Z's Party

I've been struggling lately. With several things, but one thing in particular is a two year old named Austin. He has decided that he has a will, and he will exercise that will whenever he feels like it. The last few weeks have been spent placing this child in time-outs, spankings, and priviledges being taken away. But the other morning something reminded me of why I decided to take on the tast of mothering in the first place. The love and pure joy it is of having children. The boys and I were just hanging out on my bed looking at books, getting into my drawers (not so fun), and coloring with pens (on paper of course....or at least I think) and my little guys started giggling. I actually got a picture of it and this just says it all. Joy - even in the challenging times of our lives. Thank you, God, for my children's laughter.

He's even got the hand going to his chest - it's SOOO funny. Ha ha!!

My friend Sonja's son turned 3 last week. We went to his costume-themed party and had some fun. Notice that both my boys are wearing basketball uniforms (a daily costume) because neither one wanted to even ATTEMPT to dress up. There were some serious wailings and tears when I tried to get Austin's frog costume on. You'd think I was asking him to eat mushrooms or something.... Ethan loved the crafts and had a lot of fun with the stickers.

Blowing the birthday candles out. Sonja made these cute cupcakes decorated as Frankenstein and pumpkins. It was fun to meet a lot of her friends and see their kids. Happy Birthday Zechariah!

I was not surprised to see this happen. The son who is a LOT like me chowing down on his cupcake. We love our sweets!!! Yesterday when we were making cookies with my cousin, Cheryl all three of us were eating the dough. Ethan and Bryan could care less, but there's Austin, Cheryl and me helping ourselves to the YUMMY dough. Martha Stewart makes a mean chocolate chip cookie recipe!!!

I can tell when he gets older, that we'll be stubborn together, too. We sometimes clash wills like siblings do (of course me trying to be the mom and the grown up in the situation...which doesn't always happen).