Army Man Adi and Pleecy Sebastian

As you may have noticed from nearly all of my latest pictures, Army Man Adi (or Combat Carl Gattas as he sometimes refers to himself), refuses to wear anything but camo.  And, in fact, lately, he will only wear one single pair of "Combat Carl pants" and only a few shirts.  He is so picky and stubborn about it.  We made a trip to Bass Pro Shops this weekend to buy a new (bigger) pair of army man pants because it's hard making due with only one wear of "usable" pants! (He comes home from school filthy--covered in food and paint!)

Adi carried his new pants and shirt around the store with him.  He even showed the pants to the fish, who, by the way, sort of looked like army man fish.

Here he is modeling his new outfit.  (Santa brought the shoes, but they are still too big.)

One morning, Adi wouldn't get dressed at all because he refused to put clothes on if it wasn't his Combat Carl pants.  Eventually after 20 minutes of screaming Carlos wrestled him into some pants and then he screamed some more for a different pair of pants (although not his Combat Carl pants) and then we were ok.  It's quite the challenge.  From what I understand, it's not all that unusual with 3 year olds, but it sure isn't easy!

Here the army man is "cooking" with his Play Doh.  He cut it up into a thousand little chunks with his knife.  I'm still finding pieces on the floor...

Army men like to model.

Army men like to play K'nex.

And work with lawn/yard tools.

And all good army men need a camo lunch box.

Sebastian is more flexible, but even he is getting pickier.  He wants to wear fleece pants and sweatshirts ("pleecies", as he calls them)all the time because they are "so soft, Mama!"  I guess I can't blame him--I would like to live in fleece 24/7, too!

He loves this "pleecy."  (He wanted so badly to help me with email one day...)

Sleep habits lately have gone to hell--not sure why.  Adi in particular wakes a lot at night and takes a while to go back to bed.  He's happy to stay in his bed, but he'll call out every 10 minutes for something different: his puppy, water, his blanket, etc.  When they were younger I used to let them cry it out, but now that they are bigger, my #1 goal is to keep them in their beds, so I have caved and usually get up to give them stuff when they can't find it.  That's the other thing--I keep it pitch black in their room so they can't see well enough to get up and cause trouble (jump on the beds, etc).  But that also means they can't see or find anything.  :-(  Sebastian also wants to come in my bed every morning.  That's fine, but he's waking earlier and earlier and asking to come with me, and he doesn't sleep in my bed.  That means less sleep for both of us.  :-(  I think we're going to have to shift to a later bedtime and hope that works--eventually.  We've tried that many times before, but despite trying to change the schedule, they always seem to wake early.  And we need them to wake early for school--by 5:30 or 5:45 at the latest to not feel too rushed.  Goodness!  The 3s haven't been easy so far!

The boys were sick two weeks ago--all that week.  We made 3 trips to the pediatrician in less than 7 days.  But the good news is that, out of all of it, the only real "sickness" was Sebastian having an ear infection: no flu, pneumonia, strep, or anything like that.  But my mom helped take care of them a few days and, unfortunately, they got her sick.  :-(  Hopefully no more sickness this year...I'm going to think positively...

The week they were sick, they spent a lot of time watching movies and "resting."  Occasionally, the boys now play together, and they talk to each other and interact much more than they used to.  I love to see them lying down together like this.

Sebastian liked using the shovel to move the snow and water and ice around.  He thought he was the ice men at the beginning of Frozen--it was too cute.  He WOULD. NOT. WEAR. mittens, though.

Last night our next door neighbors Tom and Sarah came over.  That was fun!!!!  This morning we had breakfast at Mrs. Donut's house.  Boys were good.  So it was a busy weekend--a nice change after being bored and stuck at home sick for what seems like the whole month of January!