cuttin'

i was convinced that girls were the only ones who cut their own hair. jackson never tried to cut his hair. he did cut a couple of his shirts. but never his beautiful blond hair. so i was really surprised when i discovered payton had snuck off and given himself a haircut. i found him before he caused too much damage, but i was so sad to have to cut his adorable hair at all.

i thought maybe since he saw his mom cutting hair all the time he wanted to try it himself, but word on the street is that boys experiment with their hair just as much as girls do. so i guess it was inevitable.

needless to say, i have hidden all the scissors.

adventures at target

95% of the time my kids are wonderful. they are sweet and nice and a joy to be around. the other 5% of the the time i wonder where my kids went and how they got replaced with devil children.

tonight i was that lady that every one stares and and secretly judges because it seems like i have no control over my kids. after trying to reason with them i resorted to the usual discipline tactics. those failed and things escalated to threats. once i realized that wouldn't work i just decided to ignore them.

the people at target sure got a show.

payton was screaming about candy. jackson was going crazy because i wouldn't buy him a transformer (and seriously, this kid has a million transformers. i've never seen a kid with more transformers). when he realized whining wouldn't work he started crying and yelling stuff like this, "you just want me to be sad and to cry and to not be happy. you just want to be a mean mommy. you never want me to be happy. you like to see me cry about not getting transformers. you never ever want me to be happy again. and i won't ever be happy again until you buy me a transformer. you just want to save money and not buy me more toys."

if i weren't so angry i would've totally laughed at him like i'm laughing right now.

when i wouldn't reply to his complaints about his happiness he started screaming "MOMMY!" over and over again and when that didn't work he started hitting me. for reals!!! he was literally punching me in the back.

so needless to say. my boys had a very early bedtime tonight. the sun wasn't even beginning to set when they got tucked into bed. i'd be lying if i said that this evening wasn't relaxing. i got to sit in my chair and relax in silence.

it was priceless.

Is there a mouse in my house.....

...........That likes to nibble on butter???

Or do I have a two year old who didn't believe me when I said "We're all out of cheese" so went on a discovery mission and found something that just HAD to be cheese. I bet he was a little thrown off by the taste, but clearly he decided to go for it.

This is proof that McKenzie blood does in fact run through his veins. We love our butter. Just talk to my Dad.

R.I.P. Crib

Last Sunday was a sad night in the Boden household. But when I say household I mean ME. Cute little Payton and his rambunctious ways broke the crib. The child likes to jump on the bed and I guess he jumped one too many times. Nate and I happened to be right across the hall. Luckily he was right there because me and my deaf little self didn't hear anything. I thought Nate was just being old and senile and hearing things. But sure enough, when we went in to check on him the mattress was sinking abnormally low.

I seemed to be the only one truly affected by this. I think Payton was secretly pleased with himself, and Jackson was just happy to have a reason to stay up. I was sad for two reasons:

I wasn't ready for Payton to move out of the crib!! He's a determined little boy who likes to party. He pushes the limits as far as he can (while still being unbelievably cute) and I just wasn't ready for the bed-time battle.

I was also sad because this crib had some sentimental value for me. I bought it for Jackson for his first birthday. I was a poor single mom and was so happy to buy him that crib. In reality though, we got plenty of miles out of that little crib. Two babies and four good years. I think that's a lot to ask of a Wal-Mart crib.

I wanted to wait until we got to Utah to get a new bed. I wanted to get the boys twin bunk beds, but the current sleeping arrangement wasn't going to work out. We had Payton sleeping on his mattress on the floor. Nate went in to check on him at 4 in the morning and he was asleep on the hard-wood floor almost underneath Jackson's bed. So after a Craigslist find fell through I sped on over to our faithful Wal-Mart and purchased a pretty cute Toddler bed. After moving all the toys and anything else moderately entertaining out of the room Payton does go to sleep at night and even takes a nap during the day in it. I just have to get him really tired beforehand.

So, just as we're about to say goodbye to beautiful Monterey, we welcomed a beautiful dark brown Toddler Sleigh Bed into our little family. Good Luck. I'm betting the bed breaks in 7 months.