A little about Conner

Here are some tidbits about Conner:
 - He loves music.  He likes it when we sing songs.  He likes listening to the radio, as long as its a boy singing.  I often look in the rear view mirror and see him bobbing his head to the beat of the song.

- It is still hard for Conner to say some sounds, such as th, r, and s with another consonant. 
For example:
"flushie" - slushie
"wed" - red
"lellow" - yellow
"What is dis fing?" - what is this thing?
"free" - three
And here are a couple of cute quotes from the last couple of weeks:
"Aww, its the life" - he suddenly started saying this a lot when he was happy
"could you be my dear and go get my shoes?" - we are trying to get out the door and he turns to me with a big smile and says this.  I actually did go and get his shoes!

- he still naps 3 or 4 days a week.  He will fall asleep around 1 and I will wake him up around 2 or a little after, otherwise he will stay awake until late at night.

- he LOVES to have his back scratched

- he likes to build things:

- he seems very in tune with my mood.  He is quick to apologize when I get upset (this only applies to me, he still needs to be reminded to apologize to his brothers).  For example, when he was in swim lessons he got in trouble with his teacher for not listening.  Afterwards when I asked how his lesson was he said he got in trouble and couldn't go down the slide the next day.  I said that was too bad and he needed to try to do better next time.  He replied "I'm sorry I made you make your mad face"

Conner with his brothers making pizza one night:

Conner opening his presents from family:

When we were at the store a few weeks ago Conner found this parachute guy and wanted it so I saved if and gave it to him for his birthday:

 



Thank you hug for Micah:

Alan enjoying the sucker he got from the birthday party and Conner so happy to get some presents:

I took him in for his check up and he is a healthy little guy. 
height:  43.75 inches (66 %)
weight:  37 lbs.  (24%)
He was really nervous about getting his booster shots.  We talked about it before hand and he was really worried.  After the doctor left and we were waiting for the nurse to come in and do the shots he turned to me and said "Are you going to plug your ears?"  I was confused and asked why I would plug my ears.  He replied "because I am going to scream when I get my shots."  He was so matter of fact about it that it was pretty funny.  He actually surprised himself and me by not screaming or crying.
This doesn't directly relate to Conner but I realized that this is the first winter in 6 years that I have not had to take any of the kids to the doctor for an ear infection!  Hooray!!!!

Here are Conner's answers to my questions.  My additions are in parentheses:
favorite color: red and yellow and orange
favorite song: ABC song and the Sunshine song (you are my sunshine...)
favorite movie:  Jack Frost (the Guardians) and the Rugrats movie
favorite food: candy, apples, cutie oranges, watermelon
favorite thing to do: eat candy, go to parties, go to the park and play
who are your friends:  Josh and Alex, everyone in the whole entire world.  Mom and Alan and Alex and Josh.  Hiram, Micah, Brooklyn and Dad.
What makes you happy: going to people's birthday parties
What makes you sad:  if people hit me in the tummy, and then it chokes me (I think he means the wind gets knocked out of him)
favorite book:   Nanook and Pryce gone fishing  and The Monster in the Swamp (I can't remember if this is the actual name of the book, we got it from the library a while ago)
how do you know that mom and dad love you:  Because you told me!

Conner turns 5!

Conner's birthday was on a Tuesday last month.  I decided to do a friend party for him this year on his birthday.  He decided he wanted a race car birthday party so I printed out hot wheels pictures and he colored them and then we wrote the party info on the back.  Unfortunately the big day arrived and I woke up so sick.  I thought maybe I could just work through it, but after I threw up I knew we needed to reschedule.  Conner was SO sad and disappointed!  Luckily a lady (Vita) in our ward called and asked if she could take Conner to McDonalds for lunch.  That saved the day.  I got to rest while he was gone and he came home so happy to show me his happy meal toy and this sweet lady also gave him a present and a new t-shirt.  We rescheduled the party for a couple of days later. 

That morning Conner helped me frost a race track on his cake:

Then we started working on party games.  I bought each of the kids a hot wheels car and I got on idea from the internet to put the cars inside balloons and blow up the balloons.  Then the kids pop a balloon and they get a car.  It was one of those ideas that sounded really easy but when you try to put it into practice you find out it is really hard.  The cars would get about this far and then it took a lot of wiggling and tugging to get it in the rest of the way (as a side note, this was Micah's car.  He chose this one before we put it in a balloon and carried it around the house for a couple of days.  I told him he was just going to have to see which car he got in his balloon and that it probably wouldn't be that one.  After we blew up the balloons and it was time to pop them he immediately grabbed this balloon and popped it and happily walked away with his "fire" car.  I guess he had memorized which balloon it was in and remembered it - smarty pants!):

I got pretty frustrated with the whole process:

Mean while Brooklyn wasn't being very helpful.  She was super fussy (teeth coming in):

I didn't get as much decorating done as I had planned but this was a party for 5 year olds so it didn't really matter.  As soon as the kids arrived they chose a balloon and popped it:

Alan was a master popper so if any of the younger kids couldn't (or didn't want to) pop their balloon Alan would help them:

Then everyone went outside to race their new cars.  The kids and I made a race track out of a big piece of card board.  We painted a finish line on it and decorated the sides:

I planned a couple of party games but they were all flops.  I tried making a race track and the kids were the cars but they got too tired to race and just gave up:

Then I thought it would be fun to tie a balloon to the kids' ankles and they could run around and try to pop them but as soon as they stepped onto our grass the balloons popped by themselves.  Oh well, I quickly realized that all they really wanted to do was play in the dirt so I found all the shovels and pails that we own and let them go to work in the garden:

I grilled hot dogs and we had chips and juice and apple racers (slices of apple with grapes stuck on with toothpicks.  The apple slice was the race car and the grapes were the wheels.  You can kind of see them behind the pink cup on the table).  One of the only decorations that we did was the table cloth.  We painted a race track on it and used little yellow sticky notes as lines on the road.  Going around the table clockwise starting on the left side: Rachel, June, Chris, Micah, Conner, Henry, Alan, Hiram

The cake (Conner chose which colors he wanted):

Everyone singing happy birthday to Conner, and he was trying so hard not to smile:

Make a wish!

After that it was time to open presents and hand out treat bags and say good bye.  Conner was thrilled with the party so that made all the work worth it!