Hello Again

I feel like I have not posted in a very long time. It's actually only been a couple of weeks; but at the rate I was going the last couple of months, I guess that is a long time between posts. We've just been doing so much lately that I fell behind and then the thought of catching up on everything that has been going on seemed so overwhelming. So, I started avoiding my blog. But I'm back now... only I decided rather than write about everything we've been doing, I'd rather write more about nothing. I'd prefer just to say that everything has been going great!

I think that we are over a huge hump with Owen. The "terrible twos" for Owen were more like the terrible 2.6-3.25. But we have really been working on modifying some of his not so desirable behaviors and it has helped a lot! And I really recommend the book Childwise. Its principles are based on teaching the morality behind behaving so that the child has the tools to think out why they should behave certain ways. Some of the suggestions I thought would be really hard to implement were actually really easy. I would sit down and explain to Owen what was going to change, for instance that I was going to start choosing what he ate for breakfast and if he had a choice about it I would ask him. And it worked! Breakfast is no longer a battle! This one was really easy. Some changes took a little longer, but almost every difficulty has improved. He now actually listens to what I ask of him (most of the time) and is getting better at communicating what he wants and how he feels (i.e. less tantrums). Another tip that has really helped was getting him to say "Yes, Mommy" when I call his name or tell him he needs to do something. At first I thought this sounded pretty Mommy Dearest and maybe a little creepy, but it has really helped to get him to listen and to acknowledge that he heard. We started it out as a game, and he loved it. He asks to "practice saying yes" all the time! When we introduced this "game" we also told him that whenever he said one of our names that we would also answer with a "Yes, Owen" to show the same respect to him. It has helped him to be able to tell us more of what he wants and how he feels. He also is getting used to then not always getting what he wants. This has been a harder lesson, but is definitely getting better. Even Colin's Mom, who of course thought Owen was perfect even in the middle of a world-class tantrum, commented that Owen must have been abducted by aliens because she didn't recognize him the last time she was here. This remark was also brought on by the fact that Owen now eats vegetables!!! It's crazy; it's like every thing fell into place all at once. So it's kind of a case of the chicken and the egg... who really knows which came first. But his improved behavior, better diet, and becoming "regular" (the bathroom kind) all have definitely been reinforcing the rest of these key changes and we are much happier for it!!! One thing we are still working on is being nice to the kids that he is around the most. He is the sweetest boy in the world to kids in his class and strangers at the park. I can't tell you how many times I've seen him spontaneously hand over a train to a child at the bookstore with a smiley "Here you go. You can play with this one." Yet, he is sometimes so mean to cousin Kierstyn and 2nd cousin Brandon. So, these are the next battles we are going to conquer.

Anyway, we've been keeping busy with trips to the park, visits to the Easter Bunny, and visiting friends. I also fit a job interview in there, but haven't heard anything back. :( Last night we got to go meet Ryan and Jill's new baby girl Erin Ashley Clark who was born on the 11th. She is adorable! So happy we got to go see. Jill looks like she is doing great and Brandon is really excited for his baby sister. Although, Jill says that he did already ask if she could go back in mommy's tummy. I guess that probably sums up how every big brother or sister feels at first. But, he will get used to the new wonderful person in their family.

So, I haven't talked at all about Sutton. I figured I would wait until his 6 month half-birthday next week and do an all Sutton post. But, I will leave you with a few pictures of the adorable little guy (who is unofficially sitting up)!!!

Can you see Owen hiding behind him? He's getting ready for a "peek a boo".

"Give me some food crazy woman!!"

The end.

I figured some of you have not seen the back of this crazy head. He has a permanent mini mohawk and this picture does not even do justice to the perfectly defined white, hairless stripe on the back of his head and the red tail right below it!

SHE is a grandma?

I think my mom is way too energetic (not to mention skinny) for the Grandma title. But she takes it on with pride.

The greatest park EVER

We went to Enchanted Island today, which is an amusement park for young kids by downtown Phoenix. It was so much fun! Mom and Dad- after all the money you've shelled out to take these kids to Disneyland, I almost hate to let you know that as we were leaving (after spending $30 for the six of us) Owen said "That was just like Disneyland." But for them, it really was. I think the pictures tell it all...

This was our favorite!

I LOVE this picture of Kierstyn!

Owen and Batman riding the train

This is how Sutton spent most the day.

This huge smile is how Sutton looks most of the time. This one was inspired by the train ride.

I Just Can't Pick a Favorite

I owe these

Some pictures that have fallen into the "I will post later" category from the last few weeks

My Birthday party pics:

Cake Decorating

Sutton with Colin's Grandma

Owen at the park

A Day in the Life

Woke up, got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, And looking up I noticed I was late....

Sorry, when I wrote the title of this post I of course thought of this song. And, of course, this is not how my day started because I have not yet combed my hair and when you have no life you're never late for anything!

But I have already made a trip to Africa (Acticra if you want to talk like Owen) to go on a safari and eat bubble gum ice cream. So, it has been a pretty exciting day after all. It went a little something like this...

6am- Both kids woke up early after an agonizing night of continuously waking up with Sutton (combination of new teeth, a cold and sore throat, and forgetting his baby pillow in Tucson)

6:02-7:00- I have to admit that I was a grumpy bear this morning and spent most of the first hour nagging at Colin. Mostly for "always" leaving the syrup out and "never" doing the dishes (two words I know I shouldn't use)... to which he replied that he only uses syrup once a month. I muttered something about how he must then just get it out to torment me. (don't I sound pleasant). Owen and Colin took a shower and ate breakfast while I fed and played with Sutton. Colin left for work at 7.

7:00- Made coffee. Poured coffee. Had to reheat coffee numerous times before I had the time to actually drink it while it was still hot. Also played with the boys, did dishes, and sang songs with Owen for Sutton. Owen ate a grapefruit, which he for some reason kept accidently calling a lemon, which made us both laugh.

8:00- Owen decided he wanted to go for a trip. So, we packed our bags (which ended up being filled with only play food) and left on an airplane/laundry basket for Africa. While in Africa we ate all the food we brought along, went on a jeep ride and saw lots of animals, and ran into baby Sutton. Owen said his favorite part of the trip was eating bubble gum ice cream (how has he ever heard of such a thing???). We then "flew" home and put all the food back in Owen's kitchen. Lately, in order to get Owen to help clean up we play riddly, riddly, ree and he has to pick up whatever it is that I see after he guesses it. This takes way longer than if he would just clean up, but at least we have fun, kind of learn, and get his room sort of picked up. :)
(Don't worry... Sutton wasn't just being ignored during this whole time)

8:45- Sutton went down for his morning nap. He was VERY tired from waking up too early, but I didn't want to get him too far off schedule, so I kep him up until as close to the normal 9:00 as possible. I then caved into Owen's plea to watch one of his shows. I think it was Clifford. Then we "had" to watch Curious George. OK, Owen. By this time I was already exhausted and used this time to peacefully check emails. The person who I interviewed with wants to know if I am available to relocate to Florida. Am I? I don't even know.

10:00- Owen and I take turns "sneaking up" on eachother to do dinosaur tickles. This is his favorite thing to do right now. This then turns into a game of hide-and-seek.

10:45- Yeah! Sutton took a really long morning nap and wakes up happy! I feed him while Owen colors on his doodle pro.

11:15- We go to McDonalds (Hey you, stop judging me!!!) and bring chicken nuggets and a cheeseburger to the park to have a picnic. Thanks to the new $1 4 pack, you can now get 8 nuggets for less than 6. This puzzles me. While we were at the park Owen plays with a 4 year old and a 5 year old boy (Owen was by far the biggest). They play hide and seek. Side note: this 5 year old was hilarious! He was so bossy, but Owen totally didn't mind. He told me that he just turned "the big 5", that his sister is 20 and "she's getting really old", and that his mom is "oh wait, let me go ask her...... she says she's 46. That's REALLY old." After playing hide-and-seek, they pretend to be firemen. Pretty cute stuff. Sutton seemed to really enjoy the fresh air and watching the kids play. He also enjoyed spitting up all over himself, my pants, and my camera.

12:45- We came home, read a story, and now.... wait for it.... I think I actually have two sleeping children! I'm not sure, Owen's pretty good at faking it, but I haven't heard a peep and it's now 1:30!

So, I know that I haven't posted pictures for a while. But I've been feeling pretty lazy. Not that it's hard to just plug the camera into the computer. We'll see if I'm up for it later. Maybe I'll edit them into this post. And, i guess "A Day in the Life" isn't really accurate since I only described a morning. But it seems like it's been at least a week since I woke up this morning. My mom is coming tonight and she's a pretty big sucker for her grandkids, so maybe I'll get some sleep tonight. Here's hoping!

Thank You Prunes!!!!

Warning: this post falls under the category of "Way too much information"
Some of you may already know (only because I complain to anyone who will listen) that Owen has had a HUGE problem with pooping for a really long time. We're talking once a week! How he held it this long... I don't know. Basically it started to hurt him to go, which caused him to hold it in as long as possible, which of course then continued the cycle. And when he would finally go the sheer size and density of his poop would clog the toilet. EVERY TIME! I expressed concern to his doctor many times; he would just tell me that it was normal and that I should have him sit on the toilet more often. Aagghhhhh! Didn't he know that I already had to physically force him onto the toilet and hold him there and it wasn't helping?
So, I printed out some more of our old potty charts, this time with specific ones for #1 and #2. Five #1 stickers and he gets to paint, 5 #2 stickers and he gets to go to Blockbuster. And I started bribing him onto the toilet with lollipops (all this bribery can't be good parenting, but I didn't know what else to do!). Well, a week and 7 lollipops later, the #2 chart was still empty. We've been giving him prune juice for months, which hasn't helped at all. Finally I bought actual prunes.... and SUCCESS!!! He loves them and eats 4-5 a day. It worked immediately. This was almost 12 days ago and he's gone 5 times. Which for him is a miracle. Yesterday we went and rented Land Before Time.
If you haven't noticed the tone of my recent posts... let me tell you that this has elevated the mood of our entire household! Before this miracle, days 3-6 of Owen not pooping would be unbearable and Owen would spend half of them crying (this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is how I remember it) and now sitting on the toilet is no big deal and we are all so much happier for it!
I have no idea why I felt the need to share all this, but I think some day maybe I'll want to remember that dealing with poop consumed at least a third of my daily life for a little while.

An absolutely wonderful, positively perfect, especially terrific day

When I made my Valentine's post I didn't have time to go into detail about how absolutely wonderful, positively perfect, especially terrific our day was (fyi: that description is from one of our favorite bedtime stories, Owen). So, I feel the need to describe it now. We all woke up in great moods and I made breakfast for me and Owen (Colin leaves for work too early and the poor guy never gets a hot breakfast). I had volunteered to stay at Owen's preschool to help with the Valentines Day party; so Sutton and I were there for the whole class from 9-11:30. I got to watch Owen interact with all the other kids, see him be more independent than he ever is at home, and help out with various art activities. Playing outside with the kids was my favorite. Their teacher is great at getting the kids to listen and participate in learning activities, but is anything but playful; so, I think all the kids were really surprised and excited to have a few moms there that actually played with them on the playground and encouraged them to run around like a bunch of crazy kids. Owen's favorite part, of course, was getting Valentines and candy from all the other kids. They had made huge pink and red envelopes to put all their valentines in, and Owen was really proud of his.
Some friends were supposed to come over after school to make cupcakes with us, but we got the bad news on the way home that they were sick. We were sad they couldn't make it, but mostly just felt bad for Jami who was home with 3 sick kids. I can't even imagine. Owen was bummed to not get to see his friends. But, as you saw in the pictures, was still pretty excited to make cupcakes. We baked them and then let them cool while we had quiet time. For the record, since I changed nap time's title to "quiet time" and started telling Owen he just has to rest, he has taken way more naps than during the last two months. Anyway, we decorated them with pink frosting and heart sprinkles. I ruined the cake we baked by taking it out of the pan too early. So I decided to act like I did it on purpose and I cut the cake into various sized hearts and wrote a message for Colin. I thought this was very creative of me. We sent some cupcakes to the sick Richardsons and saved some for Owen to decorate with his friend Alana. Now that the weather is nicer, Owen and I usually play outside during Sutton's late afternoon nap. Lately I get ditched to play with the neighbor girls. This is so cute!!! There are a couple of girls who are about 5 years old and when they play together, it's basically just Owen copying everything they do. We made meatball subs for dinner and Kylie, Zack, Alana, and Grayson came over. It's always fun to get together with them and share/vent about the miracle/headache that comes with parenthood.
Thursday and Friday were both really fun because Owen, Sutton, and I just really enjoyed being together. Not that I don't always enjoy being with them; but I think Owen particularly appreciated having me around on these days. Which felt nice.
Colin took off early on Friday so that we could go to Tucson and celebrate my birthday. His parents watched the kids (thank you, thank you, thank you) and we got to go out for sushi. We both really like sushi and rarely get to eat it. It was such a delicious treat. We went out for a drink afterward and on our late night out were home by 9:30. We were just too exhausted, but we gave it the old college try. Saturday the Heiseys had a little birthday party for me (another thank you), which was a lot of fun and full of more yummy food. Owen got to help decorate the cake that Colin's grandma made. I would post pictures, but I think I left my camera in Tucson. I would know for sure, but I've been too lazy to unpack.

Happy Valentines

I hope everyone's Valentines Day was full of lots of love. Or, at the very least, lots of chocolate. I was one of the lucky ones who got to enjoy both.

Blogger's Note

Note: Although the list in my last post was enumerated, the entries in the list were in no particular order. Colin sent Owen out to me the other night to tell me that "Daddy was sad because he didn't make the top 5 on the happy list." I of course know that Colin is the #1 reason for my happiness! And I make this note so that he won't be such a baby about it! :)