Who has two thumbs and finished her blog book tonight?

This girl right here.

I almost gave up after I had to completely start over on it when we switched from a pc to a Mac, but for some reason I've had the motivation to get it done, and I finished it tonight after two long years of working on it. How's that for a run-on sentence.

It feels so nice to finally be finished with it. I can't wait to see what it looks like!

Losing my brain?

I think all of the blogging and Facebooking (I'm using this word even though I do not consider Facebook a verb.) I've been doing is making me start to lose my brain. That, or it's making me completely careless.

I'm a total grammar and spelling nazi. I hate announcing this because it worries me that people will start scrutinizing the things I write. But I notice detail. I would say that's why I LOVE doing math. I love that you have to get every little detail correct in order to get the correct answer. So I don't go looking for grammar or spelling mistakes, I just naturally notice them. And I'm not saying that I am the best at using proper grammar, but I do try really hard to write things the correct way. I keep my English 1 book from college at my computer, and I use it a lot to check myself. And I also keep a dictionary close by to make sure I'm using words the way they are supposed to be used and to check my spelling.

So you can imagine my horror when I go back and read some of the comments I've left for people on their blogs or on Facebook, and I've used "their" instead of "they're" or some other incorrect homonym. And I misspell words all of the time now! I'm appalled at some of things I've posted for the world to see!

I never took keyboarding, so I never learned how to type correctly. I know that's where the misspellings are coming from, but I AT LEAST used to be good at proofreading what I'd written before I posted it. I spend a lot of time reading about other people, whether it be on personal blogs or on Facebook, and I really like to comment if a thought pops into my head about a person's post. I consider myself an over-commenter sometimes. And I think the past few years of reading blogs and Facebook posts has made me get too comfortable with commenting to the point that I don't check anything I say anymore! I just type and post, type and post, etc.

I want to change. I don't want to be careless with my comments anymore. I'm doing this post because I want to be more aware of the things I am posting FROM NOW ON! Now that it is written, I will try to be better.

Feel free to attack any grammatical errors I make all the time that drive you nuts.

Golden Birthday

Today is my baby's 2nd birthday. Here are a few fun facts about Braden right now:

- He takes a binky like a champ! And I'm okay with that since he sucks his thumb if I don't give him a binky. I get anxiety thinking about trying to get another kid to stop sucking his thumb. Maybe taking the binky away later will be just as hard, but I'm hoping it will be a little bit easier.

- He's a little violent. We call him Brutus sometimes because he's so rough with his brother and sister. We have to keep tennis rackets and William's mini hockey sticks and golf clubs out of Braden's reach because he likes to use them as weapons.

- He has two blanket babies that he loves and has to sleep with every night. If I put him to bed without them, he'll instantly ask for his "babies".

- He likes to try to pray like his brother and sister do, but so far he'll only copy "Heavny Father" and "Amen".

- He's been sleeping in his new big boy bunk bed for about a week now, and he is doing great! Now every bed he sees is a "bunka bed".

- He LOVES all three Toy Story movies right now. He asks for "Stoy Stowy" when he wants to watch a movie. He also likes to say, "To infiny and benon!" with the same inflection as Buzz Lightyear.

- He likes to jump on the "jumpeen" or trampoline, and he knows how to climb in and out of it all by himself.

- He gets to go to school in the morning on Tuesdays through Thursdays and hang out with the big preschoolers. His teacher told me today that even though he is the youngest (he's two years younger than the youngest kids in the class), he wants to do everything that the big kids are doing. A few weeks ago the music teacher Mr. S had the kids play "American Idol" during music time. Each preschooler got to go on stage and sing a song using the microphone. Braden wanted to participate, so he sang the "may me maw mo moo" warm-up song when it was his turn.

- He calls William "Bub" or "Bubba". He calls Rebecca "Becca". And he calls me "Mom" and Kevin "Daaaadyyyy". I love that he calls us all by name.

Braden is such a fun boy. He makes us laugh every day. We're so happy to have him in our family.

Happy birthday, Braden!!