Socks, Flour, Hunger Games

The weather has been beautiful this week and I've been really looking forward to spring. Hyrum asks everyday, sometimes a few times a day, if it's time to plant the garden yet. He LOVES working in the garden, and I'm getting pretty excited too. Our perfect, easy going Baby O has been acting like a normal baby(crying, needy, must be held, etc.), which means one thing. . . teething! I still feel like he's a newborn but he's getting older way to fast for me! He can now sit up by himself and he constantly has something in his mouth. He's been eating like a maniac, but managed to not gain any weight beween seing the doctor at 4 month and his 6 month

appointment this week. He's in the 95% for height, which seems to follow the pattern of our other boys. He's adorable and LOVES laughing at his older brothers. His eyes are a little more brown now, but still seem to change in certain lighting. His nurse at the Ped.'s office complimented him on his 'big blue eyes'.

Once a month I grind a bunch of wheat with my boys to last for the rest of the month. Hyrum and Noah love helping me with the wheat grinder and pouring into the storage containers. This week, after finishing a batch of flour I needed to help Owen and left Noah in the kitchen with a big bowl of flour. About five minutes later I came in and found Noah completely covered. It was SO funny! HE had flour on every strand of hair, eyelashes, clothes, EVERYTHING. I don't know how he managed to cover himself so fully, but I'm sure a great deal of throwing occurred. He spent twenty minutes cleaning everything off the floor and counter, before I sent him to his bathroom for a major shake down. Noah just loves being dirty!

After a long week I was so excited to have a girls night. I went to see the Hunger Games at a Pre-Premier viewing, the night before it officially came out. I got the book read just in time and I had so much fun.

Avocados anyone?

We recently started Owen on his first ‘real’ foods. I’m excited to be making his baby food at home.  I now have the freedom to make more of what I want.  We started with avocado and then went to acorn squash.  Coming up will be peas, bananas, and who knows?  Here’s a look at Owen’s very first taste of flavorful food:

“What is this stuff?!”

“I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

  

“Okay, this is actually really good.  I want more!”

 

PS. Owen slept from 8pm to 8 am last night!!!

Feeling Good

Yes, this is a picture of my wrinkly laundry. I was washing the whites earlier this week. I pulled the church shirts out of the dryer, still wet, and put them on hangers. A little while later, I went back in and saw that I had unknowingly hung them in age order. It made me happy to see these white shirts and to think about how blessed I am to be the mother of three little boys and the wife to a wonderful husband. My boys are so small and needy in so many ways, but someday I will be the needy one and they will be my help. It scares me and excites me how fast they are growing up. Twenty years from now they could be anything in the world, but right now at this moment they are mine and I want to do a better job of remembering that. Brett’s worked quite a few 15 hour+ days lately and on those days sometimes I loose my patience with the boys, sometimes I feel like I’m not a very fun mom, sometimes I let them watch more TV then I would like, but when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep I know that they love me. This week I made a conscious effort to try harder. I was sure to spend one on one time with all three boys at least once a day. I tried to take more deep breaths before scolding them about something they had done. I replaced “go play downstairs, I’m trying to get this done” or “not now, maybe later” with one of these three phrases, “Yes, let’s do it!”, “I would love to. . . ,I will finish this quick so I can spend more time with you. Do you want to help me finish?” or “I just set the kitchen timer for 5 minutes. I’m going to finish what I can of . . ., but when the timer goes off then you’ll have my full attention.” These few changes have made a big difference in the boys’ attitudes and mine. I can’t say I was perfect at it. I lost my temper a few times and I got inpatient, but it’s a start.

This week had two more noteworthy things happen that I must record, because this is my journal. This is the week I finally decided to plunge into sleep training Owen. I was getting sick of being tired all the time and being cranky every morning. We started Monday night by putting the pack-n-play in the basement with the monitor receiver in our bedroom. He spent a good chunk of 8-midnight crying. We went in a few times to comfort him and give him his binky, but we didn’t pick him up. He woke up a few times after that crying before morning, but it wasn’t very long. Monday night pretty much completely exhausted him, because on Tuesday night he slept from about 8 until 6am!!!! He was the happiest baby in the world on Wednesday! Wednesday night went okay, but not great. I put him down at about 7:00. He woke up and I fed him at eleven, then he slept until 3:15. 3:15 until 4 was crying/screaming. Brett had gotten home from work only a few hours before that, so I decided to pick him up and rock him to sleep, but not feed him. He fell asleep quickly in my arms and slept until 8. I used to be anti-cry it out. It just seemed so cruel, but after Noah (he would wake up and want to be nursed and held every 2-3 hours up until we made him cry it out at 9 months old) I know my body just can’t handle the sleep depravation anymore. I am really happy with his progress, and I’m glad to not be a zombie anymore.

A neighbor of mine made a 30 day, 30 minutes or more workout every day, challenge and I accepted. I’ve been really loving the challenge and support from others that are participating. One of my good friends and I are swapping babysitting three days a week and I do workout videos at home for the others. So far, I have gone running twice (and I will again tomorrow) and done core training Yoga twice. It’s incredible how great I feel already! My goal is to fit comfortably into my ‘skinny’ clothes by my birthday in September. I’m feeling motivated, lets hope I can stay on track.

Our Three Year Old

Around the time that Brett and I became Brett and I we read the Color Code book. We found out, with no shock, that Brett was a strong red and I was a strong white. Somehow red and white made yellow and that is Noah. To the outside world he is just cute Noah, but to us he is Goose or Noah Kaboa. There are so many things to say about him and I don't even know how to start or how to express how amazing he is. From the time he was about 18 months old his little personality started to become very evident and it was a big one. He's one of those people that are just naturally funny. He doesn't have to try or tell jokes. He is funny in the way he phrases things, the tone of voice he uses, and his facial expressions. Brett and I have expressed several times that we should just video tape him all day long, because he's just constantly going and doing funny things. Here are just some of the things you have to know about Noah to understand why we love him so much, even when he drives us crazy:)

-Noah usually smells great because he likes to wear his Mom’s deodorant on one arm and his Dad’s deodorant on his other arm.

-Noah has the LOUDEST talking voice in the house. There is no problem with him not being heard. We frequently tell him to turn his volume down, which he does by twisting an imaginary knob on the side of his head.

-Noah loves to communicate how he feels. His conversations frequently begin with one of the following:

“I is happy.”

“I is sad.”

“I is angry at you.”

“I is mad with you.”

“Guess what? I love you.”

-Noah is an excellent communicator. when we took him in to the Pediatrician for his three year checkup we were told that he has exceptional vocabulary. Noah wouldn’t stop talking and he really blew the Doctor away.

-A while ago when Brett was leaving for work he blew the boys a kiss and Noah 'caught it' with his hand and then stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it for pretend. This has now become a tradition. We eat kisses in our family:)

-Noah is extremely intelligent. Out of nowhere he’ll bring something up that happened months ago and ask questions about it.

-Noah was the first one to call Brett Daddio.

-Noah is the family whiner. It’s starting to get better, but there were days where it felt like every word out of his mouth was a high-pitched whine and it drove us CRAZY!

-Noah invented Team Potty! (Sometimes when Hyrum runs to go potty, Noah will run after him to go at the same time and he’ll shout TEAM POTTY!”)

-Today Noah said this about half a dozen times: “I love you Mommy. I love Daddy. I love my brother. I love my baby Owen.”

-Sometimes after he changes his clothes he’ll come and tell me, “Look! I magically changed back into Noah Kaboa!”

-Noah is a master of sound effects and facial expressions. Here’s a little preview of a few of his faces (Oh, and the bruise, scratch, and hot chocolate mustache are frequent occurrences, so it fits him well.):

-He is really great at remembering peoples names and details about things that happened.

-He is the sneakiest boy I know. He frequently is sneaking food, especially if we have treats in the house.

-He’s very athletic (for a three year old, anyway) and loves sports.

-He’s picked up the role of big brother and run with it. . . sometimes literally.

-Noah is a daredevil. He has no fear and because of that he frequently gets hurt. I’m planning on big hospital bills for this one.

-Noah is very sweet.

-He picks fights with his brothers, but if they fight with him he usually just takes it and cry’s.

-He doesn’t like new environments very much and it takes him a little while to get used to new people/places. Some people think he’s really shy and quiet because of this.

-Noah is potty trained. Woohoo!

-Noah knows all of his letters by sight and sound.

-Noah can count up to 13 with no help, and higher with just a few promptings.

-Noah has Alma 32:21 memorized

-Noah LOVES chocolate. (He also likes to sneak cookies and treats into the cart at the grocery store.)

I know that there are a million more things that I’m forgetting, but I hope these will help me remember him at this fun age. I love getting to know him as he continually grows into his huge personality. Noah will always be my snuggle-buggle-wuggle, even when he won’t let me snuggle him anymore. He is a wonderful part of our family and we love him so much.