2013 Christmas Card

An Eventful Week

(taken Thanksgiving weekend)

Thanksgiving week was quite the eventful week for our family!  For the first time ever, we celebrated Thanksgiving dinner at home in our jammies!   We had been invited to a friend's house for dinner, but with sick kids all week on and off plus Rachel waking up Thanksgiving morning with the body aches and a fever, we cancelled the dinner plans with friends.  I still made lots of stuffing and took it over to their house, and then just brought us home some dinner to enjoy with our own little, sick family.

Thanksgiving Week Recap:
Monday
- Brandon got 3 root canals because there was an infection growing up above his front teeth (right where he had his tramp accident as a teenager).  It caused his face to swell and was kind of scary!  But he feels much better now and is all taken care of.
- Andrew got a fever, so we laid low.
Tuesday
- Kendall threw up and had a fever (having a 1 year old throwing up is the worst because you never know where it's going to go!).  I felt like I was hovering around her for half the night until it was done.
- Andrew was grumpy and sick, but handles sickness pretty well.
Wednesday
- Debated on what we should do about Thanksgiving plans - should we cancel or split up and take the healthy kids?
Thursday
- Happy Thanksgiving!
- Rachel had a fever and body aches and was down most the day.
- Cancelled our dinner plans and decided to stay home and eat in our jammies.
- Black Friday shopping for Brandon where he scored a kindle and some fun toys for the kids.
Friday
- Black Friday shopping for me and I got some poinsettia neighbor gifts and a fire pit for our backyard.
- We bought our first piano at Linton Milano in downtown Mesa!!!  (Nancy & Val's Christmas gift to us was money to put towards it - awesome!)
- Lost my mind and started potty training Andrew.
Saturday
- Potty training central.
- Brandon finished major paver project on the side of the house where the shed is going to be.
- Girls' night with the Natalie, Suzi, Kasey & Sarah - had so much fun and got home close to midnight!
Sunday
- Got a new calling; released as VT supervisor and got called to be the RS Activity Chair.
- Stayed home from Church to potty train and tend to sick kids.

Me, Sarah, Suzi, Kasey & Natalie at Oregano's - love love love these girls!

Big Boy Underwear

Look who is potty trained and wears big boy underwear!  This picture is a perfect depiction of potty training week at our house.  (And it makes me laugh out loud!)  The house was a complete disaster while I was chasing around this little guy in his superman underwear.  If you know me well, then you know I DESPISE potty training!  The constant hovering over a little 3 year old tornado - every moment of every day for 5 days - is not my idea of fun.  The constant repetitious phrases ("Tell mommy when you need to go potty…Please keep your underwear dry"- 75 million times a day) plus following every frantic movement he makes, and all while watching his squishy face for any indication that it might be time to go and just basically not taking my eyeballs off him … it's enough to drive me totally insane.  BUT WE DID IT! 

We started Thanksgiving weekend, and he had a good handle on it after about 5 days.  We had lots of juice, sticker charts, there was a lot of running to the toilet, & potty treats (the whole family got one every time he went - it was a serious sugar party at our house that week) & poo poo prizes.  He has done fantastically, and I am so proud of him.  Andrew, this was the best Christmas present you could have given me!  You are a rock star in my book!

Quote of potty training:

Mom:  Andrew, be sure to keep your underwear dry, ok?

Andrew:  Aye, aye, Captain!!

Update on the Monkeys

Rachel is thriving in school and absolutely loves it.  She earned an outstanding citizenship award for the first term and the teacher had lots of good things to say about Rachel.  When Rachel was student of the week, Mrs. Caha let her read the class a book and lead the class during calendar time, share time, etc. and Mrs. Caha said that she could have left to run an errand and she was pretty sure the class would have run very smoothly under Rachel's direction.  She is brave, confident, outgoing, and makes friends easily.  She is very sweet and helpful most of the time, but she has her moments when she is disrespectful, whiny, and irrational (mostly just at home).  Last month, I started a "nice talking jar" for Rachel and everyday, she had 15 puff balls automatically to start the day but if she didn't talk nicely, I would just count down to 14, 13, etc. and however many were left at the end of the day, she could put in her jar.  Once the jar was full, she could get one of those Beenie Boo stuffed animals (she and her cousin love these, but they are not cute in my opinion).  It really helped and was a successful little system for her and helped us get in some better habits.  Rachel does really well with positive praise often, so I try my hardest to recognize when she is doing something good and I try to give her good consequences too, instead of only bad consequences.

She is also taking the bus home from school!  Crazy, right!  I'm pretty sure that at one time or another I said that I'd never let my Kindergartener ride the bus.  And once again, I eat my words in the parenting department.  The pick up line was a horrendous system for us - usually interrupting Kendall's nap time and Rachel had to wait in line for 10-15 minutes before I got to the front of the line.  Her little buddies she was standing by were not my favorite, and she was coming home with all sorts weird stories from the pick up line.  So now she rides the bus and sits by her best friend, Holly, and Holly's big sister.  Rachel had been begging to ride the bus, so it worked out to let her ride it just on the way home from school.  We've recruited lots of the neighborhood kids, so now there are lots of kids that ride the bus all together.  Rachel is also participating in the school's choir and goes to practice right after school twice a week (so nice that it is free!), and she is also doing tennis lessons, which she really enjoys and Coach Ray is so fun with the little girls.

Andrew is growing like a weed and makes us laugh everyday.  I don't know how to describe it, but we just think he's dang funny.  I hope he keeps his good sense of humor.  We have a rule in our house that we can only say potty words in the bathroom, and that they shouldn't be used to make jokes.  Well, Andrew made up a repetitive song, "We only say potty words in the bathroom.." and if he's singing it IN the bathroom, then all the potty words become part of his song, "...poo poo, pee pee, bum bum, naked."  And occasionally, I'll watch him go into the bathroom just so he can say the potty words.  It cracks me up.  Last month he participated in a class through the city called "Play Along Pals", and it was good to have a special little class just for him (Kendall also enjoyed the class and thought it was for her).  Andrew has struggled with the transition to the new nursery, and I'm convinced it's because he misses Grandpa Rod and his best buddy, Maddox!  He gets whiny and tearful now so we're trying to help him through that.  He starts Sunbeams in January, so maybe that will be better since he'll get a little more structure and get to see Rachel.

Kendall hasn't been feeling well this month, so she's been off a little bit.  She once was my best sleeper, and now she wakes up usually once a night and it's hard to figure out what she needs to put her back to sleep (she is not a cuddler, so that doesn't work).  This all started when she got a double ear infection and it took me awhile to get it figured out before I took her to the doctor to get some medication (this was the first time she got sick and needed medicine).  She also got 4 new teeth in the back this month (1st year molars), and has had 2 different colds this month.  She has been whiny and has wanted me to hold her and haul her around.  It is making for one tired mama!  It all started back when she turned 1 and we switched to whole milk.  We were desperate and decided to try giving her soy milk, and it has made all the difference in the world!!  She is back to sleeping all the way through the night and is so much happier (we started this 3 days ago).  Hallelujah!

At 6:30am, I found Andrew watching daddy move rocks.  What a big helper!  :)