Dean turns 3 years

(I wrote this on Saturday, but am just posting it now for some reason...)

Today was Dean's 3rd birthday.  We had our good moments and our bad today. He's been feeling a little sick the past few days I think. He acts totally normal, but hasn't eaten hardly anything at all. Yesterday when I tried the "no milk if you don't eat your food" (our normal rule), he started to eat and then threw up.

Today started out ok. He slept in until 7:40 (unheard of!!!) and then played computer games while I went jogging. When I got back, I made him some puffy oven pancakes by request. I frosted his cake, and then we went outside to play.

That was when things went down hill.  He started throwing fits because I was alternating pushing him and swinging with Walt. He then tried to "mow the lawn" with his little mower, and Walt started chasing him so he could mow too.  Dean pushed him down a couple of times so he couldn't get the mower, so I put him in a time out. He went ballistic. He's usually pretty reasonable about going to time outs, but he was screaming at the top of his lungs and started hitting me repeatedly.  I put him in time out for 10 minutes.

After that we had lunch and naps. After naps, he and Walter wanted to play in the car, so I was out there with them for awhile. I needed to go to the bathroom, and I decided to get Dean some gatorade since he hasn't had much of anything the last few.  When I got back 2 min. later, Walt was SCREAMING.  I asked what happened and Dean said nonchalantly, "Dean poked Walt in the eyes."  He was holding a pencil. That warranted another 5 min. time out and a big talk about how it's REALLY dangerous to do anything to the eyes.  He didn't actually get the eyeball, but he poked him really close to his eye and dragged down. He had 2 nice welts across his face and one on his arm from Dean's pencil. Poor kid.

It was raining here most of the day and we even had a tornado warning go off (though it was just for our county and I don't think we were ever in "danger"). I was feeling pretty caged and the boys were just being difficult, so I let them run around in the rain for a good 1/2 hour or more. It really started to pour at the end and got a little colder, so we gave them a bath to warm up. I have a video that blogger won't load, unfortunately. In the video Dean declares that he is never going to wear underwear. Great. I hope I'm not in for another full year of diapering 2 kids. I don't want to potty train them together, but watch, that's what will end up happening. =P

I felt pretty worn out most of the day from my run. (I swear, anything over 6 miles and I'm TOAST the rest of the day. I didn't recover until about 5:30 or 6 pm!) I asked Dean what he wanted for dinner, and the only thing I could get out of him was "french fries". He doesn't like my homemade oven fries, so I decided we'd eat out. We haven't eaten out at all on our dime (even at Taco Bell) in the last 3 months, so we went a little $$ than I'd normally do for a kid birthday. We'd never eaten at Fuddruckers, so Matt dropped us off at Lowes to play on the tractors while he went next door to pick up "hangaburs and french fries". In my personal opinion it was way too expensive and not good enough to buy again. But it was better than having to cook tonight, so I guess I still won out on that. Their fries were potato wedges, and I don't think Dean even ate one (though he didn't complain about them not being regular fries). He did eat a good portion of his 1/2 a hamburger and said it was yummy. So at least he enjoyed something.

We cut the cake and had a little ice cream (left over from the homemade stuff I made a few weeks ago for the letter I!). He had a tiny bite of his cake, one spoon of his ice cream, and ate the monkey's mouth (a starburst rolled into a rope). So, I guess he was still feeling kind of poorly.

His presents were pretty minimal. In June or July he saw this "tote-n-go laptop" at Target and wanted it so badly. To keep a scene from erupting from my not buying it, I told him we'd put it on his birthday wish list. It worked. We came home, wrote it on a paper, and posted it on our bulletin board. I honestly thought he'd forget about it, but every time we went into the store after that, he asked to see the laptop. It was only $20, so I couldn't not get it for him! I was a little worried that he'd play it 3 times and be done with it since he knows how to use my real computer, but we'll see. I also got him an Eric Carle puzzle set, but Matt felt like that was too excessive since I already got the computer (the 4 puzzles were a whole $10 total), so I'm saving it for Christmas and Matt gave him a $1 big bubble wand instead.  Whatever. He's 3. He was happy. Grr. another video foiled. Our camera's too good I think. It's videos are too large for blogger to compress if they're over a min.!