Seriously awesome weekend!

So much great stuff happened this weekend, I would be here all day writing if I didn't break it into manageable chunks.

First ... Clair perfected her get-down-get-funky dance, and it is the best part of my day.

The girl's got rhythm, no? Takes after her Mommy. Sorry, Lester. You know it's true.

Also, we went to Storyville again, and Clair really got into it, as opposed to the last time we came, when she was a teenier baby and conked out the entire time.

Fun with magnets.

The Davis family took over a whole section of Storyville. We roll deep, yo!

The boys' second time at the library was a huge success. While I picked out books that were all on a waitlist, dangit, they picked out books to take home, put 'em in a basket, and then sat down -- uninstructed by me -- and started "reading." Yes. My boys are awesome.

Seriously, I turned around from the library counter and this was happening. I almost fell over.

Also, drumroll please ...... Dean Ezra Davis earned himself a pair of Elmo-covered Big Boy Underpants for successfully declaring his need for the potty -- and then successfully using said potty -- three times in a row!

"I'm getting bigger!" he said, after putting on his underwear.

He was sooo excited! And when he also woke up this morning with a dry diaper, and went to the potty first thing in the morning, we also decided to send him TO SCHOOL WITH HIS BIG BOY UNDERPANTS ON!  I have no idea how this turned out. I will have to call Michelle at some point and see if there were accidents, but I'm too scared.

For his part, Cary tries, but he is not having as much success as his brother. But he melts down when Dean gets a Raisinet for his potty-success, and he doesn't, and he wants to wear Big Boy Underpants, too. So, being the sucker that I am, I just give him a chocolate raisin for "trying," and I put underpants on over his diaper. This seems to satisfy him for now. But it's making a mockery of the incentives. Oh well.No one said parenting was easy.

But the total cherry on top of this sweet-sundae of a weekend, was piling my entire family into the minivan and driving 100 hours to Angel's house in Virginia, where we got Clair's 1st Birthday photos taken, hugged and squealed over one another, ate, drank, laughed and had the. best. time.

Of course, I have NO photos of us together because I was so focused on Clair and her photo shoot, I lost my phone for several crucial hours in Angel's bedroom. But Angel has documented the fun, fun day here on her excellent blog (which you should be reading, anyway, if you're not already because she is absolutely hysterical and her children are gorgeous).

Angel and I have become such good friends over the course of the last 3+ years, seeing us together on Saturday, you would never have known that we've only actually met in person twice -- yesterday's visit counting as one of the two times. Being with her was so easy and warm and familiar, it was like we were lifelong friends. I was so happy to be in her house, cooing at her babies, laughing with her two Roars, eating fine cuisine (LOL!) and drinking supremely tasty cocktails. (I was a little tipsy when the night was over, but don't tell my children.)

Anyway, I am always amazed at what a great job I do picking friends. Just about all the women in my life are fabulous in so many ways, I marvel at how much awesomeness would be in one room if I was lucky enough to get them all together. Angel is no exception. She is beautiful, talented, smart, skilled in a wide range of things, a loving, kind and inspirational Mom, creative, generous and has great hair.

I kind of hate her.

But when I start to get jealous, I think about how those talents often benefit ME (of course). For example, her skills with a camera give me sweet shots like these:

Tahira, don't ask me what I'm doing with her hair. OK? I don't. frikkin.' know.

Isn't that so cute? I can't wait to see the rest of her photos! Most importantly, I hope we can find time to get together more often, now that we know that we fit together like orange juice and coconut rum. And oh, how sweet it is.

I Spy a library book! And it better not be torn!

This weekend, I took the boys to Storyville, one of our favorite and easy go-to places when we're looking for something to do to get out of the house. I'd wanted to take them to the park/playground, because the weather was beautiful (damn global warming!) but it had rained all night Friday so I was in no mood to brave the mud.

This Storyville visit ended a little differently than others have. The boys actually wanted me to read them the books they have strewn around the place, instead of just running around from station to station, unable to sit still. So we read a bunch of stories and discovered that the boys LOVE "I Spy" books (the board books; not the bigger, more complicated ones). They loved them so much that when it was time to leave, a major hissy fit started. They both wanted to take an I Spy book with them. I tried explaining that we couldn't take the books home, that they were for everyone to share, and for other children to use when they came to Storyville, but you all know how well explaining things logically to 2-year-olds works.

Anyway, turns out you CAN take the books home, because, DUH!, Storyville is a part of the Baltimore County library! All you need is a library card. Up until this weekend, I'd thought my boys were still a little young for borrowed books. Occasionally, a fight still breaks out over one of their books and pages get ripped and timeouts ensue and lectures happen about the sanctity of books. Everyone is appropriately remorseful, but the end result is still a torn book. When the books belong to us, I can deal. But I thought another year or two might do the boys well before we took on the responsibility of other people's books.

But they wanted I Spy books so bad! And I knew we'd never leave the library without it.

So we did the library-lesson a year or so early, and checked out six books, including one each that they got to pick out for themselves, and even one for Mommy ("Blood, Bones and Butter" -- which was my book club book LAST month. Ahem.) Dean picked out a Llama Llama board book that is actually more appropriate for Clair, and Cary picked out a Cars book that is waaaaay too advanced for him and also stupid, and I flat out hate reading it. Seriously, it is the dumbest book. I have no idea who that book was written for.  So I hope that the book-picking will someday get better. For now, though, I know that it really doesn't matter what they pick; just the fact that they are learning about the library and how it works -- and reading anything -- is all that matters.

 ******

In other news, we started the next session of music class, much to the boys' happiness. They literally jumped up and down and said "YAAAYYY!" when I told them Sunday morning that they were going back to music class. So color Lester and me both completely shocked when Cary acted a pure fool at the class, screaming and crying and refusing to participate. He was tired from a long night out at Lester's Aunt Tootie's house, and an early morning to boot, but his losing-of-his-ever-loving-mind went way beyond being tired. We don't know what his issue is lately, but Lordhavemercy. It stinks.

The only good thing about his weirdness lately is how sweet Dean is to him when Cary's having a moment. He really tries to care for him, and it is quite touching.  He is a very, very good brother. I hope it lasts a lifetime. The caring, not the craziness.