Paper, pals and popsicles

Right after we got home from Florida, Lance was on his way to California with his dad for more than a week. That left the rest of us at home in Charlottesville trying to fill the time.

Jude's newest favorite thing to do is cut paper. He'll get out the scissors, grab a handful of paper and just go to town.

It often creates a rather large mess.

But it keeps him sitting in one spot for a long, long time. I'd call that a win, even if I do have a large mess to clean up afterwards.

Jude and Cole have become good buddies. Jude is always asking to hold him and whenever Cole catches a glimpse of Jude or Lance, he is all smiles. It's really sweet.

Sweet boys.

I wish I had thought to take a picture when it happened, but I guess I'll have to be content just re-telling our popsicle story.

One day we were out at the park with our friends. Jude had been asking for a popsicle but I wasn't sure if we had enough to go around, so I told him he could have one later. He wasn't too pleased, but didn't whine too much about it. After a little while of playing on the park, all the little boys decided to run inside. My house is right next to the park, so the moms all stayed out with the other kids while the boys played very quietly inside. We were all so impressed that they were getting big enough to play together without help from the moms.

About 20 minutes later Jamie needed to go home, so she went inside to get Bo Bo. She walked inside and then straight back out, calling for us to come. We run to the back door to see Jude and Cameron happily sitting on the couch sucking on dripping unfrozen popsicles. They are covered with juice, the couch is soaked through with red and blue and the carpet is littered with empty and half-empty popsicle sleeves, puddles and stickiness. We look around for Bo and finally find him sitting in the pantry with the door closed, trying to open another unfrozen popsicle. Apparently Jude took getting popsicles into his own hands and, unable to reach the ones in the freezer, grabbed the box full of them on the floor in our pantry. It was a mess of gargantuan proportions.

I guess that's what you get from a 2-year-old who tells everyone he's 6 whenever they ask and is self-sufficient to a fault. Where there is a will, there's a way and boy does he have a will!