Hanging over my head

I've been wanting to blog about a bunch of short stories lately, but I've had these Christmas pictures hanging over my head, and I can't seem to blog about life, until I get my pictures done. So here!!! Now I can move one.

I threw a shower for my friend back in December and the theme was Jungle Animals. It turned out super cute. I guess I was feeling creative.

Christopher in front of his preschool on his first day of school. (Keep reading for more info)

Christmas with my family. Enjoying the lights and ride at the train park.

Mesa Temple lights. Somehow I didn't get any good pictures with my parents and siblings while they were here. :(

Christmas morning at the Garretts. Drew looks so tired.

Christmas eve. Boy, I miss looking that skinny!! These are the Fletts, our great Brazilian friends in our ward. This was the day we had the BIG family dinner. 22 people!!!!

The girls posing by the tree.

These pictures are not in chronological order, which bugs me incredibly!! Ward Christmas party. The boys with Santa (although you can't really see Santa's face.) If you look close enough you can see Drew has a butterfly on his chin. He fell and split his chin open on the fireplace that week.

Doesn't his smile say it all? He is soooo full of mischief!

We've been busy lately, but it's late and I don't want to blog all the details. Here are some of the short main points.

I turned 27 on the 27th!! My golden birthday!! I went out to dinner with Cory to a fabulous Brazilian restaurant. Then later during the week I got to celebrate with my girl friends at the Cheesecake factory. Easiest birthday yet!! Loved it!

Christopher started preschool last week. So far he's loving it and so am I. He goes twice a week for a few hours. My mornings are so much quieter when he's gone, and I can actually get stuff done around the house. Yesterday I got to clean out the garage while he was at school. It was awesome, I left the garage opened and Drew just played in the garage the whole time!!! That would never happen if Christopher was home. I would have to chase him around and threaten him a gazillion times before finally giving up. I love that boy, but he requires so much stimulation, I just couldn't provide it anymore. I hope things keep going this well.

Drew is finally talking more and more. It's still very hard to understand him, but we're happy with his progress.

Here are Drew's words at 19 months (funny to compare the list with Christopher's at 15 months):

Mamae - mommy

Papai - daddy

all duh

buba - bottle

acua - water

doggy

ca - car

ba - ball

bu - Buzz (he LOVES Buzz Lightyear)

tatch - catch

Jesus

ights - lights

soes - shoes

what's that

I know he says a few more things but that's all I can remember. He speaks his own language most of the time.

Ok, it's way too late to keep going. Funny Christopher stories will have to wait until next time. Hopefully by the next time I post I'll also have a 100% on the baby gender.

A Rough January

I'm hoping this will be just a quick post to tell the blogging world, we're still alive.

We've had a rough beginning of year, to say the least.

My whole family came to Arizona for Christmas. We had a blast spending time together with all the cousins. Cory and I accommodated 12 people (including us) for about a week, and I was impressed with how smooth it all went. Christopher really LOVED having a full house and always having someone to play with. Amongst a few of our accomplishments were hosting Christmas eve dinner for 22 guests, Laura's baptism (Alvaro's oldest), visits to the train park, temple lights, and Jump and Shout. Oh how I miss them!!!

Then, there was New Year's Eve. AHHH!! Drew got the flu, then Christopher got it, and then I got it. Every night we added one more person to the puking list. I did so many loads of dirty sheets, I can't even remember what the grand total came up to. I know that I averaged 1 load of throw up per day for about 10 days. Drew's flu turned into a cold, that turned into double ear infections with pink eye, that turned into bronchiolitis. All followed by Christopher. Fun!!

When the kids finally recovered (around the second week of January) I found out we are in for MORE FUN!! Haha, Cory and I are EXPECTING again!! Surprise!!! At least it was for me. I'm 12 weeks pregnant and hanging in there.

Along with all the other craziness, we sold our Tucson (I'm sad) and bought a Honda Civic. Cory's enjoying his "new" car, specially since it's a stick. I miss my baby, but we need to cut back on gas costs, and the Civic is definitely more efficient.

I don't have pictures ready to post. So I promise to add lots of pictures to my next post, whenever that happens.

Funny Moments

We’ve had funny things happen during this past month, but I never seem to find time to blog them. I’ve been keeping track of it on a piece of paper, and now that I’m finally blogging, they don’t seem to be as funny, but I’ll record them anyway. Maybe one day I’ll laugh at them again! J

I sold my digital piano about a month ago and bought a real piano. Boy, I love craigslist!! Anyway, the piano I was purchasing was all the way out in EAST Mesa (a good 45 minutes drive away). Cory and I loaded the kids in the car, packed lots of goodies, a DVD player and some movies and off we went to buy the piano. 5 minutes into the drive Christopher starts to complain about his tummy. We tried distracting him with mints, songs, talking… anything that would get his head off his stomach. Well, that didn’t seem to work so I jumped in the back and sat prepared with a puke bag in hand. Sure enough about 20 minutes out from our destination Christopher started throwing up. The funny part is that just as Christopher started to puke Drew started to cry and when I looked over he was also full on throwing up!! Haha, Cory looked back and just started to laugh hysterically. Seriously, 2 kids throwing up at the exact time?!! Luckily I was able to catch all of Christopher’s in the bag, and I’ve gotten so good at cleaning throw up in the car, that we didn’t even need to stop so I could clean Drew. I was somehow able to clean the car seat and change the kid while he was still strapped.

When Drew gets tired he becomes VERY needy. He just wants to be held, and even then he’s not happy. So the other day we were at my in-laws for Sunday dinner, and since we tend to leave at the kids bed-time, we already pack their toothbrushes and pajamas so they can fall asleep in the car. This day Drew was being his normal cranky self, tugging on my legs as I was getting the toothbrushes ready. (By the way, the kid HATES brushing his teeth). Then, I had a brilliant idea, I got the toothbrush and showed it to Drew. It worked like magic!! The kid stopped crying and ran as fast as he could to the other side of the room. I started laughing so hard. Seriously, I should walk around with his toothbrush in my pocket. This way whenever I need to do something I can just flash it at him and he’ll run for his life. Crazy Drew!!

Lately Christopher has been into playing with cars and dinosaurs. A few weeks ago Christopher was playing pretend with his dino. He turned to me and said “Dinosaur eat pao (bread)”. So I went to the fridge and got him a slice of bread. He had a few bites of it and shared with the dinosaur. Then he had a brilliant idea, if I asked for bread and got it, let’s try something else, so he said “Dinosaur eat hopsicle?” I couldn’t stop laughing. Sorry bud, dinosaurs don’t eat popsicles, at least not the ones in this house. Good try though.

To end my funny moments I’ll tell the most recent one. This one wasn’t so funny though. Last week we were at my in-laws enjoying leftovers the day after Thanksgiving. We usually put a gate up blocking the boys from the bedroom area. This day we decided not to do so, since their cousins where there and they were playing pretty well together. Boy, don’t I regret that!!! That night Drew got into the bathroom in one of the rooms and decided to throw a remote control in the toilet. I found him happily splashing a way with the soaked remote at the bottom of the bowl. AHHH!!!! Then, to end the night, Cory and I were talking to my mother-in-law as Christopher played in the bedroom. He was so quiet Cory decided to check on him. He found Christopher with a Sharpie coloring on their white doors. He managed to get 2 doors really bad, and a little bit on the wall. Seriously kids, we give a little bit of freedom and this is what you do? Today when we went there for dinner we had the gates up again!!!

Christopher has been talking more and more lately. In fact that kid is never quiet and he only has one volume: LOUD!!! These are some of his cute words:

hiffo - hippo

hopsicle - popsicle

lu-of – Rudolf (the red nose reindeer)

it’s uge – it’s huge. Usually when he sees any kind of Santa Claus (even small decorative ones)

Enough with the writing. Here are some funny pictures of the boys, mostly Christopher.

He was playing outside with chalk today and decided to color his nose red. I called him "Christopher the red nose little boy"

Better late than never. Halloween pictures!! Drew the giraffe and Christopher as Buzz.

Sooooo happy!!!

To infinity, and beyond!

Where did the boys go? I gace Christopher an umbrella to play with and this is how I found the boys.

First visit to the dentist. Aunt Kady cleaned his teeth and he did great!! (he actually realy liked it, even though it looks like he's terrified in the picture.)

These are my mom's cleaning gloves. Christopher loves playing with them. In fact, this day he wanted to leave the house with them on. At least he never left the car with them. I guess he was too embarassed to do that.

I had some pictures taken lately of the boys and of the family. WOW I did not imagine it would be so difficult to get some nice shots of the kids together. They usually do great when I take their pictures individually, but once you add both kids, it's pretty much impossible!!!

I still need to upload Halloween pictures. This year Christopher was Buzz Lightyear and Drew was a giraffe. Christopher LOVED his costume. In fact he actually still likes to put it on and play around in it. I went shopping this week for costumes for next year. I'm so proud of myself, I bought ALL of our costumes (even Cory's and mine) for a grand total of $23. That's less than 6 bucks a piece!!

Other than that life is pretty much the same. Drew has been a much happier baby latelly. He's actually been really cute, him and Christopher play well together. Christopher has been doing much better with using the potty. He pees in it without a problem, but still hasn't gone poop. I still haven't let him roam around in just underwear though. I'm not sure how to do the bathroom scene when I'm out shopping with the two boys. Any suggestions? How do I help Christopher use the bathroom and hold Drew at the same time?

Better get going. I still haven't had dinner, and this post is way longer than I expected.

My cute boys




This is the reality of family pictures. Hard to get Drew to smile. Impossible to get Christopher to sit still!!!

Brothers! I love them!!!

Journaling

The other day Cory and I got out our journals and spent some time reading through the past. We had such a good time and I realized that since I've started to blog, I've been using this as my journal and I haven't really been good at writing stories about my day to day. My goal is to write at least once a month, and I'm good at posting once a month, but I do a lot of picture posts and not a lot of story behind it.

Anyway, that was a long intro. Let me just begin with saying that I'm sick and tired of cleaning Christopher's puke!!! Yes, he still throws up at least once a month, and most of the time in the car. Today he did it again. We were almost home and he started complaining "tummy hurt". I wasn't prepared because we were in Cory's car (which means I didn't have my normal gallon Ziploc bag and towel at hand). Well, he did it. He threw up all over himself and the car when we were only 1 minute away from home. Will he ever outgrow his car sickness?!

On another note. I thought Christopher was a gross little boy, but I'm starting to think Drew is worse. We are trying to potty train Christopher, so anytime Drew sees the bathroom door opened he makes a run for it. He loves to stick his hands in the bowl and make HUGE splashes. He always enjoy getting into dirty diapers. If I don't throw them away fast enough, he most likely gets into them. AHHHH!!! This week as I was on the phone with one of the ladies I visit teach I heard Christopher say "coco potty" (poop in the potty). Well, next thing I see is Christopher without diapers in the bathroom (poop on the diaper), Drew with both hands in the toilet and Christopher saying "drink". Yes, he (Christopher) was trying to stick his head in the bowl and get a drink! GROSS BOYS!!! Needless to say I had to hang up very quickly, and somehow I managed to get things cleaned up without killing a kid. I'm sure one day I'll look back and laugh at this.

This week we started taking Christopher's binky away. He's been doing very well, and I think I'm having more withdrawals than he is. I have been tempted to offer him a binky so many times when he was sad, even though he hasn't asked for it. I didn't know this binky thing would be harder on me than on him. I guess I'm just losing my baby.

Christopher has also started saying prayers. It's really cute to see him say them. He usually lets us help him but sometimes he insists on doing it by himself. A couple weeks ago I was at mutual and Christopher said the night time prayer. This is what Cory texted me:

"Heavenly Father

Bless Drew night night

Bless mamae, ... "and beyond"

In the name of J.C. Amen"

In case you are wondering the "and beyond" part see if this serves as a hint. Who says "to infinity, and beyond!"? If you answered Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story you're correct. He LOVES Buzz and calls him "And Beyond". In the past month we have seen Toy Story at least once a day. Good thing we own the first 2 and he doesn't care which one he watches. I laughed pretty hard when I got the text and realized he was asking for Buzz to be protected.

Since this journaling attempt has gotten longer than expected I'll stop now, and of course, I'll leave you with some pictures.

Do I bug you? Poor Christopher his little brother won't leave him alone not even when he's drinking his milk. Good thing he's a good sport about it.

Drew is our first child to get a bee sting. If you look closely you'll see how his right index finger is fatter than the one on the left. He picked up a bee at the park and tried eating it. Than when I pulled it out of his mouth he screamed at me because I took away his "treat".

Got stickers?

Movie Time

Grab your popcorn and a drink because this is a “movie” post. I’ve been meaning to post these videos for a while, but just now got the chance. They are really short, though.

Drew has been walking for a few weeks now. I know, I’m a bad mother, I don’t blog about my children’s accomplishments as often as I should. Anyway, he started walking around the 1^st of the month, and now he’s quite fast on his feet. I took the video when he had been walking for just a week.

This video is about the boys playing outside. I’ve said before that Drew absolutely LOVES his big brother. Well, here’s the proof. Christopher was playing with sand and rocks outside and Drew couldn’t stop laughing. Super cute!!! I love baby giggles!!!!

Lastly, this one is mainly for me. I know my little boy will one day grow up and say “I hate you mom” (not looking forward to that day). This video is for when that day comes, so I can play it and know he really meant he loves me. I love his cute high pitched voice!