Summer Boys

I have a slew of pictures from the last month or so that haven't made their appearance on the blog yet. Here we go...

We went to a splash pad with my sister and her kids.

I never want Eli to lose his baby fat.

Caroline and Spencer decided the water was too cold and focused their attention on Carson. Carson enjoyed the entertainment.

Let me start this sentence by knocking on wood, but Eli has been the best non-hitting brother all month! He has been so sweet to Carson lately. He loves to talk to him and tickle him and help me change his diapers. It's been a refreshing change.

This week I found out Carson hates blenders. I turned one on with him in the same room and it took him about ten minutes to recover. Poor baby.

Here's another poor baby -- Eli fell out of his bed last week. I went in to comfort him and found blood spewing from his mouth. Well, not quite spewing but there was a lot of blood. Somehow he sliced his lip open during his 12 inch fall to the floor. Still not sure how that happened.

Carson got a new outfit because he's growing way too fast.

My mom kept telling me I needed to get Eli a toy lawn mower. He LOVES lawn mowers. I never did get Eli a lawn mower, but we did get him those golf clubs for his birthday which he thinks is a lawn mower. Awesome.

Let's just say I get a nice, quiet evening once a week while Eli's out mowing the lawn with Jeff.

These pictures warm my heart. It's everything I love about Eli.

As far as potty training goes -- we haven't had an accident in a week! Would you believe me if I said potty training has been an absolute breeze? Would you believe me if I told you the last two Sundays he's used the big potties at church and then sprinted back to Nursery because he loves Nursery so much? Sometimes two-year olds aren't so terrible after all.

 We told him once he was potty trained we'd get him his first cell phone.

He doesn't mind that his first phone will be my old, broken phone. If you ask him, it can still get a hold of Grandma.

I'll finish with an Eli story:

We've started going on "neighborhood walks" in the evening right before bedtime. This evening Jeff said, "Sarah, do you want to go on a W-A-L-K tonight?"

Eli then screamed, "Yeah! Neighborhood walk!!"

Now, the context clues may have led him to his assumption, but I'm choosing to believe my son can already spell. Either way, he's too smart for his own good and he sure keeps us on our toes.

Binky Intervention

If Eli ends up getting diagnosed with OCD later in life, I will immediately erase this video as it would be undeniable evidence that I caused his germ phobia.

Until then, I gotta do what I gotta do to get that kid to stop stealing his brother's binkies!

Curtain Call

Jeff wanted me to make darker curtains for the boys' rooms since their rooms get so hot in the evenings. I'll take any excuse to dust off the old sewing machine so I was up for the challenge!

I saw an idea on Pinterest to make curtains out of $5.00 twin flat sheets from Wal-Mart. Um. Yeah. That sounded like a super idea. Even better -- I happened to find a striped pattern that was very similar to the fabric I used for the chair in Carson's room. I love the way Carson's curtains turned out even if they give his room a red glow in the evenings.

Carson likes them, too.

For the past month I've been working on ruffle curtains for the guest room. Again, these are made out of flat sheets.

I may just be a slow seamstress, but these babies took me about 20 hours to finish. Glad that project's done!

Potty Training Part II

Eli's enthusiasm after we said, "Eli, do you wanna potty train this weekend?" made us wonder if perhaps he thought we were asking him if he wanted a locomotive with potties on it.

As he soon learned, that was not the case.

When Eli woke up yesterday morning I exclaimed that a special potty surprise had come for him the night before. He was amped. It took zero convincing to get him to hop into his new undies. He loved them right away. It also took him zero convincing to drink a cup full of juice first thing in the morning.

As Eli was checking out his new potty, he noticed the jar of Skittles in the bathroom and started begging. "Eli. You can have some candy if you use your potty."

Eli ripped his underwear off and went a teensy tiny bit in his potty. He proudly stood up and shouted, "Now get candy!!"

I glared at Eli for a minute because he's acted so clueless about how to have any control over his bladder. Now with candy into the mix he's suddenly a pro? Eli's first-thing-in-the-morning success made me confident my boy is ready to ditch the diapers.

Our first huge accident quickly came after our first success. Luckily it was all over the kitchen floor and luckily Eli did not like the feeling of getting wet.

Five accidents later he realized the cause and effect of wetting his underwear and he started to hold all that digested Gatorade in. Right before nap time as I was feeling very discouraged with only two minor successes and five accidents, Eli started saying, "Ouch. Ouch. Ouch."

I couldn't figure out what was hurting him. "Eli? What's wrong bud?"
He continued his "Ouching" while slowly inching towards the bathroom.
*Gasp* "Eli! I think what you're feeling is that you need to use the potty. Let's go sit on the potty."

After reading three books on the potty, Eli finally mustered up the courage to go for the first real time all day. We were both really proud.

Post nap he had two tiny accidents and three successes. He might just be getting the hang of this!

I was so excited for the funny blog posts I was sure would come from potty training but it's actually gone much smoother than I ever expected. I've been following the advice from this blog on how to potty train a 2-year old and it's worked really well for Eli.

Onto day two. I think we can. I think we can. I think we can.

Three Months Old

Carson is three months old! Here's what he's up to:

• Rolled back to front while he was swaddled several times one night. Now we have him sleep with an arm out and he doesn't roll anymore.
• He giggles when we tickle him.
• He coos when we talk to him and when he's falling asleep.
• He still eats about every two hours.
• He got sick this month and ever since he's been sick it takes him forever to fall asleep at night and he is back to only sleeping about five hours in a row at night.
• Loves to suck on his hands.
• Sticks his tongue out when we stick our tongue out at him.
• Started to be interested in toys hanging in front of him on his bouncer.
• Loves taking baths.
• Always fussy in the evenings between 5ish-8ish.
• Good in the car and in the stroller.
• He still isn't super awesome at sucking a binky but we're forcing the binky upon him.
• Finally getting the hang of eating from a bottle every now and then.
• Has good head control.
• Loves to sit up or stand on our laps.
• He's generally very happy and content while he's awake.

We love Carson! It's fun to see him grow and learn new things.

Parenting Fail

Nothing makes you feel like you're an incompetent mother quite like all those blogs out there from moms who provide three trillion learning activities for their kids every day starting from the moment they're born. "This activity really enhances their fine motor skills," they say. "Newborns are really receptive to body massages which promote bonding," they advise. "Your toddler can easily learn all 50 states," they claim.

Then I glance from my computer to my toddler running around the house in just a diaper with his hands flailing above his head as he's making motorcycle noises. That's when the feelings of incompetence really set in.

The blogs convinced me that I needed to work on Eli's fine motor skills. All he does is jump and play! I told myself. He's so behind! He can't even pick up a lima bean with tweezers. How will he ever do well in school?!?

I raced off to Wal-Mart to buy some craft balls in an effort to help Eli learn how to maneuver small objects. When I got home I dumped them out in front of him along with a muffin tin and had him put the balls into the muffin slots.

He quickly lost interest in the muffin tin -- furthering my suspicion that he, in fact, has no fine motor skills. Oh no! He'll never be the brain surgeon we hoped he would be! If he doesn't even care about putting craft balls into a muffin tin, how will he have the discipline to learn how to scalpel?!? 

As Eli became interested in sorting the craft balls by color and mumbling about which ones were smaller and which ones were bigger, I snuck off to put Carson down for a nap.

That's when disaster struck. I came back down to find Eli in all his gross motor glory.

The damage was already done, so I let Eli continue to throw the "fluffies" in the air while he screamed in bliss. This will be a good lesson on helping clean up a mess, I assured myself, proud to have turned a mess into a learning opportunity.

As Eli shifted his attention from the fluffies onto a new activity, this unsuccessful moment in my parenting repertoire happened:

Me: "Okay Eli. It looks like you're all done playing with the fluffies. Will you come help me put them back in the bag please?"
Eli: "No."
Me: "Eli, you made a big mess, now you need to clean it up."
Eli: "Don't want to."
Me: "Can you help me put that green one in the bag?"
Eli ignores me.
Me: "Eli. If you don't help me clean these up then I'm not going to let you play with the fluffies again."
Eli ignores.
Me: "If you don't help me I'm putting the fluffies away forever.
Eli ignores.
Me: "Okay Eli. I'm going to VACUUM the fluffies up and you'll NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN!"
Eli perks up a little, but mostly ignores me.
I get the vacuum and begin to realize the vacuum threat may have been a bad idea.
Me: "Eli. You don't want me to vacuum up the fluffies because they will be gone FOREVER!"
Eli: "Fluffies vacuum?"
Me: "We need to put the fluffies in the bag or else I'm going to suck them up in the vacuum and you'll never see them again."
I suck up two fluffies for dramatic effect. 

Eli then begins bringing the fluffies over to the vacuum to be sucked up. I could just see him thinking, Hey. Great idea, Mom! Vacuuming the fluffies would be so much easier that picking them up. Let me help you out with that.

I picked up all the fluffies by myself while Eli played with the vacuum.

 

You win again Eli.

Carson's Closeup

Sometimes your baby says to you, "Mom. I'm being super adorable today so you should probably take a zillion pictures of me to permanently freeze this moment in your mind." Okay baby. Will do.

(He's recently discovered his horse-like tongue. He likes to share his discovery with the world often.)

Point and Laugh

Hmmm...I can't help but feel like we're quickly becoming the house on the block that has all the neighbors whispering, "Did you see that?!?"

If mowing the lawn with Carson in a bouncer on the front porch and Eli chasing me around doesn't keep our neighbors entertained, then leaving the baby monitor on outside -- full blast -- while I gave Eli the screamiest time-out of his life sure should have gotten us some attention.

If our other stunts have gone unnoticed, I'm sure Eli's latest trick will turn a few heads.

Come one, come all to see Eli the caged animal!

Having a window seat in a toddler's room is a terrible idea. Note: blinds are broken. We are that family.

Surely that window can withstand the force of my rambunctious toddler, right?

In other news: I contracted an illness after interacting with the three sick boys at my parents' house last week. We're talking fever, head exploding, exhausting, cough-up-a-lung kinda sickness. It hasn't been pretty around here.

Although I never actually purposely left any of Carson's binkies within Eli's reach, the past two days I haven't gone through great measures to steal them back from Eli after he's discovered one. Because, hey. I can get a good 15 minutes of quiet time when he's sucking on one of those things.

I find it odd that he loves the binky so much in the first place, but even more odd that he insists on crawling in Carson's crib to fully enjoy his binky fix. What a kid.

Jeff went up to visit his brother tonight which left me looking for ways to keep me and the boys entertained all day. My no-fail happiness formula is to go to D.I. and let Eli pick out a new toy to keep him busy. We found some building blocks and they worked like a charm. They worked so good that I was the one who was bored and begging him for attention. Which resulted in this video of the boys and their latest tricks:

Cousins

My brother Jacob came to town over the 4th of July for their annual Utah trip. Logan and Eli share the same interests. But that's about all they shared with each other.

Logan was hit, shoved and a victim of theft. I won't tell you our suspect because this picture makes Eli look so innocent.

Grams and Carson having  a little bonding time.

On the 3rd, we all trekked up to the Eaglewood Golf Course for their fireworks show.

We got a cute picture of all the cousins (plus Jacob). Cuties.

Natalie was a great baby holder...as long as a sufficient amount of time had passed since Carson had eaten so that he wouldn't spit up on her. I think she successfully dodged his spew her whole visit! Wish I could say the same for me.

I was already all set up to take a picture of my parents when we heard this jet flying by. Good timing!

Waiting for the fireworks.

Here are the boys on the 4th of July sporting their red, white and blue.

Emma let me do her hair in a french braid before dinner.

Eli and Natalie having a picnic.

Carson was attacked a few times by curious observers.

Cousin picnic.

It was fun to see Jacob and Laurie's family! Too bad Logan got everybody sick or we could have seen them longer.  :)