2's and brothers

The other day I managed to get a decent night's sleep, the boys both clean and fed and happy, the house decent, and I was feeling pretty darn good about myself and like, holy cow, I have this all figured out. We could do this again and have another.

And then Luke turned into the hottest hot mess ever. On Friday I was feeling unusually brave and took both boys into Target by myself. And since I had no room for stuff with Matthew in his infant car seat in the basket of the stroller (FYI, infant car seats are not supposed to go on the top part of carts. Even if it seems like they snap in and most people do it.) I got one of the huge carts with a ride on part for Luke. Except Luke refused to sit on the seat of it-which was a little small and awkward- so I let him stand and he actually rode along pretty well until we checked out and I made the mistake of buying him some freaking M and M's as a reward and he had a meltdown wanting them RIGHT NOW as we were checking out which made everything chaotic as I was trying to cram bags of stuff around Matthew in the cart and keep Luke from running out the door/throwing himself on the floor/etc. Fun fun fun.

And then, because clearly this motherhood stuff has killed some of my brain cells, even after the meltdown, I decided, hey, let's go to Chik Fil A for lunch and let him play and burn off some energy since it was cold outside. I ordered our food and made the mistake of sitting next to the play area. Luke is cautious enough that I was okay with him playing while I sat there and ate if he didn't want to eat, since I could see him and he usually just plays with the toddler stuff. BUT OH NO. It couldn't be that simple. He wanted to play, but he wanted me in the room watching. The little benches in the room were already full of parents plus I would have had to juggle our food and Matthew in there, so it wasn't happening. So I told Luke it was okay and waved to him through the glass (I was literally sitting right against the glass where our table was) and tried to get him to go play, I even walked him in there and went back to our table and waved, he kept coming back and grabbing my hand and trying to drag me in there with him. I tried to get him to eat instead and said I'd go in there when we were done eating. No no no. After having the same discussion over and over and over again we were each getting increasingly irritated and as Luke started having a fit I had had enough. I managed to carry him kicking and screaming out, while also carrying Matthew in his car seat, and also our food shoved into Luke's kid meal bag. (Okay so I had to rest our food on sleeping Matthew's lap. I had my hands full.) Once I got us all out to the car which was a work out by itself, I had the pleasure of wrestling Luke for 10 minutes into his car seat. AWESOME DAY.

Today we had a similar experience. Joe had to work all weekend so we went shopping. I learned my lesson and brought my stroller with both kids strapped in and happy. Luke got a little whiny wanting to look at the books I was browsing but OMG, SO MUCH BETTER. He tried to wiggle out of the stroller seat and even said "Stuck! Help! Stuck!" It was my turn to smirk at him and say, "You are supposed to be stuck!"  But we survived it without too much incident. Then we decided to go to the park and because I am dumb, dumb, dumb, I left my stroller in the car and decided to wear Matthew in the baby carrier. Luckily I thought to bring the car seat with us and set it on an empty picnic table just in case I had to wrangle Luke. He happily held my hand and walked to the playground like he was going to be perfectly good. And he was good and played happily for an hour. But then Matthew started getting hungry and it was time to go, and he didn't want to go, and luckily I managed to get Matthew into his car seat (wrestling an angry almost 2 year old while having an almost 6 month old strapped to your chest just doesn't seem like a good plan) and then had the fun of carrying a squirming and angry toddler in one arm and the infant car seat in the other hand into the car. Again, had to wrestle him for a good 5 minutes into the seat. Ay yi yi.

On a happier note, he has started talking like crazy and is coming up with new words and phrases every day. This weekend, out of the blue, he started saying "Nick!", he says it SO exuberantly. Since Joe has been working 12 hour days since Friday, we've spent a lot of time at my mom's this weekend, so he's had plenty of time with my brother . On Friday when he first said it, he wouldn't say it in front of Nick, even though he said it in front of my mom and I unprompted 5+ times. We tried to get him to say it when Nick was there, and over the phone, and he just stared at us. Then all of a sudden Nick was sitting on the couch playing on his phone and Luke starts yelling "Nick! Nick!" Any time Nick stopped paying attention to him, Luke would start yelling his name. Of course this started some jealousy with my brother Tim, so most of the day Saturday we kept trying to get him to say Tim, then all of a sudden, all on his own, unprompted, he started saying Tim. We also tried to get him to say "two" and he wouldn't, then while we were shopping I asked him to say "two" and he repeated it several times. That kid. He has been saying "Brooke" for about a week but it sounds like "book". This is the fun part of 2.

The boys are so fun together. Luke has wanted me to put Matthew on his lap, so I have, and they both sit there and beam at each other. I'm pretty sure Luke is Matthew's favorite person in the world, when we sit at the table next to Luke with Matthew in my lap, his face just lights up watching every move Luke makes. I remember in the early days being emotional because I was afraid I had "ruined Luke's life" since he wouldn't get as much attention from us, etc., and he had such a hard time with the change in the beginning. But the hard early days makes the time now even sweeter. We have decided to buy a wooden playset/swingset for our backyard. (OMG, the options are overwhelming.) I can already picture the two of them outside playing together on it.