he is really hard for me right now. he has some serious separation anxiety issues when it comes to me. jude can be quite "aggressive" with his little sister. he has very intense tantrums and some rage moments that scare me. all of these things were of note to me before preschool but i thought going to preschool would help with all of these things. now, i think if this said preschool would have had a little more patience, love, and understanding it would have worked out, but it didn't and here i am picking up the pieces. i figured these issues that are happening are a little bit beyond my area of expertise.

today we met with our pediatrician who i love and trust to discuss some of jude's issues with. after about an hour us expressing our concerns and fears dr. cramer came up with a game plan for us. he explained to us that some of jude's issues were normal {tantrums, boundary pushing, and some separation anxiety} and others not so normal {rage, "aggressiveness", and severe anxiety}. our first step is to turn off t.v. completely at our house. jude's aggressiveness is a result of television watching and him mirroring what he sees when his frustrated. secondly, we will stop giving time-outs and replace them with holding jude because he cannot calm himself down properly in time-out. third, we will try to look at jude when he is upset through his eyes and talk him through it. lastly, we are going to try to have jude be more involved with play dates and specifically play dates when i am not there. jude needs to learn that he can trust someone that is not family. {fyi.... i guess you are suppose to have people other than family watch your children?} dr. cramer also assured me that preschool is not a requirement for a reason, its not entirely needed and that jude surely did not need to go to preschool to learn anything academically because he is very intelligent for his age. dr. cramer said that jude would benefit much more from a preschool that focused more on play and social interaction and that gave out lots of hugs. poor jude, he just needed a little tlc and the newcastle school obviously could not offer that to jude. after lots of tears on my part, we left the office feeling reassured that everything was going to be okay {have i mentioned my love for dr. cramer yet?}.

i am worried for my little angel boy. i have clinical depression and moderate to severe anxiety and have had these things from a very young age but i went untreated and undiagnosed until i was about 17. once i was diagnosed things went much more smoothly for me and anyone else who knew me. also, we were also able to see that i presented these issues very early on in my life but no one knew what was really going on. i worry that jude too has depression and anxiety. dr. cramer addressed jude's susceptibility to depression as well and we are going to watch jude and see how he does after our 4 step program. i don't want that for him. freak, i don't want that for anyone. i know i am a poster child for anti-depressants but i know they don't work as well for everyone as they do me. i don't want any of this to be a part of who jude is. i hate that i may have passed that nasty gene right on down to him..... not that i will love him any less its just a really hard road to travel. i want him to be happy and loved. i want him to be okay. i just want him.

i just want to know everything will be okay. i want to read ahead. i am a big ending ruiner. my whole life i have read the end of books shortly after starting them to make sure it would be worth the read. i frequent moviepooper.com so i can know how movies end. i don't like not knowing. if i could only read ahead to 20 years from now and know that everything would be okay, i know i could do this. just a glimpse of my family in once piece. i don't need to know everything, i just need to know that i can do this. i need to know that my parenting will pay off. i need to know my jude is going to be okay..... but the reality is that can't read ahead. i have to play this guessing game of trial and error. i am aiming for the stars and hoping i can at least get the moon. i read all the parenting books i can get my hands on but none of them can show me what i need. i think what i need is a break, a refresher but i don't think us mom's ever really get that. i will just have to settle with a good nights sleep and a new day tomorrow.

i am just struggling. i want to be the best mom i can be to my 2 little darlings. today, i am feeling not so good but tomorrow will be better. i get to wake up to those 2 darlings and they will love me even if am i not.

p.s. i love being a mom, really i do.

2 p.s. did you catch the part about no tv? wow. that's a whole other blog entry, more on that later

in the morning

i am not a morning person, never have been. in fact, growing up my family would draw straws to see who had to wake me up. not much has changed. we rise early here at the gregory household but most days we are in our pajamas until we leave the house, somedays that is not until 3 in the afternoon. i wouldn't say its because i am lazy, i think its more because i love pj babies. my kids are always more snugly while they are in the pajamas.

sunday morning we had a family lay in in our bed. its was delightful.

greta's hair is so amazing when she wakes up, it brings a tear to a glass eye.

grets has also found her nose and will show you it whenever you want.

since we have moved our bed under the window greta's standing skills have significantly improved.

oh, and jude was there too. it takes a lot of convincing to get him into our bed during the day. he knows not to get in bed with me because we wind of staying there way too long for his taste. when he wakes in the morning instead of coming into my room he goes down stairs to the couch and starts yelling for me instead. he knows me all too well.....

if only we had a bigger bed we really could have a lay in all day!

that would be my best day ever.....