Toilets and Tiaras

As you all know, last Friday was little man's 1st birthday!  I can't believe it's been a whole year since he was born.  It's gone crazy fast!

We had a teeny, tiny little "celebration" for him on his actual birthday, Friday night, and then his party was Saturday.  We originally planned to have the party at our new house, but in the weeks leading up it had been SUPER hot outside and I was informed we wouldn't have AC until mid-May.  I was still going to try to wing it and hope people wouldn't be too uncomfortable, but a few days before his party we had a serious plumbing issue...(I think I can make room for this story...)

So this past few weeks I have started babysitting the kids' 2 year old cousin, Christian.  Well approx. two weeks ago we were at the house and the kids were "playing in the toy room", or so I thought...Dun dun dun.  Usually, even if they're playing nicely, I can hear something going on, whether it's toys going off or kids laughing etc., but about maybe 10 minutes had passed (I don't even think THAT long, but I don't see how they could've done THIS much damage in any shorter period of time, so I'll say 10 minutes) and I hadn't really heard anything so I went to check it out.  I pass the bathroom door, noticed it's closed, grabbed the handle and it's locked.  Uh oh.  So I start knocking and tell Cooper to open the door, but of course he won't.  In the meantime I notice my feet feel wet...  I look down and there is water coming out from under the bathroom door about 3 inches into the hallway carpet.  Yeah. 

So I take off running for the flathead to unlock the door, pop it open, and find all three big kids in the bathroom.  Cooper appears to be the ring leader as he's standing over the toilet with the plunger, Chloe is standing on the potty stool at the sink playing in the faucet, and Christian is just standing idle behind the door knowing this is bad and they're in trouble.  He just had this look on his face like, "I told you guys not to do that" LOL 

There is about an inch of water all over the bathroom floor, soaked the bath rug, leaking into the heater vent, and all three kids are soaked head to toe with what I believe to be toilet water. I'll try to do my best to explain how I think this happened....See, the plunger we have is some new fangled thing that's huge and holds a bunch of water.  As you plunge it sucks up like the entire contents of the toilet bowl into the head of the plunger.  I believe Cooper had "filled" the plunger then proceeded to hold it over the othe kids' heads and/or just allow it to empy outside of the toilet.  Again, yeah.  I could hear the toilet just running away, so I turned the sink off, stripped the kids down, popped 'em in the tub, and ran to get towels.  As I'm telling Josh about this on the phone later he says, "Well did you get onto them?" and I'm like, "No. I didn't have time. I was in a panic."  And I was. I just wanted to get it all cleaned up before it got worse. I just went into work mode.  I mean, of course after the shock of the whole situation wore off I talked to them, but at the time I just wanted it taken care of LOL

Anyway, after all was said and done, I realized our main toilet was no longer working (hence my decision to then move the party to the park, but we'll get back to that).  Josh plunged and plunged and plunged and plunged, and I then decided to call my dad.  He suggested something was probably stuck in the toilet which is when it dawned on my that Cooper probably flushed something down there. So I turned to him as Josh is plunging and I'm on the phone with Papa and ask, "Cooper.  Did you flush something down the toilet?"  His response, "Yes.  Toys."  Toys. Plural.  Once again, yeah.  So Josh asks, "What toys Bubba?" His response, "Uhhhh.  Ball."  Perfect.  The ONE toy that would probably get lodged the easiest.  Needless, to say Papa had to come over and help Daddy pick up the toilet to get underneath it and get the little "ball" out.  It was indeed a ball.  It was one of the baseball shaped Easter egg balls that he'd gotten in his Easter basket.  Thanks Easter bunny.  Ya jerk. ;-)  So of course we've now been explaining that the toilet is ONLY for pee, poo, and toilet paper.  So far, so good.

Now back to the party, so my next thought being only a week out from the party was the park.  Sounded great.  Until a few days before I checked the weater which was forecasted to be 55 and raining.  Ugh.  So at this point our toilet is STILL out of commission (it was broke for about 4 days total), so I'm telling my mom all of this and she graciously offered up her house.  Yay!  Which was actually perfect because come party day we realized that we'd had ALL our little ones' 1st birthday parties in their home.  It's a tradition now. :)

The party went just swimmingly.  Mom prepared all the food and we brought the cake, decorations, and ourselves LOL  The turn out was perfect and everyone had a good time (I believe LOL).  We all ate, talked, and hung out, and then Bro got to open his presents which he wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with.  He sat there for the first few minutes but then started getting restless.  Of course Coop and Chlo wanted to help out, which they did, and then Bro came across his first one dollar bill which went straight to his mouth and he wanted let it go.  He even tried feeding it to Josh LOL  He got tons of adorable (much needed) summer outfits and a few toys.  It was great. Thanks everyone! :) 

After that Chloe passed out in my mom's bed and by the time we started cake Bro just wasn't having it.  He was exhausted.  Exhausted is an understatement actually.  I had bought him this adorable 1st Birthday hat and he screamed bloody murder when I put it on, so I snagged a pic and took it off.  When the cake came by Coop helped him blow out the candle, then we gave him his later cake and once Josh gave him a taste he was fairly content.  Of course he then got a bath and passed out in his crib with a bottle. So overall, a wonderful success.  Thank you again to all who came to celebrate with us and thanks especially to parents for all their help!

Speaking of bottles, we've got Bro completely off formula and switched to whole milk. At first I thought this would be a big problem.  Both Coop and Chlo went straight to milk at about 11 months.  We didn't have to wean them off formula at all.  Well a few weeks back I tried this with Bro and he hated it, so we slowly did half formula/half milk until he got used to it and he finally did.  Yay!  No more formula!  He's also talking a bunch and learning some new words.  In the past few days he's begun asking for "nigh nigh" (night night), and for a "baba" (bottle) and the other day he even walked himself to his crib! Craziness!  He even learned the word "what?" but I'm not sure he quite understands it or knows how to use it.  He just knows it's a word and he can say it LOL  And his new favorite thing is "dun dun dun".  You know? That's sounds that's made after something surprising happens like in a mystery movie or something.  We always say it to the kids when they're surprised by something and Bro has picked up on it.  It's adorable.

And Chlo Bear is doing wonderfully as well.  More diva princess than every these days.  She's learned to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and is working on her ABC's.  I took an adorable video of her singing "Twinkle Twinkle" (want to upload it soon, but it's saying file too large. Grr.) and we got the part, "like a diamond in the sky", so I sing this part to her and she looks down at her hand, points to one of her fingers (any empty finger by the way, nothing on it) and says, "Look at my diamond!"  What a diva!?  She hears the word diamond and is immediately thinking of a diamond ring!  Trust me, we did NOT teach her this.  I haven't even been wearing my rings (thanks to my hands being so dry) and even when I do wear my rings they are far from having a giant diamond on them LOL  I don't know where she gets it, but we just started cracking up.  And we've discovered her new favorite movie.  We ordered Tangled from PPV and the beginning they show baby Repunzel wearing a shiny tiara which Chloe feel in love with.  We had to rewind that part like five times because she kept asking for "baby priness" LOL  I love that girl!

And last, but not least Cooper is doing wonderfully as well.  We've had a few ups and downs with the potty training these last few weeks in light of Christian coming over.  Cooper regressed a little the first week I was baby sitting and had several accidents, but I changed my tactic a little bit, and made sure to encourage him to use the potty and stayed on top of him a little better. I think he'd just get caught up playing and wouldn't want to go, so whenever they're "busy" I make sure to interupt him and take him to the potty and the last two weeks he's done much better and is right back on track.

Also, a pee wee T-ball league has opened up in our area for the summer for 2 to 4 year olds, so we'll be registering both Cooper and Chloe.  They get a little trophy and a t-shirt and games will be Friday nights. We're stoked (and so are they!)

So I guess that's about it for today.  Thanks for checking in everyone and I'll be sure to update after Brodie's check up tomorrow and about T-ball of course!  See ya!