Stressing and slacking...

For some reason, I have been so much more stressed over preparing for Christmas this year than ever before. I am not quite sure why. I think it's probably a combination of things, but whatever. I am working through it. Some of my coping mechanisms have been listening to Christmas carols non-stop (and thus annoying the heck out of my husband) and completely slacking when it comes to this blog!! I am sure the masses that hang on my every written word have barely been able to get through their days without their daily weekly bi-weekly dose of Stinker stories and pictures. I am so sorry to have left you in the lurch. To make up for it, I thought I'd share a little bit of what we've been up to. Of course the pictures are from my phone because I have been too busy and lazy to pull out my fancy camera. I'm a brat. I know. Again, sorry...

We made Christmas cookies the other day for our firemen around the corner. We used this new recipe for soft and fluffy sugar cookies and they were amazing. My extra wide bum can back me up on that statement.

 Luke ate 3 of them before they had even cooled enough to ice and decorate. Once I iced them, I let him decorate them with sprinkles. He referred to them as sparkles instead of sprinkles, and whenever he says words that start with "sm" or "sp", they come out with the "f" sound on the front instead. So he was in charge of putting on the "farkles". I may have coaxed him into saying that word 100 times that day...

Once the cookies were all decorated, we took them to the firemen and they let Luke play in the fire truck for a while. His favorite part was getting to wear the "talker phones" to listen and talk to fireman Dan (whom he calls "Fireman Dance").

 Wearing women's high heeled boots and clomping around the house saying, "Howdy, folks! I'm a cowboy!" has been a favorite activity as of late.

We've spent quite a bit of time looking for Elfie too.

 That guy comes up with the silliest places to hide.

 Another favorite activity has been playing with his "tiv-a-tee" set that Flipper gave him last Christmas. So far he has called the sheepdog a skunk, said that the wisemen took baby Jesus a treasure chest and a Coke, claimed the angel looks like a helicopter, and set up his train tracks around the whole thing so that he could give everyone a ride to "Mary's house".

 When he gets bored he likes to reenact scenes from movies. 

If you've ever seen Cars, then you know about tractor tipping.

Possibly the most exciting thing we've been doing around here is going peepee and poopie in the potty!!!  It all started when Luke was taking a bath and started going #2. Phil yanked him out and put him on the potty, while he scrambled to clean up the mess. Luke kept saying, "I went poopie, Daddy!", and Phil just thought Luke was narrating the unfolding scene. When Phil got things under control and turned his attention back to Luke, he saw that Luke did indeed go poopie in the potty and then watched in amazement as the Stinker finished everything off with a healthy dose of peepee in the potty too. We were ecstatic because it helped to extinguish Luke's fear of going potty, and he has been on a roll ever since. We aren't pushing him into potty training hardcore yet, but he is going in the potty a time or two every day...and of course his motivation is based solely on CHOCOLATE. Here he is making a monocle out of his mini Reese's cup. After all... there's no wrong way to eat a Reese's.


And the rest of the time, we have just been busy being cool dudes. 

It's a full time job.

What???

Just before Thanksgiving, Luke was playing with his best pal/elephant blanket, Eddie. I was on the phone in the next room, and he was running in and out of my view in the kitchen. He started draping Eddie over his head and face, and found it hilarious that he couldn't see anything and had to feel his way around. It wasn't long before he bonked his head on the edge of the counter. He came running and whimpering to me for a hug and kiss. I told him to please stop putting Eddie on his head because he was just going to keep hurting himself if he continued. Of course he completely disregarded my warning and once out of my view, threw Eddie back over his head and began his ghost/zombie looking game once more. Within one minute, he RAN face-first into that same counter edge. I could see this out of my peripheral vision and thought for sure that he had broken his nose. He hit SO hard! I dropped the phone and he ran to me, crying a little for the 2 seconds it took to get to me. I immediately checked out his nose, expecting gushing blood and crooked cartilage. He was completely done crying at this point and was trying to get out of my arms. I was surprised, to say the least, since even the partial view I had had of his collision made me cringe in sympathy pain and fear. His nose looked fine and I couldn't find any signs of injury, only sweat-soaked hair from having run around in footie pj.s with a fleece blanket over his head for several minutes. I thought to myself that maybe he hit his forehead rather than his nose and was just being a tough guy. I released him and to my horror, he put Eddie back on his head and headed back to the kitchen to resume his kamikaze game. I yanked him back to me and removed Eddie, telling him that by no means was he allowed to play that game anymore. This time he chose to throw himself on the floor and act as if he had just run nose-first into an immovable object. He was SO upset that I wouldn't let him play his dumb game. He screamed and cried for a minute or two and then hopped up to go do something else. It was at this point that I saw the bloody nose.




Thankfully it wasn't too bad, but it was proof that he had indeed head-butted the counter. I also found, at that point, a small cut and an already purple bruise on the side of his cheek from his first collision with the counter. What is wrong with him? How can he absolutely bang the crap out of his nose and barely even whimper, only to become hysterical when I tell him he's not allowed to hurt himself anymore?

"What? You don't want me to blindly slam my face into the furniture? I'm confused."

"Are you sure, Mom?"

(you can kind of see the cut and bruise on his upper cheek in this photo)

"Well how 'bout if I look cute and show off my dimples that you love so much??

Would that change your mind?"

The only answer I can come up with for this (and so much more) bizarre behavior is this:

He is a BOY.

Boys are so weird.

The end and Amen.