A few of Alan's favorite things

Alan LOVES to create and make things. One day I was especially tired so I told Alan I was going to lay down for a little while (Conner and Micah were sleeping). When I came back down this is what Alan had made:
It is a house and car made out of lincoln logs and a ship that he made out of a piece of styrofoam. He used a pencil for a mast and he tore a piece of clear plastic from a wrapper and attached it to the pencil with a chip clip. It was pretty cool looking.
Alan LOVES to draw. He very rarely plays with his toys - during his free time he draws pictures. When his friends come over he wants to draw pictures with them. Once when I was flipping through the channels we saw a show where a guy was showing kids how to draw some different things. Alan was so excited, he ran and got a pencil and a piece of paper and then he sat through the whole show and tried to draw everything that the guy did. He has asked several times since then if that show is going to come on again. Lately he has been drawing arrows, spaceships, volcanoes, trucks and ships.

Alan is a great big brother to Micah - if Micah starts to fuss Alan will run and find one of his toys. He will also make funny faces to make Micah smile. He likes to hold him and just be around him in general.

1st Hair Cut

I finally buckled down and gave Micah a much needed trim on March 17th. I trimmed the hair around his ears and the back of his neck and I cut his bangs.

The before pictures:

It was pretty long

Micah's feelings during the hair cut:

The after photos:
Much better

I left his hair long on top mostly because I think it looks cute and because it is finally long enough that it will lay down if we comb it down right after his bath.

6 Months Already!

Micah is 6 months old already, where has the time gone? Here are some recent photos of him:


He loves standing in this thing:
He started to sit unsupported when he was 5 and a half months old but he was still tippy. By six months though he was sitting well by himself. He only falls over occasionally now.
He is a HUGE fan of his jolly jumper. He jumps non stop when we put him in it and when we take him out his legs just keep jumping whenever they touch a hard surface.
He got his first tooth (bottom front one) about a week before he was 6 months old. He spent the next few days with his tongue out - I think that new tooth felt weird. Now he loves to grab our fingers and stick them in his mouth and then chomp down as hard as he can - ouch!
He still can't roll over, although he is actually trying now. He can get his hips over but he hasn't figured out how to turn his shoulders over so he gets stuck half way and then he just cries. It has been fun to listen to him start to "talk" - he coos and squeals and makes his voice change pitch so it sounds like he is carrying on a conversation. We are still working on his sleep. He can sleep through the night but he usually doesn't. He usually wakes up once or twice but we just have to go in and tell him it is still night time and wrap him back up (he still likes being swaddled) and then he goes back to sleep. He gets up for the day between 6 and 6:30 am. His day time naps are getting better too - instead of sleeping for 30 minutes at a time he now sleeps for an hour to an hour and half most of the time. Hooray for Micah!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

For St.Patrick's day this year we continued our tradition of wearing green clothes and eating green food. For breakfast we had green waffles and green milk. For lunch we had ham, cheese and lettuce sandwiches with green yogurt(we decided that the meal had to have something green, but not everything had to be green). We had pistachio pudding for snack. For dinner we had green cornbread, chili and peas. The kids thought it was fun to have green food all day.

Pine wood Derby!

Last weekend our ward had a pinewood derby race. Alan was SO excited. He and Reed decided on a design and then Reed and I cut it out. Alan decided he wanted a red car with a silver lightning bolt on the front. They used fishing weights to weigh the car down and they put the weights in the driver seat, so Alan pretended that one of the weights was him driving and one of the weights was Conner.

Alan with the finished product, which he called his pine wood derbian car

The boys right before they left to go to the church

According to Reed they placed 10th out of 14 or something like that but Alan came home with a medal that said winner on it and he was so pleased with himself. He wore that medal for days. I unfortunately didn't get to see the races. I came down with a sore throat on Thursday and went to the doctor on Friday to see why I felt so horrible. He did a half second look at my throat, announced that he was pretty sure I had strep throat and then did a test to be sure. Yup, definitely strep throat. He gave me a shot of penicillin and sent me home. I was feeling a lot better the next morning, which was the pinewood derby, but I was still contagious so Micah and I stayed home.

On Thursday I was trying to think of something for the boys to do that didn't require a lot of work from me since I was starting to feel yucky. Here is what I came up with:

I filled squirt bottles up with colored water (red for Alan, blue for Conner) and told them to go make designs on the snow. They had a blast. I am grateful to be feeling better and glad that no one else got sick.

Big Boy Bed

We finally decided to move Conner to a big boy bed. I have held off doing this as long as I could because he was sleeping so good in the crib and he never tried to climb out. When Micah outgrew his bassinet we moved him into the pack 'n play. However, a couple of weeks ago Conner decided he wanted to sleep in Alan's bed and there was no going back to the crib. So we ordered bunk beds - that way when Micah eventually moves into that room there will be a bed ready for him.

Here is what Conner looked like in the crib. The picture below was taken in Micah's room after we moved the crib and that is why the mattress is so high - it wasn't that high when Conner was sleeping in it.

Here is Conner sleeping in his new bed. We don't have a mattress yet for the top and we didn't attach the ladder because I don't want the kids climbing and playing up there.

Conner has done pretty good about staying in his bed. For a couple of days he did get up and he kept coming out but he is doing better now.

A couple of days ago I went in to check on Conner during his nap. He wasn't in bed and I found him on the floor in the corner of the room between the wall and Alan's bed. He was folded in half and fast asleep.

The next 2 pictures are just silly pictures of Conner. Conner has a fettish about keeping his hands clean. If they get dirty or sticky he will hold them up and yell "ticky!!" and run to the sink. Recently this has moved to his face too - all of a sudden in the middle of dinner he will get up and run to the sink to wash his face and then he will come back to eat.

Conner is eating a donut without using his hands (this was before he started worrying about having a dirty face)

I was pulling out some of Alan's old clothes to see if they fit Conner and Conner decided he wanted to try them all on. He put one shirt over the other until looked very thick. I think he ended up with 5 or 6 shirts on and he wore them for several hours. In the picture below he is wearing 6 layers of clothes, his hair is crazy and he has a black eye (hit in the face with a door knob at a friend's house).

5 sick days at home = cabin fever

On Wednesday Alan woke up complaining of a sore throat and it all went down hill from there. By the next morning he had a fever, was throwing up, and he was complaining of a sore throat, an ear ache and cough plus a runny nose. Just about everything that could go wrong with him did. He was not a happy little boy and he spent a lot of time laying on the couch watching movies and having books read to him. Thankfully by the next day he was feeling a little better and not throwing up anymore so we started thinking of other things to keep us occupied while we stayed at home. I gave the boys some styrofoam blocks, golf tees, elastic bands and pretend hammers and told them to get to work. They stayed busy hammering the 'nails' in and then stringing elastic bands around the tops of the tees to create guitars, drums, storage areas ect. I remembered doing something similar with some toddlers in one of my university classes and it was a big hit with the boys.

Here is Conner, hard at work

Alan and Conner working. Alan put so many elastics on his that it broke in half. Luckily we had a few extra styrofoam blocks from our new printer.

Alan showing me he can make music with his guitar/drum.

We also made a cardboard house, played lots of games, made some cards, and watched tv and movies. Alan is doing lots better today, but we still stayed home from church. I didn't want to risk giving anyone else that nasty bug. I am hoping to resume normal activities tomorrow though, because I have a bad case of cabin fever.