Backing Up

Okay... I know I have been the world's worst blogger this month.  My parents just left this past Sunday and we had such a nice time visiting and being together that I didn't want to waste time being on the computer.  So now I'll take a post to play catch up with all that we've been doing this month.  Is anyone else in shock that 2011 is already half over??

Independence Day...
Phil did some flyovers in the morning, so my mom and I took the boys outside and let them ride bikes, play with the hose, and eat popsicles.

 

I kept cutting off my mom's head because I was looking at Reid to get him to smile.

Our small-town 4th of July parade, which is usually held in the morning, got moved to 5 P.M. this year and we had every intention of going.  But as we were leaving Phil realized that he had left his wallet on the front of the minivan and my mom had driven the minivan to her parents' house that afternoon.  We drove back to her parents' house and searched for it on the way, which put us really close to the start of the parade, so we decided to skip it.  My uncles (who were staying at my grandparents' house) drove back towards our house and got out of the car to look for Phil's wallet, and lo and behold... they miraculously found it on the side of the road!  What a relief!!  We were so grateful to them.  Instead of the parade, Phil and I and my mom and the boys went to Fred Meyer and bought Jackson's birthday gift (which sweet Phil spent the rest of the evening putting together) and then came home, grilled out, put the boys to bed, and my mom and I shared a bottle of wine.  :)  No fireworks or anything this year for us, but a fun day nonetheless.


Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

**Oh, and just for posterity's sake I have to mention that we spent one night camping at Shasta Lake again on July 3rd (and I have NO pictures of the entire trip!).  We camped on a friend's property and spent the whole day out on the lake.  We had another wonderful, fun day with our friends and the boys had a blast playing on this huge floating island-raft thingy that our friends had.  My mom had offered to stay home in KF with Reid for the night, and I was so very grateful to have a little break from him!  (sorry, Reid... I love you!)  Unfortunately for me, I ended up with a very painful chest from not nursing all day (which just got worse and worse until I finally got home and was able to nurse again), and we had to deal with Emmett having a night terror at 1 A.M.  Ugh.  Luckily for my mom, Reid was an angel and ended up sleeping from 8 P.M. until 5:30 A.M.!!!  I found that whole situation very unfair!  :)
 
Jackson's Birthday...
He celebrated on his actual day by going out to McDonald's for breakfast with Grandy (that boy loves his McD breakfast... he always eats a burrito, sausage biscuit, and hash brown) and to Fred Meyer to pick out his very own Razor scooter.  Then that evening Phil and I took him to see Cars 2 in the theater.  We shared popcorn and he seemed to like the movie, but got a little bored during the slower parts.  He even said at one point, "Mom... I need to go home and ride my scooter!"  He did get to ride his scooter for a little bit when we got home and then we sang "Happy Birthday" and had cake.  I'd say it was a pretty good day for a newly-minted 4-year-old boy!

Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the part where he woke up from his nap and we showed him his present that Dad had spent all of July 4th evening and part of the next day putting together... a trampoline!  J was a little shy about it at first... he didn't want to jump much and kept asking where Emmett was.  He wanted to share the fun with E, but E was still sleeping.  The shyness has worn off for sure by now!  He and E go out there at least twice a day and have a ball jumping together.

Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.


More Camping...
The next weekend we went with a group of people from our squadron and camped closer to home up in the mountains.  It was so nice and cool and the area was just gorgeous.  Our campground was right on the shore of a lake amongst these huge evergreen trees.  Jackson even got to go fishing with Phil, which he has been asking to do for forever.  They caught about five fish and J was thrilled!  Again, no pictures of the fish from me, but our friends did take a few.  I drove over to Medford with Reid on Saturday to do some shopping and pick up my dad from the airport.  Dad spent that evening camping with us and got to enjoy some early-morning hiking and Phil's gourmet breakfast the next morning.  Yum!

 

This is our friends' super sweet daughter, Avery.  She loves the boys and always plays so nicely with them whenever we are camping together.  Jackson and Emmett just adore her!

Reid...
In the almost 4 weeks that my mom was here, Reid learned how to roll to both sides, pick up and pull things (even tiny things) to his mouth and chew on them, jump in his jumperoo, suck on an icecube (in that mesh thing-y... it is wonderful to be able to give him things to entertain him), blow little raspberries, and he is almost crawling.  Yes, crawling.  He pulls his knees up and uses them to push forward to get something he wants.  It really is unbelievable how quickly and how much he's changed.  The only thing that hasn't changed much is his night sleep!  He's getting close, though.  The past three nights he's gone from around 10 P.M. until 5:30 A.M. without eating.  He still wakes up sometimes, but is able to put himself back to sleep.  He's a stubborn little bugger about sleep... he loves seeing Mommy in the middle of the night (or maybe it's just having some warm milk or formula).  Here are some pictures of my sweet baby boy...

He loves to grab his feet!  He was sitting in the swing like this the other day with his legs completely spread.  It was funny!

This picture was taken around dinner time the other afternoon.  R was laying on the floor playing with toys and when my mom checked on him after a few minutes he was on his side like this sucking his fingers and totally asleep!  I love how his hand is over his eyes like he just can't take it anymore.  :)

He woke up for a second while we were taking pictures, but then went back to sleep!

I love this series of pictures of Reid and Phil...

Reid is just the absolute sweetest baby.  He smiles and laughs all the time and is just so patient and good.  I could just eat him up!

This next thing happened while I was in Medford taking my parents to the airport.  Phil had put Reid in the jumperoo and obviously left him there a little too long!  R decided to take matters into his own hands.  :)  All of these "sleeping wherever" pictures just kill Phil and me because neither J nor E would sleep anywhere but their cribs for so long!

I had put Reid on the floor the other day with a baby ball toy to play with and when I looked over a few seconds later he had "crawled" over to a Nerf gun and was playing with that!  You can see the abandoned baby toy off to the side...

He must know he's got two older brothers to keep up with.  Gotta learn how to use this gun ASAP!

I've had this sweet white outfit since Jackson and finally took the tags off so that Reid could wear it.  Oh, he looked so precious in it!  I just had to take these pictures...

Then I took him out to the family room and laid him on the floor to play. I came back a few minutes later and, of course!, saw this:

Ugh.  It never, ever fails to happen when he has anything white on!  :)

I will try hard to be better about keeping up with the blog this month!

Jackson's Birthday Party

We had J's 4th birthday party at a park near our house last Monday.  It's actually the same park where we had his second birthday party two whole years ago!  I know everyone always says this, but I cannot believe he's four already.  It really makes me remember to try to cherish every moment because time really does go by so fast.

My friend Michelle's daughter, Addy, has a birthday two days earlier than Jackson, so we decided to do a joint party for them.  Addy is turning three this year.  We invited pretty much our whole squadron since we were having it at a park and Michelle and I could split the cost of everything.  A ton of people actually came!  I think we had around 25 adults and a bazillion kids.  It was a lot of fun!  My friend Rocky took some great pictures of the day for us, and I was SO thankful for that because if I had tried to take some myself we would have ended up with none at all!  Here are some of the 200 or so that she took...

It was a beautiful day and the kids had so much fun playing, climbing, swinging, running, and kicking balls. We were so happy to have my Mom there to celebrate with us, too!

Sweet Grandy did a lot of pushing the swing while Phil and I were busy...

Here's my friend, Lana, with a brand new baby girl (not hers) in the squadron...

Applying sunscreen to E... the sun is crazy intense here since we're 4,000 feet up and our super fair-skinned babies burn really easily!

Here's our cake that was very yummy but not so wonderfully decorated.  :)  We asked for red, white, and blue decorations since that was kind of what our "theme" was, and for some reason the lady wrote the words in green.  Michelle and I just had to laugh.  Like I said, though, it was really tasty!  Strawberry-almond poppyseed... 

Baby Reid just hangin' out...

Our sweet birthday boy... oh, I could just eat him I love him so much!

All of the kiddos were excited about the cake, but J did not like being sung to!  He never has, really.  He got really shy and backed away and tried to hide his head.  :)

 

Here's J's buddy and fellow birthday girl, Addy, not being shy at all and stepping right up to blow out the candles!

I finally just scooped J up so he could help with the candles.  I knew he wanted to, but was just a little overwhelmed with everyone singing. 

Better now...

 

The cake-cutting was towards the end of the party.  Don't these kiddos look a bit tuckered out? :)

Reid was pretty happy to just hang out during all of the cake excitement...

Michelle and I got inexpensive water bottles as favors for each kiddo.  There were almost 40 kids there!

The hostesses with the mostesses...

Our future's so bright, we gotta wear shades...  :)

Michelle and I were hoping to get Jackson to hug Addy and then have both of them smile sweetly at the camera while Addy held up the tag that said "Thanks for celebrating our birthdays."  Um, yeah.  That didn't really happen like we planned.  J was not wanting to cooperate.  We have about 12 pictures where they are at least a foot apart, Jackson looks totally uncomfortable, and Addy is looking at the ground.  Ha!!  At least A held up the tag like we wanted!  :)

And, to put the cherry on top of a fun and successful party, we got a few decent family pictures!

 

It was really great to get almost the whole squadron together for the afternoon and for all of the kids to get to play and have fun together.  We are really blessed to have so many nice families in our squadron.  All of the kids get along really well together, and the adults do, too!  ;)  Michelle and I figured that we'd better do these type of parties now because in a few years J and A will probably not want their parties combined and will have their own ideas of what they want for their birthdays.  We're hoping we have at least one more year together!

Happy 4th Birthday to our super sweet, wonderful Jackson!  We love you so much!

Things to Remember

These are some things I want to remember about our boys at 4 years, 2 years, and 4 months:

Jackson:
1.  He is still the most lovey boy ever.  He must tell us he loves us at least 20 times a day.  I love it.    "Mommy, I so wuv you," are the sweetest words I could ever hear!
2.  He always says people are his best friend.  Like "Mommy, you know where my best friend Woody is?" or "I wuv Popeye/Addy/Alyssa/insert someone else he's thinking of at the moment.  He's/She's my best friend."
3.  He has also started saying, "Aw, Mommy, you're just killing me!"  I don't know where he got that from!
4.  He is obsessed with the Cars movie and the characters from it.  He also loves the Toy Story movies.
5.  He absolutely loves running, jumping, riding his bike (and new scooter), kicking balls, etc.  He would much prefer to do those things than color or do crafts.  He'll color for about two minutes and then say he's done.
6.  He sure loves his brothers.  I know that God totally blessed Emmett and Reid when he chose J as a big brother.  Yes, J does tease Emmett sometimes and take toys from him, but he really does love E so much.  He always asks where E is when he's not around and I will randomly hear him tell E that he loves him. We bought a trampoline the other day for J's birthday and showed it to him while E was still napping.  J must have asked 10 times where Emmett was and if he was awake yet, because he wanted to share the fun with him.  When he meets new people he'll tell them his name and then push Emmett forward and say, "And here's my brother, Emmett!"  He also gets really excited when he sees that Reid is awake... "Oh, Reid is up?  Hiiiii Reidimus Aureweus! (his nickname for Reid)"
7.  He still sucks his thumb when he's tired or sleeping and adores his two blankies.
8.  He's still very timid about most new things.  He hates loud noises and covers his ears all the time (just like Mom) when he's nervous or afraid.  He likes to watch and observe before trying things and sometimes it takes him a while to warm up to things.  We try to be really patient with him and not push him into doing anything. Once he feels comfortable with something, though, he will give it all he's got!
9.  He is really pretty obedient, kind, and eager to please.  Phil and I always thank God for giving us Jackson first.  If E had been first there might only be him!  :)

Emmett:
1.  He still loves a sippy cup of milk every morning.
2.  He is finally starting to imitate sounds and say some words.  He has most success with "oo" sounds:  two (when you ask him how old he is), goo (when I change a poopy diaper), peek-a-boo (comes out like pee boo), and cute (speaking of himself, of course).  He also attempts to say milk, no, stinky, and can do a simulated count to ten.  He says mama, dada, and the cutest-sounding Jack.  He also can make a cow, dog, cat, duck, tiger, and snake sound, an engine sound like Lightning McQueen, and say "Choo-Choo" like a train. The sound he makes most often, though, is "mow".  Not like mow the grass, but mow like "Mow, I hurt myself."  He will get so excited about something and run up to you and say, "Mow-mow-mow-mow-mow-mow-mow-MOW!"  All the time frantically pointing and bending his knees or jumping.  And whenever you ask him if he wants something he doesn't say yes, he'll say "Mow."  Or when you give him something he doesn't say thank you, he says, "Mow."  It cracks everyone up.
3.  He is completely fearless and will try anything.  He's just a little timid around strangers right now.  It takes him a bit to warm up to new people.
4.  He has started being really lovey.  He loves to snuggle and give kisses and whenever we pick him up he immediately lays his head on our shoulder.
5.  He can still throw a mean little tantrum, though, if he doesn't get what he wants.  We're working on not throwing toys and not screaming at us when he gets mad.  He does recover pretty quickly, though.
6.  His favorite foods are pasta, oatmeal, and anything sweet.
7.  He really loves Jackson.  He will randomly give him hugs and kisses and is very concerned when J gets hurt. 
8.  He absolutely loves his Thomas trains.  He loves to take them and line them up next to each other or in a row.  He carries one or two around the house all the time and even has to take a few to bed with him.
9.  He loves to eat weird things.  Like my chapstick, deodorant, soap, and he likes sucking on wet wipes.  We don't just let him do these things, but we have to watch because he will sneak them! :)

Reid:
1.  We are having the roughest time with R sleeping right now.  He wakes up at 10 P.M. on the dot and has flipped onto his back.  The only way to get him to go back to sleep is to feed him.  Then he wakes at either 2 or 3 A.M..... same thing.  He rolls front to back to front to back to front all over the floor during the day (he won't stay on a blanket anymore), but for some reason in his crib he rolls to his back and then lays there and screams until someone comes to get him.  NOT FUN!  His naps are hit or miss.  Sometimes he stays on his belly and takes a good long nap, other times he flips over and only sleeps for 20-30 minutes.  I'm so hoping this phase is almost over!
**UPDATE:  I started this post a week ago and last night Reid finally figured out how to flip back to his stomach and go back to sleep in the crib!!!!!!  Hallelujah!  He still woke up around 3 A.M., but only fussed for a few minutes until he flipped over and fell back asleep.  I didn't have to feed him until 6:20 A.M.!! I'm SO hoping that wasn't a fluke and that this will become the norm!**
2.  Luckily, he's super cute right now and smiles and giggles and coos all the time.  I can't even be mad at him when I get him up in the morning because he always has a huge smile and some sweet coos for me.  He loves to make noises that sound like gargling, too.
3.  He just found his feet yesterday and loves to grab onto them on his back.  He has been bringing his hands together for a few weeks now.
4.  He has just started grabbing toys and bringing them to his mouth.  It's so nice to be able to give him things to play with now!
5.  He eats about every 3-4 hours during the day.  He takes a bottle and formula really well when I want to go out, which is wonderful!
6.  He is very ticklish!
7.  My mom and I can't believe how active and strong he is.  He almost sits up, reaches for things, pulls himself up to sitting, stands up when we hold his hands, kind of scoots along in a crawling-like fashion when on his belly, and rolls all over the place. 
8.  Nicknames we call him:  Reidy Reidiger (like Rudy Rudiger from Rudy), Reidimus Aurelius (like Maximus Aurelius from The Gladiator), Reidabaga, Reidiger Roo

**Just two cute things that happened the other day**

1.  I was walking past J and E's room a few minutes after bedtime the other night and heard talking.  I poked my head in and saw J down in E's bunk with his Cars flashlight pointed on a book on E's lap.  I asked what they were doing and J said, "We're just reading the Colors book with the flashlight."  It was so freakin' cute that I couldn't even scold them for not going to sleep right away.  :)

2.  J was helping to water my plants with the hose the other morning.  E walked up to him and this is the conversation I heard:

E:  "Mow, mow, mow, mow, mow"
J:  "I'm just washing the plants."
E:  "Mow, mow, mow, mow, mow, mow, mow"
J:  "Sure, you can help me!"

Maybe I need to ask J to interpret E's language for me all the time!

Here are some pictures I took of the boys together to put on a Father's Day t-shirt for Phil.  Oh, how I adore these precious boys!

 

 Oh, Emmett...