Reward

Meet "Elmo Fish", Kason's reward for going #2 in the potty.

While Kason has not had a #1 accident almost since we started, he HATES going #2 on the potty!!!  He will hold it until it is an emergency and then cry while he goes.  It's heartbreaking!  The Skittles and M&M's just weren't helping K overcome his pooping fears, but Elmo Fish is working wonders!  Kason "earned" Elmo Fish the other day when he finally pooped on the potty.  We packed him right up and went to PetSmart to get a "boldfeesh".  Since K wanted a blue one, we headed right to the betta fish.  Kason gets to feed Elmo Fish every time he poops.  No worries, the fish will be fine, Kason only goes once a day.


BTW- I finally gave in and put Kason in a pull up to sleep last night- I have been setting my alarm to wake him up to go around 2am so he doesn't have an accident- exhausting!  But this morning, HE WOKE UP DRY!!!  I will continue using the pull up until we're sure he's got it mastered, but I was totally impressed.

Now we just have to master the poop.  :)

Better late than never....

Sorry, this is a LONG post!


My big boy Kason turned two on March 11!!! We had a wonderful party with lots of family, but of course, I was too busy running around to even remember to take pics. You'll just have to take my word for it- it was killer!

Here's one pic of him clapping while everyone sang to him. Kason got Woody, Buzz and a helmet from Mommy and Daddy and a trike from his Grammy Robin! He LOVES his bike and asks to ride it ALL THE TIME! ("Bike? Ride? Bike? Ride?")

When Kason went to his pediatrician for his well check she was amazed by how tall he is. He is 39.5" tall, which is the size of an average 4 year old. The doc thinks Kason will be 6'6" or 6'7" based on his current height. Not too much of a surprise considering his daddy is 6'4" and I'm 5'11"!

Kason has been such a good big brother. He lets Daylen pull his hair and he is constantly trying to entertain "Day-Day". In the morning, Kason runs all over trying to find Daylen and asking "Day-Day awake?". When he finally finds his little brother (usually in his exersaucer so I can make breakfast) he yells "Morning Day-Day!". I love that Kason is finally expanding his language skills!
And even though we took away his binky a few months ago, every once in a while this ball of energy gives me a pretty good nap. Naptime is my favorite time of the day. I feel like I hit the lotto when he actually takes a nap longer than 45 minutes!
We're working on potty training right now.  I started last Wednesday, May 2, and he is already accident-free during the day!!!  He can't quite hold it all night long but we are working on it.  I love this big boy!!!

THIS little man is almost seven months old! 

I started him on solids about a month ago, but it has taken a while for him to accept them!  He is PICKY.!!

  I finally threw in the towel and started weaning about a month ago, too.  I'm tired of pumping all the time and worrying about him being hungry!  It was definitely hard to do since I have worked so hard to make it happen, but I think both baby and I will be happier now.  I know for sure baby is because about a week after I started upping the formula he began sleeping 10+ hours each night.  Love him!
Daylen also just started CRAWLING!  Can you believe it??  Kason didn't crawl until he was 9 months old!!!

 It amazes me how different these boys are...

 Kason is very intense and BUSY BUSY BUSY.  He needs constant entertainment.  Daylen is already on the go but surprisingly easy.  He is pretty happy just hanging out.


 Last month we took a trip to California to visit friends and family.  The plane ride over there was pretty hairy- Kason was not happy about waking up 3 hours early!  Daylen was an angel... of course...  :)  We stayed with my mom and were able to spend a lot of time with her and my stepdad, Mike.  My dad drove up from Phoenix for a few days and then my wonderful cousins drove up from the LA area to hang out.  My sister and her beautiful family live about 3 minutes away from my mom, so the boys got to hang out with their cousins a TON.    My mom has a beautiful back yard that Kason took full advantage of.  I didn't take any pics (D'oh!) but here he is playing in her sandbox: 

 

Here's a pic of all the California Cousins:

We miss everyone already!!!!
*but we especially miss the cousins that we didn't get to see.  We love and miss you, Kit-Kat, Chocolate Chip, Baby Ruth and yes, Mr. Goodbar!!!!

4 Months old

My baby boy Daylen is four months old! We always think he is so small and delicate, but we tend to forget how big and husky Kason was/is! Our delicate little Daylen is in the 95 percentile for height and 50-75 percentile for weight. He's not so small or delicate after all!

Here are his stats:
Height: 27" (Kason at this age was 28")
Weight: 15 lbs (Kason was 18 lbs 13 oz!)

Daylen must remember Kason from heaven because no one can get him to smile like Kason can! He LOVES his big brother and already idolizes him. Kason rolls on him, pulls his arms, legs, head, but through all that Daylen just grins at Kason with pure adoration. I hope they continue to love each other for a long time, otherwise Daylen is in for some trouble!

Kason's birthday is next month and we are having a big family birthday party, so I have been scouting ideas on Pinterest. One idea I LOVED was a rainbow cake. I like to use my giant cupcake mold so Kason can have a cake all to himself to destroy, but I wasn't sure how the rainbow cake would transfer. I decided to test it out today during naptime. I ordered some fabulous gel food colors online to get the right hues.

The batter looked amazing and delicious!
I poured one color right on top of the other into the mold. I had leftover batter so I decided to make a simple single layer cake as well. Good thing I did!!! I actually read the directions on the cake box and they specifically said to only grease the bottom of the pan. I knew better, but was influenced by LC's cake post a few weeks ago and didn't flour the pan as well! As a result my giant cupcake was a giant flop. Only half came out of the pan when I overturned it. :( Oh well, lesson learned for when I make it in a few weeks. On the bright side, the colors inside the cake were marvelous! Here's the single layer cake I made:

Kason was a huge help. Can you imagine anything worse than a boisterous almost-two-year-old in a kitchen filled with rainbow dyed cake batter bowls?

Here's the finished product. It was delicious AND turned out pretty cool! I can't wait to do it on a larger scale next month.

Day Day helped me in the kitchen, too!

Catch Up

This little man will be 4 months old on Wednesday! Can you believe it?!?!?

A LOT has happened since my last post:
1. Kason and Daylen both caught a nasty fever bug with FEVER and irritability as the only two symptoms. Daylen was not quite 2 months old and was otherwise fine, so my doc told me just to bring him in at his normal appointment.

2. At his 2 month appointment Daylen was 24 1/2" tall and 12 lbs 3 oz. Kason at that age had him by exactly 2 pounds and 1 inch. :)

3. I caught a NASTY bug that left me with a sore throat for 10 (yes, TEN) days! Of course Daylen caught that, too. He woke up one morning at 2am with a temp of 101.5. I called my doc in a panic (he was STILL under that magic 3 month mark where fevers aren't a huge deal anymore) and the on call doc told me if it didn't come down with Tylenol to go directly to Texas Children's ER. We were pretty sure it was just the bug I had but wanted to play it safe. Luckily, after a dose of Tylenol and a tepid bath his temp returned to normal and he was a happy camper.

4. About two weeks ago Daylen started rolling from his back to his tummy:

5. I am embarrassed to admit that Daylen had been sharing a bed with Damien and me until about a week ago. Well, when he started trying to roll over in our fluffy bed I knew I had to stop that!!! He had also been waking up every 45 minutes to an hour to nurse. My paranoia about my low milk supply prevented me from denying the sweet little angel...... Four months of up 6 times a night cured my paranoia! I will happily supplement a few ounces of formula from now on because Daylen is magically sleeping 7-8 hour stretches!!! Last night he went to bed at 8:00 pm, kinda woke up at 3:30am, nursed, then slept until 8am when I had to wake him up! It was AMAZING! Of course, now Kason has decided he wants to cry for mama at 5 in the morning. It's almost like they plan it.

6. I braved taking the boys to church alone for the first time ever today. It did not go well. Kason is of course a maniac. He is energetic, loud, busy, oblivious and curious. A lethal combination. His behavior in Sacrament meeting today was no exception. My lovely friend SC invited us to sit with her family so I would have help wrangling K. Before we even sat down Kason ran away from me out into the foyer. It's pretty hard chasing after an almost-2-year old while carrying a carseat. I had to drop Daylen off with SC's family and then run and catch Kason. (I should have learned from this.....) During the meeting Kason did his usual loud chatter mixed in with loud whining and occasional loud crying. He told everyone "No" and behaved as if I've never disciplined him in his entire existence. It was not embarrassing. Not at all. Right after Sacrament Kason wanted to go say hi to one of his favorite people, AO. She was sitting literally two feet away from me so I encouraged him. As I watched him FROM TWO FEET AWAY a crowd of people swept between us and Kason DISAPPEARED. Seriously. I couldn't see him anywhere! I frantically pushed through people with the carseat (Sorry Daylen!) and ran out into the foyer to see if that's where he had gone. No such luck. I started to seriously freak out. Like seriously. I know that we were in church, around people who know Kason, know me, know Damien, etc. But I experienced pure panic. I left Daylen (again, sorry Daylen) with some sweet friends and ran back into the chapel to find Kason. Luckily my VTer found him playing the piano. Of course. I was pretty upset at this point and was ready to bail out and call it a day, but some more friends reassured me and I decided to try taking both boys with me to Primary. I don't dare let Kason go to nursery, I am sick of Daylen being sick! (That is a future LONG blog post. In short, it's just my personal kind of crazy.) Kason sat quietly on my lap for about the first 15 minutes or so of Primary. Then he began whining, head butting my face, writhing to get down, etc. So I let him down and kinda just chased after him. Let me tell ya, that kid does not stop. He looks for stuff to get into constantly. By the time he dumped out a bag of magnets I had had it! I was so embarrassed and so frustrated by his behavior that I didn't know what to do. I took him to the back of the room, packed up and high-tailed it outta there. I wasn't mad at him, he's just being normal Kason, but I was so frustrated at how hard it was. I was frustrated that I'm so scared of him getting Daylen sick that I won't let him go to Nursery. I'm frustrated with myself, my OCD (self-diagnosed thank you very much), and my husband for working every other weekend (totally not his fault, but I like to blame....). I'm going to try again in two weeks. But I am going to give myself permission to leave after Sacrament Meeting if it gets too hard. I always feel better if I have an "out".

Almost 8 Weeks

Little D will be 8 weeks old on Saturday. The time has flown and I can't believe so much has happened in such a short period of time!!!

About two weeks ago I had my gallbladder removed. Here's a lovely pic. I had two crazy gallbladder attacks within one week and thought I was going to die! I'm very grateful for modern medicine and laparoscopic surgery! I would have recovered very quickly except on the day I had surgery Daylen started feeling hot. His temp slowly climbed from 99.6 to 100.2, where it stayed all night long. I even had my wonderful friend LM come over with her thermometers to make sure we were getting an accurate reading. I called my pediatrician's on call doc to see what we should do, since a reading of 100.4 in a newborn is kind of an emergency. He said to sit tight and if it reached 100.4 to start worrying because then he might be worried about meningitis. Yes, he seriously mentioned meningitis to ME, worrier extraordinaire. So of course I didn't rest or sleep at all that night. Neither did poor Daylen, who was violated by a thermometer about 8 times!!! In the morning I took his temp again and it had reached the magical 100.4 mark. Since I was on strict orders to not lift over 20 pounds and couldn't stay home with Kason I took Daylen to the doctor. My pediatrician is amazing and totally reassured me. (I ran in crying, no appointment and they saw me within about 5 minutes! They rock!). She said Daylen looked healthy and happy so his fever was probably just a cold he caught from Kason, aka Germosaurus. She sent me to get some bloodwork done and told me to give him Tylenol. Sure enough, his fever came down with just a dose of Tylenol and stayed down all night. I was so relieved we didn't need a spinal tap! Since then Daylen caught a cold from me and had another little fever, we all caught the wonderful stomach bug circulating, and I had a phantom gallbladder attack. It never slows down, does it???