Isaac's First Day of Preschool

Isaac is not quite 3. He will be turning 3 in October. He has been begging to go to preschool since the beginning of last school year! Our wonderful preschool teacher Miss Sam encouraged me to enroll Isaac this year even though he's a little young. Isaac is quite intelligent and way more verbal than Oliver was. And he really is ready (even if his mom might not be)! So off he went to his first day of preschool. He will only be going 2 days a week this year! As excited as he has been, he was a little tiny bit nervous this morning. But he went in like a champ and had a blast! I was joking with Berto this afternoon. Isaac told me he played playdough, ring around the rosies and played with trains and had animal crackers for lunch, this is more information in one day than I got from Oliver in two years! Our boys are so different! It's so cute! Isaac had a great first day. We got to have rootbeer floats on his first day of school too! He was thrilled! And I got to go to the gym alone and take my time. That felt like a little piece of heaven! I think I'm going to like having both boys in school two days a week!

Another one bites the dust!

Oliver lost his second tooth on Saturday August 31st, 2013! We didn't even know this one was loose. And I think it was just barely loose, but Oliver was holding Isaac by the shirt, with his teeth and Isaac pulled away and the tooth ripped almost all the way out! It was barely hanging by a thread so I yanked it out the rest of the way! At first Oliver was a little freaked out.... until he realized the tooth fairy would be paying him a visit! He scored another buck! Lucky kid!

Our big KINDERGARTNER!!!!!

I still (a week into school) can't believe this time has come! My Oliver is in Kindergarten. My Oliver is in Elementary School! Where did the time go? When did he grow up? Why did it happen so fast? Sigh. It has been a hard realization for me, but he is loving every minute of it! The first day of school he was a little nervous, but came running out with the biggest smile on his face and threw his arms around me and gave me the biggest hug! It was like he was thanking me for letting him go to Kindergarten! (As if I really had a choice!) (Well technically Kindergarten is optional in Utah so I guess I did!) Every day since he has the same huge grin and I get the same big hug! I'm loving that! Oliver's favorite part of Kindergarten is recess (no surprise there)! And his second favorite thing so far is when he got to draw a picture of him and his teacher on the white board in the front of the classroom! So far I really like his teacher, Mrs. Bowman. She is very good at communicating with the parents via a weekly email, and has already asked for some volunteers in the classroom this coming Thursday. I did get a little teary on the first day of school when he walked away, but have been doing fine since then! I think it's going to be a great year! We started a few traditions, a blessing from Roberto the night before school starts and rootbeer floats after school on the first day!

Grandpa and Grandma Anna's yearly visit

My dad and Anna came to visit the week of August 19th! It was a fun filled last week before the reality of Elementary school sunk in at our house! We had a ton of fun. We swam a lot, Lianna, Hamlet, Hamlet's sister Dalliny and uncle Donnie spent some time with us. We went bowling all together. Took a drive up to Park City, swam some more, and this year we visited This is the State Heritage Park. It was exhausting and great fun all at once! We always love their visits! Thanks for everything Dad and Anna!

What Isaac did while we were in surgery

We have been so lucky to make so many wonderful, amazing friends here where we are living now! We have so much fun with all of our neighbors. We have made friends for life. Of course, when they found out what was going on with Oliver we had so many people asking if we were in need of anything. I had been planning on having Berto stay home with Isaac while I went alone with Oliver to his surgery. My friend Jesse offered to watch Isaac. It ended up being such a relief. I was a nervous wreck about Oliver so I was grateful to have Berto there with me. It was such a wonderful blessing to know that Isaac was perfectly happy, safe and in great hands! Jesse and Lincoln took Isaac to the park and to storytime at the library. They had so much fun! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Jesse for taking that stress away from me!

Oliver's Mucocele and Adenoids

Oliver has had a mucocele or cyst on his lower lip for about 5 or 6 months. We had originally decided to leave it alone, but after a couple more months it kept getting bigger and was causing him some discomfort. So we went to see an ENT to see what our options were! We decided to go ahead and schedule a date to have it removed, while we were there we discussed a few other issues. Oliver has always had sleep issues. I've tried several sleep "methods" with terrible results, nothing has worked. He's always been a snorer and with his allergies he gets chronic sinus infections. We decided it was worth getting an x-ray to see if his adenoids were an issue. The results of the x-ray were, that he had definite prominent adenoids. So, on the day that we had scheduled for the mucocele to be removed we decided we would do the adenoids as well. The procedures went well. The entire surgery took about 30 minutes. It was super fast. Oliver was pretty nervous the morning of and was definitely scared when they rolled him away. It was heartbreaking for me. After just a short time they came to get us to see him. Oliver was quite hysterical and it took a good long time to calm him down. But he did calm down. The only "complication" he's had is that he chewed out the stitches on his lower lip. The doctor said the lip should heal fin on it's own and we determined he was probably likely to chew the stitches out again so we left it unstitched. There hasn't been any bleeding or anything. As far as the adenoids go, the doctor said after surgery that they were quite large. Oliver hasn't been snoring as loud, but I'm sure it will get better as any inflammation goes down. He hasn't been in any pain at all. It's been great. I was so worried. The only issue we are having is trying to keep Oliver from running, jumping or being a maniac (which he is). For 10 days we have to keep him from doing any of those things, to keep the clot from coming out where the adenoids were. So we are trying to be creative, but so glad we are on the road to hopefully getting Oliver more sleep and an all around better quality of life.

Waiting to see the ENT! There's the cyst!

Waiting for surgery to start!

In the recovery lounge!

Resting at home!

Happy 25th Aunt Lianna

A couple weeks ago, Lianna and Hamlet called to say they were going to be stopping by for a little visit the following day! They were in Salt Lake for a couple of weddings. We of course always love it when Aunt Lianna and Uncle Hamlet stop by! The boys and I decided it would be a great opportunity to do a spur of the moment birthday celebration for Lianna! We knew we wouldn't be seeing them before her birthday on August 10th, so we whipped up some gluten free brownies and stuck a couple candles on them! She was surprised! It was a fun little visit! Thanks for stopping by Lianna and Hamlet! And Happy Birthday tomorrow Lianna! We love you!! xoxo

Pioneer Day

Every year on the 24th of July we celebrate (here in Utah and LDS people around the World) Pioneer Day. Pioneer Day is when remember the Mormon Pioneers that crossed the United States and settled right here in good old Utah! In Utah there is a parade every year on the 24th of July. This year our ward was in charge of the float for our stake. Oliver and Berto were able to go and help paint the primer on the float! Apparently, each ward has the opportunity to do this once every 40 years. That made this a once in a lifetime opportunity!

We went to the Expo Center in Sandy, UT to check out the finished floats on July 23rd! Oliver loved seeing all of the floats, but especially HIS float! We also, on a whim decided to hop on the train and ride into Salt lake to watch the parade. We had a blast. We found a spot right at the start of the parade where the floats were lining up! It was great because there wasn't any crowd! It was so much fun! I'm really glad Berto talked me into it! Here is a pic of Oliver in front of HIS float! I love the set up of this shot with the Salt Lake Temple in the background!

Room Redo

I've been wanting to make new comforters for the boys for a long time! I finally got motivated (ha) and let them pick out their own fabric! Oliver picked batman and Isaac picked Spiderman! While I was at it, I decided their decor needed updating too! We'd had the same lame Cars pictures up since Oliver was 2 and they had moved with us at least 4 times! So new pictures to match the blankets were in order! After a little fiasco with Oliver's blanket where I didn't buy enough fabric (hazard of bringing to naughty kids to the fabric store), I love how everything turned out! The boys love their new stuff too! :)

The art of Bribery!

When our babies are babies, we practice co-sleeping. For me, I feel like I get the most sleep if I'm not having to fully wake up, get baby, feed baby, put baby back in crib/bassinet and then try to fall back asleep, rather than just rolling over, feeding baby and going back to sleep! This works for us. I know some people will talk you to death about all of the negatives. Honestly, until I had Oliver I probably would've too but he was such a fussy baby it was literally the only way we could go. And it worked so we stuck with it. Having said that, my nearly 3 year old is still sleeping in my bed. It really doesn't make a difference most of the time because Berto works graveyard and isn't home to sleep in our bed most nights anyway! But, Isaac is getting older and I feel like I need to get him out of my bed. So we are implementing the ever popular sticker chart! Isaac will get a sticker for each night he sleeps all night in his own bed and in turn will get a scooter of his very own. I am a firm believer in situations like this you have to make the bribe worth it or the whole plan will backfire. Potty training was a breeze and I know it was probably partially because he was ready and mostly because we picked the right prize! So we begin the attempt to get him in his own bed, in his room!
Now, I realized when I came up with the right prize, that I was going to have a jealous 5 year old on my hands, and there are some things I've been wanting to work with Oliver on. Mainly, channeling his anger/frustration and using his words more effectively rather than punching his little brother. So Oliver has a chart too. He has to go through the entire day without hitting Isaac when he's mad. He has to learn to use his words to express what he is feeling. If he goes through the entire day, he gets a sticker before bed each night. Oliver will also be rewarded with a scooter!
So there you have it. The art of bribery. Ok, really I'm not bribing them. I'm richly rewarding them for working on some things that need to be worked on! Wish us luck!

Little things I don't want to forget

The boys are growing up so fast! There are some things (especially with Isaac since he's younger) that they say, that I don't want to forget! Isaac:

Olvo = Oliver, he now says Ol-i-ver
Yog Yog = Yogurt
The eyebrow nod. When Isaac nods he barely moves his head, but raises his eyebrows up and down. It is so darn adorable!

On August 9, 2013- As I was putting Isaac to sleep, he lifted up his shirt and was looking at his sunken chest. He said "mom, my tummy is broken!" It was so cute, but I hope he doesn't ever feel self conscious about his little chest cavity!

Oliver:
Drinky

For some reason Oliver started saying "I'm drinky" when he's thirsty. It's so random! We correct him, but secretly love it! He's starting to use it less and less...

Oliver has a sweet, sweet heart. (As I'm typing this my boys are climbing over me fighting and calling each other poops... ) Seriously though, we have some friends that are moving to Alaska in a couple months. The dad left yesterday to start work up there and will be gone until the move! We saw them this morning and Oliver asked if Lincoln (their little 22ish month old) was going to be sad because his dad was gone. I said he might be a little and suggested he be extra nice to little Lincoln. Then Oliver said "maybe my dad can be his dad for a while?!" This is a huge gesture of love. Oliver cries nightly at bedtime because he misses his dad while he's working at night. I explained it didn't really work like that, but that I thought that was the nicest thing he could've ever said!

Soccer Trophy

Oliver LOVED playing spring soccer! We took summer off in order to get in swimming lessons and things! I can't remember why (one or some of us were probably sick) but we missed his last soccer game in the spring. Life went on and I forgot that we had pictures and a trophy around somewhere! Oliver's coach called last week to see if I wanted to come pick them up! So we did and Oliver couldn't be more proud of his trophy! Love that cute boy!

Superhero Party

Each summer Miss Sam does little workshop/summer camp type classes throughout the summer. I'm not one for signing my kids up because I enjoy the freedom of not HAVING someplace to be each day. Last summer I did send Oliver to the Superhero party and decided this would be an excellent opportunity to ease Isaac into preschool. He is SO READY and looking forward to spending a couple mornings a week with the best preschool teacher ever, but I thought having one day where his cool big brother was also there would do him good! So on Friday off they went to have an awesome superhero adventure. I don't know what they did aside from eating cupcakes and playing a spiderman silly string game... but I do know that Batman and The Flash had an awesome time! So glad to know that my house is protected by two members of The Justice League!

Potty Training a Necessary Evil

Well, it's Isaac's turn for the dreaded potty training! He's been showing signs of readiness for quite a while, this just happened to be the first week where we could lay low and not have to go out of the house too much!  We have had his bribe toy for a few weeks and are stocked up on apple juice and potty treats!
Day one was suprisingly awesome! We didn't have any accidents AT ALL! He willingly sat on the toilet each time we prompted. And although most of those times he didn't go, when he needed to go he told us, ran to the bathroom and took care of business without help!
Day two was a bit of a nightmare, with 4 accidents and 4 successes... I found myself really hoping it would all sink in by day 3!
Days 3 and 4 were perfect! Isaac even went to a superhero party at preschool for two hours on day 4 and stayed dry, and mom wasn't there to remind him!

I think it's safe to say say Isaac is potty trained! Sianara diapers!

I am a huge fan of the sticker reward chart! If you come up with the right prize it makes it all worth while! Isaac was desperate for this ship from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. I sweetened the deal (for my own sanity, hoping to avoid some fighting) by adding a captain hook boat and a couple extra figurines!

Ah, sweet success!