Kiddos

Yep, another post about my little boys. They're changing so much all the time and I find that blogging is the best way for me to keep track of what they're doing. I love these two boys and they're both so much fun!

Brycen...

Whenever I change a diaper (whether it be his or Carter's) Brycen says, "Cuck! Cuck!" (yuck) We've decided to get him a little potty and start the potty training process. He's starting to show a little bit of interest so we're going to work on it at his pace. Any and all tips/comments on this subject will be greatly appreciated!

He says the word "hot" whenever he sees anything potentially hot. I'm so happy that he doesn't just dig in to stuff and he blows on things before eating it! Even if it isn't hot.

Brycen loves to help with the laundry. His favorite part is putting the clothes in the dryer. He also likes to help with the folding. 

Balloons. Or "bn", as Brycen says it. (That is seriously the best way I can describe how Brycen says the word "balloon". And it actually sounds more like an 'm' at the end instead of an 'n'.) Where do I start with balloons? Our families can attest to Brycen's love for balloons. We can't go to a store that sells balloons without a battle with Brycen. He'll want one and scream till he gets it. We used to just give in and buy him one when we went. But now we've decided not to let him get his way and we let him hold it through the store, taking it away right as we're paying. This results in one parent taking the now kicking and screaming toddler out to the van while the other stays with Carter and pays. No, I don't go grocery shopping with the kids without Tyson. EVER! I'm too scared. Brycen is too much of a wildcard. We have to laugh at Brycen whenever we go to these stores with balloons because he always manages to find one in the rafters. Even if the balloon is lodged way up high, he'll still manage to find it yelling, "Bn! Bn!" We'll have birthday parties with family and Brycen ends up taking a balloon home with him. Most recently he took two from the party we were at. And these balloons that come home with us always end up on the ceiling of the foyer in our house. The ceiling is super high and he always lets them go right there. We have a nice collection right now. I think there are three up there.

Other common words:

• "shook" (juice)
• "Carty" (Carter)
• "bit" (blanket)
• "mo" (more)
• "Oh wow! Cool!"
• "Cheese!" when taking pictures

We taught Brycen to say "please" when he asks for things. It started when he wanted some Crystal Lite. I said, "What do you say?" His response was, "Shook? Shook?" (He calls Crystal Lite and pretty much every other beverage juice.) I told him, "No, you say 'please'." He then said, "Peez?" Ever since then he'll ask for something and we'll say, "What do you say?" His response is, "Peez?" Sometimes he'll just walk into the pantry, point at something, and say, "Peez?"

With all of Brycen's new words he's saying, he's still very fluent in his jibberish. We have people ask us all the time if he's talking yet or if we can understand what he's saying. Our answer is always, "yes" and "yes". Well, we understand him MOST of the time. For example, the other day he was watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and "Gooey" and "Don Cuck" were trapped on Mistletoe Mountain. It was snowy and all kinds of crazy. Brycen said, "Oh no! Gooey eh Don Cuck jargikmy fdisal;lskdjf cjfuekclwoom fjdiox!" In so many words, anyway! My response was, "Really! Goofy and Donald are stuck? Uh oh!" We use situations to help us know what he says. But a lot of the time he'll say something in his jibberish and we'll say, "Really?" or "Oh wow!" We're not at all worried with how he's talking, and honestly I'll be sad when the jibberish is gone. It's his trademark and you can't help but smile at him and laugh a little. 

Brycen shows his love with pats and tickles. He'll see someone he loves and he's excited to see, like an aunt or uncle, and he'll run to them and tickle them. He also pats people in greeting them. He gives really good hugs too.

His looks remind me of his cousin Bailey in a lot of ways, in the eyes and mouth especially.

Brycen is going through a horrible hitting phase. We're constantly and consistently putting him in a timeout chair where he kicks and screams till we let him out. We have to physically hold him there for the two minutes he's in timeout and brave the squirming, screaming, punching, and kicking. He'll hit us and get in trouble, laughing as we're getting mad at him. (He laughs a lot when he gets in trouble. He's just like I was when I was a kid. Great.) If he gets in trouble for something other than hitting, he'll hit us. He'll make a solid effort to walk across the room, crawl up on the couch, and hit whoever is there, just from feeling awkward. Sometimes he doesn't even have to get in trouble and he'll hit someone from feeling awkward. I'll tell him to be careful with his spoon at dinner and he'll climb out of his chair to go hit me. He also grabs things that he knows he's not supposed to touch and attempt to throw it. Or he'll hold it up like he's going to throw it, waiting for our reaction. And all of these things he does with an absolutely blank face and no talking. Gah!!

He's also going through a phase where he holds spit in his mouth. I know. So gross. He'll hold a mouth full of spit and end up drizzling it out as he's actively playing. We'll constantly tell him to swallow and he won't do it. We offer him food and drink (which he takes) but he just walks around with it and continues to hold the spit. We eventually started picking him up, holding him over the sink, and telling him to spit it out. He spits it out in the sink and goes on with his day.

We go through bananas like crazy because Brycen loves them. He'll ask for one and we'll open it for him, then he'll take a bite and set it on the counter to continue working on it as he goes throughout his day. I was shocked when one of our bananas went bad last week. It's been a long time since we've had bananas around long enough to go bad.

He loves eating cereal bars like Nutrigrain bars for breakfast. He'd prefer that over anything else. He doesn't like cereal yet so we find ourselves giving him these cereal bars. Sometimes he'll eat dry cereal with a glass of milk, but never the two together.

He's starting to want to take his "bit" everywhere we go now. Whenever we go in the car the bit has to go too. We draw the line at taking it inside though. He's gotten better about letting Carter lie down on it, or touch it, for that matter. But he's still very protective of it. He wakes up in the morning (whether he knocks on the door to come out or comes in our room to get me, depending on how early), he'll want to be picked up, and then he'll point to his room and say, "Bit. Bit." He'll point and say that till we get to it and pick it up. He watches TV with it, takes naps/goes to bed with it...I will cry if we ever forget to bring it with us when we go out of town. Not that Brycen would ever allow that to happen, he's attached to that thing. And yes, I'm still referring to the Stacy Pasley blanket. He wants nothing to do with his other blankets.

He's getting so good with prayer time. He folds his arms and lasts almost the entire way through a prayer that way. Sometimes he'll pick up his food with his arms half folded and eyes have closed, but he never bites till the prayer is done. The other night we made dinner and sat down. Tyson and I were ready to dig in when Brycen folded his arms and just looked at us. We looked at each other and smiled.

Brycen recently developed a love for candy corn. We have a pumpkin jar with candy corn sitting on the counter top and he'll come up to it, point to it, and say, "Peez? Peez? Peez?" over and over again. Tonight I told him to say "candy corn" so now he goes up to it and says, "Corn? Corn?" I'll say, "What do you say?" and he says, "Peez?" 

One of his new favorite shows is "Imagination Movers". It's a show on Disney Junior that is similar to The Wiggles: four singing and dancing men. However, these men are American and they all wear matching coveralls. I wasn't sure if I'd like this show because I've always thought The Wiggles were a little weird. But this show is pretty cute and they solve all kinds of problems. Brycen likes the songs and he does the actions as well.

Other favorite shows:

• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
• Charlie and Lola
• Octonauts
• Timmy Time
• Special Agent Oso
• Small Potatoes (short 2-minute song between two shows on Disney Junior)

 Carter...

Carter has started smiling a lot more. He has started smiling after others smile at him first and it's so fun. The picture above was taken last Sunday and it was so fun getting him to smile so much.

He still has reflux issues but he's doing SO much better than he was when he was smaller. He used to cry a lot and we'd just have to love up on him and hold him close to try to help him feel semi-comfortable. Now he has a normal day if we give him his medicine in the morning like we should. He gets his dose every morning 30 minutes to an hour before he has a bottle. We're not supposed to give it to him with food but it tastes so awful. I give it to him as he's drinking his bottle then I take both away and give him his binky. Then he usually sits in his lamb chair or sleeps in it till it's time to have the rest of his bottle. It has worked really well. We've forgotten a couple of times and we could definitely tell. Poor kid! It makes me so sad that he ends up being in so much pain with this reflux. But we can tell he's slowly growing out of it and hopefully he'll be over it in the next couple of months or so.

In the NICU the nurses told us we could keep my milk I pumped frozen and try giving some to him again when he's about three months old. He had to stop drinking it in the NICU because it was so hard on his tummy with the reflux and we wanted him to be able to come home. They put him on formula and it was a night and day difference. It was amazing how much better he did. I decided to put a little milk in his bottle a couple of weeks ago and see how he did. He had the bottle then later he started crying and kept crying a lot. I gave him milk in his bottles for a couple of days and he cried and cried for those two days non-stop. Once I took him off of it he started doing really well again and didn't cry. Apparently the milk is still too hard on his tummy. I thought about waiting till the reflux was gone (most likely at around six months old), but by that time the milk would be bad and we wouldn't be able to use it. I ended up throwing two bags full of frozen milk away. And I didn't even care that I spent hours pumping all of it. It felt good to just be rid of it since Carter couldn't even drink it. It's too bad I couldn't donate it.

We have to keep mittens on Carter's hands so he doesn't scratch his face up. We keep his nails cut but he gets so mad so fast that he just starts clawing at his face. For now we'll keep the mittens on until he can stop scratching!

Carter loves to be held. And every now and then he'll fall asleep on us in that cute newborn scrunched up position and it's wonderful. He did that tonight right before his bath and I didn't want to move him.

He's wearing size 1 diapers and they're starting to get a little snug. I'm so happy that Carter is filling out so well!

He drinks 5 ounces of formula every 3-4 hours. He mostly wakes up once in the middle of the night to eat and falls back to sleep well.

Carter has the cutest little pouty lip when he gets sad. His mouth makes a perfect frown and it's so cute. I hate to see him sad, but it's hard not to smile a little when you see something that cute. He also has a super cute cry. He sounds like a little puppy dog, and sometimes like a sad cat. Brycen had a cute little cry too. We've been lucky so far with cute criers!

He started wearing 3-6 month clothes yesterday. I put a sock monkey jammy on him that my mom gave him and they fit great. It makes me sad to see my baby getting so big! I'm just glad we've been able to enjoy him being so small. I love having a baby around.

His first trip to Idaho was August 10th for the Murri family reunion, and his first time sleeping through the night was September 8th. He slept from 11:30 - 7:30 and it was amazing! He's only done that once more since and it was the next night.

Carter is the opposite of Brycen was when he was a baby in so many ways!

• Carter doesn't like the swing and Brycen loved it. I think Carter has used the swing once and he didn't last long.
• If Carter gets woken up he is Mr. Grumpy Pants. When Brycen was a baby he was so happy when he woke up, even if we had to go in and wake him up. (Things have clearly changed for him since then!!)
• So far Carter is keeping a binky longer than Brycen did. I know, right? He's almost four months old, but Brycen was three months when he ditched his binky. And we did just find without it. One less thing to ween!  
• Carter loves listening to music to soothe him. Music never did much for Brycen. Carter does really well going to sleep when we have his music playing. He mostly listens to classical from his pack 'n play, and as soon as I find the CD player I'm going to start playing the Primary Children's Songbook music for him.