The terrible threes

Sorry I haven't written in a few days. I've been battling a bad case of the terrible 3's. We seemed to make it almost all the way through the 2's but I must say as we are approaching the 3 year old mark I find myself wondering what happened?
Gavin is one of the most stubborn kids you will ever meet!(I have no idea where he could have got that from!) The last few days he has been in trouble everytime I turn around. I can't begin to tell you how many times I say.. "Gavin.. you need to listen the first time" or "Mommy is going to count to 5 and you need to make a better choice". Without fail the last few days he will stare at me and ignore every word coming out of my mouth! I just want to hurt him! So... there have been alot of tears from Gavin lately and alot of time spent his room so that his mommy can get herself together before slapping the mouth that just said "you no talk to me mommy... leave me alone" when asked to please take his feet off the table. I know all kids go through this phase but it doesn't stop me from wanting it to end sooner rather than later.

Hopefully a little vacation and lots of together time with mommy and daddy will help. We are going to Tweetsie Railroad for Labor Day. He is really excited. We will also go to Grandfather Mountain and tubing at Linville Falls! We can't wait! I think it's time everyone in the Stevens house had a vacation!

It's Gavin and Mommy Day

It's Gavin and Mommy day!! Yeah! This is a special day that Gavin and I look forward to every month. Matt has to work one Saturday out of the month leaving Gavin and I at home. At first we thought this was a bummer but it actually has worked out nicely for Gavin and I. We make it a Gavin and Mommy day and we go and do something fun together. We usually have a blast!

Today was no different in fact today was the best Mommy and Gavin day yet! We went to Marbles Children's Museum in downtown Raleigh. It was sooooo much fun! (Yep, even Mommy had a blast!)

Marbles is a hands - on, interactive children's museum. This is right up Gavin's alley! There's a courtyard with water activities, boulders and a "creek", and across the courtyard from the museum is an IMAX theater.(we didn't go to the IMAX theater though). Gavin's favorite place to be was in the "Around Town" section of the museum. There are terrific play areas like the grocery store that has hundreds of realistic food items, shopping carts, Lowe's food aprons and a couple of cash registers. The kitchen is next door, with a life size refrigerator, stove, work island with lots of cupboards to open and take things in and out of, and chairs for you to sit and eat at! It was Gavin's dream come true! In fact, Mommy even enjoyed playing with the cash register at the check out line!

They also had a wooden fire truck and ambulance with real medical supplies to pretend with. We even saw a crib like "Baby Molly" had.

Another favorite thing to play on was the big pirate ship! It was 3 stories high! Gavin enjoyed putting on dress up clothes and cleaning the deck. He even dropped the anchor down!

All of these things were on the first floor! I couldn't believe it... another floor! We already had been there a hour and a half and we had only made it through the first floor! Upstairs they had themed things that are switched out periodically. This time it was Olympic themed. Gavin got to play hockey, go on the balance beam, practice ping pong, and so many other things.

Finally it was time to go (Gavin insisted he wasn't hungry or tired but mommy knew otherwise).

We really enjoyed ourselves and I must say for $5 and almost 3 and a half hours of play we certainly got our moneys worth! We can't wait to go back!

The Pirate ship

The Fire Truck

The "not tired" Gavin

Heartbreaking...

I was so tired last night I didn't have a chance to stay up to write about the conversation I had with my boy yesterday afternoon.
As many of you may know Gavin is now in my class. That's right.. mommy is now teacher too. This is not good! I must say Gavin does do an excellent job of sharing mommy though. There is far too many toys and friends to play with that are more exciting than mommy. However, there does still tend to be moments where he trys to get special treatment because his mommy is there or of course his best bud Nenner. It is so hard to play both roles of teacher and mommy. He usually fits into one extreme or the other. He either gets way too many chances or he gets in trouble faster than anybody else would because after all "his mommy taught him better than that" right?
Uggg... well last night he pulled a few of my heart strings and I really tried not to show any emotion one way or the other.
He was pretending to be teacher and I was the kid. He really enjoyed bossing me around, telling me where to sit, giving me jobs to do, and warning me that if I was not a good girl I would get an "OH NO" report. (these are notes home from the teachers to the parents). After a good 45 minutes of being the kid I said.. "Mommy's turn, I wanna be the teacher now". So I began to do all the same things he did to me. After about 10 minutes he was done playing school. Imagine that! Apparently he is the only one who can be in charge!
We were sitting on the couch together a little while later and I said "do you like playing school Gavin?" He said "yeah, I be a good teacher mommy" Cute huh? That's when he sent the slap in the face... "Mommy.. I no want you to be my teacher anymore... I just want you to be my mommy"
I knew that was coming eventually. I just smiled and assured him that next year he would get a new teacher and that I would always be his mommy. I wanted to say.. don't worry honey.. I don't want to be your teacher either but somehow there was just no nice way to say that! HAHA!
I don't know how people can home school their kids. It is so hard to be two people at one time. God bless the millions that have done so successfully. As for me and Gavin... I don't think there will be any homeschooling for us!

Not the back!!

I think it would be safe to say that if my son were to take up swimming the backstroke would not be his favorite stroke. In fact I didn't really ask him but after the swim lesson today I'm quite sure my son hates it!

He has just about mastered swimming to you with his face in the water and the kid has no fear so jumping off the side and swimming to you is no big deal either. So... the next step is learning to float on your back. Well that didn't go over very well for Gavin. There were lots of tears and lots of "I want my mommy's". The kid is terrified to be on his back. He looked like a alligator doing a death roll as he was twisting out of his swim teacher's arms to try to swim on his stomach. He did float on his back once or twice with much begging from mom.

After the lesson I asked him why he cried at swim lessons today.... his response...."mommy i no like swimming on my back.. i just like to jump and swim". Of course being the mom I am I reminded him that we are a big boy and we need to swim on our back too. His response..."ok mommy... I no cry next time" Next lesson is Wednesday... we'll see!

Playing The Single Mom Life

Today was the first of 3 days of playing single mom and I'm not sure that I like it. It hasn't really been that bad yet just exhausting. Hats off to all the single moms who do it everyday!! Matt had to go to Atlanta for a KIA training and I wasn't able to get off work to go with him so Gavin is having even more mommy time.

It was raining today. This is not good news to a mother of a VERY active almost 3 year old who wants to ride his tractor outside everyday after school. Fortunately he was not as concerned with the tractor when mommy mentioned we could go to "Jumpin Beans" instead. (Thank God for big giant inflatables!) My friend Jennifer (aka Nenner) came to. Gavin loves playing with her. We bounced around for about an hour and then headed to "Nenner's" house for dinner (isn't it wonderful that I managed to get out of cooking the first night Matt was gone!)

Gavin enjoyed scooping and dumping noodles in and out of bowls while dinner was cooking. Nenner doesn't have any kids yet so there were no cool toys to play with. However, noodles seemed to be a nice substitute. (even if mommy did have to keep picking up noodles off the floor) We had lots of fun. We even got to end our night watching a train pass by in her backyard. He just loves going to Nenner's house to see the "choo choo train"!

I must say other than being told "no mommy.... daddy puts my shirt on first not my shorts!" while getting ready for bed and other little jobs that are usually daddy's I haven't done too bad! Here's hoping tomorrow goes as well as today or even better!

Nenner and Gavin

Nenner and Gavin playing on the teeter totter

Go Fish!

Today we had another swim lesson but there was something just a little bit special about this lesson. Usually swim lessons are at 4:30 when Daddy is at work but today our swim lesson was scheduled for 6:15 so Gavin was able to show off everything he has been learning to his daddy! He is a true daddy's boy and he was sooo excited that Daddy could watch him swim. (I must say Daddy was pretty proud of him as well!)

After swim lessons and of course dinner it was game time! Gavin now LOVES to play "Go Fish"!

I got him some real cute Little Tykes cards with pictures of ocean animals on them. He just loves asking "you got that seahorse mommy?" and it is super cute when he says "I no have that mommy... GO FISH!"

If you are ever up to a game of "Go Fish" ask Gavin. He will play with anybody... in fact I even caught him playing with Emma the dog. He had put the cards in front of her and was asking her.. "Emma you have the octopus?"

He is too funny!

Swim Lessons

This is the 4th week of swim lessons and Gavin is doing great! He goes with his friend Holt. I had hoped that seeing another child do things would encourage him to do it as well. (yes I am promoting peer pressure :) )

Gavin has done better than I thought he would. He is actually the leader. He encourages Holt and frequently will say "you wanna jump like Gavin?" On Monday his swim instructor took off his swimming vest thing and had him swimming underwater!! I was so proud. I just knew when he came up he would tell me that he was swimming like mommy and dadddy. Nope! He came up and the first words he got out were.... "maaaa maaaa mommy.. I swim like Kendyll!" (that would be his cousin) Of course I responded with a very happy "yes you did swim like Kendyll and like Mommy and Daddy!" Of course yet again he didn't care what we thought because he then said "I tell Nenner and John" (friends of the family). It was very cute but I must say I was a little annoyed that my boy gets more excited about friends, family, etc. than he does his own parents! Haha.. I'm sure it won't be the last time! Needless to say I was still grinning from ear to ear and was very proud of him anyway!

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly children can learn things. Now if I could just teach him to stop being so stubborn!

Gavin swimming with no swimmies or vest!!

Gavin and Holt enjoying a capri sun after swim lessons

National Night Out

Tonight Wake Forest had it's "National Night Out" in the Target parking lot. This was a big safety event that allowed everyone to see police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters, army vehicles, etc. There were so many things there. The Wake Forest police did a safety kit for every child that came. It was actually really neat.

The only thing Gavin cared about was the helicopter. He kept asking "I go up in the sky now?".

I tried to take pictures to share but they didn't turn out that great. It was hard with so many people there and so many kids fighting to get on the helicopter.

Everyone's Doing It...

It seems as if everyone has a blog now! So... to keep up with everyone else I thought I would give it a try. We are pretty busy at our house but I will admit I do always find time to get on myspace or check my e-mail so I'm sure I could find time to put an update about our family every couple days or so. We'll give it a try. Forgive me if it doesn't work out.