happy birthday!!

we celebrated the kids' birthdays on saturday.

today is actually colbys birthday; he's 4. molly will be 2 on the 8th.

we had their party at petland-not petco, not petsmart. petland. its a much smaller version of the other two, but petland actually sells pets, whereas the others typically do not. when i say pets i dont mean fish and birds. we're talking dogs, cats, hamsters, ferrets, bunnies, guinea pigs, and a few reptiles. its very cool and theres a party room in the back. you get the room for an hour and a half and they bring you whatever animals you want to play with , 2 at a time. the kids sit in a circle on their bottoms (yeah right) and each has their turn to love on whatever is in the room at that moment (usually looking for a corner to hide in, poor things).

we saw all kinds of puppies, 1 kitten and 1 bunny. we didnt really get any great pictures of that with all the kids running around and such, but there are some cute ones from the cake and present time.

the first pic is of colby and his best bud evan at the zoo last week. they're so cute!

this was taken while everyone was singing 'happy birthday', you cant tell as much in this picture, but she was soooo excited that everyone was singing to her! too cute.

obviously he was really happy about this gift--the Toy Story figure set from the disney store.

halloween cake- seriously?

**UPDATE**
colby's poop has had a really odd blueish color to it for the past 2 days. i honestly think it's diluted black icing! sooo fun fact: black icing makes your poop blue.

you can find a cake for every occasion these days. colby and molly received their first ever halloween cakes this afternoon. mimi and papa came in town for a birthday get together. the kids' party is this evening, and they didnt want to be here too late, so they drove in this morning and we did presents with them followed by lunch, and then they headed back to h-town.

in addition to the birthday presents, colby and molly each got a halloween bag (think easter basket, but with halloween stickers and such rather than eggs), and a halloween cake. what color do you think the icing is on a halloween cake? that would be black. why would someone ever put black icing on a cake--especially a cake for a small child? at any rate the cakes were super cute and enjoyed greatly. well, molly hasnt had hers yet, but i'm sure she will love it. here are the results of an almost 4 year old eating black icing....

if i let him dress 'goth', i suppose this is what it would look like. for a split second, i think allen honestly thought i had put black lipstick on our son.

thank you mimi for the memories...and the mess. :)

colbys goatee

colby came home from school last week with a 'self-portrait' they had been working on for a few days. in his own mind, my 3-year-old has a goatee. why do i say that? because his self portrait has a blonde goatee. its been hanging on my kitchen cabinet (thats where i have to hang things, because our fridge isn't magnetic) since he brought it home, and every time i look at it i chuckle to myself a little bit. so i thought i'd share.

apparently, from what i'm told, some of the other boys thought the facial hair look was really cool, so they added one to their face too.

i got tagged!

my friend kristen tagged me and i have to post the 6th picture from the 6th file in my photos. so here it is....




















colby t. sitting on the roof of the playhouse, watching for the hurricane.
seriously.
so....i tag karen and christi

colbys latest stunt

i admit it. i leave my children unattended while i take a shower. frequently.

they do fine...usually.

but the other day i was getting out of the shower and i heard colby yelling. not a scared, hurt yelling. just yelling.

i walk out of the bathroom to see him trapped in allens pants.

he somehow got one pant-leg down over his entire body, with his arms down. i honestly don't know how he could have done that, but he did. he was yelling for me to get him out, and after i stopped laughing hysterically and took a picture (can you blame me?) i set him free.

he tried to get back in again, but he just couldn't do it quite the same.

check it out....

flashback--my most embarrasing mommy moment

i read another blog called Bring the Rain on a regular basis. it has blessed me!!! i would highly recommend it, from the beginning, along with a box of kleenex.
the sweet author of this blog, angie, shared one of her most embarrassing moments as a mommy and it inspired me to do the same. this happened back in the spring and i've never blogged about it (i wasn't blogging yet at the time), but its definitely worth sharing.

colby, molly, and i were headed to houston to visit mimi (allens mom) and take a trip to the houston zoo. we stopped at mcdonalds on the way for a bite to eat and colbys toy was a doll with a purple afro (some of you may remember the american idol dolls that played music. there was an oriental one, and african american one, and emo-ish one, etc). he said to me
colby: "mommy, i want hair like this."
me: "colby you can't have hair like that."
colby: "why not?"
me: (thinking.....) "because you're white."
colby: "no i'm not."
me: "well, not exactly. you're actually kind of a peach color, but we call that kind of skin white. people with hair like that are african american. they have dark brown skin."
colby: "are their bones white?"
me: "yes everyones bones are white."
colby: "where are some african americans?"

so i start to look as we're driving, for a car with an african american in it. keep in mind, we're not so completely sheltered that my son has never seen a black person. he's just never noticed before, and we don't have any close friends that are black for me to say, "your friend so and so is an african american." ...so i'm looking....
i don't see any and the subject is dropped.

fast forward to the zoo a couple days later.
there are more buses in the parking lot than i've ever seen in one place and most of them are full of predominantly black children. this does not seem like a big deal to me.
we've been at the zoo all day. we've been seeing black people all day. we're on our way out and colby is walking behind me with his mimi and i hear him yell, "mimi! i found some!! i found some african americans! there they are right there!!!!" i turn around and he's pointing and shouting at a small group of preteen black girls who absolutely don't know how to react to this blond very white 3 year old boy who is acting as though he's just discovered some long forgotten treasure...or a starbucks in rural west texas. they kind of laughed it off (lucky for him he's adorable) and when i crawled out from behind the concrete pole i had quickly disappeared behind, i explained to him that we dont point at people, and under no circumstance do we ever scream someones race or nationality at them. ever.

no incidences since then, thank goodness.
but, there's still molly, and you can bet she'll do something just as fabulous.

juice box overdose

colby learned yesterday that if he wants something, he can get away with it if i'm trying to take a nap.
yesterday i woke up early to go to my thursday morning workout class (5:30am). by 2 o'clock i was super tired so i laid down to take a nap while molly was taking hers. colby, being almost 4, is pretty trustworthy and good at playing by himself, so i dont worry about him getting into anything on the occasion that i decide to take advantage of that 2 hour window to catch a little shut eye myself. :)

he came in not too long after i had dozed off and said he was thirsty, so i told him to get a bottle of water or a juice box out of the fridge and bring it to me so i could open it for him.

now, juice boxes are usually reserved for picnics or the occasional preschool lunch box surprise, but i didnt want to get up to pour him a glass of half and half (juice and water), so that was the other option. bad mommy, i know, i know.

he didn't come back in, so i figured maybe he got caught up doing something else between my bedroom and the refrigerator. i fell back asleep. about 45 minutes later he comes in and says, "mommy, i'm drinking all the juice boxes!"

i mumbled something like, "one more and you're done," and he left.

fast forward about 2 hours later. mollys awake. i'm in the kitchen getting dinner ready. nothing unusual really. then, i open the trash can to throw something away, and see this...

my son managed to suck down 4 juice boxes in less than 2 hours. not completely surprising i guess, but something he's never had the privilege (or opportunity) to do. i didn't think he could open them!

he walked in just now and saw this picture and said

colby: "whoa! look at all those juice boxes!"

me: "yes, colby. you drank all of those."

colby: "yeah i did."

me: "why did you do that?"

colby: "i was soooo thirsty. hey, one fell to the bottom."

ok, so make that 5 juice boxes in less than 2 hours.

and a new adventure we're experiencing here in the frans household; molly has figured out how to get out of her crib and usually decides to do it sometime between 1 and 4 am. then stands at her door and screams till we come rescue her. she also did it this morning when she woke up. allen was sitting on the couch with colby and heard her knocking from the other side of her door to be let out. she also climbed out as soon as we put her down for naptime today. so allen may be taking the side panel of her crib off tomorrow (it turns into a daybed).

this is not a battle i'm ready to fight, but i figure if she's going to get out of bed anyway, we might as well remove the possibility of her breaking her arm in the process.

i'm sure i'll have more to blog about this later.

in the meantime, don't drink too many juice boxes. :)