This isn’t really a funny story, just something on my mind tonight.  Preston’s getting smarter, so I need to wise up about punishments. 
Tonight it was just me and Preston for a little while.  He was having a rough night, he was clearly testing me and my limits.  I kept my cool and 20 minutes before bedtime we decided we would play blocks and build a robot.  This went really well until it was time to clean up.  Over the weekend he got a hand-me-down marble maze, so it’s the latest craze around here.  He said he wanted to go play marbles, and I said that was fine, but we needed to clean up first.  He didn’t want to help me clean up, but agreed after some persuasion and threatening of not playing marbles. 
So, next up should have been marbles, because that’s what we agreed to.

Except he needed a new diaper.  So marbles got put off again so we could go upstairs for diapers, and being that it was the last diaper before bedtime I added a quick bath into the mix.  He was agreeable to all of this.  Then after his bath he reminded me that we needed to brush teeth.  That’s when the problems started.  It was his idea to brush teeth, but he likes to play with his toothbrush and wouldn’t cooperate for me to actually get in there and brush his teeth.  He knows that part of the drill, so I told him that he was running out of time to do marbles, and that he needed to cooperate with teeth.  He didn’t, he got less cooperative, and was testing me.  So finally I told him we were out of time to do marbles, and that it was too bad he wasn’t being a nice boy to brush teeth.  Then he got mad at me and hit me (more like slapped me a little bit on the arm) which is an automatic time-out in this house.
So here is where the dilemma comes in.  After his time out I went in and he said he was sorry.  Then he told me that I could finish brushing his teeth and we could go play marbles.  In this case I stuck to my original punishment and said that we couldn’t do marbles because he wasn’t cooperative, but I had to give it a little extra thought.  We HAD been talking about playing marbles for quite a while, and he did make it through quite a few tasks without too much incident – all with the intended reward of playing marbles for a little bit. 
I think what I did was right; and I did mention that he was having a rough night to begin with, so it really was just time for bed.  But I feel like I made a mistake in the first place by agreeing to play marbles.  If he hadn’t pooped right then, we would have gone right to playing marbles for a little bit, but having to change a diaper threw me off. 
A few months ago he would have forgotten all about playing marbles by the time we made it all the way through what is essentially bedtime routine.  But he is remembering now.  I need to be more careful about what I agree to and when.

Put it through the straw hole in a juice box of course.

Last night we had shrimp and spaghetti with green beans for dinner.  I ate 2 helpings of green beans before I even gave the rest of my dinner any thought (all the green beans were gone by then), and then moved on to my spaghetti (conveniently leaving my shrimp off to the side – I guess 2 and a half is my limit for eating everything on my plate).  I asked for a second helping of spaghetti, too, but by that time I was getting full, and Mom was ready to clean up.  So I sat and ate my spaghetti for a little bit, before I noticed an empty juice box on the table next to me.  Said juice box was missing it’s straw, so there was a perfect, spaghetti sized hole just waiting for me to stick some spaghetti in it.  It was a difficult task, but I managed to get quite a few noodles through that hole, before I started to get bored and ask Mommy to stick it in for me… She said no.

Preston has a pretty good grasp of language, and we’re constantly seeing improvement, but there are a few cute things that he says that are adorably incorrect.  He’s still trying to figure out the difference between “with” and “at,” and almost everything comes out as “at.”  
“I’m coming at you to the store”
“I take a shower at Daddy”
“Daddy goes toat you?”
So it’s really cute when he announces “Mommy, I’m coming at you!”  I always brace myself for an attack, and all he does is follow behind me as I go downstairs.

The other thing that he consistently says is “can’t” instead of “don’t.”  They are very close, but totally change the meaning of whatever he’s trying to say. 
Me - “Preston, are you going to eat your dinner”
Preston – “No, I can’t like my dinner”

Me – “Let’s go take a bath”
Preston – “I can’t want take a bath”

Me – “Do you want to sing that ABC’s”
Preston – “No, I can’t sing ABC’s”

My favorite is when he says “I can’t like this.”  It seems so dramatic, like he’s tried a hundred times and he just can’t like his dinner!!

A few awesome things happened on Sunday: We met baby James IV and we went to Kai’s 4th Birthday Party!  I have pictures to share from both events!

Baby Jimmy is VERY cute!  I was shy at first, because they have a new doggie, too, his name is Webster, and dogs tend to make me nervous.  We were at Alex’s parent’s house, and they invited some other people to visit the baby, too, so there were other babies and kiddos there.  The highlight of the visit was getting to hold the baby.  I sat on Mommy’s lap, while the baby sat in my lap, and I got to see him up close.  He was very small and snuggly, and when Mommy asked me if we should give him back or keep him I told her that I wanted to keep him!


You can find more pictures here!

After visiting the baby we went home for a little bit so that I could take a short nap, and then it was time to go to Kai’s Birthday Party!  There was a bounce house, food and snacks, water guns, pools, a water table, and a JEEP!  As soon as I put eyes on the Jeep I was obsessed.  I just had to drive it.  I had to wait my turn, and then once I finally got in that driver’s seat it took me a little while to figure out how to get it to go.  I had to push the foot pedal.  I finally figured that out, and then the next step is steering.  That was a little more complicated, and I never really mastered it.  It was more fun to just watch the world go by as I drove… into everything.  Did you know that if you crash into something or get stuck, all you need to do is go backwards?  I learned that lesson quite a few times.  
I had to stop driving for a little while so that I could eat some dinner.  But I had my eyes on that Jeep the WHOLE time.  Some other kids gave it a drive, which was ok for a little while, but as soon as I saw my opening, I was back in there for more.  
Eventually the jeep ran out of gas.  This was a bit of a problem, because it meant that I couldn’t drive it anymore.  But then I got deeply involved in trying to fix it, which included lifting the back end and dropping it back down again, double and triple checking the headlights to make sure they were still turning on, whacking the tires with a stick, and simply pushing the jeep around the lawn to try to jump start it.  
I finally dropped the cause, and that’s when I realized there were actually a few other things to try!  A bounce house?  Where did that come from!  Now that I’d managed to stay dry the WHOLE TIME I thought it was a good time to jump through the sprinkler with Kai – and got soaking wet just a few minutes before it was time to go home.
I also had to take a break for birthday cake!  All the kids got to sit around the table to watch Kai blow out the candles!  Kai had BLUE icing on his super hero cake, and it was delicious!  I ate all the blue off of my piece of cake, and asked for more!

From Mommy:

Last night Preston wrapped a dish towel around his neck like a cape and announced that he was "Super Grover."

My Great Grandpa is visiting from Florida, and it was his birthday, so we went to visit him yesterday.  We stayed overnight on Friday night, and then headed to the pool on Saturday morning.  We had fun at the pool, except when I went in the kiddie pool the water really hurt my eyes.  That was too bad, because the kiddie pool was the perfect size for me.  Luckily the big pool was just fine for my eyes, so I stayed with Mommy and Daddy and splashed on the steps of the big pool. 
I ate a WHOLE peanut butter and jelly sandwich, plus some snacks for lunch, and Mommy wanted me to take a nap because of all the crying I did when my eyes hurt, but there was NO way that was going to happen while we were at the pool.  Once I calmed down I stayed in good spirits for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to go home.  Then I took a REALLY good nap!  Dad had to wake me up for dinner!

It was fun to see everyone!

On the way home, Mom showed me how to take pictures using my new tablet that Gigi and Daddy go for me.  I was REALLY good at it, and I would tell Mommy “I want to smile that blue truck!” 

I took about 160 photos in the car, but Mommy weeded them out to these few gems of toddler photography excellence.  At one point I figures out how to switch it to a forward facing camera, and got