A Page Is Turned: Family Reunion and More Fair Rides!

I'm falling a little behind on things I want to remember this week. Will turned 8 months on Saturday so I need to get his post up ASAP. However, this is also BIRTHDAY week for a certain little boy at our house so I've been pretty busy. After all of this I might just lie down and watch trashy tv for the next two weeks....Who am I kidding? I don't watch trashy tv!

Anyway, Friday we stayed home. James played outside and began what will go down (I hope) as the most meltdowns/tantrums/fits ever in one weekend. Seriously, please let it be the most ever.

It all started while we were playing outside and he would not stop driving his truck into things. I asked him to pay attention several times and he WOULD NOT stop. So, I told him to put the truck up so that we could go inside. And the tantrums began. I actually had to carry him, screaming, into the house under one arm. OMG. I have never been so exhausted by just downright terrible, mean behavior.

Later, he was trying to postpone going to bed and kept getting up to talk to Eddie. I was laying down with him and he told me he needed to tell Daddy one more thing. I told him to run because Daddy was going to the grocery store and he didn't make it out of bed before Eddie was out the front door. You would have thought I was hurting him the way he screamed and cried and carried on. I finally told him that I wasn't going to lay down with him and he was not to get out of bed. He fell asleep screaming and crying. :(

Sidenote - this was all after having taken him to the fair the night before and the meltdown where he THREW a bowl of cereal occurred when we got home. Please tell me I'm not the only one with a kid who pitches fits this way. We're sort of feeling concerned sometimes.

Saturday morning we got up and the whole thing started over again. More tantrums. More acting ugly. More timeouts and spankings.

This pout was over the fact that Eddie wouldn't let him REALLY wear this deodorant. Never fear! While they were getting ready for church on Sunday morning James coated himself in it. Eddie was in the shower and couldn't see what he was doing but said he realized what had happened when he SMELLED it. Awesome.

I have no idea what this was about. More of the same.

*BIG Sigh*

Finally, we were able to get ourselves presentable and out the door to drive to a family reunion in the big city of Rebecca, Georgia!

Aunt Jen, Aunt Susie, and Will. I don't think I've seen Aunt Jen in TWO years. I see Aunt Susie several times a year just because we live close.

Cousins with James and YaYa playing football.

This reunion was for my dad's side of the family and wasn't really an "official" reunion...just his brother and sisters. He's one of five living siblings but he's the youngest by 15 years. Because of that, there's a pretty large age gap between cousins. My oldest cousin is just four years younger than dad and has a son who is just four months younger than me. The cousins above are nine years older than me but have children not much older than James. They're starting to interact a little more and that was fun this year!

Learning about barbed wire. :)

Uncle Mike had chickens at his house! There's always an animal of some sort!

Baby tricks for entertainment!

Aunt Sue bought all the "babies" airplanes. They were so much fun to play with! Even the adults enjoyed them!

High five, Dad!

As soon as we left we came to a fire on the road! The picture looks like it was just smoke, but it was not! We drove past it and the realized it was a car so we turned around and came back to make sure no one was in it. Someone had already called the fire station (I'm not sure Rebecca has 911. Ha!). The fire trucks hadn't gotten there by the time we left, but no one was hurt. The biggest danger was that the fire had spread over into the woods and they were concerned the car was going to go up in flames. Excitement in the country!

As soon as we got back into town we went to the pumpkin patch to meet the Trains. MISTAKE. We enjoyed seeing them, but James was wild. He wasn't bad and not throwing fits, but he kept doing things like pushing pumpkins off the pallets and carrying pumpkins around and running from us. That kind of thing just wears me out. We stayed for a bit and then headed home. I may take the boys back next week to get cuter pictures and buy real pumpkins (we just got little ones) because I didn't have my camera with me. We'll see if I can handle that alone!

Everyone was tired when we got home and even Will had a meltdown. Eddie wouldn't let him hold the spoon while he was being fed. (He did eventually, I finally just got another one for Will! Ha!)

Speaking of Will, he's into everything! I told Mom the other day that I don't think he's as busy as James was, but she disagreed. She thinks it's all relative...my perspective now is different and Will is pretty easily distracted by James. Put him down, though, and he is OFF!

On Sunday morning, James and Eddie were going to go to church together and let me get caught up on some things at the house. I'd been up with Will ALL night long, too. Not sure what that was about. However, SOMEONE pitched a royal fit and made them too late to go. See a theme here? He got into trouble over a few more things as the morning went on. About 11, Eddie got a phone call from Nancy asking if James could go to the fair (if you're counting, this would be the THIRD time). In what I deemed a bad parenting move, Eddie said, "Sure!" What about all the fits? What about all the bad behavior? I think he realized too late it was a mistake, too.

We got a few things done Sunday afternoon while James was out - Target run, watched the SPACE JUMP. Did y'all see that? It was incredible. They had to tell him to unbuckle his seatbelt twice and I kept thinking I'd be telling them to abort the mission and come get me! Incredible.

When James got home, Mrs. Bobby and Nancy reminded James several times that he needed to be on his best behavior since he'd been allowed to go to the fair. They left and then this happened:

Know why he's upset? Because his cheese broke in half. So he threw it away and then pitched a fit because I wouldn't let him get another one. It is so tough to be almost three. His mama is the meanest mama in the world.

Thankfully, he calmed down later. It took a long while, though.

After baths, James requested a book. We never all read together. Will is a little hard to read to right now - he's a little rough with books - and once Eddie is home it's like we're on full speed to get the kids in bed. But Sunday night Eddie read to the boys. It was wild, but it was a nice end to the day!

Yesterday we stayed home and did some playing.