brian & kristin: March 2018

Grayson :: 18 Months

{March 16th}

This 3rd child has been bursting with personality and I don't want to forget any of it because I know how fast they change!

He is tall and skinny.
At his 18th month check up, he was 20% for weight and 70% for height.
He has started transitioning into 18-24 mth clothes.
I've been holding onto some things thinking they would be too big and he's almost outgrown them already. Oops!
He also has huge feet! All my boys do... since the day they were born. But his seem to be trending bigger than the other boys at this age. He is definitely a size 5, and I'm guessing might be a size 6 by summer time.

He's been talking like crazy and repeats most of what we ask him to.
We started keeping track of his words and he's somewhere between 20 and 30.
Some favorites are 'I buckle', bubble, ants, Hoorah!, egg, and daddy.
The one word he refuses to say is Mimi and its killing my mom!
She's going to be watching him for about 9 days in April so he better pick it up quick, ha!
He will literally repeat anything but when we ask if he can say Mimi, he just says No.

He still loves bath time and water.
He has started blowing bubbles in the bath and begs to get in the shower with Brian or I any time he can.
We also took him to the pool for Everett's birthday last month and he loved going down the little slide on their playground.
He also wore a floatie for the first time and didn't seem to mind so we're getting excited for a summer at the pool.
When get gets out of the bath, he says "Yoda" to ask for his bath robe/towel.
The first time we put it on him we kept calling him Yoda cause thats what he looked like so now he calls the robe "Yoda!"

We finally found some TV that he is interested in!
He LOVES watching the YouTube videos for "Ants Go Marching" and "Going on a Bear Hunt".
He marches his feet and sings Hoorah! and Boom Boom....
When he wants to watch it he points to the TV and begs for "Ants" or "hoorah" and we are so obsessed with it.
He asks for "Bear" for bear hunt and also gets super into that one too.
Our favorite part is when he puts up his hands to make his little binoculars.
We keep trying to get him interested in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse but he only likes the beginning song and the Hot Dog song at the end. He could care less any other part of the episode.

He hates getting into his carseat and overall doesn't care for riding in the car at all.
Which is a total pain as the 3rd child because he has to tag along everywhere.
He arches like crazy and screams and cries and tries to claw his way out of his carseat every single time we have to go somewhere. I am about to switch him forward just to see if it helps because it is Such.A.Pain. I would say he also cries and is upset about 50% of the time we are just driving somewhere too.

He also hates the shopping cart and is a total pain to take on any errands.
(also a problem for me).
He will sit with a bribe for about 10-15 minutes at the longest.
I literally try every snack, cookie, treat, toy, etc to keep him entertained and he will still freak and climb out. When I say freak I mean scream at the top of his long and then hysterically cry until I unbuckle him and carry him around.
He's only happy being carried for about 5 minutes before he wants back in the cart to just monkey and climb around.

He loves to play outside and follow the big boys around.
He can climb up the slide and go down by himself and surprised me when we were out the park last week and he climbed up a little rock wall thing by himself too.
He's dying to ride the scooter too but hasn't quite figured it out yet.

He is still getting into everything and anything.
He tears through our bathroom cabinet, the cabinet with DVD's and a few drawers in my office with camera stuff on a daily basis.

He's barely just started to get into books and let us read to him.
They have to have very few words on each page because we only have a few seconds to turn the pages before he loses interest and just tries to close the whole book.
He likes to play with a few of our puzzles too.
Sometimes he'll recognize colors or animals but it isn't consistent yet.

He's gotten several of his body parts down and has several animal sounds too.
But only when he's in the mood.

He has been pretty needy lately but I just felt around in his mouth and he has all 4 molars coming in right now so that is fun.
We take him for his first dentist appointment later this week!

He's still a great eater and eats almost anything we give him.
Loves all fruits, veggies, most meats, and ALL sweets.
We've retired the high chair and he only wants to sit at the counter near the big boys.
Sometimes he'll only eat what they are having too... specifically for breakfast.

Braxton :: 6 1/2 years

{February 28th}

I feel like Braxton has moved into the 'big kid' stage and out of the little kid stage and it makes me so sad that it happened so quick. I also feel like we've had to spend so much energy and attention on Everett and and Grayson the last year that we blinked and we missed it.

He is such a smarty pants and is doing so awesome in school!

His kindergarten teachers really are so amazing and his experience this year will probably never be topped.

After Christmas, they've basically been doing a 1st grade curriculum and his teacher has already warned us that he will be bored to tears next year when he is actually in 1st grade.

He is reading and writing and doing additional and subtraction math problems in his head.

Besides the incredible detail and time spent on academics, his class does so much extra stuff that is so dang fun.

They put on a 'Parisian Coffee House' for their spring Readers Theater where they decorated a legit coffee shop to look like Paris, had all the kids wear all black and then all they each got up and read a book in front of all the parents. They made a huge Chinese dragon and put on a parade around the school for Chinese New Year and then had a Chinese feast with chopsticks and tons of fun traditional Chinese foods. They've put on incredible performances for Veterans Day and their Turkey Trot, 100 days of Kindergarten, a Grinch week and of course the Christmas program. It's just been such an amazing year for him and its gonna be hard for all of of when its over.

He is such a morning person... probably the only one in the family, ha!

He isn't a light sleeper but is so sensitive in the morning if he thinks Brian is leaving for work or hears him upstairs and pops out of bed.

He almost always wakes up on his own before 7 am and will usually get completely dressed before he even comes upstairs.

We take turns picking out clothes because of course he wants to wear t-shirts, shorts and hoodies every day. And if we didn't alternate, he wouldn't wear most of the things in his closet.

He is such a good boy most of the time and our only real hiccup is when he doesn't listen very well to us.

He uses manners and almost always helps with his little brothers.

He is just easy and agreeable almost all of the time.

The only time he has breakdowns is when he's just exhausted. And we'll see it sometimes at the end of the week/weekend when we've been busy.

He doesn't really throw fits, but just gets emotional and the most random thing can put him in tears.

He's lost 3 teeth so far.
His front 2 on bottom and 1 of his top front teeth.
The other one front one on top is a little wiggly.

I think he's been going through a growth spurt because he's had such a big appetite lately.

He isn't very picky about foods and will usually eat anything we make for dinner.

But he's starting to eat a lot!

He'll put down 3 Eggos and a bowl of cereal for breakfast no problem.

He's still not really into any veggies and only a select few fruits, but he'll usually try or eat them if we ask him to.

He is a rule follower and a people pleaser.

And it puts him in tears if we even yell at him.

He is a good friend and can play with anyone and everyone.

He isn't shy to go up and meet new people and has become such a leader.

A few weeks ago he told me he has a girlfriend at school now... Emma.

That they were dating now.

When I asked him what it meant to date, he said just that they were gonna get married.

Of course Emma is the sweetest little thing, but I think it has more to do with several of his friends having 'girlfriends' and not that he really cares about girls in any way, ha.

He played basketball this winter and improved so much from the first couple of weeks.

He hasn't shown to have the natural competitive sports instinct yet.

But he got really into practicing and definitely got better each week.

He loves to play everything so we'll just see how it goes as he gets older.

We're doing spring soccer again with his usual team and we also just signed him up for a baseball league this summer.

We just had his first soccer game and can tell he's a lot more engaged and involved than he's been before so maybe its just taken him a little while to get going.

He also still loves riding bikes ands scooters and swimming and playing a pickup game of just about anything in the front yard with neighbor friends.

He's also been in ski lessons again this year and has been rocking those as well.

He's only gone up twice, but was cruising down greens and blues his second lesson.

We've got 1 more lesson and then Brian is going to try and take him for for just a ski day with him.

He's been loving it and we literally have to tear him away from the hill at the end of the day when its starting to close down.

He has started to get bored with cartoon movies and loves to watch movies with real people in them now.

I feel like they don't make good family friendly movies like they did when we were young so we've been showing him some from our childhood.

He's seen Richie Rich, the Sandlot, Home Alone, the Little Giants and Little Rascals and has loved them all.

Sandlot and Little Giants are his favorites so far.

The Sandlot is really his only exposure to baseball so far and the other day he went to change to play baseball out back. He came up in jeans, a t-shirt, a short sleeve button up shirt (unbuttoned) and his baseball hat because that is what Benny wears to play baseball.

He's been working so hard at memorizing his bible versus for Awanas and just finished the first book.

I really think he is just good at memorizing.

But he got so into it and was super proud when he finished.

He did really well with the books of the New Testament on his own but then Nana taught him little song and that is all we listened to for about 3 weeks.