Random

Today I felt sick pretty much all last night and all day long as well, so when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a surprise while driving home from the grocery store, it lifted my spirits. I love camera phones- now I always have a way to capture funny moments.

Brendan had managed to snag my purse and pull out my glasses, which he loves and constantly wants to wear and constantly gets mad when I won’t let him. So he totally took advantage of the situation and got to wear my glasses for the whole drive home- a whopping 3 minutes. I love that he puts them on upside down every single time. And don’t you love his awesome hair?  My excuse is that I could barely fix my own hair today without throwing up so Brendan’s hair got neglected. I think he pulls off the Jim Carey Dumb and Dumber hairdo quite well.

This totally made my day.

I’m Ready…

I’m ready to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. We go in for the ultrasound next Monday and I can’t wait. I’m tired of not knowing and this time around I don’t have much of a feeling either way. With Brendan I was pretty positive he was a boy but this pregnancy has been quite different. I just want to know so I can start getting ready and hopefully buy lots of adorable pink things. There’s a little poll over in the sidebar if you’d like to cast your vote before Monday!

I’m ready to be done with potty training. Seriously. The last couple of weeks have been all over the place. One day Brendan’s doing great and the next he can’t even pee in the toilet. Today was particularly difficult for me to keep my patience with him. He pooped in his underwear TWICE and once happened while we were at the store despite me asking him over and over if he needed to go to the potty. I was already in a bad mood today and this did not help. So it was back in pull-ups for Brendan, which Brendan just treats like a diaper so it felt like we took two steps back today.

We’ve moved to bribing Brendan with cars to see if that will help motivate him and last week he picked out a Chic Hicks car from Cars- which he then tried to flush down the toilet later that night (but luckily didn’t go down). Brendan LOVES flushing the toilet and it was only a matter of time before he progressed to flushing his toys. We thought he had also flushed his Lightning McQueen car too since he was no where to be found so Brendan got in BIG trouble and had a very stern lecture from us while in timeout. And then we found Lightning in the kitchen. I felt so bad. So to make it up to him, we let him go crazy and jump off the stairs (which he is usually not allowed to do).

I’m ready for Brendan’s speech therapy to start. I finally got a phone call to schedule his full assessment so at least we’re getting somewhere. I’m hoping that we can have him start as soon as possible because even though Brendan has made tremendous improvement lately, he still definitely needs some help.

I’m ready for my picky eater to not be a picky eater. He’s so difficult to feed- what kid doesn’t like mashed potatoes?! Or strawberries? Right now, he’s living off of grilled cheese, pancakes or waffles, bagels and chicken nuggets. So it was quite the shock the other night when he found half of a lime and wanted to taste it.

And he actually liked it and took several licks from it. I think he mostly did it because Chris and I were cracking up but hopefully he’ll be more inclined to try new things in the future now.

 

This kid cracks me up and even though I spend a lot of time trying not to tear my hair out, I just love him to pieces.

I know Easter was a couple weeks ago…

I finally found the cord to connect my camera to the computer (I always lose that stupid cord!) so without further delay here are the pictures and video of our Easter.

Brendan had fun finding the eggs that Chris “hid” in our backyard until the giant bumblebees appeared. At that point he refused to come back outside to finish collecting the last few eggs and I don’t blame him. Those suckers are HUGE.

Brendan was sporting some awesome hair that morning. The egg hunt was literally the first thing we did that morning- even before breakfast.

When Brendan was done in the backyard, he wanted more eggs so Chris re-hid them in the front yard.

We found that net in the $1 section at Target at Brendan had to have it. He didn’t want to put his eggs in his basket. It was all about that net.

Brendan eventually wanted to look through his basket and was pleased to discover he had even more goodies in there. I had to buy him a chocolate bunny despite the fact that the only candy he eats are Reese’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups but it’s just not Easter without a chocolate bunny.

Since Brendan isn’t much of a candy person, I filled his basket with other little fun goodies- punch balloons, chapstick, toy cars- and he loved it all.

As for Chris and I, Chris managed to track down my favorite Easter candy and I made sure to have lots of Cadbury Creme Eggs for him. Then we watched conference, relaxed and had a nice dinner. I’d say it was a pretty successful Easter.

Day 4

We are slowly making progress with potty training. Brendan has had two successful attempts at peeing in the toilet today and I’m excited since yesterday we had quite a few accidents. Turns out that Brendan has no problem peeing in his pull-ups or underwear so it’s been a battle to get him to go to the toilet before he pees. But this morning after breakfast, I asked him if he needed to go pee and he went into the bathroom without a fuss, pulled down his underwear and went pee!!!! I was so proud of him and it was so nice to get him to go without crying, screaming “no!” or refusing to sit on the toilet. But we’re getting there and I’m hopeful that things will keep getting better. Brendan has always been resistant to change so I knew he’d put up a fight but so far, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought. Then again, we’ve only been doing this for 4 days and things could still change.
And because I have to include pictures, here are a couple of Brendan and his buddy Josh playing with the hose since we’ve been having a heat wave here all week and they needed to cool down. I’m not loving the hot weather and it’s a little too early in my opinion to be having 90 degree days.

Cherry Blossom Festival

We headed into DC last week to check out the Cherry Blossom Festival and we picked the perfect day. The weather was awesome (mid-70’s), the trees were at their peak bloom and we beat most of the traffic.

We also got to stop and see the Jefferson Memorial, which we missed on our last trip. It was super crowded but still very cool.

The trees were really beautiful and I couldn’t believe how many there are.

The weather was so nice that we had planned to rent a paddle boat and enjoy the water but unfortunately the line was a little too long. I couldn’t even see the end of it. So instead we opted for some popsicles and got to sit and rest our feet. It was a long afternoon of walking and we were all tired.

Brendan was wiped out even though he got to be pushed around in a stroller the whole time but I guess the excitement of the day was enough to exhaust him. He never takes naps anymore so I couldn’t believe that he fell asleep on the ride home. It was a beautiful day and now that the weather has warmed up, I’m sure we’ll be exploring DC more- there’s still so much that we haven’t seen yet!

Foiled Again

This past week, I had planned to start potty training with Brendan but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. One day we picked up some tacos from Taco Bell and Brendan managed to eat 3 soft tacos in about 5 minutes- which is really impressive for someone his size. I can’t even eat three in one sitting. Well, it turns out that Brendan’s digestive system couldn’t handle all those tacos either. That night he threw them all up and proceeded to have diarrhea for the next few days- which is why he’s in the bathtub in these pictures. No one likes to smell like puke and poop. Actually, Brendan probably couldn’t have cared less but I had an issue with it.

I figured with all the stomach issues going on with him, it wasn’t the best time to to start potty training. Which was a bit disappointing since I’m looking forward to the day we are diaper-free at our house and Brendan has actually been quite excited about using the toilet like a “big boy". We already got him a potty training seat and he loves to put it on the toilet and sit on it, and he’s even managed to go poop once! Hurray for Brendan. Too bad he had also pooped on the floor before we made it to the toilet but luckily we have hardwood floors.

Brendan’s feeling better and is back to his normal self so we’ll begin this week! I know I’m going to need to have a lot of patience but I’m hoping that things move along quickly. If anyone has any good tips, books, methods, encouragement- let me know! I’m sure I’ll need it.

I know this isn’t a very Easter-y post but Happy Easter! Our pics (and a video!) will be coming along soon. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as much as we did. In between pigging out on candy and chocolate, we had a very inspirational conference weekend and loved every minute of it.

The best part of his day

Guess what we did yesterday?

We made brownies and a certain little boy got to lick the spoon when we were done.

He likes the batter more than he likes the finished product (although he does like brownies). It was the highlight of his day.