Midweek Report

MONDAY
Monday was my favorite day of the week so far. Although it started out a little stressful with trying to get the boys ready and out the door by 8:30am so we could go get Nala to the groomers. Of course, as we're about to leave Aaron has a blow out diaper... up to his neck! But we did eventually get out the door and were only slightly late to the Groomer. 
While we burned some we wondered over to Petsmart where we looked at all the animals and bought some dog food. 

After some playtime over with cousins Keili and Allie's home, we met my mother and Grandfather over in the River bottoms for lunch and to give my mom the dog food.

Maddix took the photo

 TUESDAY
I was lucky enough to have my third day in a row off of work. We played on the floor all morning. I did a lot of cleaning, and at one point I was vacuuming the hall when all of sudden Aaron disappeared. 

During Maddix's quiet time (instead of naps he takes time in my bed with a ton of books) I heard him leave the room to go to the bathroom and it clicked in my head "Hmm... Maddix has a pile of toys in the hall. What are the odds that he picks up some toys." So I hid around the corner and sure enough he snuck a few into the room. When I opened the door, he flipped around with a slight smile, trying to judge if I knew anything. "Hey mom, I'm just reading." I asked him if he had any toys to which he replied
No.
I continued on about how mommy's know when you're lying to them and continued to shake his head that, "no, I don't have any toys in the room," all while sliding the lump under his blanket closer to him. OH MY GOSH... so we continued again, with the explanation that you'd be in more trouble if you lied than if you just told the truth, at which point he sat on top of the blanketed mass, and innocently shook his head back and fourth... THIS IS MY THREE YEAR OLD!! Eventually he was discovered and he smiled and said, "I was just trying to be sneaky." 

Later that day cousin Bella came over to play. They went out and went sledding in the backyard, rode scooters downy the hill, had a snowball fight, and basically emptied EVERY toy in Maddix's room out on the floor, ha ha. 

WEDNESDAY
We went to my mom's and while we were playing with the lovely Nala: 

Beauty after being groomed

Love this girl

laughed as Aaron crawled over to pick up Nala's slimy ball. Well as we were leaving I had Aaron in the carseat and Maddix came running over laughing, "Mom! I... Mom, I gave ha ha ha... Aaron..." He couldn't even finish. I looked around the corner to find Aaron sucking on Nala's slobbery tennis ball!!! YUCK!! But Maddix thought he was just Hilarious. 

When I came home from work last night I heard Maddix crying in his bed, "No, I just want mommy, please, I just want to go home!" When I went in to check on him I found him BURNING up. He had a fever of 101.6 but was still being so nice as I made him take some medicine. 

My little trooper

My little trooper

It took all my self control not to snuggle him in my bed as I listened to him toss and turn all night. In fact, when he woke up in the morning for another dose of Tylenol I tried to put him in my bed, but he said, "mom, what are you doing? You need to put me back in my  cool bed. Crazy, you were confused:)" 

So once we were up for the morning I made a little resting spot on the couch and informed Maddix that all we were doing today was watching movies and reading; he is officially fine with being sick. He really really likes that we are watching sooooo many movies today! 

learning to pull himself up

Went over to check on his big brother

The Rest of Our Week

Today was a nice day. 

Maddix and I enjoyed some fun time together outside just sledding, playing basketball, running up and down the hill, wrestling, and having a ball while Aaron napped. He just laughed and laughed, and for once I didn't find myself checking my phone every few minutes to check the time or worry about what else I needed to be doing; truthfully I didn't even have my phone with me. 

At church Aaron was such a chatterbox. He kept saying, "dad" and "dadda" so I filmed it during Sunday School and sent it to Travix who was VERY excited to receive the video; he misses his boys so so much. Also cousin Bella (4yrs old) and Colton (my 17yr old Brother) were with us at church and the Relief Society Pres. came over and said, "Lacey, I didn't know you had 3 little ones, or that your HUSBAND came home already:)... no NO, this is my brother, and my cousin. It was quite entertaining. 

Also today we got to pick Nala up from the breeders. They informed me that she should be "good and pregnant" after FIVE rendezvous' and she seemed like she was really enjoying her big backyard and other dogs to play with. Now I don't think I mentioned before that we took her to be bred, but that is partly because I know that in the world today there is a HUGE stigma about breeding dogs and many people are very against, BUT here are my reasons: 

1- I REALLY want to keep a puppy from Nala's blood line someday, and realistically when we actually I get an opportunity for that she will be 7, and I've read everywhere that it is still okay at that point, however they have to have had a littler before so their body knows what to do. 

2- It really mellows your dog out and instals a mothering instinct in them, which would be nice for Nala to have where we're moving back into an apartment in New York. And

3- If there is an opportunity to make a little money while fulfilling the top two reasons, I would consider myself extremely blessed. 

SO, those are our reasons. You can think what you want, but I stand by our decision. To continue on...

Yesterday Maddix had a great time at his "play date" with Porter and Lucy while I went to work, then enjoyed our evening having Colton come spend the night: 

Breakfast pancakes, compliments of Grandpa

Friday we took the morning easy and later had some friends over for lunch. They ended up staying while I went to work and they watched/played with the boys until my dad showed up. 

Thursday was a very great day. Maddix was so excited that I had the WHOLE day off from work to be with him and just NOT go anywhere:) We had a great time. Got some Insanity work out done in the morning, deep cleaned together, then me and my boys had some uninterrupted cuddle time for the length of the entire How To Train My Dragon movie. That was probably my favorite moment of the whole week: 

And that was our week in a nutshell. 

For Travis...

His week went like this: 

Study, Study, Study, Study, Study, sleep, eat a little. 

Study, Study, Study, Study, Study, eat, sleep a little, shower. 

Study, Study, Study, Study, Study,

Study, Study, test, test, test...

briefly talk to us. 

Study, test, test, and then finally reach Sunday where he had decided to eat some time

up by cooking: extensively cooking. That was the beginning of what turned into his 10lb. lasagna. 

 Then he had the elders over to eat. Before they arrived he said to me, "this lasagna will probably last me until I come home." At which point I reminded him he had Elders coming over for dinner, and he quickly said, "you're right. There won't be anything left over:)"

P.S. Some bonus moments from the week:

They melt my heart!

Where to Start??

Where to start?? Seriously. So much has happened in the past 10 days; nothing traumatic, or life altering, nothing like that. It has just been busy, and crazy, and fun, and hard, and well that's why I don't know where to start... because it's been a little of everything.

I guess to start off, we moved :O)
And today I think I finally finished putting the last of our things into their new places

Our yard to play in

MY room, no boys allowed ;)

The Boys Room:)

I love that they're in their own room

A big THANK YOU to my grandparents for letting us stay at their house for the time being. And a big THANK YOU to my in-laws (including the Brother-in-laws) for opening their home to us whenever needs be. For helping us whenever he fell short of something, and for being willing to alter their daily life style to accommodate ours; Thank you very much and we love you all.
Shortly after moving here and getting acquainted to having a little more space, I decided it's time to get back into shape. So once it's warm I want to start running again and what better way than not having to find a sitter, but just getting the boys out of the house too. So we bought this:

Found it online for only $100! 

We've already taken it out for one walk and the boys LOVED it. The weather was perfect... maybe a little chilly, but it was just nice to not have Aaron in those terrible MOBE wraps (sorry, not a fan), or have Maddix constantly hopping in and out of the other stroller. We went 5 miles before going home and snuggling up to a movie; I love days like those :)

Beginning of the walk all bundled and
equipped with snacks.

They didn't quite make it all the way

I must say that we've really been enjoying the added space. For instance Maddix gets to burn a little extra energy simply running up the stairs to breakfast, vs running laps around the kitchen table ha ha, which was entertaining still.

Little boy energy

Bat man shirt and cape!

Just taking a readying break! 

Then on top of having all the space, we've been enjoying all the play dates and new friends that are around to play with:) 

Wanted to be a part of the fun

First play group in this ward

Aaron has also been growing bigger n bigger! He is pretty much crawling; it's not pretty, but he gets anywhere he wants too! He is also trying to pull himself up on everything and still wants to eat everything big people eat. He just went to the doctor and is in the 60 something percentile for height and is on a 9 month old baby level with mental development; however, his weight plummeted down to the 9th percentile because come to find out... my milk is drying up and he is basically starving :( So we're pretty much done with breastfeeding; this makes me sad, but I also know that it's better for Aaron at this point, and once again I don't have to make the decision on when to be done. Like his brother, Aaron will be done feeding without it being my call, so that's fine. 

Bath time in the sink because we don't have a tub

A NOT so happy day

A very happy day

First time sitting up in the grocery
cart and not sitting in the
carseat

And puking some more, of course.

 And that brings up to yesterday. I asked Maddix, "buddy, how would it sound to go with me to the grocery store and then after, we could rent Turbo and snuggle under some blankets and eat some popcorn?" His face lit up and he JUMPED into my arms, "Oh that sounds like the BEST idea ever!" He was sold. And we didn't get to cuddle long before I had to make dinner, but we had a good time, me and my boys. 

And today, today was once again a farewell to another loved one. Goodbye for two years Elder Garett! To say goodbye we went to lunch at Brick Oven (apparently it's the place to go if you're a leaving Elder). Aaron was a little less than pleasant at the beginning and then got nice as it went on. Then as Maddix went to say goodbye to Garett he got wapped in the eye REALLY hard with a chair, and then vomited in the parking lot on our way out; overall it was a successful farewell and I even managed not to cry:) 

"Guess what Garett? ... NOTHING"
Maddix said his last one of those
to his Uncle Garett for awhile. 

Just after puking

Garett's Missionary Farewell

Garett is my brother-in-law.
       I knew him when he was little, with little crooked teeth and little muscles...
I remember when I started dating Travis and he was babysitting Garett, so he brought him over.
      We dared him to kiss my roommate, Mackenzie on the cheek; of course he did.

Soon to be Elder Johnson

He has such a great personality.
      The people (and Lemurs) of Madagascar will be lucky to have him!

2008 trip. Garett on the right

One of little Garett's baseball
games

Spartan race; look at those Garett muscles

These two cuties will miss him for sure!

Baby Update: 6 Months! ~ Better late than never

As of January 5th, you're officially half a year old. You're getting so big, yet you still feel so small to me:)

Sleep: Well, this would be a different story if we didn't live with so many people, and if I didn't get off work around 10:00 most nights.

• You go to bed at 7:00-7:30pm each night with relatively little fuss. I wake you up around 11:00 and feed you, and you squawk back to sleep within about 10mins. 
• You have been a good boy about staying asleep until 6:30-7:30am; however, once you get away with even one night of waking up earlier... you try it again and again. This is where living with people blows! I am having to pick you up and rock you and force you to keep your binki in so you don't wake Maddix up or anyone else in the house. 
• So now that I want to break you of the 10:30pm feeding habit I'm finding that you will wake yourself up because that's what you're used too... it's going to FUN trying to break that! 
• And lately you've been waking up around 5:00am and SCREAMING for 20-40mins before going back to sleep.
• You wake up in the mornings between 7:00-7:30am, nap around 9:00-9:30 until 10:30-11:30. Then you take your next nap about 1:00pm for an hour-ish, then sometimes another quick and short snooze around 4:30pm. 

Weight: You have chubby little cheeks! As well as roll polly legs! You're adorable and I THINK you're probably 15.5lbs, but that's a guess.
Likes: More like LOVES:

• Paper and the act of eating it!
• Big people food. No matter what it is, just as long as it gets in his mouth
• Your brother, Maddix; he's your fav person ever! 
• Your new found independence from getting bigger
• Bath time in Gma Janet's large sink
• Being teased and made to laugh
• Anytime someone says "Hi."
• Toys, especially in your mouth
• Chatting, chatting, chatting all the time
• Flirting with women; you love the ladies!
• Being cuddled
• Any and all ATTENTION given to you. 
• Sitting on the heater vent
• And soooo many other things

Dislikes:

• The carseat! You have to be in a rare and relaxed state to be okay with the carseat
• Toys when they get away from you and you end up on your belly trying to chase them
• Crawling further and further backwards when all you want to do is go forward! 
• Being left on the floor for too much independent time:) 
• Being laid on his back! Makes changing his diaper difficult
• Still doesn't allow me to eat Chocolate, pineapple, broccoli, or Cauliflower without getting an upset tummy

Anything Else: Holy Smokes you're a grown up lil' guy now! You are getting too big! While Travis was home, I think it was Christmas day even, you began sitting up completely by yourself! Within a day or two you began rolling all over the place, getting wherever you wanted too. On that same day you also learned how to get up on all fours and rock back and fourth:) Now you are skilled at getting up on all four, rocking until your knees move and you do a froggy hop to move around. Then, the other day you saw Grandpa in the hall and decided to roll clear acrosss the room, get up on all fours, then sit yourself onto your bum (I've yet to see it, but I have seen you sitting yourself up after being down)! You are beginning to grab little bits of food and move them to your mouth. You are now eating the little puff snacks. You eat really any big people foods, and the other day I turned around to see you trying to drink from brother's sippy cup; your face when I caught you was priceless, like the first mischievous look of many to come!! 

 Also, I've had to take a medication for Mastitis that I think has been hurting your tummy a bit. I do know for sure that it has helped your bowel problems. You've gone from the baby that only poops once every three days, to the baby with about two a day blowouts! Geesh! Never has a mamma been so happy to see you poop, however, if you could avoid your clothes, that would be nice. Now that i've finished the meds, I think you're starting to just normal out. I hope you don't go back to being constipated all the time again!