A long day ends with a good night...or mom takes over the blog.

Mom here. I am temporarily taking over blog duties from Hank so that I can share with you the day we had yesterday...or "What led 7 month pregnant mama to drinking before noon." Prepare your head shaking and clucking noises, as I'm sure most of the choices I made yesterday were in bad judgment and will probably lead Henry to a life of crime in his teens.

We needed eggs and milk, so we decided to go to the co-op grocery store, where we also need to get a gift certificate. We don't normally go to this grocery store, just because there are two other stores closer to us, and this one doesn't advertise its sales. When we got to the grocery store, about 95% of Madison's residents were also there. Seeing as how we only needed two things, I told Henry that we would just get a basket instead of a cart. This did not go over well. Let me be the first to say that Henry behaves wonderfully in stores. He rarely runs away from us or demands things. As long as he is in charge of a cart to steer. He will walk beside a cart for hours at a time. He even knows that when someone is coming towards us, he needs to stand behind the cart until they pass, so he won't get run over. What a wonderful child.

So the news of no cart did not sit well with Henro. It started with minor whining and turned into a 45 minute fiasco of my wonderful child throwing himself on the (very muddy) floor and screaming.

Now Henry may be strong willed, but he forgot that he had to have gotten it from someone. His papa was ornery and stubborn and his mom was a brat. So two can play at this game, little boy. As Henry wallowed in the mud crying (I pushed him to a wall so he wouldn't get trampled), I surveyed my options.

1. Throw him in a cart, and get my stuff and get out of there. In my opinion, this wasn't a viable solution because we were fighting over a cart to begin with. Granted, he wanted to steer the cart, but I decided any cart was a loss to the parents and a win to the 2-year-old.

2. Pick him up and get the heck out of the store. I wasn't really into this either. First, he was muddy and I'm enormous (29 weeks and counting). I didn't want to touch or carry this kid at all. Second, it's my own humble opinion that most kids throw temper tantrums in stores because they don't want to be there in the first place. So if you leave, I think the kid wins, plus you still have to drag them back there later to get the stuff you went for the first time.

So because I was determined to be as stubborn (and probably mature) as my two-year-old son, we stood (or laid) in the grocery store for 45 minutes until Hank pulled himself together. (Maybe I finally broke his spirit). After that, he was a perfect angel. He walked beside me and even helped my carry the tub of frosting we bought. He was even good when we had to wait in line for 20 minutes to buy our 3 items and the idiot cashier told me I had to buy a gift card at the service desk. (Then the service desk told me I had to buy it at the checkout. Needless to say, we're never going to Woodman's again.)

After we got home, Henry was still kind of whiny. So, for some reason I felt he needed a focused activity. Did I choose coloring or stickers? No, I decided Henry was going to help make sugar cookies- from scratch.

Henry really liked helping me bake. He was the most enthusiastic helper ever. The only downside was that he was SO helpful. When we went to measure out our 5 cups of flour, I had to briefly turn my back to open a new bag of flour. Henry continued to count the cups of flour. But because he is a good boy and obeyed my orders not to touch or put anything into the mixer, he instead decided to count the cups of flour onto the floor. "2, 3, 4..."

When the dough was finally ready, we had to roll the dough out and cut the cookies out. Unfortunately, our kitchen does not provide very much uninterrupted counter space. So while I rolled the dough out, Henry stood on his stool and tried to push me out of the way so he could put the cookie cutters in the dough. Luckily, he only fell off the stool once.

About 4 trays of cookies into the process, Henry decided that he'd rather play with the dirty dishes in the sink. Now imagine my paranoia as my kid sticks his grubby hands into a filthy sink filled with bacteria ridden dishes and then decides he wants to cut out another cookie? Eek. I tried to swallow my fears and assured myself that the 350 degree oven would kill any surviving filth.

When we finally got the cookies made, I was grateful to put that sticky flour-y boy in bed and look forward to a nap of my own. Unfortunately, the mess we left behind wasn't going to clean up itself....

The fruits of our labors.

Collateral damage.

After this, I'm not doing anything special with Henry until next July. I feel like I've fulfilled my requirements of special mother-son moments for the year.

Grandpa Seibert said these are the days which drive parents to spend their money on child guru books about "parenting your strong-willed child."

The night ended well when our favorite 2 year old boy (besides our own) came over for Henry's first sleepover! Huntley's parents were out on the town, so we had our own pizza and cookie party (like I was going to do any more cooking after that afternoon).

We Turners love Huntley. While Henry is strong willed, free spirited, and high energy, Huntley is mild mannered and well-behaved (at least at our house- his mom might disagree).

I frosted and sprinkled all of the cookies while Henry took his nap, but saved two for the boys to decorate themselves.

They really liked shaking the colored sugar.

I hope there's enough sugar.

Yum.

Huntley preferred to eat the red sprinkles over anything else. He still had red cheeks and red fingers when he left this morning.

Huntley comes from a mixed home- his mom is a Packers fan and his dad is a Bears fan. So we did what any good neighbor would do and we dressed him in a Carson Palmer jersey so that they could both finally agree on something! Isn't Henry photogenic?

Black and orange looks good on you, Huntley.

The boys had a great time playing. We must have run them hard enough that when we put them down for bed (in the same room), we never heard a peep until 7:30 this morning. Having two kids is going to be so easy.