Ready...Set...Crawl!

Conner started to crawl on Wednesday night. It has been so fun to watch him figure it out. He didn't scoot around or army crawl first. He figured out how to move his arms first but it took him a few weeks longer to figure out how to move his legs. Now that he can crawl he has been able to entertain himself a lot better, which is nice for me.

This picture was taken about a week before Conner started to crawl. You can see him moving his hands but his legs stayed still.All that crawling has made for a tired boy. I found him sleeping on top of his stuffed animal, using it as a pillow.
I have been trying to get Conner to eat finger foods, like cheerios. He isn't interested so I tried giving him these little teether cookies and he liked it. Below are some pictures of him with and his cookie.

Alan

According to Alan:

favorite color: pink
favorite movie: Lightning McQueen (Cars)
best friend: Zachary Freelove
favorite food: sandwiches with plain peanut butter (meaning no jam)
favorite toy: my dump truck, and the fire truck too.
What are you going to be when you grow up: I will eat a BIG bite.


Interesting facts:

-Alan is left handed. Most of his fine motor activities he does left handed (eating, coloring..). He will still do some gross motor things with his right hand.

-Alan started November with 5 pairs of pants. By the end of December 4 of the 5 pairs of pants had holes in the knees. He spends hours each day crawling around on his knees.

-Alan asks about 100 questions every day. About half of those start with the word "why"

-Alan loves to take medicine. Sometimes I have a hard time knowing if he actually needs medicine or if he is just pretending so that I will give him some. Like last night he got out of bed and told me he needed medicine because his ear was hurting a little. I told him he didn't need any and took him back to bed. He came back out about 5 minutes later - this time his hair was hurting and he thought he needed some medicine.

-Alan is 39 3/4 inches tall. He is in the 90th percentile.

-Alan weighs 37 lbs. He is in the 90th percentile.

Alan turns Three!!!

Alan's birthday was on Tuesday. I decided not to do a friend party for him this year but we did have our ward's play group on his birthday. So I told him that we could make cupcakes and share them with his friends. He decided he wanted "sprinker cake" (rainbow chip cake) with pink frosting and sprinkles. The funny thing is that I don't think he actually liked them. He had a ton of fun making them, but he only had a couple of bites of one cupcake and then he didn't want any more.

Alan loves "sprinkers" (sprinkles)

Here was a conversation about his birthday dinner:

Me: What do you want for dinner on your birthday?

Alan: Um, pink.

Me: No, what do you want to eat?

Alan: (looking around our play room) Um, trucks.

Me: Okay, you can pick spaghetti, tacos or pizza. Which would you like?

Alan: Tacos...pink tacos

We had regular color tacos but I made pink lemonade to satisfy the pink craving.

When I asked Alan what kind of cake he wanted he said a boat cake. Then he changed his mind and said he wanted a train cake because it was "red-pink, and I like red-pink". I made the train cake last year so I told him I would make him a boat cake and we could make the boat pink. He loved the idea so here is the final product (my flash wouldn't work). Again he wasn't thrilled with eating the cake but he loved the pink peppermint icecream (in case you can't tell Alan's favorite color is pink)

We gave Alan a big dump truck. He was so excited. When he pulled the wrapping off he gasped and said "a dump truck!!" It was pretty cute.

Opening presents

Thanks G-ma and G-pa Pitcher and G-ma G-pa Bassett for the presents and phone calls. Alan loved all the attention and presents.

Late birthday post

My birthday was 2 weeks ago and I am just getting the pictures up. My birthday was on a Monday and the Saturday before my birthday Alan got sick with the stomach flu. He was up almost every hour that night until 4:30 am and then he slept till 8 am. Poor guy. So when Monday rolled around we just took it easy that day. Alan didn't throw up on me that day, actually he didn't throw up at all that day, which was the best gift he could have given me. Reed got me some matching picture frames for my birthday and we decorated our dining room. It looks nice now...Reed and I agreed that we need to do that sooner the next time we move!

Alan was eager to help use the tools.

That night Reed made me a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Yum!! Alan was a big help blowing out the candles and I think he had a hard time understanding that this was my birthday, not his. In the picture below you can see part of the decorated wall.

Over all it was a fun and relaxing birthday. Now we are preparing for Alan's, which is tomorrow.

videos

Here is another video of the epic snowball fight.

We don't have a mirror at Alan's height anywhere in our house so he doesn't get to see his reflection very often. Alan could see himself in G-ma and G-pa's bathroom mirror and I got a kick out of watching Alan wiggle his eyebrows, wrinkle his nose, and stick out his tongue as he washed his hands. Here is a video of Alan and Grandma pulling faces in the mirror.

Fun with Family

Here are a few more pictures from our Christmas vacation. The picture below is of Grandma Bassett and Alan. Grandma was letting Alan "play" the guitar. He loved it!Alan and James (his cousin) had fun playing in the tub with Conner's new bath toys. Alan and James look quite a bit alike: they are about the same height and build, and they both have blonde hair and blue eyes.

Reed's brother, Russ, came on Saturday with his 3 kids. We were very excited to see them (we hadn't seen Hudson, Kelcie and Boyce for 2 years). In the picture below the kids are playing right before we had to leave to go home. L-R; Kelcie, James, Alan, Hudson

I love the picture below of Conner and Baer. Conner liked stroking Baer's back and Baer (unlike Alan) seemed to enjoy it.

Christmas Morning

We spent Christmas at the Bassetts this year. Reed's sister, Jackie, and her husband and 2 sons were there as well.
Christmas Eve night was quite a short night. Alan woke up around 12 am crying (he had a cold and wasn't sleeping well at all). So for the first time in Alan's life we let him sleep in bed with us. Then I remembered one of the reasons we don't usually let him do that: we don't get any sleep. We finally took Alan back to his bed at 4:30. I was just starting to drift off when Conner woke up at 4:45. I fed him but Conner didn't go back to sleep. By 6 am everyone was upstairs. Alan stumbled up the stairs last and as soon as he saw James he walked over and said "Hey James, do you want to build a snowman with me?" James just starred at Alan: he was probably thinking "I just woke up and it is cold and dark outside, are you nuts?" That is what I would have thought. The day before we told Alan that James was going to come that night and that maybe the next day they could build a snowman together. Apparently that stuck in his mind because he completely ignored the presents and went straight over to James to ask him. We told the boys to go pick out a present and Alan dug through the presents until he found a big one that he had been eyeing since we left home. Here is a picture of him dragging it out:As soon as Alan opened one present he just wanted to play with it. Below is a picture of Alan and James playing with his train set.

The only thing Alan asked from Santa was an egg and he was pretty excited to get it.
Conner had 2 very eager volunteers to help him open his presents. Part way through the present opening he fell asleep so we let him finish his presents later.

As you can see our Christmas was great, we all got spoiled and it was so nice to spend Christmas with family.