A Week in Review

It's been another busy week so let's just do one big week-in-review-photo-drop shall we? 

Last Saturdy, while Darin was working, Shae and I stopped by the Williamsburg airport open house.

 Shae loved exploring the helicopter from head to toe and touching every single button in his reach.

We had a fun park day with Shae's buddies.

This hunk of my husband turned 28 years old and we celebrated by having friends over and eating Nutty Butty Ice Cream Cake.

Shae found all the socks that his daddy kindly leaves all over the house and turned himself into the sock monster (all the while thinking it was the COOLEST thing in the world). 

 And yes, that would be ANOTHER boo boo on his head. His forehead and the cement seem to be good friends these days.

We had lot's of fun with our friend Flavia who I started babysitting at the beginning of the month while her mama works.  Shae LOVES Flavia. He gets really excited when she comes over and has a good time playing with her, but it's definitely been hard for him as well. He started to learn the fine art of not-sharing, pushing, "No! Mine!" and other all around jealousy-toddler skills. Sometimes I feel like my days consist of being Flavia's body guard, and yet they always tend to have some cute moments like these.

Flavia's "CHEESE!" face vs. Shae's "CHEESE!" face.

Flavia wins.

 What's this? Shae letting Flavia read one of HIS books? Could it be? Moments like this are very rare.

While doing laundry the kiddos decide to come help me. They went on like this for a good 20 minutes. Doing the laundry is the new hop-scotch.

 Shae is quickly outgrowing his sandals (thank goodness summer is almost over). I looked through his drawers one day last week to see what I could find and tried one of each of these shoes on him and he REFUSED to let me take them off the rest of the morning.

 We put the shoes on after he brought me a cup full of tampons and kneeled down to say his morning prayers. It cracks me up that he kneels down and folds his arms at the steppers where we put our fan. His daddy is a good example at morning prayer so Shae always sees him kneeling at the bed, I guess the bed was just a bit too high so he found something more his size.

 Two straight rainy days definitely calls for teaching Shae what a fox says.

 And then sitting on the table for half an hour playing with two root beer bottles from daddy's birthday while mommy does some work. He loved pretending to put the lids on and off and then taking them in and out of the shoe box. It always amazes me what entertains a baby/toddler.

As soon as the rain stopped on the second day we booked it outside because we were all going crazy. One of our neighbors was playing with his dogs out in the field by our house. We need to schedule appointments with these dogs, the kids could have watched them play frisbee for hours.

 Insert squeal of joy here. (And this sunken table is the PERFECT play toy for these two).

 We went to the park again. We really really like the park.

 Shae walked around with my sunglasses on like he was the bees knees of toddlers. 

 And then plastered his face against one of the toys.

This morning we babysat these two crazies while Darin went with their daddy to buy themselves a car. We walked around Colonial Williamsburg a bit and of course had to stop at the Farmer's Market and get some muffins. (Sorry Ezra for turning you into a ghost).

And that was our week. 

Just a Whole Lot of Random

Two blog posts with no pictures of Shae surely warrants an entire blog post with little cohesion, but lot's of pictures of Shae.  

Shae loves walking around the house with these little soft baseball's in his mouth.

Or making this face at me when I ask him to do something. (The kid has my eyebrows, what can I say).

Or saying "cheese" to any possible object that has a camera.

He really loves smelling flowers or candles which is really funny to watch him do because I don't know that he is actually sniffing anything... And we love that the last two times we've gone to the temple that there has been a huge group of people taking quinceañera pictures out front. The temple does make a mighty fine castle backdrop for a picture.

Let's just take a break from the pictures for a sec and talk about how this little munchkin has turned crazy over the past few weeks. Okay, not crazy all the time. He's still super sweet and funny a lot of the time, but he's definitely turning into a toddler. He's started having some pretty epic meltdowns as of late, you know, the kind where you pick em' up and they turn into dead weight saying, "No, no, no, no!" Heaven forbid we are out in public around 11:00 a.m. when nap time approaches. I made that mistake a few too many times last week. Leaving the train station play set at Barnes and Nobles--meltdown. Taking the shakers away at the end of story time--meltdown. Putting him back in his stroller at the Farmer's Market because it was getting busy--meltdown (i just kept walking around the market while he screamed and at one point started to laugh because I felt so silly. A sweet older lady came up to me and patted me on the back and said, "Good for you for laughing, sometimes that's all you can do."  This morning he got mad getting out of the bathtub and flung his naked body onto the bathroom floor wailing. That was a fun sight.

The meltdowns really only happen around nap time thus far. I don't doubt that more will come as he gets older. It's interesting to learn how to handle this new side of Shae.  It's not all that fun in the moment, but after the breakdown has past, I can see how he is learning what he wants and how to express himself. He can't express himself in many other ways so a meltdown is sometimes the best way to do it. Little toddlers don't have much self-control, I suppose that's something that we as parents have to patiently teach them, or.... we can both just have meltdowns together. Someday's are better than others. 

Back to pictures...Shae currently loves hiding in the cupboards, closing the doors on himself and then peeking out at us. He thinks us saying, "Where's Shae?" is the greatest thing in the universe

He's also really into sitting on the "big" swings as of late (although even after a few falls he doesn't seem to get that taking one arm off to quickly point at a doggie does not end well).

This boy is just getting so big! We took a big good-bye-baby step two weeks ago and sacked the pacy. I was bracing myself for a miserable week, but then a miracle happened... he cried for 20 minutes the first night and then, that was all. The second night he didn't cry at all. "Must have been a fluke," I told Darin as the third night I prepared for the worst, but again, he went down just fine. I apologize to anyone reading this who has had nightmare experiences taking the pacy away, I really did expect that to happen and I don't really know why it didn't, but I surely ain't complaining. He did cry for a few minutes with naps, and sometimes still does, but nothing like what I expected. I'm grateful that he still has his other oober attachment of the "geekie" (blankie) to help soothe him at night, I think that helped a lot.

And some more randomness to finish off the post.

We go to the park. A lot. Even when the slides aren't fully dry from the previous days rain and we get our bums all wet and have to drive home naked because mommy is unprepared, all the while reading Elmo Christmas books.

And sometimes we walk 20 minutes to the park just to sit on the playground stairs for half an hour playing in mulch. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's the simple things that make life great (probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned thus far from being a mom).

The End.

OOOOOOO Yeah

I went to a Relief Society activity on Tuesday night. This is what I came home to:

Do you know how happy this scene made my heart? I mean, he put his O's gear on for the big game and everything:

I should have known he would, he is Darin after all. "Go put your O's shirt on!" he shouted to me as soon as I walked in the door (he's a bit superstitious when it comes to these kinds of things). It makes me so happy that Darin has embraced Oriole's baseball so much since we started dating a few years back. Obviously the Braves are still his homeboys but I just love him even more for loving the Orioles as well.

Throughout middle school and high school my grandpa would always email me and ask, "Well, BK, is this the year? Is this the year that the O's are gonna do it?" I always responded with an optimistic, "Yes! This IS the year!" I said that for a good seven years (the seven years of my life that were dedicated to Oriole's baseball, even though it's been 17 since they last clinched their division...).

I was SO confident that the Oriole's WOULD finally have a winning season. I thought this EVERY season for so long.  Usually by the end of the season I was just hoping that they wouldn't be in last place.

 It's been really fun to see them win the past three years. Seeing them make it into the playoffs in 2012 was incredible. Seeing them clinch their division on Tuesday night for a guaranteed spot in the playoffs was a dream come true. 

Although I am absolutely loving all of this hype with the O's, it's definitely made me think a lot about how I've changed over the years. Watching them celebrate on Tuesday night, I kind of wished that I could have brought back high school Brillante. I can't imagine how much it would have meant to me to see that happen back then. High school Brillante DEFINITELY wouldn't have missed half the game to go to a RS activity, that's for sure.

I still love the Oriole's and all, but the feeling is different than it was when I lived and breathed Oriole's baseball and that was about the extent of my life. It's funny how things change you. Going to Chile changed me. BYU changed me. My mission changed me. Jobs have changed me. Friends have changed me. Becoming a wife changed me. Becoming a mother changed me. It's interesting to think about the ways that all of those things have changed me and to see the effects of that in other aspects of my life, like baseball for example. I'll always love baseball, but I'm glad that I've changed. I'm glad that I don't cry when I miss a game, or have a notebook filled with notes on every single at bat of every single player, or folders full of newspaper clippings, and I'm glad that I don't want to be mad at every person I see wearing a Yankee's hat (not that it makes me particularly happy either). And I guess that's how life should be right? We should be changing and those changes should affect the way we view other things in life.

With that said, I cannot wait to see the Oriole's play in the playoffs and have high hopes of them going all the way. Oriole's magic baby!

The Septoplasty

Did you ever think that you'd see a blog post from me with no pictures of Shae? Probably not. Today is that day. Today is exclusively about the other man in my life.

Last Friday Darin had a Septoplasty performed on him.  Basically, they went up his nose and straightened out his nasal septum which was deviated so far over that he has not been able to breathe well out of his right nostril for years.

He was excited, and nervous. 

Here he is right before they wheeled him away from me. 

As they wheeled him off the anesthesiologist said, "Now I'm just gonna get a little dose going for you," and started something up in his iv. He said that he got to the next room, moved on to the other bed and that's all he remembers. After the surgery he kept telling the anesthesiologist, "You're tricky. You know, I really wanted to do the backward countdown."

He was cracking jokes all over the place when he came out of surgery. He was also super flirty, with me and the nurses. It was fun to watch. As soon as they wheeled him in he looked at me, winked, and said "Hey sexy, how you doin'?" right in front of the nurses. Later a nurse walked in and he said, "Oh hey, don't mind me, just checking out your shoes." haha! It was pretty funny. 

Flirty, funny Darin quickly turned into in-pain, i-don't-feel-so-good Darin. And this is who they sent me home with. 

It was a rough weekend for the poor guy. They put "packing" in his nose (basically two massive curved tampons that had to stay in all weekend). Those suckers were not fun. He couldn't breathe out of his nose AT ALL. This made just about everything miserable, eating, drinking, talking, especially sleeping. I felt so bad for him. He had to sleep propped up which made things hard enough, but I can't imagine not being about to breathe through my nose at all. He said all weekend that he felt like he wanted to blow his nose and clear it up, which he obviously couldn't do. Sneezing and yawning were pretty awful too.

(We'll talk about how the boppy is the greatest invention in a different post...)

It probably felt like the longest weekend of his life, with very little "good" sleep. He got the packing taken out on Monday. He says he can already feel a difference as air flows through his right nostril. He still has a good bit of head pain and is still pretty tired from the long weekend. He also has to do this funky cleaning thing to his nose until his final follow-up appointment next week. It's pretty gross up there.

We won't know for a few days/weeks still, but we both have high hopes that the couple days of misery was worth it.