Sleeping Upstairs and Sneaking Downstairs

The end of last week was a rough one for Riley at Nana's.  Which was wild to us because Nana sent me photos of them doing really fun activities.  On Thursday she took them to the museum.

On Friday they painted lava on a volcano that Nana had made them out of boxes.

Riley also made a really cool boat out of Legos.  He called it his GSPE boat.

But when we got there on Friday Nana was at the end of her rope.  Riley had been being mean and disrespectful to her and so before we left we had a serious talk with Riley about how he needed to act better or Nana would call Daddy and Daddy would come and pick Riley up right away.  Nana thinks that maybe he is nervous about going to kindergarten, but that is still no reason for him to be mean to her.  I ended up loaning Nana the Love Languages of Children book and Nana thinks Riley's love language is Acts of Service.  Makes sense, as that is my love language too, so I'm going to try and look at him differently and remember that could be his love language.  I also bought a copy of Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood so hopefully that will give Nana and I some more insight into Riley.  Chad is really good at Love and Logic and so I need to brush up on my skills.

Katharina arrived on Sunday from Germany and will be staying with us for the month of July.  The boys were super excited she was coming, especially Riley, and we spent Saturday getting the house ready for her.  After many tears and stress we decided to put both boys upstairs to sleep while Katharina visited.  I was nervous about Carter on the stairs.  Riley did not start sleeping upstairs until just before he turned 4.  Carter is a lot better on the stairs at his age than Riley was at 2, but I still stressed over the decision.  Saturday night they both did great upstairs.  On Sunday night, which was Katharina's first night, they did a little worse, but still not too bad.  Carter kept trying to sneak downstairs, but eventually stayed up there.  He now thinks sleeping upstairs is a fun game!  On Monday night, Carter snuck down once and Chad got him to go back up.  Chad, Katharina and I went to watch TV in the living room and when we headed to bed about an hour later this was what we saw.

Carter had snuck down, but was really quiet about it.  We thought we kept hearing small noises, but we didn't worry about it.  Apparently, Carter came down, played trains and when he got too tired he just laid down on the hardwoods and fell asleep! We could not stop laughing!

On Tuesday Nana took the boys to Grammy's house to play. 

They had a lot of fun playing with mine and Jake's old toys and Carter even posed for a photo with Grammy.  I love how his arm is draped in her lap!

Riley would not take a photo with Grammy and this was the closest he would get.  At first I didn't even realize he was in this picture.....(look behind Grammy)

Riley also started Museum School this week.  He's been learning about frogs and toads and snakes he loves it.  When Chad dropped him off the first day, Riley walked in all by himself and didn't even say goodbye to Chad!  Chad was so surprised.  I wish I could afford to put Riley in Museum School more often as he really seems to like it.

Tuesday night the Loveladys came over for dinner and we had a great time with them and Katharina.  Katharina gave all the kids gifts and she gave Riley and Carter German flags.  Riley and Liz paraded around with the flags for a very long time!  It was so cute!

On Wednesday I woke up and went to a barre class at Urban Yoga.  Felt really good to work out a bit and start the day off by getting my adrenaline flowing!  After my class Chad and Jason went the movies and then we all went to swim together.

 Afterwards we met back up at our house for some grilling and backyard fun!  We skipped the fireworks this year since we had to get up for work today, but we lit sparklers and small fireworks in the backyard, so the kids still had a fireworks experience.

Chad lit 15 sparklers at once, hence the smoke and bright light!

This is Riley's "posing" face.  Haha!

Last night Kids Who Care did their annual trip to Billy Bob's and this year we decided to take the boys with us.  Riley dressed up in his boots, hat and he made sure to wear his sheriff's badge!  The boys had a GREAT time playing all the arcade games.  And we even got them to pose for a bull riding photo.  Yee Haw!  Riley wants to go to Billy Bob's everyday now.  Not yet, my son, not yet.

This was towards the end, where Carter was tired, but knew if he just ramped up his energy and ran around, he would stay awake. Despite the smile on my face, I was exhausted (and a little dizzy!)

  
A BIG Thank You goes out this week to Katharina who shared a lot of her photos with me.  Her camera takes way better shots than my phone!

We are having a really good time visiting with her and the boys LOVE to talk her ear off and convince her to play with them all the time!  This morning we took her to Bluebonnet Bakery for Friday donuts and Katharina got not one, but THREE donuts!  (She ate two of them while we were there, and took the third to go!) YUM!