Mascot

This past Saturday I was the chairperson for an event that my office hosted for MSU students. It was a post-football game carnival. It was behind the football stadium here on campus from 10pm-midnight. We rented a bunch of large blow-up games and small carnival games. We had a band play and we gave away a lot of prizes and food. Anyways, the MSU mascot is the Maverick (cross between a bull and a horse...looks a lot like the Chicago Bulls basketball team logo). Our Maverick mascot's name is Stomper. We thought it would be fun to have Stomper stay after the football game and attend the carnival. Well, the athletic department couldn't find anyone to be Stomper this past Saturday (they have 4 or 5 students who rotate) and so they told us that we could find our own person to be Stomper. That's were my loving husband, Ben, comes in... I asked him to be Stomper and he was pumped! He was looking forward to it all week, until he put the costume on...it is VERY hot and VERY uncomfortable! Ben was Stomper from 6pm until midnight. What a trooper! He hung out by the cheerleaders, tried to dance around a little bit and he hugged and high-fived little kids. The college kids took more pictures with him than the little kids did! :) Domino's Pizza was hosting a "pizza party" for a lucky fan...That meant that Stomper got to pick a random person in the stands to hand a hot pizza to. He became really popular for that move. At half time he had to catch a punt from a contestant and dance around while a bunch of little flag football players from the YMCA were on the field. All in all, Ben did a great job in his new role! Maybe he can quit his teaching job and take up "Mascotting" as his new career?!?...I THINK NOT! After the game he walked around the carnival and played a few of the games. He was pretty tired by that point, but just having him there showed our school spirit. Around 200 students came to the carnival so it was a success, indeed! I have added a few photos... I will be flying to Tennessee with my parents tomorrow and will be there until Sunday. We are going to the wedding of a good family friend. It will be nice to get away but I will miss the boys a lot. Haley is stepping in to play the role of "Mom" while I am gone...she will be driving Peter to and from daycare and bringing him to Special Ed and Therapy, since Ben's job is so far out of town. We are truly blessed to have her apart of our lives as we are able to have a little bit of freedom to do what we want from time to time...And Peter gets along with her just GREAT! I'll be taking a lot of photos in Tennessee so I will add them next week. We hope you are all doing well...keep in touch!

Bye Bye Crib!

Well, this past weekend we did it! We (actually just Ben) took down the crib! I was going to wait for a few weeks, but Ben wanted it down so he went ahead and took it apart and put it away...He says it's in Peter's closet and that scares me so I'm not going to look in the closet because I don't want to know what kind of disaster is in there. Peter has handled it just fine. And he no longer cries in the morning...he just sits on his bed and plays and gabs until we go in there to get him. There is a ton of room leftover so his toys are more spread out and the room doesn't look all crammed. :) He has plenty of space to play and he plays in the middle of the living room floor less too! Next, I think we'll tackle the pacifier...He only gets it for naptime and bedtime but I think he can start to manage without it...After he's been in his bed for awhile we'll give that a shot. Unfortunately I think potty training is still down the road quite a ways. He is totally oblivious to anything related to the potty or even his own poop and pee. When he shows us that he is understanding more of that, we'll begin that process. Wish us luck...

Yea for Peter!

I just wanted to take the opportunity to share with you all that Peter has slept in his "big-boy" bed for 3 straight nights! He slept in it one night a very long time ago and I told you all about it here on the blog, however it didn't last long. But now I think he's really getting used to it and I think it will stick!

After we read and say our prayers, he gets laid down...Then he usually attempts to get off the bed(we can hear it on the baby monitor)...one of us pokes our head in and says "Goodnight" and then he runs back to the bed and jumps on giggling all the way. He does this about 10 times but eventually settles in...It takes about 15 minutes but eventually he will work that out of his system (hopefully) and take less time after it becomes routine. After a couple weeks we may just take the crib down! What a space saver!! However, we have accumulated so much darn stuff that I don't think we even have a place to store it. GRRRRRR. Wish us luck!