What's in a Name?

Of late, my children have become obsessed with their names. They want me to write out their full names so they can painstakingly copy them beneath my writing. Then we have to write out the full names of the rest of the family, including their grandparents and aunts. Then we have to talk about why each person has that name (i.e. if it is a family name or some other connection). We do this pretty much on a daily basis. The only thing that changes is the color of marker we use.

We have always had issues naming our kids. Only Drew's name (Andrew Joseph) chose itself, mainly because we were lazy - it was the name my parents had chosen for my youngest sister, had she been a boy.

We vacillated back and forth on Cade's name and finally settled on Peter Cade - Peter after Aaron's grandfather and Cade because we liked it (it was before the days when Caden was so popular). Calling Cade by his middle name has never given us any problems, except for at the pediatrician's office, where we have been patients for almost 4 years now. The doctor still issues instructions like, "Sit still, Peter." or, "This won't hurt a bit, Peter.", while Cade looks around the room wondering who the hell Peter is. Despite my multiple attempts to correct the doctor and her staff, they just can't get it. Until his 4 year checkup, when they started calling him Andrew. Yes, time for a new doctor, I know, but that's another story...

And most of you have probably read about our recent trials naming poor Joshua Quinn.

So today Cade threw us by a loop by informing us that his name was no longer Cade. He now wants to go by Quinn. Because he "likes it better".

That'll throw the pediatrician for a loop.

Boys and Their Toys, Part II

I am not a fan of teeny tiny plastic toys. Especially those with a million movable parts. Perhaps because toys fitting this description seem to be primarily targeted towards boys. As a girl growing up in the pre-Polly pocket days, I was successfully able to these tiny critters, such as army guys, Star Wars guys and their battleships, and the most evil of tiny toys with movable parts - Transformers.

Yesterday, we received our first Transformer as a gift. The boys, who know nothing about Transformers, were inherently drawn to the package. The begged me to open it, surveyed the jet-looking toy before them and asked, "Does it turn into something else?" Seriously?! Do guys have a sixth sense about this stuff or what?

Using the handy accompanying 45-step, poorly illustrated instruction booklet, I was able to make exactly zero progress after a good 20 minutes of trying to turn the Transformer from a rocket/jet type thing into a robot. Cade finally got impatient and snatched it out of my hand and in three swift moves, actually made it resemble the Decepticon on the package.

Drew wanted it to go back to a jet, but Cade couldn't figure that out. I tried to, but I accidentally ripped his arm off (the Transformer's, not Drew's). When I told the boys I couldn't figure out how to get it back on and we would have to wait for Daddy to get home, Cade replied, "I know just what we need to fix it! A soldering iron!"

Spoken like a true guy.

A Brief Moment of Thanks on Sunday Morning

We got a free pass from God this morning. Since the baby fussed through church last week, this week I left him at home with Aaron and took the two big boys with me. Unbeknown to me, Aaron was taking out the trash when we left. I shut the garage door and we left. Because of my hyper-vigilance about locking doors, this means that Aaron was locked out. Not good on a normal day. Especially not good given that on this particular day, the baby was locked in. Even more not good because by the time he realized he was locked out, I was gone. Even MORE not good because my cell phone was in my diaper bag, which was in the house. And not with me.

He started walking to church (it's a 10 minute walk) before he realized that I would probably kill him if he showed up there having left the house (with the baby in it) unguarded. So he knocked on the door of every neighbor, only to find that they were all gone. Finally he found one home across the street who was willing to A) stand guard in the rain on our front porch and B) let him borrow her car so he could drive to church and fetch me and the keys to unlock the door.

It was probably only ten minutes between when he found me and when we retrieved the baby, but I swear it took ten years off of my life. It took me a minute to register the sight of Aaron (in his trash-taking-out clothes and sandals) standing before me in church. Sans baby. Naturally, I flew into a panic. We dashed home, leaving the big boys in the church nursery. Of course, we drove up to the train tracks at the entrance of our neighborhood just as the gates were lowering. Aaron wanted to drive through them, but I truly felt like the only thing that could make the situation worse was if we were dead on the train tracks (having decimated our neighbor's car) with half of our children locked in the house and the other half in the church nursery. Nope. Not a good plan. So he u-turned like a bat out of hell to beat the train at the next entrance to the neighborhood and we flew up the street to our house.

Once home, it was all painless. We unlocked the door and quickly retrieved the baby, who had worked himself into a tizzy enough to have snot all over his face and a little spit up. Our neighbor, bless her heart, tried to calm my hysteria by assuring me that she had been listening to him cry through the window and he was fine. She assured me that had she needed to get to him quickly, she would have broken the window. But my heart is still pounding four hours later.

So thank you, God, for looking over us this morning. And thank you, Nadine, for being such a good neighbor and missing church yourself to help the Fox family.

PS. Yes we did remember to go back and collect the big boys. We are crappy parents today. But not THAT crappy.

What Are Cade, Drew, and Josh Up To Now?

These are busy, busy boys. Funny stories from this week:

Cade has a new trick where he launches onto the sofa and stands on his head on the sofa, bracing his feet on the wall (thanks, Little Gym!). We basically yell at him 15 times a day NOT to do this, but he keeps "forgetting". Aaron reported the following conversation today.
Aaron: CADE! Why do you insist on doing that all the time?!?!
Cade: Because I'm a jackass!
Oops. Not sure where he picked this up. And I'm really not sure. That's one word that isn't in my potty mouth repertoire....

And while getting ready for bed one night....
Me: Drew - come here so mommy can put your jammies on.
Drew: Ok, mommy. I know no one wants to see my butt crack.

And last but not least, Baby J. Before he was born, we heard from so many friends and family about the laid-back, go-with-the-flow, sleep anywhere/anytime temperament of third babies. Well, apparently he didn't get that memo and not only that, he thinks he is an only child. He prefers to be held - all the time. Actually, this makes for not such a funny story by 1 am each night...

For the Grandparents

And now, because I know the grandparents will be ticked off that I have time to post pictures of my stupid cupboard but not my baby, here is a picture of my baby.

Making Progress!

So my "free time" has come to a screeching halt with the addition of the latest Fox. Not that I am complaining. I am content to sit on my dead butt loving on him all day long, which is pretty much what I have been doing for the past month. While my house falls to shambles around me.

On Friday night, some friends came over and brought dinner. As we were picking up the kitchen after eating, my friend asked me for some plastic containers to package the leftovers for my fridge. Producing said containers was easier said than done, as the container cabinet (which also holds my children's plastic plates and bowls) was a tangled mish-mash of mismatched lids, bottoms, and assorted odds and ends. I was seriously embarrassed by the state of this cupboard.

On Saturday morning I was resolute that if I did not do one other thing besides sit on my butt and love Baby J, it would be to tackle this cupboard. Around 11 I grabbed a few free minutes and took everything out, matched the lids to bottoms, and either recycled or tossed everything mismatched. In the spirit of one of my favorite mommy bloggers and her organizing website, The Junk Pyramid, I thought I would share my results:

BEFORE:



AFTER:

I can't figure out how to rotate the stupid picture so you will have to lay your head down sideways on your keyboard looking at the screen to get the full effect.


And that, my friends, is why the birth announcements haven't been mailed, the baby thank you notes haven't been written, and the laundry is piling up. But hey, at least I can put my leftovers away now.

The Olympic Rings Under My Eyes

I look like crap these days. For two reasons:

1) Baby J stays up half the night and insists on being held from 5 pm to 1 am until he finally conks out.

2) For the past week and a half, we have been staying up half the night watching swimming and gymnastics.

I have seen more Olympics this year than I have of the past 5 Olympics combined. I will be sad when they are over because I will have to go back to watching Law and Order reruns until my little night owl gets his schedule figured out.

One Hot Mama

Blogging at Deep South Moms today. And my post was picked up for MCT syndication next week (a first for me) - woohoo!

Baby J Wakes Up

I knew this would happen because I remembered it with my other boys. Around week 3 of their lives, they seemed to "wake up" and develop opinions on everything. And they haven't been quiet since then.

After blissfully slumbering around the clock for almost 3 weeks, Baby Josh is now officially awake. For the third straight night in a row, he has been awake from pretty much 5 pm to midnight or 1 am. And letting us know that his lungs work just fine and he will be weighing in heavily and frequently when he is wet, dirty, gassy, hungry, wants his pacifier, etc.

But hey - I can't complain. When he finally conks out, he is going some decent sleep stretches - anywhere from 5 to 7 hours!!! Woohoo!

Too bad the big boys get up at 7 am and advice to "sleep when the baby sleeps" only applies to first time moms...

War Games

I'm over on Deep South Moms this week, talking more about Cade and Drew's favorite games. Check it out!

Ruminations on Parenthood

To see how much I'm enjoying Baby Josh, check out my cross-post on Atlanta Parent today.

Introducing He Who Is Un-named - Still. Sort of.

As predicted, Baby Boy #3 joined our family in July instead of August, although even earlier than expected. He was 2 weeks, 1 day early, born on July 24 at 11:36 pm. He weighed in at 7 lbs, 15 oz and was 20.5 inches long. The weight thing made me glad that he hadn't hung out for another week or two - I would've been giving birth to a baby the size of a first grader.

The baby's name was (and continues to be) a small source of contention. As this was our third boy, we were running a bit dry on ideas for boy names. Despite the fact that we had 9 months to come up with one, we entered the delivery room with our options narrowed down to 3 or 4 combinations, none of which we were both crazy about.

So we didn't name him. He continued to be Baby Boy Fox for the first two days of his life while we tried to see if he "looked" like any of the names would suit him. Nothing really stuck. By the end of day two, my mom and I were calling him Squeaky No Name, which seemed appropriate enough for the hospital setting but not formal enough for a birth certificate.

All the while, Aaron and I continued to discuss names. We turned off our cell phones to avoid the countless calls from well-meaning friends and relatives wanting to know if he had a name yet. Knowing that we HAD to name him before we left the hospital, the pressure was really mounting and the naming discussions got tense. It turns out that only one of us had actually been considering name options for the past 9 months. My husband informed me that he really hadn't given it much thought until the past day or two and he felt it was a decision that couldn't be "rushed".

We finally came to pseudo-consensus on Joshua Quinn. Sort of. We both liked both of the names, but couldn't decide if we wanted to call him Josh (Aaron's unstated top choice, despite the fact that I asked him 100 times to display a preference) or Quinn (my clearly stated top choice). So we agreed to call him Quinn. We called the grandparents and a few friends to begin spreading the word for us. And the matter was settled. Or so I thought.

Fast forward to the next morning. When I hear Aaron whispering, "Hello, Baby JOSH" to the baby. Clearly the matter was NOT settled. So we delayed making a decision and sent out his email birth announcement under the name Joshua Quinn (no nicknames mentioned). We marched through the next few days calling him everything from Josh to Quinn to Josh Quinn (Cade's choice). Finally, when he was 5 days old, I found myself telling my mother in law a story about him where I repeatedly called him "The Baby" because I didn't know what his name was. And I decided enough was enough. Aaron clearly preferred Josh and I was getting to the point where I really didn't care. And besides, Josh was growing on me.

We're still spreading the word to a few key friends from the early days that his name has changed, so if you're reading this, help us out.

Welcome to the Fox family, Baby Josh. And get ready, because yes - we are always this insane.