Bitty and the Boy

Here are a couple of cute videos of my boys singing from Summer 2008. We were on our way home from Huntsville Int'l Airport's Airshow. We are actually watching the Blue Angels perform as we are driving out of the airport. The boys thought we needed music to go with the planes. I love how they try to harmonize.

(In these videos, Bitty is just over 2 years old. The Boy is just a tad over 5 years old.)

Enjoy.



PS. If you are not related to them, these might not be as good. :) But I am, and I crack up every time I watch them.

From The Boy's student teacher. The class decorated their white lunch bags for Valentine's Day yesterday.



Ms. Teacher to Be: What are you drawing?

The Boy: A machine.

Ms. Teacher to Be: What does the machine do?

The Boy: It sucks all the bad up. So everything is good. This is a robot. But he is a good robot cause everything is good now.





My son, the inventor. I pray that this will be his addition to our world. To suck all the bad away, so everything will be good. Out of the mouths of babes.

Who Ya Gonna Call? Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusting has been a popular game in our home for the last week or so. The boys just watched the movie and are now busting the ghosts that have apparently taken up residence in and around our house.

Today, the boys were outside playing Ghostbusters. They would ride around in the Gator and stop to bust some ghosts. This is a sampling of their conversation.

(Bitty got back into the Gator.)

The Boy: No, Bitty, we still have to bust the ghosts.

Bitty: (running over)

The Boy: We have to go to the hot dog shop. Hurry.

Bitty: Over Here!

The Boy: No, that is not where the ghost is.

Mommy: Can't the ghost be where he wants it just this once?

The Boy: No, the ghost is over here. Hurry. The hot dog shop!

Bitty: I like hot dogs.

Mommy: ( Really? You never eat them. Never in your whole life have I gotten you to even try a hot dog or anything resembling a hot dog.)

The Boy: We aren't going to eat hot dogs. There is a ghost.

Bitty: We no eat hot dogs?

The Boys: No. GHOST!!!!!!!!!

Boys: (running and making ghostbusting sounds.)


I love having boys. They are the best!


* I do apologize for those of you that now have the Ghostbuster theme song stuck in your head. Extra points to anyone who can name the artist who sings the theme song. No fair cheating with the internet.

he might ask you for more. *

We had muffins for breakfast. My boys adore muffins. Their favorite is strawberry mini-muffins. They will easily both consume a dozen mini-muffins each. Most times we have to cut Bitty off. "More muffins, peas" he will say. After the twelfth or thirteenth muffin, I end up saying no. I sometimes wonder, how many muffins fit in a Bitty?

All this talk is making me hungry for my absolute favorite muffin...my grandma's 6-week raisin bran muffins. They are super yummy. Here is the recipe.

We are lucky. Our boys have 4 grandparents and 5 great grandparents still around to spoil them. And spoiling them is what they do best. If you think grandparents know how to spoil little ones...well, they don't hold a candle to the great grandparents in our lives.


Here is a bit about Bitty and the Boy's Great Grandparents.



1) Cookin' MaMaw and Old PaPaw are wonderful to have around. There is always ice cream at their house. Often there is a donut stick or honey bun to go with the ice cream. My fondest memory is of the boys being given ice cream, donut sticks, a pop tart, and chips at almost 11am. Then, Papaw says, "They didn't eat much lunch. I don't know why they aren't eating." I wonder why they might not be hungry for lunch. Let me think on that for awhile. MaMaw always likes to keep a Guthrie's chicken bucket on hand for Bitty's hat. PaPaw is always keeping both boys busy with learning about chickens.

We had a busy witching hour this morning. The Boy was up and could not get back sleep.

Important Information to the story...

a) Jason (my husband) and I have a deal. I get up with the boys at night during the week. He gets up with the boys on the weekend.

b) This was Sunday morning...most definitely a weekend.

c) Jason is a sneaky, sneaky man.


Back to the story.

The Boy came into our room at midnight. He was whining about something or other. I do not know exactly what he whined about this particular time because his Daddy fielded this instance. Normally, his whining stand-bys are thirsty, scared, had a bad dream, scared of his room, or it is just plain lonely in his room. His Daddy took him back to his room after some cuddling.

Fifteen minutes later, The Boy is back. This time he comes straight to me and tell me he had a bad dream. Since I know he has not been to sleep since the last time he was in my room, I doubt the bad dream angle of the story. Anyway, I look over and Jason is asleep. Here is when I should have just kicked him out of bed. But I am a good wife. So if he is asleep, I will take The Boy back to bed. I tucked him in real tight. As I was leaving, he stops me. "Mommy, there is something that tastes bad in my mouth. I can't sleep with it there." Hmmm. I got him some water and he drank it. This apparently helped the taste situation. He gets tucked in and I am headed back to bed. As I enter the room, Jason says, "that is the second time in 20 minutes that he has been in here." He was awake! I only got up to spare him from waking up. Not again.

Twenty minutes later, The Boy is back. Jason and I are both up and in gentle discussions with The Boy. After a long discussion on why he just can't go to sleep, Jason informs him that he gets ONE more tuck in tonight. Any more than that and he will have to get in bed and cover himself up (this is absolutely horrible for Our Boy.) Then my sneaky husband says, " Who do you want for your last tuck in?" Are you joking me?!? Of course, he is going to pick me. The Boy is a smart boy and is clearly not going to chose the parent who just doled out punishment. Sneaky man. The Boy is still trying to not have to go back to his bed and begins whining, "I am not tired. I can not sleep." I get up and reach out to hold his hand on our walk across the house. The Boy drops to the floor and starts whining, "I'm too tired to walk. I'm too sleepy." I have to use my Mommy voice to get him to get up and hold my hand. As we walk back to his room, I explain the irony of being too tired to walk 30seconds after being not sleepy enough to sleep. I tucked him in with extra kisses and a loving reminder that this was the last tuck in of the night. We finally all get some sleep.

This morning when I tell Jason that he was very sneaky. He looks all innocent and says, "What? How? I didn't do anything." Like I said...sneaky, sneaky man.


Addition to the story: The Boy's conversation with his Ma (Jason's mom).

Ma: Did you sleep well last night?
The Boy: Not really. I was up quite a bit.

I love watching my boys grow up into wonderful people. Sometimes I look at them and wonder how they change some aspect of themselves so quickly, though. This is VBS week at our church. Which translates to long days for the boys. Yesterday was packed to the brim with fun. We spent the morning at VBS. Then we went to see Ma & Papa at the lake for lunch, boating, and a little swimming. At the last (and best) swimming area, my boy who is a bit afraid of deeper water (than the foot in the baby pool, I mean) took off his life jacket so he could go underwater looking for shells and rocks. I pondered who this boy was because just last week I couldn't go 3 feet away from him at the pool where he was protected by his cherished floaties. It brought a smile to my face to see his glee at rock/shell finding and to witness his progression in water proficiency.

After the lake, we went back to church for the VBS Family Night for a totally funtastic time. The church has rented some huge inflatables. One for little kids, the Titanic slide, and a ginormous obstacle course. My usually shy boy rushed away from me, found a couple friends, and never looked back. I watched as he ran from one inflatable to the other. He was never nervous. He never looked back. He played on them for over an hour and a half. I made him take a hot dog break and then he was back playing until they closed up shop.

I am so proud of The Boy and even more grateful for this morning when he came into my room crawled into my room and said, "Mommy, I want to cuddle up with you a little bit this morning." I want to cherish these "little boy" times because you never know when will be the last morning cuddle.

We have this little neighbor girl, Mary Grace. She is a stylish 6 year old. She loves to have fun and play, but the girl is stylin' while she does it. Because of this all the neighborhood and church boys are in love with her. I have heard at least 4 boys (under the age of 7) say they are "going to marry Mary Grace." Yesterday, I was telling someone about how fun Mary Grace was at VBS that morning. She ate her goldfish crackers and decorated her bagel (don't ask) with so much poise. So, I said, "Mary Grace is so..." I was about to say "graceful...or girly" when from the back seat The Boy says, "beautiful. Mary Grace is always soooo beautiful."

We had two birthday parties to attend this weekend. They were full of tough obstacles for our shy 5 year old.

Party #1: Ashley and Brooke's Water Fun Party. They had a great water slide in the front yard, sprinklers, and baby pools. The Boy was nervous about all the gleeful girls. He only knew Ashley and she was in full birthday party swing by the time we got there. After hovering around us for almost an hour, he started getting more brave. He would run through the sprinkler as long as Bitty and he were the only ones near it. They played in the baby pool alone together. Finally, he started getting comfortable around the other kids. He climbed up the water slide and patiently told the boys and girls at the bottom to watch out. (He didn't want to slide into them. How polite!) He slid down and practically didn't come up for air...though he did come up for pizza and cake.

Party #2: Navaeh's party at Skate Odyssey. This party was full of the same problems as the first one. He was fine putting on the skates. He didn't mind falling. He is really a brave boy in some ways. He was fine rolling around on the carpet. He just didn't want to get onto the rink. I assumed it was because he was nervous about going fast or falling. Upon further conversation, I found out that he just didn't want to be out there with so many people. After missing out on the skate races and the "prize for all racers", I talked my son into going around with me. He really was fine. In fact, after the initial two or four laps, he wouldn't even hold my hand anymore.

If anyone out there has any suggestions to aid social anxiety at his age, please feel free to comment.

In stark contrast, Bitty would have gone on the water slide from minute one, except he really wants to be attached to the Boys hip. Bitty also wanted his own skates and then was furious when I skated without carrying him around with me. (Skating with a 2 year old on your hip is much harder than it sounds.)

The Boy
April 11, 2008 2:24am
4 years, 11 months

"Can I tell you about it when we get back in there (his room)"

"It was when I was at school. And you had some bad stuff in your mouth. And you were gonna die. And there was pirate stuff all around 'cause we were pretending to be pirates. And Cindy tried to get you to spit the bad stuff out. And it was paper."

"I know. It was just a bad dream."

My only question is....who is Cindy?

Since the day we brought Bitty home from the hospital, The Boy has agitated him. It was common-place to hear someone say, "The Boy better watch out when Bitty gets bigger. He's going to haul off and smack him." Little by little Bitty has asserted himself.

Battle 1: March 2008

Bitty vs. The Boy

The Boy loves to dress up and pretend. On this day, he was Spiderman. He finds it amusing to have Bitty be a villain -- the Green Goblin that day. I will add here that Bitty doesn't really comprehend the pretending or the fact that there is a reason The Boy is jumping around screaming at him.

SpiderBoy found that he could make the Bitty Goblin holler if he ran up and yelled at him. Aunt Mae (aka Mommy) was in the kitchen cooking dinner. The Boy came into the kitchen crying loudly, "Bitty hit me with his hand." I looked at my precious Bitty hovering behind The Boy and said, "No hit." Then calmly explained to The Boy that scaring his brother like that was going to result in violence. "He will hit you if you do that to him," I said. Ten minutes later. The Boy is back crying even louder. "Bitty hit me with his (stuffed) monkey," The Boy cried. The somewhat amused Mommy looked at the boys and said, "Bitty, no hit." and "He will hit you with whatever he has in his hand if you do that to him again. This is your choice. Don't scare him and he will not hit you." Ten minutes later. The Boy is shrieking and holding his head as he wanders into the kitchen. "Mommy. Bitty hit me in the he- ad." (I love the way children say head with two syllables) I look up prepared to repeat the warnings to my children. What do I see? I see my ever so sweet 22month old coming around the corner with a baseball bat (albeit a plastic one). As I check The Boy's head for damage, I explain that this is just the thing that I warned him about earlier. There were no more incidents that night. The Boy had learned his lesson for the evening at least.


Winner: Bitty

The War Continues....

In his almost 5 year old innocence, he was pretending -- it seems he pretends more than he doesn't. This morning he pretended that he was fat. Why? I don't know. While he was walking around pretending to be fat, he came up to me and said, "Not that it matters, but you are a little fat, aren't you? I love you anyway, but you ARE a LITTLE fat, right? I still love you. But you ARE fat, right?" I just started to cry. I couldn't help myself. There was no reasoning with my heart. I couldn't say no -- because I am overweight. I was just so sad for his innocence lost. It startled me. Not three months ago, he looked at me and said, "Mommy, you are not fat. You are beautiful." This happened as we were having a conversation about a little girl at school who is heavier. He called her fat as a descriptor for me to know which little girl she was. He said it as truthfully as when he said she had brown hair and was "really nice." I told him that it hurts people's feelings when they are called things like fat. I told him of the times that I was called fat when I was a little girl and how it had hurt my feelings. How did things change so quickly?

OK. My husband has been on a business trip for 6 days now. I know that the stress of single parenting is taking its toll because this morning I believe I may be losing my mind. Last night, bath time was not the normal joy it usually is in our house. Both my boys were very tired. The Boy, my 4 year old, was acting sick. He wanted to lay down and watch his movie that he was promised. So, I got him out and dried him off. Not being able to leave my 18 month old, Bitty, in the tub; I sent the towel wrapped Boy into the living room to start the movie on his own. Bitty played for awhile by himself. Then he wanted to get out of the tub. I got him out and dried him off. Realizing that I had forgotten to unstop the drain, I resigned myself to cleaning the bathroom after the boys were in bed. So, I left the bathroom. The later events of the night are pretty irrelevant. Except to say that the boys got to bed and I forgot my chore of cleaning the bathroom and tub. Oops.

Skip to this morning. The house was full of chaos as it is everyday that I have to take The Boy to school. My husband does this easily on the way to work. I, however, have to get everyone ready and loaded into the car. He is never there in time for breakfast on days when Mommy has to drop him off. ( I would like to note here that it scares me next year when it is actual school and he will be counted tardy for my inability to perform the morning duties efficiently.) Back to the story at hand, we go into the bathroom for the morning vitamin and tooth brushing. What do I find? The bathtub full of water? The towels everywhere? The towels are everywhere, but the bathtub is strangely only partially filled with water. This is odd because now I remember that I forgot to clean up the bathroom & tub. Here's the real challenge. There is poop in the bathtub! What?!? When did that happen? Am I that clueless of a mother? I don't think so. I have decided that those tiny elves that refuse to clean my kitchen have begun to play cruel bathroom jokes on me.

Husband returns in 5 day.