His First Racial Slur?

Yesterday, we were driving to school, and Barrett was announcing everything we saw.

From the backseat I heard, "bus, red light, green, trees, cows (Chick-Fil-A), slide (McDonalds), big truck," and many other things he felt the need to identify.

As we stopped at a red light, which he did inform me was red, I noticed two panhandlers on either side of the street.

I try to at least make eye contact and smile even though I do not give them money when I heard Barrett say, "White man," while he pointed to the right.

I thought it was strange that he was identifying a person by color, but I pretty much ignored him.

UNTIL...

He then said, "Black man," and pointed to the left.

I was almost embarrassed even though no one heard him. I thought it was weird that he would even think of that because he's been around people of all colors and his tv shows are diverse too.

I was trying to figure out how to explain to him that it isn't polite to yell out the colors of people, when he yelled, "red man."

He was pointing forward and I noticed a red van driving through the intersection.

It was then I noticed that the car on our right was a white van and there was a black van to our left.

My little "talk" I was going through in my head quickly changed to a lesson on making the "v" sound.

Ahhhhh!!!!

Sorry I haven't been updating, but things have been too busy around here.

Between Barrett's school fundraiser (yes, they have one) and various birthdays/crawfish boils, I haven't had time to write.

Oh, and the boys are NEVER asleep at the same time leaving me NO spare moments to write because if I do get a moment, I wash bottles, take out poopy diapers, clean, start laundry, etc.

Fisher is now screaming, and I don't want him to wake Barrett up from his nap.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to update more soon.

Ahhhhhhh!

Picture Day

We went and had the boys pictures taken today, and overall it was pretty successful.

Our photographer was great, and the boys both behaved perfectly except that neither one of them wanted to smile.

I'd write more about the experience, but I am short on time.

Doug just took the boys to his parent's house for the night (woo hoo), and I need to get ready for the party we are going to tonight.

I am really looking forward to a night of adult conversation with friends from church, not that I don't love discussing Barney with Barrett! :)

Here are some of the pictures that they took.

He's Armed and Not So Dangerous

Yesterday afternoon, Barrett was restless, and to be honest, so was I. We ended up calling next door and asking NeeNee to come play.

After being inside for a while, NeeNee begged to go outside and play with her and Barrett's newest toys.

For Easter, they got matching guns.

Not the kind of gun Doug wants Barrett to have, but it's still a gun.

Barrett has his first water gun.

After filling them up, NeeNee immediately starting shooting Barrett.


I told her to back off while I taught him how to work it.

Let's just say that if yesterday is any indication of my son's shooting abilities, it will be a LONG time before he has a real gun.

Once Barrett figured out how to shoot, he was loving chasing NeeNee and attempting to shoot her. Needless to say, he only got himself very wet, but he was having a blast.

He ran out of water pretty quickly, and he felt like he could refill on his own.

Once he finished "reloading", I took off his soaking wet shirt, shoes, and socks.


He was then ready to attack his prey.

Sydney was busy trying to shoot her other neighbor, Papa Matt, through the fence, so Barrett was going for the sneak attack.

It would have been great if he knew how to aim. He really ended up shooting himself while NeeNee shot him too, but he was really proud of himself!

Here he is showing his muscles after his brutal attack...

If you're wondering where little brother was the whole time, he was enjoying watching the two big kids play. See how happy he looks!

I think he was really secretly happy about his brother's inability to aim.

I'm sure it won't be long until they will be arguing about who is a better shot.

Easter Continued

Barrett and Fisher's Easter is officially over, and even though it was great, I'm glad it's over.

Saturday night at Doug's grandparent's house, Barrett counted to ten all on his own.

Nana was having him count her fingers, and he got to three which is nothing new, but then he kept going all the way to ten.

She was shocked and she said to me, "You didn't tell me he could count to ten."

I had a really good reason for not telling, I didn't know.

Apparently the Barney episode where Baby Bop learns to count to ten not only helped Baby Bop but Barrett too.

He's been counting ever since.

I'd love to show you picture of that Easter celebration, but I forgot my camera. Here the boys are before we left.

On Easter morning, we went to church. We were running too late for me to get pictures of them in their cute outfits, but I am getting them professionally taken later this week, so I'll post those pictures then.

After church, we drove to the beach to get together with my mom's family. For years we have been going to the beach where my aunt rents a beach house for the day, and somehow the weather never cooperates. In the years I have been with Doug, the weather has only been good once.

This year was no exception. I was freezing. Seriously, it almost was. It was 36 degrees Sunday morning, and the truck's temperature thing said it was 49 degrees when we pulled up to the beach.

Even though it was cold, Doug still took Barrett down to the beach.

We had been preparing him for the beach, so when we said we were walking there, Barrett kept saying beach.

Unfortunately, his pronunciation of beach didn't sound like beach.

My sister didn't think it was funny when I told everyone he was calling for her. :)

While we were walking down the boardwalk, Barrett really didn't know what to expect.



As soon as he saw the beach, he started running towards it.

Daddy picked him up and walked out to the water.

Before looking at the next picture, I have a warning for you.

For those of you who have never experienced a Texas beach, they are ugly. Get over it. There is seaweed everywhere (unless the beach is groomed), brown water, and ugly sand. The only redeeming quality about it is that our sand really can make castles unlike that loose sand other places.



Barrett loved watching the waves. He laughed when Daddy walked towards them then ran away when the water chased them. He laughed even harder when his cousin, Tyler, stood in the water letting the waves hit him.

When we left the beach a few minutes later because we were freezing, Barrett wanted to stay.

We convinced him to tell the water bye- bye, and we promised him we'd come back when we wouldn't freeze.

Easter was great with the exception of one major problem.

C - A - N - D - Y

Barrett wants it all the time. He walks around looking for it. He opens every plastic egg we have hoping there is some inside.

I think we've created a monster...

Easter #1

We had the first of our three Easter celebrations yesterday at the Gran Gran's house.

Barrett loved playing with all his cousins and the big people too. He had a blast playing outside, hunting eggs, dying eggs, eating candy and cookies, and even learning a few cheers from cousin Blair and her cheerleading friend, Bree.

When we have any gathering of this side of the family, we all expect Daphne to bring the yummiest cookies in the world with her. And by we all, I mainly mean me. I can eat hundreds of them.

Barrett seems to like sweets as much as his mom. All he really ate the entire day was cookies, candy, and a little rice. (After all, this is a rice farming family!)








The funniest part of the cookies was that they had those little, tiny ball sprinkles on them. Barrett would work really hard to take the "candies" off one by one to eat. He usually dropped it before it hit his mouth. He finally gave in and just ate the cookies.




When we went outside for the egg hunt, Barrett was ready to go. Doug actually had to pick him up so he would wait for the other kids.

As soon as we said go, Barrett took off after the eggs.





He didn't waste time trying to carry his basket. He sat it down, ran to an egg, and brought the egg back the the basket.

He was too funny. He would be running saying a color, and that would be the color of the egg he was after. (I think he got that from me because I constantly have to say what I am going to get or I will forget what I was going for.)

He did really well for being the littlest hunter out there, but he wasn't quite finished with his hunt.

As we were trying to get pictures of all the kids with their baskets full of eggs, Barrett saw this as a great opportunity.


He started going through Morgan's basket and stealing the eggs. Poor Morgan didn't even notice.

After a few minutes went by, Barrett had completely cleaned Morgan out.

I did put a bunch of the eggs back, but somehow Barrett's basket still ended up overflowing with eggs.

He even took Gran Gran's giant egg. I guess he thought taking them was so easy that no one would notice her yellow egg missing too. :)

Later in the day, the bigger kids were dying eggs, and Barrett decided he wanted to also. His Nana was there to help him, so we took off his shirt and let him try it.

Of course, he had to use the blue dye even though we tried to encourage the light yellow!

He successfully dyed the egg and put it in the egg carton. After worrying about his blue fingers, he wanted to hold his blue egg.

Things didn't go well with that.

He wasn't too thrilled that his egg broke, but he got ever it when he realized it was fun to break even more.

After he finished playing with it, he put it back in the carton.

Guess which one is his!

Overall, Barrett had a wonderful day!

For those of you thinking that Fisher wasn't even there because he's not in the pictures and I haven't mentioned him, I am not a bad mommy. He was there, and he was held by everyone all day.

I do have pictures of him being passed around, but I am pretty sure the next photo sums up his day without posting a ton of pictures.

Let's just say that Fisher probably had more fun than any of the other Schmidt men.

What man wouldn't love to be in his place?

Firsts

Over the past few days, we've had quite a few firsts around our house, and if I don't write about it now, I'm afraid I'll forget. This will be brief because both boys napping simultaneously never lasts more than 10 minutes.


Ha, right when I typed that, Fisher started screaming. He's now temporarily occupied in his swing.


On to the firsts.



#1


On Saturday, Nana was over playing with Fisher, and she put him down on his mat on the floor. He was laying on his belly and the next thing we knew, he was rolling himself to his back. It was weird because he did it like it was no big deal.



We thought he had rolled over weeks ago on multiple occasions, but we just assumed we forgot how we put him in bed or something.


I won't count those as his first roll over since we didn't see them, but there was no doubt that he rolled on his own Saturday.


If he can roll over at 6 weeks and one day, I think I'm in for a VERY active little man.


#2


Yesterday after church, I let Barrett play on the playground while I gave Fisher his bottle. Some of the equipment was wet from the rain, and Barrett of course got his pants wet.


He walked up to me to report the mess which is nothing new, but it's how he told me.


He said, "Barrett got wet."


His very first sentence! :)


This morning, he used another sentence all on his own.


He came up to me carrying his toy bull while I was getting dressed and said, "Paw come play with Barrett?"


This actually led to first #3.


#3


As I was celebrating Barrett's second sentence by cheering for him as he looked at me like I was insane, he decided talking to Fisher might be more productive.


Fisher was in him bouncy seat on the floor, and Barrett sat right next to him. He was showing him his bull when Fisher actually looked at Barrett.


I told Barrett that his little brother really loves him because he's looking at him while he was talking. (I'm working on that with Barrett.)


Barrett continued talking to Fisher in some language I don't know, but I guess Fisher understood him because he looked right at Barrett and smiled.


I ran for the camera and told Barrett to keep talking.


Of course when I was ready for the picture, the smiling was over.


I asked Barrett to look at Fisher, smile, and talk, but Barrett wanted me to take pictures of him.

After about 10 pictures of Barrett, I gave up on Fisher smiling again.


As I continued getting dressed, Barrett said, "Baby smile."


At first I thought he was telling Fisher what to do, but then I realized he was reporting what he was seeing.


Fisher was again looking at his big brother and smiling.

After taking a few pictures that never quite caught the full smile, Barrett quit on me.

He picked up his bull, gave me a weird look, and headed to the living room.

I guess I never really answered the first real question he ever asked.

So, Paw, if you're reading this, can you come play?

Bluebonnet Pictures

On Friday, we went to Doug's Grandma's house to take the obligatory "we live in Texas" bluebonnet pictures.

Most people drive out in the country to find a patch in a ditch on the side of the road or jump some one's fence to get into a huge field of flowers.

I drive five minutes from home to Grandma's which used to be the country until Houston grew around her. Luckily, she loves flowers and lets a few patches grow in her yard still.

We ended up actually making two trips there. One in the morning that was not very successful, and one trip later in the day with our neighbors which was great because Barrett loves his buddy NeeNee.

I ended up taking around 200 pictures, and I have about 10 that I really like. (I have no idea how I lived before digital cameras. If I had to develop film and limit my number of pictures, I'd never get the shot I want.)

It was difficult to get a good one of Barrett because he seemed to remember our bluebonnet experience from last year. He would sit in the bluebonnets looking down at the ground saying, "Ants?"

I did manage to get a good standing up picture.



When we returned later in the day with NeeNee, he was a little more cooperative. He was willing to sit in them on her.



After taking bluebonnet pictures, Barrett got to sit by the flowers he really loved, the PINK ones.




I know his Daddy is so proud that he loves pink so much! You can tell in his face that he is a lot happier surrounded by pink!

There are still a couple of old tractors behind the barn at Gran Gran's, and Barrett liked showing them to NeeNee. He is used to them, but she thought it was really cool.


As Barrett and NeeNee were playing with everything in Gran Gran's garage, (safety was apparently not a concern of Gran Gran's because she was handing them all kinds of things that no one else would ever give a kid) I was visiting with my neighbor about Gran Gran.

As we talked about various things about her house like the Walgreen's that was built spitting distance from her bedroom window, I somehow got on the rabbit statue she has. I am always worried I am going to run it over, and Doug has commented on it more than once as being annoyed at her placement of it.

Then I realized that this bunny could serve a purpose.

I hadn't gotten around to taking Barrett to the mall for the overpriced bunny pictures, and he really doesn't get it yet anyway. So, here is my 2007 Easter bunny picture:


I might get Fisher to the mall while Barrett is in school this week, or I might just take him back to Gran Gran's and carry the statue back to the flowers.

Even though I really thought I wouldn't take bluebonnet pictures with Fisher, I decided that since the other kids were busy doing things like this,

I could at least attempt getting a few.

The bluebonnets were really tall, so the flowers are not as prominent in the pictures as most people have them, but he was cute anyway!




After I took a ton of pictures that all really look the same, I turned him over and let him enjoy the nice breeze. He seemed to really love being in the middle of a bunch of flowers enjoying the weather.



Overall the outings were successful, and Gran Gran was thrilled to see us twice in one day!