Wednesday, November 25, 2015

When Grandma Comes to Town

We are all just loving having Grandma Sharon here with us for the week. Especially Shae. He is loooooving life. 

Shae and Darin went to the airport around 9 p.m. on Saturday night to pick Grandma up. Her flight was scheduled to come in at 9:30. However, she was delayed a little over an hour because of ice in Detroit. Even though the airport is literally right across the street from us, Darin and Shae stayed and waited until 10:45 p.m. for her flight to arrive. Darin said that he just couldn't take Shae away because he was having so much fun running around the empty airport.


Apparently he could not get enough of the pay phone and the business cards.

 Waiting patiently.
 She finally arrived! Along with Llama Llama!


They've been doing lots of reading...
 ...working on patterns...
 ...playing Go Fish...

...morning dance session. Shae was less than impressed with this activity. I, however, thoroughly enjoyed observing...


They've also been cooking and coloring and sleeping and walking around outside. I'm trying so hard not to think about it, but it is going to be a hard goodbye when she leaves :(.

But let's just enjoy Thanksgiving before we start thinking about that.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 20, 2015

33 Months

While baby updates are very focused on reaching milestones, toddler updates are straight up things that I want to remember about this stage of life.



Things to remember about Shae in the now:

~His made up language. He will just randomly start speaking in a foreign tongue while he is playing. But mostly, it's names of things. For example: 

One day while cooking he said, "I the chef, you the boageya." Later I asked, "What do we need to put in next?" He said, "the laleelo" or "the tikita." He named our pumpkins something like, Cheen Cheen, Chinto, and Shika."


~How he will randomly stop, put his hands out, look at his fingers and shout, "Ahk! Raisin Fingers!"

~How he says "faster" when he really means "louder." Every. Single. Time. In the car: Mom. Make the music faster! No faster! Or: Mom, I need the TV show faster. 

~He loves sending and getting mail. Everyday he asks for paper and an envelope to send something to someone. Sometimes I write this on the envelope because it's just expensive to send things as often as he wants:



But he does love writing his grandmas and aunts and uncles and asks to check the mailbox often to see if he got anything from them.

~How he has started using time words, but clearly doesn't know what they mean. Every time we leave the house, he gets to the bottom stairs and says, "Last night, I fall here." Or he'll say, "Yesterday I superhero! I go trick-or-treat!" I just love how he randomly throws a time word in.

~Along with that, I love how he has started to say maybe, actually, and sure. Sure has pretty much replaced yes. I asked, "Shae did you nap with daddy?" He answered, "Sure mom, I do nap with daddy." I asked, "Do you want to come eat your eggs?" He said, "Maybe, I don't eat eggs." I just love seeing the wheels turn in his head as he figures out this whole English language business. At the park the other day we were swinging. There was a little boy by us. I said, "I will be careful not to kick you while I swing." Shae also chimed in and said, "I don't kick you...either." I know it is such a small thing but I could just seem him searching for that word and then saying it. He would have normally said, "I don't kick you too." But he didn't! He said either! It was just a cool moment that I always want to remember.

~After this post, I really did think that napping had come to an end. I just can't give it up... poor Shae, the things I put him through, but he just oh so needs a nap most days. (Or is it more that I need him to take a nap most days...it's definitely both). We started laying down with him in our bed for his nap time and it worked really well for a few weeks. He's gotten a bit more difficult about it and it takes longer these days (because of his constant weird requests of putting the blankets on him in a certain way, then on me in certain way, then jumping out of bed and back in a few times...) but it still usually works if we are persistent enough. I've had quite a few precious moments with him after he finally falls asleep and I just lay there watching him sleep. Kids are just oober precious when they are sleeping, am i right?

And don't you love this itty bitty space that I was granted to sleep in. He tends to push himself right up against me before he crashes.

~I know I say this in every Shae post, but how can I not. He is obsessed with building houses. He builds at least one a day, not always in the same places throughout the house. Most days on the living room floor or the couch, but other days he decides to "build" it in his sister's crib, or his bed, or my bed.

A "house" that was made on the couch.


A "house" made in Belen's bed.


One made in our bed.


A mobile home that followed Belen arond the living room.

~How leaving the house is the worst thing in the world. (Maybe I do want to forget this one...) How I put his shoes on him and he immediately takes them off and runs away. How he bends his knees and won't stand up for me to take his pants off to help him go potty before we leave. How all of a sudden his toys are the bees knees and he wants to play with every single one of them instead of go anywhere.

~EVERYTHING is either a ball or a bat. A balloon, an acorn, a rock...they pair nicely with a bowling pin, a stick, or a spoon. He is pretty obsessed with baseball, which we kind of love. He walks around "singing" the Tomahawk Chop chant that the fans sing at Braves games. If he's not singing that he's running around saying, "Let's go BYU!" 

~I've been so nervous to introduce paint to him. It just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, so I figured it could wait a long time. But then when I was painting my box, bathtub to be, I let him paint on some of the scraps of cardboard and he just thought it was the coolest thing ever. So, now he paints. I think he enjoys watching the water change colors more than the actual painting part, whatever floats your boat. His paint is all mixed and messy (another reason I was hesitant to let him paint, even though I knew that would happen, it still hurts to watch). We're going through paper and paint like crazy, but he just loves it.



~His drawings are slightly more than just scribbles all over a paper. He has started to draw faces and one day he drew this little stick figure. What!?  It's these little things that make a mamas heart grow.

~He has discovered his nostrils and is constantly touching the tip of them.

~He uses him/her instead of he/she. "Her coming too?" Oh man, this is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I knew this would happen, but you just can't prepare yourself for something like this. 

Things he has said recently:

~He came out of his room (fake) crying, "Mom, I hurt my eyebrows."

~While I was tucking him in one night, "I want the soft side, not the grouchy side." (scratchy side--one side of the blanket is softer than the other).

~While watching the I am a Child of God video on Youtube I say, "Shae, sing along." He says, "But mom, I AM singing. My body is singing." Then he starts to sway back and forth and pat his belly, "It IS singing."

One day during nap time when he wouldn't nap...I was working on the computer. When he would come over to me I would ask, "Shae are you ready to nap now?" One time he answered, "No, mom. I no nap. I a working man."

This boy.



We can't get enough.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Lately: Part II

About a month ago I wrote this post with random pictures and things going on. I had planned to immediately do a part two post with other pictures I had. That never happened, so some of these pictures aren't necessarily "lately," rather, "in the past few months." Potato, Po-tah-to.

Something that IS going on lately is this girl up on her feet. About the second after I posted her 8 month post about how she was always up on her knees, she decided that her knees were no longer doing it for her. She loves being up on her feet. Which meant, it was time to lower the crib.



Last month was all this:

This month is all this:

Not necessarily making faces with her brother in the window, rather standing up. She can reach quite a bit more now and is in to everything. How did she get so big so fast?

 Shae was playing with his buddy Eppie one evening. I peeked in and saw them kneeling by the bed saying a prayer together, then they jumped in bed and pretended to be asleep. It was pretty precious.

This is a good representation of Shae's life. One minute he is breaking down about putting his underwear on...

The next he is happy and goofy, posing like the boss he is.

Conference selfie with our boy. He thinks we are SO cool.

October was full of lots of baseball. 

Shae found my jewelry box one day and loved it. Lately we also get ready for the day together. He sticks his fingers in my contact solution and pretends to put contacts in his eyes, puts foundation and powder on (a little little little bit), lotions his face, and I pretend to put mascara on him using the tube. He loves it. 

Firefighter story time. Rocking the backwards fire hat.


Shae has occasionally started to nap again (thank heavens!), but if he doesn't nap and we go anywhere after 4 p.m., this is bound to happen.

Sequence date night turned into seeing who could toss the most chips onto the other person's hand. 

We have a path right behind our apartment complex that goes through the woods. We enjoy walking through there while sweeping leaves, fighting dragons, and putting out fires. Amazing what you can do with a stick.

Just this past Thursday, our full-length mirror fell off of our door. B was loving it, until it fell over and broke.

Not much actually fell out but this one did some damage:

I somehow managed to walk right in to it and it made it's way right into the bottom of my right foot. It bled quite a bit, all the while the kids were crawling/running around. My friend Jenessa came over and saved us and took care of us so that I could clean off.  It did stop bleeding after I put pressure on it for awhile but has been somewhat swollen and bruised ever since. Darin has been super daddy/husband since it happened. He stayed home on Friday and let me sit on the couch with my foot up while he cooked, cleaned, took care of potty trips, naps, messes, etc. He did the same today. He's a rock star.

That's what's been going lately.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Mama Visit

Smiles for grandma. 

My mom came up for a few days in the middle of October. She was kind enough to make the boys superhero capes (because I'm still pretty clueless when it comes to sewing...we all have our weaknesses...). We mostly just hung out at home trying to convince Shae to actually wear the cape (he wasn't really feeling it until our church Halloween party). We did get out to the farm one day. We still needed to find Darin a pumpkin to carve and I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to get more apples.


I love Grisamore Farm. There prices are awesome, and it is just such a cute little farm. They had a free corn maze that we stepped into for a couple minutes.








We went down to the apple trees where my mom picked some apples. I had planned on picking some too but all the Galas had already been picked so I just grabbed a bag from inside the store instead. Gotta stay loyal to the Galas. 

And while I'm at it, I may as well finish up the October pictures and post our pumpkin carving pictures.



Belén was so entertained just sitting and watching us.




October was such a great month.