Potty Training

Look who's wearing big boy underware!!  We just finished the 3 day potty training and overall it went really well.  I'm so proud of Gavin but man and I exhausted!!  I don't think I've ever been so glad to go back to work as I will be tomorrow :).  Gavin’s been pretty attached to his diapers lately so we weren’t quite sure how this was going to go but figured if we didn’t do it I don’t think he was going to make the jump himself anytime soon.  I bought a bunch of underware for him awhile ago and we’ve been talking about how cool his big boy dinosaur underware was and told him Friday night that when he woke up on Saturday he would get to wear his new underware.  Saturday morning he woke up and we said guess what you get to do today and he said wear big boy underware and was really excited so we threw all his diapers away (hid most to be used for Wyatt) and were off to a good start i.e. no battle about not getting to wear a diaper J.  The beginning was a little rough.  It took him awhile to figure out to tell us when he had to go potty beforehand so the first few times were him starting to go in his underware and them rushing him to the potty so that he could finish there and get praise.  We did try the big potty first as I was hoping to just go straight to that but he is honestly terrified of it so we decided to deal with that battle later after he’s got the hang of going potty first.  Overall day one we went through 7 pairs of underware but he remained in a pretty good mood.  He only requested to be put back in diapers a few times but we were able to quickly change the subject and move on J.  Very exhausting on my part though since you really can’t leave their side for more than a minute.  Day 2 we only went through 2 pairs of underwear and day 3 started off really well so I think I relaxed a little bit and started multi-tasking so I think he decided to test me and we had a couple of accidents but after that I stayed on top of him and he did really well.  Overall I’m so proud of what he’s done and know that we still have a long ways to go before he will be able to do everything on his own but definitely are headed in the right direction.  Hopefully the rest of this week will go well and he will adjust to his new underware well at school.  Friday is his big birthday so lots to get done before then!

Happy New Years!

Hope everyone had a great new years!  Ours was pretty low key.  It's kind of hard to get too crazy when you have 2 kids and know they are going to wake up super early the next morning but i did manage to stay up for the ball dropping on the East coast which is pretty good for me.  Looking forward to all that is coming this next year starting off with two very special birthday parties.  Also gearing up to start our new years resolutions this year to eat healthier and get in shape.  It's about time i loose the rest of this baby weight considering Wyatt is almost a year old and it helps that we have some motivaion with our trip planned in June :).

Merry Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year and feel so blessed! Santa actually stopped by our house early and we opened gifts on Friday morning. Gavin was so much fun this year. We loved watching him get so excited about opening all his presents and showing them off and helping Wyatt open his gifts as well. We got to hang around our house on Friday and let the boys play with their new toys and then headed up to Iowa Saturday morning. We enjoyed an amazing church service at Hope and then spent the rest of the night at my parents’ house with my grandparents and aunt/uncle and cousins playing games and eating lots and lots of food. We opened more presents Sunday morning and then headed to Ryan’s parents to celebrate and have dinner with his parents and several of his uncles and aunt and cousin. It's a short work week for us and then we are heading back up to Iowa again to celebrate Christmas/New Years with my Great Grandpa and all my grandpa’s side of the family. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and are so thankful that we still get to have this dinner and spend time with my Great Grandpa who turned 96 this year. Below are a few fun pictures from Christmas. You can see more from the past month in the December album on Picasa.

Wyatt also turned 11 months on Saturday. It’s hard to believe this little guy is going to be one soon. He is crawling on his hands and knees all over the place and pulling up on everything. Gavin is definitely adjusting to this new skill as Wyatt wants to be in on everything he is doing but so far Gavin has done really well sharing his toys and dealing with the invasion of his space. Wyatt loves to dance and will rock back and forth and bounce anytime he hears music. He is all over the place and rarely sits still for long! He still loves loves loves being able to eat real food and because of this has given up drinking most of his bottles so luckily it doesn’t seem like it will be too hard to get rid of them all together. He’s also been super drooly these days and now has both his bottom teeth and his top two teeth just poked through. He likes to babble and screech but doesn’t say many real words yet other than dada. We have a busy month coming up planning two birthday parties and working on potty training with Gavin. He’s doing really well at school but has kind of given up all together at home so I think I’m going to try the 3 day potty training and see how that works since he is so close. I think he’s definitely taking after his dad on this one since he was at least 3 ½ before he was potty trained and would tell his mom at the store that she still needed to buy diapers :). Gavin is the exact same way because he can talk through everything like telling us that once he starts going potty he can go to preschool with Charlie and Braden his two bestest friends but is just too stubborn to actually want to do it yet. We will see! Hoping to have him potty trained before his birthday. It would be so nice to not have to buy formula or 2 sets of diapers anymore!!

Can’t believe we almost have a 3 years old and a 1 year old! This year has just flown by!

Santa

Santa made an appearance at the boys school last week and we weren't going to stop but the line was really short so I thought we might as well try and see what happens.  When I asked Gavin he was really excited and all about asking him for a new dinosaur for Christmas.  Well once it was our turn I sat Wyatt on Santa's lap and went to get Gavin and he wanted nothing to do with it (shocking i know).  Wyatt's reaction might have scared him off a little bit because as you can see from the picture below he really loved Santa :).

Gingerbread house

So we made our first gingerbread house over the weekend.  It was quite the experience and much more involved than i was thinking.  Little did we know that it is quite the process to put one of these things together.  Ryan and I just started putting the house together and then read the instructions and realized that you were supposed to do it side by side and let it dry for 2 hours between each one.  Who has time for all that :).  Since it was already pretty late on Sat. by the time we got the house together we decided we would let it dry overnight and decorate on Sunday.  We told Gavin when he woke up in the morning that we could decorate the house and man does that kid have a memory!  The first thing he said when he woke up that morning was now do we get to decorate the house lol.  It started out a little rough with most candy going into Gavin's mouth but then he got the hang of putting them on the house and kept saying this is fun!!  Probably the best decision was buying the icing in a can at Target on Saturday.  It made decorating much easier since the frosting that came with the kit was really hard to spread.  Overall for our first adventure and not having much artistic talent in this house I think it turned out pretty good.  Looks like we might have found a new family tradition!
**disclaimer - please disregard the messy house in the background.  Lately i feel like it always looks as if a tornado has just passed through :) **

O Christmas Tree

We were finally able to get our Christmas tree over the weekend. We had originally planned to go on Saturday since it was supposed to be the warmer of the two days but it decided to rain buckets so thankfully Sunday wasn’t too bad. It was cold by not very windy so we just bundled up and headed out to the Christmas tree farm. My parents were in town for the weekend so they were able to come with and Gavin loved getting to run through the trees and step on every stump he could find. He also loved riding in the sled after we dropped our tree off and eating the popcorn. Wyatt was a trooper and just took it all in. Below are some fun pictures from the day with my new camera. It’s so nice to finally have a camera that actually takes fast pictures so I can get a few of Gavin actually looking. We got our tree put up on Sunday but we didn’t actually get it all decorated until Monday night. This is the first year we’ve used colored lights and I love it.

We also had Gavin’s first Holiday program for school last night which was fun. His class only sang two songs but he did a really good job of leading the kids out on stage. Once he actually got out there I think he got a little nervous seeing all the people staring back at him so he didn’t really get into it much but did stay up there the entire time which we were impressed with. It was fun to watch all the kids especially the ones that really got into it. Afterwards he was funny because we picked him up and he said that was fun! Looking forward to next year when he’s a little older and will really get into it. This weekend we have a trip to see Santa so it will be interesting to see if either boy will sit on his lap for a picture!

10 Months, Happy Thanksgiving!

Wyatt turned 10 months old yesterday and hit several big milestones this month. The biggest one in our minds is that he is finally sleeping through the night at least that was until he started teething :). Milestone #2 we finally have our first tooth. His bottom tooth on the left popped through a little over a week ago and I think the other one on the bottom is very close to coming through as well. Milestone #3 he can now go from a laying down position to sitting up. He first figured this one out in his crib because I checked on him one morning and couldn’t believe that he was sitting up! I think this has delayed his crawling on his hands and knees a little since now anytime he’s on his stomach he just pushes himself into a sitting position but he did actually take a few steps crawling on his hands and knees today so he’s definitely close but still army crawls super fast all over right now. He’s also just started really pulling up on things and gets so proud of himself when he does it. Milestone #4 Wyatt is now eating mostly real food and he loves it!! I can’t believe how much this kid can eat and he just shovels it in his mouth just like Gavin. His poor tummy did have to adjust to his new diet a little bit and on top add teething to that and we had a fun week of him blowing out his diaper almost every day between the hours of 2 and 5 am. So glad that is done as it wasn’t very fun doing laundry every morning and having to give him some early morning baths.  Some other fun things, he loves to play peekaboo and will cover his face in his blanket and then when you say Where's Wyatt he will throw it down and smile and he's started giving high-fives and will do so-big like in the picture above.

We had a great thanksgiving and have so much to be thankful for this year. We were able to spend Thanksgiving day with my family at my Grandpa’s house and it was great to see everyone. My aunt/uncle and cousins from Colorado got to meet Wyatt for the first time and Gavin had a blast playing with Avrie and playing football with the big boys after dinner. On Friday we headed up to Minneapolis to see Ryan’s family. We had a great time up there and Gavin had a blast getting to play with Addy and Will and we loved getting to see Evelynn again. She has gotten so big and is seriously the happiest baby you will ever meet. We never seem to get to spend enough time up there. Headed home early this morning and thankfully both boys did really well in the car since it is such a long ride.

Enjoy the pictures from the past month. The last few are of the boys taking their first bath together and they had so much fun. Wyatt took a bath for the first time in the big tub in the hotel over the weekend and loved it. He was splashing all over the place and diving on his stomach and scotching around so we decided to put them in the tub together tonight and it got a little wild but they had fun.