Painting...Is Not Fun

Sawyer:

He has been on one this week. He is usually busy in typical two-year-old fashion but this week has been cuh-razy. I literally have not been able to leave the room for two seconds without making him come with me for fear of what he'll find to get into, in some impossible way.

He's also been funny. He's started to notice that his socks leave behind fuzzy friends inbetween his toes and is very diligent in making sure they're cleaned out before we put his jammies on for the night.

His new thing is to say, "Are you?" when he can't find me or Dillon in the house. Or when he wants us to come get him or take him with us. If he gets scared during the night, and when he wakes up in the morning, he says, "Are you? Are you?" until we come get him.

Dawson:

Hydrocortisone did the trick and his eczema is clearing up. He's really not fitting into his bassinet well anymore and is ready to be transitioned into his crib (which he will be soon when the room we've been redoing is finished).

He won't even take the Comotomo bottle anymore which is beyond frustrating. The only reason I've been trying to make the effort and teach him to take a bottle is so that he'll still get fed if I need to be away from him for whatever reason. But his little dictator self has won, we probably won't be trying to give him a bottle all that often. He screams for an hour or more while we maybe get on ounce into him and then I forfeit and nurse him. So yeah, he wins. Which means I don't dare leave him with a poor, unsuspecting teenage babysitter. My mom, thankfully, is patient enough that we can still leave him with her and he'll at least eat something.

Dillon:

Dillon works hard all the time to provide for our family and puts in extra time at work so that I can stay home with our boys. We sure are grateful that his engineering job at Metalcraft allows him to work overtime hours. The last couple of months they've had Dillon learn how to program which is outside of his regular job description (which I actually couldn't explain in detail...it takes smarts and involves engineering aaaannd I'm out but he's good at it). Once he has programmed a few parts for them, his new responsibility should result in a pay raise which is always a good thing.

Sawyer loves when Dillon is home, especially after a long day of work, and doesn't want to leave his side. Dillon is such a good daddy and will play with both the boys and I'm definitely glad when another parent is in the house.

We've been working on getting our third room ready for Sawyer to move into this week which has been no small task. The carpet in that room plus a few other places in our house needed some cleaning so I took the boys to my parents house Saturday and Dillon rented a carpet cleaner and the carpet got some love. Now we're just waiting for it to dry completely which is taking a surprisingly long time.

DaNae:

I've been putting all my effort this week into what will be Sawyer's new room. It was kind of our catch-all and storage room that we didn't go into much so it was quite the project. I had to move a lot of stuff out and give the empty room a good scrub. Then, of course, strip wall paper (the bane of my existence).

I always get excited to paint. I don't know why, because as the title says, painting is not fun. It was fun for like two seconds because it's exciting to renew something but then it took hours just to do the edge and detail work and I was sitting there going, "I still have to paint the freaking walls." Hours later, the painting was all done and I'm pretty sure my inner thighs got some much needed toning from all the squatting I had to do. So, upside.

Some pictures from this week:

At dinner with our friends

A sit down dinner with kids is exhausting, ex-haus-ting. 

Haircuts for Dillon and Sawyer. I didn't take a picture of Dillon because he's a big boy who's had a million haircuts and would rather not have his half-done haircut posted online.

He got a "suckA!" for being so good during his haircut and then was entertained taking pictures in the mirror while we waited for Dad.

From Instagram: A bright orange headband is sometimes a necessary church outfit accessory...and not worth the fight. #SawyerD

I'm dying over this picture. If Dillon gets down on the floor Sawyer views it as full on rough housing time. So here's Dawson taking it all in, in the Bumbo, while Sawyer sits on Dillon's back and then jumps as high as he can, lifts his feet, and lands on Dillon bum first.

I've saved the big before and after pictures for when the room is actually put together and not just painted but here is a little before with some edge painting.

And after painting.

And my front room currently looks like this which is giving me major anxiety. Also, my kid has too many toys.

Life Lately

My friend Maddie has started blogging in a way that I love and I'm basically going to copy completely. I don't know if it will be every week, but I'm hoping at least every couple weeks. We're at a stage in life where the kids change so fast and so constantly, and I want to remember everything I can. And I want them to have it all to look back on. So, this is all of us lately for a bigger chunk of time (like the last few months) before we hopefully stay more frequently caught up in documenting our lives.

Sawyer:

This boy. He does and says some of the best stuff. Let's start with some of my favorite things he says. He's really pretty good with words and says most of what he knows in a way that is easily understood but there a few things that he's not quite right on, or is completely off altogether, and I actually love it.

For whatever reason, he calls chips, "puts" pronounced as if it was the multiple version of put. I don't know, guys. But it caused some real frustration for a while when we had some in our pantry and he was asking for them. Now that we've figured it out, we all call them "puts" instead of chips.

In the category of not quite right, Sawyer also calls almost everything with a beak a chicken. Around Christmastime, all the snowmen...chickens. Plus he pronounces it, "kicken". He also has an obsession with the Penguins of Madagascar movie that I played one day on a whim. He looooves it and regularly asks to watch "kickens" and "Dave!" the "ock-puss". (There's a lot of octopus action going on in his life right now with that movie, Finding Dory, the Rainbow Fish book, and his night light so he picked up on the word "ock-puss" pretty quick.) He also noticed the penguins' favorite treat in that movie, the cheesy dibbles and points them out every time. Dillon decided to bring home some Cheetos for him so he could have dibbles too. And now Sawyer calls Cheetos, dibbles and we're not correcting him because we think it's cute.

One of my favorite things Sawyer does is ask for a kiss and then he sticks his lips out as far as humanly possible and says "mm". He does this at night before bed as part of his bedtime routine. He gets a kiss and hug and then he waves goodbye and says, "Sillil Laler" (see you later) to whichever parent isn't taking him to his crib.

Sawyer sometimes interacts with Dawson and lately it's when Dawson is upset and I can't help him with whatever it is yet. Sawyer will go pat is belly and say, "Okay, Okay" over and over. Mostly though, he does his own two-year-old thing and ignores his brother.

Some of his current/ongoing obsessions include eating pickles and drinking chocolate milk...and eating candy or treats. Ever since Christmas, we've had a treat of some kind that then has left overs that linger at our house. Birthday cupcakes, blessing day donuts, moms-craving-chocolate-day treats, valentines...you get the idea. So I'm pretty sure Sawyer thinks sugar should be a typical every day occurrence. Oops. The other morning I heard Sawyer waking up in his crib and at first he was repeating, "Sorry, sorry, sorry" which is what he says when something hurts (because that's what I say to him) and then he switched to, "Nonut, nonut!" in the most desperate voice. I can only assume he woke up with hunger pains and thought donuts should be his breakfast.

Sawyer also has a thing for my headbands and hats. He typically has one of those on most of the time we're home.

Sawyer knows regular words but when he wants to have a longer conversation, it's still in gibberish. Long gibberish sentences with a normal word thrown in here and there. His imagination is in full swing because he'll often talk to his "friend" in our full length mirror with lots of gestures and emotion. Some serious story telling going on there. He'll also knock on my parents walls and then start talking to the wall in the same way as our mirror.

Sawyer also likes to take my kitchen utensils and climb into the cupboard under our bathroom sink. He'll ask for the doors to be closed and then sit in there for a little while carrying on conversations in the dark. Our bathroom doors don't latch very well, so locking them is pretty futile. Sawyer thinks being left outside while Dillon or I are in there is lame so he constantly barges in. Dillon haaaates it and has tried to train Sawyer not to do it. Sawyer has figured out that if he asks to sit under the sink Dillon will let him in. So funny.

Healthwise Sawyer has had this weird thing the past 8 months or so where he pukes once at night, about two times a week. Sometimes less, sometimes more but only once during the night. Sometimes he had a cold or an actual stomach bug. Most of the time I figured he was gagging on snot. It was so exasperating and also so, so sad. He would be traumatized because it hurt and we would be washing sheets..again. We put him on Prevacid for a little while (which turned into a fight every day because he hated the taste of it) and it seemed to help but there were a few times where he would have milk in the evening and throw up at night. He's off the Prevacid now and he threw up one night when we gave him milk. So, now he only gets milk before his nap and water or juice after it. He hasn't thrown up at all with that routine. Partial lactose intolerance? Not a thing. But seriously, someone needs to explain this weirdness to me.

Sawyer also got RSV and croup at the same time recently which was so scary and sad. I always struggle with deciding whether or not to take my kids to the doctor. I don't want to take them for every little thing but I obviously want them to be treated if necessary. So I was trying to ride it out but after a particularly rough night, I took him to the pediatrician. Breathing treatment, steroid shot, and a few weeks of symptoms and he's finally feeling better.

And finally, the biggest Sawyer update is that he is now officially weaned from the binky. He's only used it to fall asleep with for a long time, at least a year. I just couldn't work up the nerve to take it away because he used it to soothe himself back to sleep if he woke up in the middle of the night. But it was time. We did it cold turkey. I did a count down for him so that he knew "In five days we're going to throw the binky away". He watched me cut the binky off of the stuffed animal of his wubbanub and I had him throw it away. And he's done great. The only down side so far is that his naps aren't nearly as long as they used to be.

Little fingers poking out from under the sink

He's pretty impressed with snow..but won't wear gloves most of the times. It inevitably ends in tears.

Helping mom shovel

He loved his pickle birthday card from his Grandma Ronna. Whenever I show him this picture he always exclaims, "Picka!"

We escaped to St. George to try out their new all abilities park. We were hoping it would be warm but it was so cold. Sawyer didn't mind though.

My poor boy. So sick.

Feeling better and up to mischief.

Sawyer's Aunt Andee sent him a baseball glove and a stuffed Skipper from his favorite movie. The glove he wears as a hat...

And the penguin he carts around the house while explaining his two-year-old life to it.

We're practicing names of the family members he doesn't get to see very often. Usually videoing it doesn't work because then he won't say any names but he let me capture him saying, "Grandma Monna."

Dawson:

Dawson is getting his own monthly posts so there may not be too much to report on him every time. He also got sick when Sawyer did but not nearly as bad. For him, it was more just a crappy cold. I'm assuming nursing helped out in that department. 

He's got a weird patch of eczema on the back of his head that we are currently trying to get rid of. I've used the Eucerin lotion that is specifically for eczema on both of my boys when they've had breakouts and it usually clears it right up but not this time. We're going to get hydrocortisone cream this week and see if that clears it up.

Speaking of his head, we're trying our best to help it be a normal shape. He favored turning his neck to the right pretty hard for the first part of his short little life and it's made his head a little crooked. But we're doing stretches and I'm trying to be more conscious of deliberate tummy time. I'm pretty paranoid about Dawson's head shape because poor Sawyer had the flattest head as a baby because of our first time parent rooky-ness.

Dillon:

Dillon's biggest news in the last few months is his shoulder surgery. He's been able to pop his left shoulder out of its socket since middle school and everyone thought it was a neat little gimmick. In the last year or so, though, it started slipping out on its own when he would play sports and then every day things like shifting gears in the Jeep. 

We decided that since I had just had a baby and we had met our deductible, last year was a good time to get his shoulder checked out. He originally went through the hospital and their doctors because they were on our provider list (even though he wanted to go to Dr. Delcore). He went in for a consultation and x-ray at the beginning of November and from there they wanted to schedule an MRI, another consultation, probably surgery, etc. When Dillon asked if there was any way that all of that could be done by the end of the year, they basically told him no. 

The MRI had to be approved by our insurance and they actually contacted Dillon to let him know that they had recently added Dr. Delcore to the providers list and they wanted Dillon to work with him because it would save thousands of dollars. So then Dillon had to get his information and everything over to Dr. Delcore's office...by the time everything was sorted out it was almost the end of December and we thought there was no way Dillon would be able to get the surgery done in the same deductible year as Dawson's birth.

When Dillon met with Dr. Delcore he told him about everything that happened and how he had wanted to come to Delcore in the first place. I don't know if that buttered Dr. Delcore up or what but once the MRI was done and they determined that Dillon needed surgery, Dr. Delcore contacted his associate who usually works in St. George (and specializes in the type of surgery Dillon needed) and basically told him that he needed to do this favor for him and get Dillon taken care of. So Dillon had surgery on December 30th and we only had to pay about $600 for everything. Blessings. Heavenly Father definitely pulled some strings.

Dillon's surgery went well. He had to have what is called a SLAP repair. Basically the fibrous cartilage and ligaments that are supposed to keep the top of his arm in his shoulder socket were all torn and not doing their job. So they placed some anchors in his bones and stitched it all back together. 

He was in a shoulder brace for six weeks that he had to keep on all the time unless he was doing his exercises. He had to sleep on an incline because laying flat was a bit of a joke so he slept on our recliner couch for a month and a half. We're all relieved that he has the use of both arms. Two kids and only three parent hands is really just a bad equation.

DaNae:

My life revolves around my kiddos day in and day out but I really do love getting to stay at home with them. I've been part of a Bunco group for about a year and a half and its been so fun to get out of the house and hang out with some fun women that I went to high school with. I didn't talk a whole lot with them in high school beyond the casual "Hey" business and it's been really fun to get to know them better.

I've been trying to keep up on my goal to read 40 books by the end of this year. It would probably help if I stopped picking super long books. I'm definitely behind. I'm currently reading Angela's Ashes and it's slowed me down that's for sure. It will have spurts of pages that I find interesting and can't put it down...and then it will be kind of monotonous which makes me not as excited to read it.

I'm also in the middle of some pretty extreme postpartum hair loss. It's disgusting. Hair that's not attached to what it should be totally grosses me out, even if it's my own. And right now when I shower and wash my hair, it looks like I put mittens on my hands. Gah.

At the SUU gymnastics meet. Sawyer was entertained for a good hour before we called it. 

Until next time.

Dawson Four Months

Four Month Stats:

Weight: 13 lb 12 oz (23rd percentile)

Height: 24 1/4 in (22nd percentile)

Head: 16 in (12th percentile)

During his fourth month Dawson really starting going to town on his fist and fingers. He is CONSTANTLY chewing and sucking on them. Sometimes he'll make his poor little index fingers turn bright red and swollen but it's not because he's hungry, it's because he wants to suck but not on a binky..so his fingers take the abuse.

He has become quite the babbler and will talk back and forth with you in his baby like fashion.

He started laughing hard and it is the best thing ever. Not too many things beat a baby laughing.

Dawson is semi-predictable when it comes to his nighttime sleeping now. He only wakes up once, but I never am quite sure when it's going to be. Sometime between 2:30 and 5:30 am.

For the most part (at least with me) if Dawson is ready to sleep, he would rather just be put down. If he's awake he wants to be held all the live-long day but he's not one to be cuddled to sleep when it comes to mom. Other people he'll settle into and fall asleep with. Rude. 

There are times, though, when he doesn't have the option of being laid down because we're out and about. If that's the case, he's very particular about the position I hold him in to get him to sleep. While I'm standing up, he likes to be belly to belly with his face nestled into the gap between my elbow and my back with his forehead resting on my arm. He peeks out the gap in the back until he gets too tired and falls asleep. There's a picture of it below that I made Dillon take because I just think it's too funny.

Overall he's becoming a pretty easy going fella and we love having him around.

Finally big enough for the bouncer! Gives mom a chance to get a thing or two done...sometimes.

I love that he started doing this when he's falling asleep. Just like Sawyer did.

Snuggled up with Grandma Paula at Braden's baseball game. I seriously didn't think St. George was capable of beanie wearing weather.

His preferred position when he's ready to sleep at places that aren't home.

Sawyer's Second Birthday

Because Sawyer's birthday is two days after Christmas, he gets quite a few days of presents in December. On Christmas we practically had to unwrap his presents for him, he just had no interest. When his birthday rolled around, he finally decided that opening presents might actually be fun.

We did a simple "Three Little Pigs" theme for his second birthday since he was really into the story and movie. I ordered some cupcakes from a lady in town and they turned out so cute! And were delicious. Sawyer made sure he had both a pig and a wolf. Gotta compare flavors. I get it kid. Any excuse to eat more than one cupcake.

Our family came over to help us celebrate and Sawyer definitely loved all of the attention but when everyone started to sing to him he got nervous and wanted his Grandma Paula to pick him up. He loved all of his presents except for the part of his present from me and Dillon that involved clothes..he tossed those aside the same as he did the tissue paper from the gift bags but it's all good seeing as how I still dress him and I like his cute new shirts.

Giving money from one of his birthday cards to cousin Braden.

His birthday haul.

A forced picture with mom because, "you're my baby dangit and you WILL take a birthday picture with me."

And his two year old stats from his well check:

Weight: 29 lbs (63rd percentile)

Height: 36 in (88th percentile)

Head: 19 in (39th percentile)