Archive for the ‘Bringing up boys’ Category

recent photos for your enjoyment

May 17, 2011

The boys are just so different. They dress up like cowboys for a morning outside, and one BECOMES the cowboy, and the other looks like a character from the ‘Apple Dumplin’ Gang’ – I’ll let you guess who’s who! Either that, or it’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Man, I love my boys! And the pic of Maryellen may already have been posted here, but it’s just too fun to pass up! Enjoy.
Kid updates:
Avery is enjoying correcting his brother at every chance he gets, and is now reading “the Tale of Despereaux”
Parker still eats PB&J ‘sandliches’, becomes a different animal every day (today he was a turtle..yesterday a horse), and says constantly, “Hey – watch me do this…watch me do this…are you watching me mommy?!”
Maryellen is now on a ‘ma-ma’ kick. She can say da-da, too, but everytime I ask her to say da-da, she smiles, shakes her head and says ‘ma-ma!…it’s endearing. She now has two small eruptions of teeth between her upper ‘fangs’…we’re glad!

A picture is worth a thousand words

May 15, 2011

Saturday morning at Taylor with Be-Bop and Pop-Pop.

Insurance

May 13, 2011

Is this what the new healthcare legislation is all about? Buy insurance from the Government? What a Dumb idea! Why would anyone buy insurance from the Government? Here comes the IRS slingshot.

On another exciting note, going to Oxford this weekend for graduation. I admit, there are very few things in life more boring than going to a graduation ceremony. We go to show support and give congratulations to:

Amanda Claire Mixon graduating Magna cum Laude with a degree in accounting! (she beat me, I was barely cum Laude).

Christina Wells Ashoo graduating with her Juris Doctorate (or is it Juris Doctor?)!

Congrats to both on a job well done.

Singing Soprano

April 27, 2011

Having a couple of boys at home who are currently sopranos, I can relate. Puberty is such a cruel, cruel time. I guess it keeps you humble. Regardless, it’s a low blow by Hobbes. I’ve been playing around with the settings, trying to make the strip more readable without having to click on it or squint.

Easter Weekend

April 25, 2011

Hope everyone had a happy Easter. We went to a Birthday Party on Saturday for our friend Joseph Broad. There was a great Easter Egg hunt followed by cake and presents. It was a beautiful day and a fun party.  Enjoy photos (I couldn’t figure out how to get the C&H comic out of the slide show)!

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Today’s Calvin and Hobbes is bringing back a favorite of mine: G.R.O.S.S. or Get Rid Of Slimy girlS.

This is my motivation for building the boys a tree house. And telling them that girls are slimy. I wonder how long it took Bill Waterson to come up with these rhymes? I always enjoyed it on Whose Line is it Anyway? when Wayne Brady would create songs off the cuff. I get the feeling that Waterson could do this as well.

Picnic Photos

September 12, 2010

We went to Centennial Park tonight with our small group. It has been a beautiful evening and I wanted to share a couple of photos of Parker that were taken. Hope you all had a restful Sunday!

Male Bonding

August 24, 2010

I arrived home after work last night at approximately 6:00 PM. Jen was pushing Maryellen in the stroller, I forget what Parker was doing, and Avery was laying in a heap underneath the magnolia tree. Apparently, he had just fallen out of the tree and was now gathering his dignity. We went to check on him and he said “my arm hurts.” After dusting him off, we asked him to show us where his arm hurt and he pointed at his right wrist. After ruling-out any obvious deformity and giving it a kiss, it was off to dinner. Jen and I discussed her history of broken bones as a child and agreed to take him to his pediatrician in the morning if he continued to have pain.

Li’l Avery is not a big eater, this is obvious when looking at him. That being said, he began to cradle his right arm and refused to eat anything at the dinner table. Jen and I shared a knowing look. It was off to the ER just to be sure. Our first clue that he was okay should have been his willingness to hop in the car to go. The last time he went in as a patient, he came out with 3 staples in his scalp. Before we left, I examined his wrist and he did have tenderness…

Thankfully, the ER wasn’t too busy, so we quickly met the nurse in triage who asked Avery a lot of questions. In the midst of this first exam, he decided to show the nurse how strong he is by flexing every muscle in his body simultaneously. This is a sight to see. Imagine my chagrin when Avery tells the nurse that his left arm hurt (see above for complaint of right arm pain). This was my second clue that he was neither going to require surgery nor a cast. Not to be a quitter, from there it was off to X-Ray.

In 2010, there is still no better (more likely cheaper) way to shield your body from unwanted radiation than by using a lead apron. They gave me an adult sized one so that I could stay with Avery in the X-Ray room. They also had a child-sized lead apron that went around Avery’s waist (see below). The X-ray tech informed me that this was to “protect his reproductive organs.” I had to chuckle at that. Avery proceeded to ask me what the shield was for. I could only tell him that “It would take too long to explain.”

Third clue that I was flushing good money down the drain was the other young boy with an obviously-broken leg getting an X-Ray in the room next to us. Thankfully, we made it to the Fast Track version of the ER and were seen and discharged rapidly. No sling, no cast, no narcotics, no bill. Home again at 10:00PM and off to bed. That’s not how I planned to spend my Monday night, but I guess that’s what I signed up for when he was born. Thankfully, his reproductive organs were preserved so that maybe he can experience that some day…

First Day of School

August 16, 2010

Today was Avery and Parker’s first day back to School! They attend the Andrew Price Play School at a local Methodist Church. Parker’s main goal for the year is potty training and Avery is officially in Pre-K. Traditionally, Jennifer’s parents had taken first-day-of-school pictures and we continue the tradition.

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Maryellen and Mommy continue to do very well. We’re going to follow-up with our Pediatrician on Friday and it’s back to Cardiology next week. I have asked Jen to collect her thoughts to share with you and hopefully that will be posted before too long.

catching up

May 15, 2010

The Mixons haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with everyone via our blog. we didn’t even send a christmas newsletter this year! Yipes.  Sounds like a family with preschoolers that’s about to have another baby to me!? 

   I’m here at work this slow Saturday and thought I might just throw out a few things that have been going on here in our family.

1)If we’ve done a really bad job of communicating with you…I’m pregnant with baby 3 due in august!  No, we don’t know what it is – boy or girl – it’ll be a surprise for us all!  The boys are pretty cool with it and Avery, jr has already decided that it is a boy, and he will be named Bob.  Good thing he doesn’t have a weighty vote!! 🙂  Pregnancy is going relatively well and I’m feeling good.

2) We did not float away in the Nashville flood of ’10. Praise God for preserving our family that loss.  We had some friends who did not fare as well and will soon see their house bulldozed to the ground – what an amazing thing water is!  There is a lot of cleanup going on. I drove by the Opryland Hotel on my way to work this morning and there were dozens of Servicemaster vans, dumpsters, masked and gowned workers outside the hotel and mall complex working on the cleanup. What a mess!

3)Av and Parker are 2 and 4 – they’re so much fun but I definitely have a 2 year old in the house – NO! No! No! is all he says!  Av has decided to surprise us with the fact that he is able to read…well.  that’s been fun to see exactly what he can read and understand.  Enter the world of “Is that ‘a’ a long ‘a’ or is it a short  ‘a’??  They’re  both pretty boisterous. In fact, I was on the phone last week with the car repairman while I was at the grocery store. The boys were in the buggy and I was a few steps away from them so I could hear what this man was trying to say. After a few minutes he said, “Ma’am, do you run a daycare?”  Great. No, I said, that’s just my TWO boys here at the grocery store!! God only knows what three Mixons will sound like!

3)Parker likes hiding things, including himself, which he is very good at since he won’t answer me when I call his name.  However, last week, the things hiding were the boys’ toothbrushes.  He loves going  in to the bathroom, but he isn’t supposed to be in there by himself.  Somehow he got in. We couldn’t find those little boogers anywhere! I looked in every hiding spot I could think of and for 3-4 days, these toothbrushes were MIA.  Thursday is diaper wash day.  Yeah, here it comes.  I took the dirty cloth diapers that were in 0ur diaper champ to the washing maching downstairs and as i dumped them in, heard two very distinct ‘CHINK’ noises.  I look in the washer – 2 toothbrushes.  GROSS!!!!  Guess he liked the way he could stick them in the diaper champ, turn the handle, and poof! they disappear like magic.  What a goof.

4)My husband is the sweetest, most patient man ever.  He secretly planned to take the boys, by himself, while I was working this morning, to get their 2 and 4 year-old pictures taken that were horribly overdue.  If you haven’t ever taken small children to have their pictures made, you have no idea what a task this is…especially without back-up with you. He bathed them this morning, dressed them all up, and took them solo.  the pictures are great and they are so cute! I’ll have to post some pics of them later.  Can’t here at the clinic.  Love you, baby!

Well, that’s about all I got for now.  Hopefully more later, with some pictures to look at, too!

PostScript – had no idea he was posting the photo shoot pics the same time I was writing this!! We should get married! 🙂

Photo shoot

May 15, 2010

We have been talking about getting our yearly photos of the boys, and it finally happened. Upon recommendation from a friend, we went to Portrait Innovations. Avery was extremely well behaved and received a Chick Hicks die cast car as a reward. Parker is two. He was cooperative for 3 minutes and then became hysterically irrational. Hope you enjoy the photos!