Night Fright

The boys do not like bedtime and because of this neither do I. They come out of their room often after being put to bed to tell me their "scary thoughts."

Jay: "I can't stop thinking about dead things."
Me: "Why can't you?"
Jay: "Because I can't stop uncontrolling my mind."

Owen: "I'm scared I might be buried alive near a pipe and a snake might come out."

Testing Boundaries

I have been trying to give the boys more independence. They have been trusted to stay in the yard with me checking on them every 10-15 minutes. The couple of weeks before school started, they decided to test the boundaries. They asked to go to a neighbors house and were given permission. The neighbor was not home so they returned and asked to visit another neighbor and again were granted permission. After 10-15 minutes I went to check on the boys. They were not at the neighbors, instead I found them playing in the creek across the street behind a row of houses. They were both soaked. Owen had pockets stuffed with rocks and each boy had a dollar bill. Apparently, they had sold some rocks but neither boy could tell me who it was that they sold the rocks to. After that they were no longer trusted to be out of doors without very close supervision. A couple of days later, Michelle took the boys out to do yard work. I warned her to not let them out of her sight but somehow Owen managed to slip away. I got a call from a friend who lives on the next block. She told me that Owen showed up at her door to tell her that he was going away for a long time. By the time she grabbed the phone to call me he at taken off again. We soon found him heading towards home. He said he just wanted to tell her about our vacation that we would be taking in a couple of months.

Balloons

The boys and I watched a huge bouquet of balloons descend from the sky and drop into the neighbors back yard. The boys were out the door in their pj's before I could stop them. They ran to the neighbors house and asked if they could have the balloons that landed in his yard. He told them they could. They were so excited!

Ouch!

Owen jumped off the couch into a pile of stuffed animals. Unfortunately, he had left an open 3 ring binder at the bottom of the pile. He ended up gouging his leg just below the knee. It was only a small gouge about an inch in length but Owen was convinced he was going to die from it. After he calmed down and was well enough to play, he got into a fight over a puzzle with his brother. Jay ended up cutting Owen's other knee with a puzzle piece. This time though, Jay did all the crying when I used one of his Star Wars bandaids to fix Owen's knee.

Blue

I woke up Sunday morning and found Owen cleaning my kitchen with a sponge and a bottle of blue food coloring.

Zombies

The boys made zombies out of rubber stretchy toys by cutting off their heads, arms, and legs. By the appearance of the guns, I would assume the zombies are armed and dangerous.

Baseball

The boys attended their first baseball game (minor league) July 28. The Davenport River Bandits played the Peoria Chiefs. Owen loved climbing on top of the dugout. Both boys seemed more interested in playing on the playground equipment and bouncy houses and eating cotton candy and hotdogs than watching the game. We left during the seventh inning. The Bandits won 3-1 by scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the ninth.