Developments This Week

Kai had his 3 year-old well check this week.  Getting out of the house and initially at the doctor's, I faced a lot of resistance.  Once the nurse pulled out a lollipop, all was well and Kai was happy.  Since he was initially throwing a fit, we had a hard time getting his weight.  I stood on the scale and held him and then we subtracted my weight.  Needless to say, that strengthened my resolve to do something this summer to get rid of this baby weight!!  Kai's weight (with his clothes) was slightly over 28 pounds.  That would be in the 15th percentile!  We figure take off 2 pounds for his clothes, which would put him at 26 pounds and in the 10th percentile!  The doctor was very happy, especially considering at his 2 year check-up he weighed only 22 pounds and wasn't on the charts.  How 4 pounds over 1 year makes that much difference, I don't know, but she was happy, so I am, too.  He put up absolutely no fight at getting measured and came up 36.25 inches tall.  That's a 4 inch gain from last year and puts him in the 20% percentile.  It's the highest he's been on the growth chart for both height and weight since he was 9 months old.  Go Kai!

In other news, Finn officially pulled himself up on an inanimate object this morning.  (Insert deep sigh.)  I'm not ready for this.  Now I have to put dropping the crib mattress on my list of things to do. He hasn't done it in his crib yet, but he's been trying and I know the minute he gets his hand on something to hold he'll be right up.  So far the bumper on the rails has kept him from getting a solid hand hold, but I don't want to push my luck.

And finally, Finn almost slept through the night last night.  He settled down to sleep around 8pm and didn't get up until 5:40am.  Had he made it to 6am I would say that he made it through the night, but for me 5:40am is not quite there.  But I'm so proud of him.  His sleep was really disturbed by being sick and having our visitors and he finally seems to be getting back on track.  Yippeee!

Grammy and Papa's Visit

Reid's parents came out to visit us, meet Finn for the first time, and help celebrate Kai and Reid's birthday. We enjoyed their visit and certainly kept busy. Over the 10 days there were a lot of pictures taken, mostly of the boys, but also of some of our activities. We certainly did keep busy with outlet shopping, dining out, playing at home, and even a picnic at the park. Here are some photo highlights!

Standing up--Finn's FAVORITE thing.

Finn and Papa all dressed up.

Riding the plasma car on the deck and stopping to see Finn through the window.

Pushing Daddy on the plasma car.

Finn watching Kai ride the plasma car on the deck.

Kai's morning routine.

Eating his hands.  Just so cute!

Finn wants to be JUST like big brother.

Multi-tasking--playing and eating.  The ONLY way to get him

to take a bottle during the day.

Playing tug-of-war with Mommy with his clothes.

It's his absolute favorite game!

Showing off his picnic outfit.

Picnic at the park

 Cleaning up to go play.

Going down the slide next to daddy.  Way off in the distance.

Almost there!

I've finally gotten all of the pictures and am almost done sorting through. I only have one more post to go. I just wanted to let you know that the posts are posting to the blog in the order that I started them, so scroll down under the video of Finn to see birthday pictures.

Uh Oh!

Finn has been getting better and better at pulling himself up. He has even taken to standing next to furniture and holding on by himself. (I have to put him there, though.) Yes, I know he's not even crawling, and he really hadn't even been close to that until yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon I looked out from the kitchen into the living room to see Finn on his hands and knees rocking back and forth. Uh oh! And then today he ended up that way several times. To make matters worse, this afternoon Finn leaned over, grabbed my arm, rolled to his knees from his bum, and then stood up. Like I said, UH OH!!



If you listen closely, at the end he starts crying and saying "ba ba". We think it's his way of asking for his bottle. This video was right before dinner so the poor baby was pretty hungry

Reid's Birthday

Reid celebrated his birthday on May 20th. His day was a lot more low-key for the most part. We had family time and enjoyed having every together. After lunch we had cake. It has become a bit of a tradition that I make Reid a "Better than.....(fill in the blank however you'd like)" cake for his birthday and this year was no exception. Since Reid had placed 30 candles on my cake this year I decided to get even and placed 37 on his. It took a bit of work to get them all lit, but true to form Reid blew them all out in one breath. Stinker!


For dinner we decided to go to Texas Roadhouse. It was quite crowded and we ended up waiting a while for a table. We actually saw the BYU baseball team waiting, too. They were playing at the Academy for 3 days. So, I let them know that we were BYU fans, too. Dinner was eaten rather quickly and then we all headed back home. After we got the kids to bed, Grammy and Papa babysat so that Reid and I could go out for ice cream. We got to Cold Stone just before they closed and enjoyed some ice cream. It was great to get out just the two of us. It's been over a year since that's happened and I forgot how fun it is. Thanks so much Carl and Joyce!

Kai's 3rd Birthday!

On the 14th of May, Kai turned 3 years old. In the weeks leading up to his birthday, he was very adamant that he did not want to be 3. He wanted to stay 2 or be 20 (or 14, depending on the day). He said that if he were 20 he would be like daddy. I love the funny things he says! I was concerned, though, about his lack of enthusiasm.

In the morning, Kai ran into our room (like normal) and we said "Happy Birthday!". And the tears began to flow. He insisted that it was not his birthday. Ok, so we backed off and agreed to not discuss the issue. Then while Kai was eating breakfast, Reid hid out in our bedroom and began blowing up balloons. Papa sat with Kai to eat breakfast and slowly but surely Papa got through to Kai that it would be fun to have a birthday. Kai got down from the table, ran to find Reid, and saw the balloons. At that point, he was ok with having a birthday. Thank goodness!
I took Kai for a bath while Grammy and Reid hung streamers and balloons. Kai was very excited to see all of the decorations. And then we pulled out the presents. Kai was definitely warming up to this birthday thing! We opened a couple of presents and then took a break. We all had lunch and then pulled out the cake for singing. Kai did not want us to sing "Happy Birthday" but rather his favorite song "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". It became rather comical as Kai stopped us all mid-way in and insisted that I do a solo. I tried, but ended up in a horrible laughing fit and had to be rescued by Reid. Upon completing our duet, Kai freaked about blowing out the candles. Reid offered to get him a straw (something we used last year to help him concentrate his air and blow out the candles) and he said he wanted one. The second Reid handed him the straw, Kai blew hard (not through the straw, though) and two candles went out! We laughed! It took a bit more effort to get out the third candle, but he did it. Then we sliced the cake and gave Kai a full quarter of it (it was a really little round one) which he devoured. Well, all but the cake. The frosting completely disappeared!


Between opening more presents, playing "Pin the tail on the Donkey", and exploding poppers with Daddy, we loaded up in the car and drove to Kai's favorite toy store--Toy Station. There we let him run around, test drive a plasma car, and pick out another present. We came away with a band-in-a-box type music kit and some free taffy (for his birthday). Once back in the cars, we went to Wendy's. I ordered quickly and then took Finn home to go to bed, while the others ate at the restaurant. Once everyone was back home, Kai opened the remaining gifts and then we quickly shuffled him off to bed. It had been a long and exciting day for him. I think he really did decide that birthdays are ok!


As gifts Kai received a remote control school bus, a digital camera, a music kit, Elmo tickle hands, a kaleidoscope, a Dr. Seuss floor puzzle, hotwheels race car tracks, and a plasma car. He has been in toy heaven!

The Month That Was May

Right after my last post, the month of May began to escape from us. We all came down with some type of virus right before Mother's Day weekend. It started with Kai, moved to me, then Finn, and finally Reid. I would not be exaggerating to say that I felt completely miserable. It just felt like if I got some sleep I could shake it, but unfortunately Finn was miserable too and not sleeping. So, it was one of the worst weekends ever.

Thankfully, we started feeling a bit better by the time Monday rolled around. It was just in time to get ready for Grammy and Papa's visit (Reid's parents) and Kai's birthday. So, I guess that's where we'll start. I think I have a lot to share: Grammy and Papa's visit, Kai's birthday, Reid's birthday, and finally a Finn update. Hopefully I'll get it all done soon!

The Things Kai Says

"I'm much to busy to eat my poptart."

Me: "Kai, can you be careful. This puzzle is really hard." Kai: (a moment of pondering) "Do we have a soft puzzle, momma?"

"Oh shucks!"

"I love my baby!"

"We are a happy family."

"I grew up!"

"I don't want to be 3. I want to be 20!"

"I'd be much happy if".....fill in demand of the moment.

There are so many more. As I think of them, I'll come back and add to them here. He's just been full of random funny things lately and it always makes me smile. While we were coming down the stairs this afternoon he said "Ants help the soil." Just one of his completely random statements. We weren't talking about ants at all.....but apparently he was thinking about them!

Teaching Moments

Today is a slow day. Really slow. We have a couple of days a week like this normally, but I think today feels worse because yesterday was slow, too. Kai has watched way too much TV and doesn't want to play. I feel guilty making him play by himself so much while I'm sitting with Finn protecting him, feeding him, putting him to bed, etc. So when Kai pulled out playing cards this morning I figured we had time to talk about them. I took all of the cards out of the box and talked to him about the "A" for ace, the four different suits (I didn't use that word but rather "shapes"), all of the numbers and the picture cards. And then I handed him cards and had him match them and put them in order. I doubt it'll stick with him, but it definitely took up some time and it was time that I felt was much better spent than it would have been otherwise. I love little teaching moments with my buddy and he really does give me quite a lot of them. Here's Kai and his cards.

Notice one card out of place. He quickly fixed it.

Kai's pictures

I was downloading pictures off of the camera and found these. We had friends over for dinner on Sunday and Kai must have gotten ahold of the camera while the kids were playing in the basement.

This 9 year-old is the one that has asked her mom if she could marry Kai. It makes us smile that Kai has so many friends and he does love to play with Micah!

Finn's 6 month pictures

Finn's pictures turned out great! I'm sad I can't afford to buy them all. But they will be online until May 30th. I'll just have to enjoy them as much as I can until then!

Click here and enter the password "jones6mo" to see our happy boy!