Catch Up

We have had a very busy November.  So much has happened that I just kept getting further and further behind on the blog and then it was just too overwhelming to catch up.  So now I am going to try to catch up.  If you don't want to read the whole thing just read the red section headings and you will get an idea of how busy we have been!

Snow

At the beginning of November we had our first snow storm.  James was really excited about the snow and after his nap he looked out the window and said, "Let's get some boots!"  Meaning "I want to go outside."  So I bundled him up and let him play in the snow.  He loved it. 

James playing in the snow.

TS3 Party

Toward the middle of the month we finally got our copy of Toy Story 3 (our mail is slow).  So we had a Toy Story 3 party and watched the movie.  The boys loved it!  It is by far their favorite movie right now. Mikey asks to watch it every day, and most of the time several times a day.  James has started acting different parts of it out.  

Watching Toy Story 3

18 Months
Mikey turned 18 months on the 18th!  He has been to nursery twice and has done better than we expected.  He does fine until the last 10 minutes or so then Dad usually goes in to help him calm down a little. He also loves to follow his brother around.  James gets a stool in the kitchen or drags a chair over to the counter and Mikey follows him.  One time James climbed up on the counter to get the rest of a cake and took it over to the table.  I heard him say "You alright Mikey" so I went to see what was happening and they were both sitting on the kitchen table eating chocolate cake.  He talks a ton also.  My favorite thing that he says is "Oh no!  What happened?"
He also had his 18 month check up.  Everything was pretty routine until we started looking at his charts.  He showed me his weight chart and he had gained weight, that was pretty exciting.  His height had jumped up a little too.  Then when he showed me his head chart (which I usually ignore because really who cares how big his head is?) I was a little shocked.  His head had jumped way up!  I thought it had to be a mistake.  So did the doctor.  So he remeasured.  It was a little wrong and brought it down a little but there was still a big jump.  So he started explaining what that could mean.  Either a few measurements in the past were wrong (no way to check that) or his head was growing at an unnatural rate which could mean there was a blockage and the fluid wasn't draining from his head properly.  So he started saying that we needed to come in every month to have it measured.  I told him it wasn't possible since we would be moving to New Mexico (more on that later).  So he said to be safe we should get a CT scan to check it out.  He had the CT scan.  Luckily Doug came with us because there is no way I could have held him down like he did.  We should know more next week.

Following Big Brother

SLC/30th B-Day

On the same day as Mikey's appointment Doug found out that he needed to go to SLC the next day for a training for his new job (more on that to come).  So when we got home I put the boys down for their nap and packed like crazy!  Thursday we had our friends come over to play and Friday we went to their house.  Mikey loves baby's and was so happy when Kaylene brought one for him to play with.

Mikey feeding the baby

 We also went and got some birthday decorations for Doug's birthday which was on Friday.  James figured out that if he put them over the vent they would float.

James' game "up balloon"

 James had a lot of fun playing with Zac.  We brought his trains so they mostly played that.

Playing trains

 Doug spent the two days in an incredibly boring meeting that made him very unexcited for his job.  When he got home on Friday we headed to Provo to go to dinner at his favorite restaurant Carrabba's.  Tim and Jason took the kids so we had a nice quite dinner.  Then we headed home where the kids went to sleep and Doug opened what few presents we had for him.  Overall not a great 30th birthday for him.
We headed home the next day and had cake and ice cream that night for his birthday and he opened the rest of his presents.

Birthday Cake

Blizzard
Sunday night the blizzard started.  School was canceled for the week.  These two seagulls got stuck in our yard.  I think one had a hurt foot.  They kept trying to fly away but the wind was just too strong.   There was so much snow!

Seagull stuck in the yard

 Tuesday we made this blanket fort to help alleviate some of the boredom.  It worked well.  The boys loved watching movies and eating lunch inside.

Blanket fort

 Doug had to snow blow a ton!  On Monday our neighbor borrowed a tractor and cleared our driveways.  On Tuesday morning Doug had to snow blow to get out for work.  On Tuesday night he had to Snow blow so he could get home.  On Wednesday morning he had to snow blow so we could get to IF for Mikey's CT scan.  On Wednesday night we parked at John Deere and walked in.  On Thursday morning Doug snow blowed so we could get the car home.  James wanted to go out and play.  He went right over to his lawnmower and got it out to help Dad snow blow the driveway.

James pushing a "Snow blower" 

Thanksgiving
We had a fun Thanksgiving.  Mikey got sick and didn't want to eat anything.  James was himself and didn't want to eat anything.  Everyone else made up for it!
James had a new "thing" he likes to dress himself and he is very opinionated about what he wears. Not a big deal except that lately everything he wants to wear is Mikey's!

James wearing Mikey's shirt

Moving
Doug also found out this month that they have a new job for him.  It is on the air force base in Clovis New Mexico.  We are excited to get away from the snow for the winter but a little nervous about moving to a new place.  There is a school there for James called "Los Ninos" for kids with special needs.  I called and they said they will definitely take him so that is good.  Doug's new position is "Quality Control"  Some good things are that he has a job, he will probably be working 4 10 hour days, and he gets a company vehicle.  Some things that worry us are in the training he went to they said no work could be done unless the quality control person was on site!  It is also a lot of paper work.  So I guess we will see what happens in the next little while.  We are moving the week before Christmas so I guess the plan is to move halfway (to Doug's parents in CO) Then the boys and I will finally see our new home sometime after the new year.

Pinewood Demolition Derby

A few months ago Doug had this brilliant idea...a Pinewood Demolition Derby.  So for the past month or so he and other family members have been working hard on their cars to participate.  I have to say I was pretty impressed by all the different ideas people came up with.  And it ended up being more fun that I thought it would.  

Scott's Car

Chad's car.  He actually made this for a pinewood derby in his ward but when we were visiting one time James threw it down the stairs and broke it so he decided to use it for this.  It was by far James' favorite car and we had to hide it so he would leave it alone and not break it before the event.   It was also by far the heaviest car there.

Grammy's car.  Her idea was to use "springs" to bounce off the other cars. 

Grandpa's car. 

My car.  My strategy was to go as slow as possible to avoid the worst of the crash.  Doug thought my idea was kind of wimpy but it worked well.

James' car.  He had the mouse traps set for the first run, but it didn't really work.

Grandma's car.  She won the best paint job award, and did leave a "kiss of  death"  on all the other cars.  

Mikey's car.  His lasted a long time.  It was strong. 

Blake's car.  His idea was to use axels that couldn't break so the wheels couldn't fall off.  It worked but he had to be disqualified when the wheels stopped touching the track. 

Tim's car.  This car did a LOT of damage.

Doug's car.  His strategy was to have a defensive end and an offensive end.  Smart idea.

Jason's car.  That golf club helped a lot.

The track.

Once we had all the entries we began the crashes.  It seemed to go pretty slow at first but it soon picked up and there were some pretty fun crashes.  Originally there were two different classes but I guess the one was too 'wimpy' and they decided to just combine them.  My car ended up winning the whole thing and didn't even have a wheel broken off.  I was pretty proud of my "slow and steady" technique.  

James had to go watch a movie in our room.  It was all a little to much for him. 

Amber and the Boys' cars.  I was sad these didn't show up on time, we have the SLOWEST mail and they came a day late.  Very clever idea to cover them with bouncy balls.  

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was so much fun this year.  Even though it was on Sunday we are lucky enough to live in a place where 98% of the population is LDS so everyone celebrated on Saturday.  It was fun to get ready for it.  We decided that Mikey had to be Mike Wazowski since that is what James calls him a lot.  James was going to be a construction worker with Dad.  Then it hit me that Mike Wazowski's best friend is James P. Sullivan.  So of course we knew James had to be Sully.  It was a ton of fun making their costumes.

Thursday had a party at school.  He walked into class, took off his backpack then his hat then asked me to take his "Sully off" I got him distracted with a bike and he left the costume on the whole time.

Sully at School

 On Saturday we carved pumpkins. The boys didn't really like Dad's, but it was pretty cool again this year.  They loved mine.  Mikey said it was "happy" and James liked looking at the "eyes, nose and hair"

Mom's pumpkin

Dad's pumpkin

For Dinner we stole this idea from my Sister -in-law.  We had stew cooked in a pumpkin.  Doug was a little worried it would taste too much like pumpkin, but it didn't and was a lot of fun.  

Dinner!

After dinner it was time to get dressed. We stuffed Mikey pretty full.  But probably a little too full, he had a hard time walking and kept tipping over.  But he was the happiest little monster.

Mike Wazowski

 James was excited to wear his Sully costume and even kept his hat on the entire time.  I had a hard time getting a picture of him standing still, and definitely couldn't get a picture of them together.

James P. Sullivan 

 It was hard getting Mikey in his car seat, but the church is really close so he didn't have to sit like this for long.  We un-stuffed him for the ride home.

Going Trick-or-Treating

 The trunk-or-treating wasn't as good of a turn out as I thought it would be, but the boys liked it.  As we were pulling up I told Doug it would be nice if we could park next to someone we knew (since it was the entire stake) but ended up just parking then realized we did park next to someone we knew.  But I felt a little silly parked with my bag of candy next to their decked out car and root-beer brewing in the back.

A short break

 After we ran out of candy to give away we headed over to a neighborhood to do some more trick-or-treating.

The houses

 Finally we stopped at the neighbors on the way home.  We kept thinking how great it would be to live in a neighborhood where we could go to houses that we actually knew the people.  And this was definitely our best stop.  They love our boys (she always tries to take Mikey during sacrament meeting but Mikey isn't always willing to go).  Our boys love all their animals.  They got tons of candy here.

The Neighbors 

Overall I would say it was a ton of fun and our guys definitely enjoyed it.

Little Monster

The other day James told me he wanted to get dressed.  He took me to his closet and pointed to his shirts, "Want racing?"  I had no clue which one racing was so I reached out to grab a shirt.  "No!  Not the one!"  Ok wrong shirt.  We soon figured out that "racing" was a long sleeved blue shirt.  I got it down and handed it to him he quickly ran out of the room and I hung up some of the shirts I had mistaken for "racing".  When I got to the front room this is what I found:

"Dressed Myself!"

He had put the shirt on all by himself then proceeded to do this:

Skipping through the house 

That night we changed him into his pajamas, he grabbed the blue shirt and ran to his room.  When I went to tuck him in later I found him wearing ONLY the blue shirt!  For the next few days we had to wear this shirt.  Today sadly the shirt was in the laundry and he had to wear a different long sleeved blue shirt.
When I got out of the shower I heard Mikey screaming for his life.  Upon investigation I discovered James had him by the back of his shirt and was trying to drag him backwards.  So I grabbed Mikey and took him back to the bathroom with me where I put him on the glider in the bathroom.  James followed us crying "My monster, My monster!"  I thought "how is Mikey the monster?"  When we got to the bathroom James continued to pester Mikey unrelentingly.  Finally I made the discovery.  This is what Mikey was wearing:

Little Monster

An identical shirt to James' "racing" shirt.  Naturally James thought that because he wasn't wearing it and Mikey was then it must be his and he needed it back.  We had to go dig James' out of the laundry to show him that it was Mikey's shirt and not his.

New Videos

Our boys are so cute.  Doug is ready to push the pause button on Mikey, I would like to wait a few months until he is in Nursery but I think we both agree that he is at a really fun age.  James has also been a lot of fun.  He loves playing with his brother and takes good care of him always making sure he has the same snack and get to play the same games as he is.  Mikey loves to copy his big brother and wants to do everything that he is doing.  So here are some cute videos of my two cute boys.

Yesterday Dad found a hurt bird outside and brought it in for the boys to see.  They loved it. 

The boys new favorite game is "Monster Trucks".  This is a game Dad showed them and they all love it so much.

The only problem is when Dad quits playing but James wants to keep playing.

"Yeah"

Mikey talks all the time now.  He is a little chatter-box.  We love it.  I don't know why I haven't posted a list of all the words he says,  I will have to remember to do that sometime.  The funnest thing is whenever we ask him a question, any question he always says, "yeah."

Doug had this conversation with him tonight while changing his diaper.
Doug: Mikey are you done pooping?
Mikey: Yeah
Doug: Are you going to poop some more?
Mikey: Yeah
Doug: Do you want me to change your diaper?
Mikey: Yeah
The diaper was changed and 5 minutes later he had pooped again.

Preschool Day 2

Today was James' second day of school.  He surprised me by being excited to go instead of screaming "No, not the one!" like I expected.  Also I no longer have any delusions about him being the most difficult kid in the class.  I know for sure that he is the most difficult kid in the class.  When I picked him up today, again he wasn't in the classroom, but walking the halls with his teacher.  When I asked how he did, they all looked at each other like "you tell her".  Finally his teacher said, "About the same."  Which means not good.  Finally she told me how he had a really hard time with things, and asked if I thought getting him his own aid would help.  So that is where we stand, James is having a hard time, it will get better, but it will take time.  And his teacher is going to ask that he has a one-on-one aid to help him be at school.

James Starts Preschool

Before I get to the point of this post I would just like to share my newest favorite thing.  Doug found out about this from some guys from work, and as it turns out we are the only ones I know that didn't already know about this, but just in case someone else doesn't know I decided to share.  So my new favorite thing is called Bountiful Baskets  Some ladies in Arizona started this.  You pay $15 and you get a ton of produce.  It is pretty fresh and you get 1/2 vegetables and 1/2 fruits.  This is great for our family because we eat so much more fruit and veggies now that Mikey loves them so much.

Bountiful Basket

Also I found James taking a nap like this the other day.  Yes he is actually asleep.

Taking a nap

Now on to the main event!  Yesterday James started Preschool!  I was so excited, James had no idea what "school" even was.  There are 10 other kids in James' class and about 1/2 the class are special needs kids.  After yesterday I believe that James is probably the most difficult kid in the class.

Going to School

1st day of school!

We dropped him off in the gym.  They had a basket for their baskets and name tags to pin on their shirts. James flipped out when they tried to take his backpack off.  And refused to let them put his name tag on. So I had to chase him down, pin his name tag on and take off his backpack.  Once he realized how cool the name tag was he was OK with taking his backpack off.  Then I had to pry Mikey away from the balls and carry him screaming out of the school.  It was fun to have some time with just me and Mikey.  We got to go to the library which we can't go with James.
Then I decided to pick James up on the bike.  I thought he would really enjoy it since he loves bike rides so much. The school is only a mile down the road from our house so it isn't really far, but the road is closed so we have to go on a detour around the block...3 miles.  I didn't think it would be so bad since we have gone to the park a few times.  But I was dying by the time we got there.
When we walked into the school I could see James in the vestibule with one of his teachers.  At first I thought I was late, but he was just having a really hard time in class and needed to have a break.  I guess he had a lot of meltdowns, he had a hard time following the rules and sharing.  We expected this but it was still hard.  To make it worse he didn't even care that we got to ride the bike home (which was awful).  He had a hard time the rest of the day.  I hope things go better tomorrow, but I think things are going to get worse before they get better.

When It Rains...

We seem to have gotten a lot of, well not really "bad" news, just not good news lately.  Two weekends ago we decided that since our place in Utah is just sitting empty for a few months and we really would like to buy a house we would go ahead and try and sell it and see what happens.  In order to do that there is a lot of work that needs to be done, (most of this we are just doing in anticipation to moving back in ourselves, but will really help it sale) tearing out a closet in the basement bedroom, painting almost every wall in the house, tearing out and replacing the carpet, and cleaning everything really well.  Last weekend the work went really well. We got the closet taken out, most of the painting done, and some carpet removed.  When Doug took the carpet out in the room he took the closet out of we noticed that water was getting in through the wall.  So that was disappointing to find.  Not a major thing to fix, but still has to be fixed.

Eating breakfast

Leaky Basement, you can't really see it very well 

Last Friday Mikey had his 15 month Check up.  Here are his stats:

Height: 30 1/2 inches (don't know the percentile, but it jumped from last time)

Weight: 19 lbs 13 oz (2nd percentile, he dropped from the 4th percentile 3 months ago)

Head: 17 1/2 inches

I thought that since Mikey had stopped nursing and was on solid food he would jump up in his weight a little.  No such luck.  I really had no clue how to help him gain weight.  This kid eats and eats and eats!  He is the best little eater and consumes more calories a day than James.  It is not just us that think he is a big eater either, everyone who meets Mikey comments on his eating abilities.  So the Doctor gave us some suggestions on how to add calories to his diet without adding food.

Cute Mikey

Then last weekend we went down to do some more work on our place.  As we were driving down I kept thinking of things I forgot: Noise machine (a must for me to sleep well), a few toiletries, shoes for both the boys, then the big one hit, PINK and PURPLE!  I debated turning around and just going home, but decided that it would be cheaper to buy a new blanket and hope the substitution would be ok (it was).  I also discovered that I forgot our pillows.  So after we got the kids to bed we got some more work done.  Friday night was awful.  I used James' backpack full of diapers and Doug used some towels for pillows.  The air mattress kept going flat, it was too quite, so I didn't sleep well.  And because I didn't sleep well Doug didn't sleep well.  Then about 5 am James woke up and got in bed with us.  Instead of going back to sleep like he normally does he decided to kick us.  So we got up and did some more work.  My dad came by and took James off our hands and Mikey took a long nap so we were able to get everything done and leave that night.
On the way home Doug kept commenting on how bumpy the road was.  Finally we decided to pull over and check the tires to ease our minds.  We found nothing wrong with the tires and were about to get back in the car and head out.  That is when I noticed the front driver side tire looked a little funny.  I put my hand on top and there was a huge bulge and it was completely bald in that spot.  So we unloaded the trunk, changed the tire and managed to get the old tire back into our already full trunk.  So now we are glad to be home for a while.

A Big Boy Now!

Mikey is now 15 months old!  He is also so little still.  His check up isn't for a few weeks so I don't know his stats yet, but he is small.  Mikey is also the best eater I know.  He is always eating and he eats anything!  It is amazing what he can eat with only 6 littler biters.  (4 on top 2 on bottom)  the other day I discovered a little chomper poking through on the top, so he will soon have another tooth, also on the top and this one will help him chew his food a little. 

The other day we decided it was time for Mikey to get a new car seat.  We were hoping that James would be ready for a booster seat, but I think James is pretty attached to his car seat.  He hated the idea of wearing the regular seat belt so we figured he will probably be in it for at least another year.  We set up the car seat as soon as we bought it and Mikey laughed and laughed the entire time.  He was so happy to be able to see us. 

1st ride in the new seat!

"Mom, let's go!"

On Saturday we decided to go let the boys play in the river.  Then we remembered about this lake our friends told us about at the sand dunes and decided to try that instead.  It was perfect!  We wish we had known about this place all summer, I would have taken the boys there at least once a week!  It never gets any deeper than my hips and most of it is about at my knees.  They boys loved being able to just play and I loved not having to worry that they were getting too deep.

Playing in the sand

Egin Lake