August

Sawyer

Sawyer started gymnastics at the beginning of August. It's just a little thirty minute class with a handful of other three-to-four-year-olds. The first week he was totally "that" kid in class and, if I'm being honest, I was embarrassed. He was just so excited and it was all new and he definitely had no idea that he was expected to do certain things at certain times in a certain way. So instead he was like a little hummingbird flitting from station to station while all the other kids listened perfectly to what the teacher said. It basically turned into a mommy and me class for the two of us that first week, with a lot of me chasing him around and giving him "the look" while trying to get him to focus. He missed the second week because he randomly got pink eye (big, fat boo on that one) but when I took him back the next week, he did really well and it was another kid's turn to have a bad week (which made me feel a lot better, her mom... probably not so much). And Dillon said he did really well when he took him too.

He also started preschool this month. We've been trying to really prepare him for going to school, telling him how fun it will be and reminding him that mom and dad don't stay. I was trying to get him excited for it by reminding him that his cousins go to school and that Christopher Robin leaves Winnie the Pooh to go to school too. His little boy brain translated that to mean that Christopher Robin would go to school with him and, as much as I tried to explain that Christopher Robin goes to a different school, he couldn't be convinced otherwise.

He seemed fine every time we talked about school, excited even. But his first and second day were both really rough at drop off. He was fine as we loaded up in the van and was even still excited as we walked to the school building but as soon as we hung up his backpack and found his seat, he started to tear up. I crouched down by him and reminded him that I loved him very much and would be back to get him, just like when I come back after he stays at Grandma and Grandpa's. His tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks and he cried, "I just want to go home, Mommy. Please, go home." And my heart about broke into a million pieces. I could tell he was getting really worked up so I found one of the TAs and explained to them what I had already told the teacher about his anxiety and how it usually causes him to throw up. At this point, Sawyer was really scream-crying and I decided that I was just going to have to rip the band-aid because my staying wasn't helping (although the time from hanging up his backpack to this point was only about 90 seconds). I told Sawyer 'goodbye' and 'I love you' one more time, then Dawson and I went out the door with Sawyer's sobs ringing in the background. As we walked to the van Dawson looked at me with big eyes and said, "Brother crying." And then my heart broke again and I started to bawl. Then I heard Sawyer's wails and him yelling, "Mommy!" over and over and looked back to see that he had gotten to the door and was reaching his arms out for me as the TA did her best to hold him back. I smiled a smile I wasn't really feeling, waved, and kept walking. Then cried for the next hour. I thought I was prepared for how hard it was going to be for him. I knew it wasn't going to be smooth but my emotions still caught me off guard.

He was crying almost just as hard at pick up and melted into my arms as I carried him to the van. The second day drop off was equally terrible, but I talked to the head TA and she said that each time, after he got through his anxiety and throwing up, he calmed right down and was happy the rest of time. That is such a relief. And at pick up the second day, he was a happy little man so there was at least some improvement. He talked to me a lot about how his tummy hurt, then he threw up in the trash, then he felt better. It seems like once his body is that worked up, that's just it's way of coping. Hopefully one day we can get to the point where he doesn't have to go through that.

He's been having a good time sneakily flushing things down the toilet- food, my hair ties, money. It all started with him taking a penny and dime that I'd given Dawson to put in his piggy bank and flushing them. He did it under the ruse of needing to go to the bathroom. Then when I asked him where his brother's money went, he told me he flushed it down the toilet because "there's mouses down there, I give them monies!" And that, my friends, is all thanks to the movie Flushed Away. Rather than ruining his three-year-old imagination, I just told him that the mice have their own money and he doesn't need to share his with them. But after that he still attempted to flush peaches down there and DID flush some of my hair ties so... the imaginary mice are winning this current battle.

It's fun to watch his interests change and adapt. He's still as interested as ever in dinosaurs and sharks but he has also become really fascinated with robots of all kinds. He also thinks Spiderman is great which is especially funny to me since he's never seen a movie or anything with Spiderman, he's just seen the toys and the Spiderman ones really draw his attention over any other superhero.

Dawson

Dawson started the month off with croup. That stinking virus makes me feel so bad for my kids. He couldn't breathe so he couldn't sleep and it was a rough night for both of us so I decided to take him into the pediatrician in hopes that they would just give him a steroid shot to open his airway. When the PA walked in and pulled out his stethoscope, Dawson started to cry really hard (he is not a fan of going to the doctor) and the PA immediately confirmed that I was right and that he had croup. He went ahead and made sure he got the steroid shot but made sure to tell me that that wouldn't cure the croup since it was a virus. Sometimes I just want to be like, "I know how viruses work. I studied Biology." but I know that would be snotty and not everyone knows the difference between viral infections and bacterial. Just still..I know things okay PA? Ha. He's actually really nice, as are all the doctors at the office we go to and I'm just glad they had an opening for sad, little Dawson. 

For a while, Dawson was spending 75% of his waking hours screaming in a rage about everything. Literally. Hours and hours of tantrums. It's calmed down some but man, this boy has a temper. It's like if he gets pushed to the edge of full on anger (which doesn't take much at all.. like telling him no more candy after he's had two fistfuls or saving him from playing with a knife.. etc.) he wants to make sure you know he's mad and he will NOT calm down for at least thirty minutes. No amount of consoling helps. So sometimes, he gets to rage in his room by himself when I put him in there and close the door. He gets his emotions out and I save the tiniest piece of my sanity. One of the last times I put him in there, I opened the door after he was done. He was leaning on the side of crib all casual and looked at me with a tiny grin and said, "Nice." Like, "Alright, I got it out. I can be nice now."

Dawson loves to play in the rain. Loves it. As soon as he hears it falling, he grabs some toys, heads to the back door and asks me, "Play? 'Side? Rain?" And it doesn't matter how hard it's falling, he'll run back and forth on our deck and squeal, "Rain! Rain! Rain!" Those are some of my favorite moments of his right now.

He's started to sing along more to music and is really liking the song "Sail" by AWOL. He's cool like that. I don't know why it's caught his attention but his singing along is the cutest. Anytime he sees a fly, he says, "Fly! Yuck!" and then asks for the fly swatter so that he can try and get it. He has the most perfect little batting stance you've ever seen. We especially love it because we haven't tried to teach him that but he loves to watch baseball with Dillon so we think he just picked up on it. I've tried my hardest to capture it on video but Dawson doesn't cooperate as soon as my phone comes out. He loves to play his version of hide-n-seek by finding a spot to tuck his head- curtains, behind a door, under a blanket, and asking, "Dawson, where are you?" Then he waits for you to ask that question and he pops out with excitement and exclaims, "There you are!" and expects you to say it too. He is all about the peaches on our peach tree right now. He asks, "Peach, peas! Peach, peas!" quite often throughout the day. And I love the way he says peach.

His interests are ever changing too. He likes pretty much everything his older brother likes, especially the sharks and dinosaurs, but he is also really into the PJ Masks and Thomas lately. He gets so excited whenever he gets to pick a show for TV time and almost always asks for those now (and puppies aka The Secret Life of Pets) and when we see toys that are from either of those shows he immediately asks to get out of the cart so that he can look at them.

Dillon

Dillon turned twenty-eight this month and, for his birthday, my parents took the boys overnight and we got to hang out with just each other for an entire twenty-four hours. It was a dream! We went down to St. George and ate at Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner per Dillon's request and then we shopped around. Dillon actually had some things in mind that he wanted for his birthday this year and he was able to get most of them. We both marveled at the ease of getting in and out of the car when it was just us at almost every stop we made ha, the little things. After we got home, we picked one of the many movies on our Netflix list and watched it together. We slept in the next morning and, even after we were both fully awake, laid there in bed doing nothing... because we could. After we got ready, we shopped a little more for him in Cedar then did a quick lunch and saw Jurassic World at the cheap theater before picking up the boys. It was a nice overnight date for both of us. Glad he could have a birthday so we both could benefit ;). He gets to enjoy his twenties for a little bit longer while my thirties are looming every closer. It's fine.

DaNae

Our guest bathroom doorknob has been struggling for... awhile now. It was definitely finicky and had to be turned a certain way in order for the door to actually be opened. This month it got to the point where you would get stuck in the bathroom unless someone was on the other side to open it for you. So Dillon and I had it on our list to fix, but didn't make it a huge priority since that bathroom didn't get used very often. Well one morning, I went in there to use the bathroom, and shut the door without thinking, just trying to keep the boys out and have some privacy. After trying to open the door for a good fifteen minutes, and having Sawyer freak out on the other side of the door, I called my mom to see if she could rescue me. She was about to do job interviews so she couldn't leave but said she would call my brother. He agreed to drive over and help me out (after making fun of me for not being able to get out of my own bathroom). Let's peddle back at this point in the story now to say that I was in the middle of getting ready, so I was only in my underwear... locked in the bathroom. This is partly why I didn't really consider climbing out the bathroom window that goes to our front lawn for all the neighborhood to see. So, as glad as I was that Devan was coming to the rescue, I was also mortified that I was chilling practically naked in my basically see-through underwear for my brother to see. Devan showed up and tried to figure out the doorknob from the other side. The mechanism inside had broken. And the screws that would come out and allow us to just take it off were on my side of the door. So he went outside to the bathroom window and tried to give me instructions on taking the door off it's hinges. I was attempting to hold a towel around me as I tried to do what he said but had to give up the towel during the process. So I tried to pretend parts of my body weren't basically staring my brother in the face as we tested our problem solving skills. I couldn't get the door off it's hinges so Devan had to take off the window screen, shimmy his way through the window, and do it for me. The door was still stuck. Back through the window Devan went. After working some magic on the other side of the door, he got it off and all was well. And now we have a new doorknob that won't trap us or any visitors in our bathroom.

Crossing off some last minute things on our Summer bucket list.

Dawson loves his brother's Owlette mask!

Wearing Great-Grandpa Loveland's hats.

We hit up another Home Depot workshop and it was so fun!

And so messy.

Made some bookworm bookends.

At a cute neighbor girl's birthday party. Sawyer was busy playing in the pool. And we had just come from a baby blessing, hence the clothes for me and Dillon.

Grandma Paula bought Sawyer a dinosaur backpack for school, and she found one for Dawson to use too. He loves to wear it on his "mummy" and haul it around everywhere.

Brothers.

We found some new shoes for Dawson and he was surprisingly invested in the process and didn't want to let the box out of his sight once we had chosen a pair.

"Dawson, where are you?"

"There you are!"

We made it back to the lake as part of Dillon's birthday festivities so that he could rent a paddle board and try it out.

He loved it and so did the boys.

Donut floaty. 

Nursery art project.

Gymnastics.

The rings are definitely his favorite.

Dinosaurs in the tub.

Dawson loves to brush hair lately, especially mine.

Eating a peach, with sprinkles on his face from the previously eaten donut. Balance.

He's starting to remember/memorize parts in books and will "read" them to me.

I always think they look so cute all ready for church and have to snap pictures.

Primary bag in one hand, our son's in the other. Dillon's the best and the hottest.

I kept trying to get Dawson to say peach while we were at the playground and he just wanted to talk about the slide.

But as soon as I flipped the screen so he could see himself, he was all about it.

He asked to get up on this bench at my parents, then laid down and asked for a blanket.

Then a pillow, and snuggled right in.

I asked him to stand for a picture for the first day of school and this is what he gave me.

First day of school!

Dawson wanted to be just like Sawyer and bring his backpack. Then they held hands and walked over to the school together and my heart melted.