Jack-o-lanterns

I love carving Jack-o-lanterns - it is such a fun tradition. I love watching our kids' reactions. This year is was a universal feeling: disgust.

Conner keeping his hand as far away from the slime as possible

Reed helped Alan while I helped Conner

Micah was really interested in what we were doing but when he put his hand into the pumpkin he was completely grossed out.

He was disgusted that his hand had slime on it.

Micah gagging. He would gag every time he watched Reed put his hand into the pumpkin.

We decided on a spider and a scary face for the designs

We were pleased with the final product, especially the spider

Learning new things

I think one of my favorite things about motherhood is watching my kids learn new things. Alan seems to have done a ton of that this summer and fall. It has been fun to watch him become comfortable in the water and start to swim by himself, ride his bike without training wheels, swing across the monkey bars and start to read. I love seeing the look of pride and excitement on his face when he masters a new skill.

Alan came home from school with an impressive black eye on picture day. I guess he ran into some of the play ground equipment at recess but he told me that they already taken his pictures (phew!)

Alan enjoys school for the most part. The second week of school he started telling me he didn't want to go anymore because some "banpire" girls were chasing him at recess. He eventually started just sitting on the time out bench for all of his recesses and telling the girls that he was in trouble so they wouldn't chase him. This went on for about a week. We were about to call and ask his teacher to keep on eye on him but Alan came home and said that one of the girls had moved away and the other one didn't want to chase him anymore. Yea! Now he enjoys school for the most part. Every once in a while he will tell me he wants to stay home and just play like he used to but I remind him of all the fun things he does at school.

Alan with his class on a field trip to a pumpkin patch

So many choices!

Alan has started to write words a lot more. He is likes to ask us how to spell things but he also will try some things on his own:

Alan was trying to teach Conner how old he is (Conner kept saying 5). Alan made this chart and wrote the numbers and then he wrote "how big are you?" - all with no help.

I went over to my friend's house to can applesauce and her husband and kids went to our house to stay out of the way. When I came back to get some jars I found this note taped to the door:

Reed told him how to spell it. His letters are improving all the time.

A trip down memory lane

**Warning** this post doesn't have any pictures. I need to do better about taking our camera out and using it when we go places.
Our family took a mini family vacation and went to Rexburg last weekend. We went down to visit Austin and Mindy and see our newest nephew Asher (what a cutie!). We got down there by late Friday afternoon and Austin and Mindy gave us a tour of the campus. It has changed quite a bit in the 6 years since we were there. It was really fun to walk around campus - lots of memories there. We ate dinner and then went back to the hotel to go swimming. The pool was actually a nice temperature - most hotel pools are freezing cold! This was nice and the kids had a blast swimming around.

The next day Micah woke us up at 4 am so we decided to get some temple attendance in. Reed went to the 6 am session and I went to the 9 am session. It is so beautiful up on the hill looking over the city. After that we went to a hay maze. When we got there I thought it was going to be really easy and we would be out of there in 5 minutes. I was wrong. I think it took between 30 and 45 minutes. We got turned around numerous times and after a while the kids started to worry that we were really lost and that we weren't going to be able to get out. We finally made it out and Alan started to go right back in - he said he needed to practice that maze. Instead we headed over to look at the pigs, rabbits and goats. After that we met up with Jackie and her boys and Mom and Dad Bassett. The boys went golfing while the girls hung out with the kids at the hotel. It was fun for Alan to play with this cousin James. For dinner we went to a Thai place. I had never been to a Thai restaurant and I thought it was pretty good. That night we went swimming again and by then we had tired everyone out so we all went to bed.

The next day we got up and had breakfast. Another good thing about this trip was that the hotel had a really good breakfast - I loved not having to make breakfast or clean up after it. Then we got ready for church. After a mad scramble to find Reed's keys we made it to the meeting house with 8 minutes to spare. They were having stake conference so after that we met in one of the rooms and Austin blessed Asher. They are sure a cute little family. After that we made the long trek home - well, it isn't that long but with 3 little kids it always takes longer than you want it to. While we were there we drove by the house that we lived in and stopped by the place that we worked at together. It was fun to remember all the good times we had as poor college students.

A little about Micah

Micah's personality is developing so I thought I would write down what he likes and what he is doing at this age.

Micah can take 3 or 4 steps but he still mostly crawls around. He has a super fast regular crawl and a speedy bear crawl, as shown below. Anytime he is on a hard surface he sticks his bottom in the air and straightens his legs and goes on his hands and feet - it is so funny and cute to watch.

Micah loves his toothbrush. We give it to him when he gets cranky in the evenings before bed and he chews on it happily.

This kid loves dirt. Here he is at 12 months outside trying to scoop up the dirt with a spoon:

The spoon wasn't really working so he decided to just lick it up.

Sadly (for him) mom put a stop to that. You can tell from the dirt on his forehead, nose and lips that he enjoys his time outside.

Micah loves to play with this toy broom. He crawls all over with it and knocks things along the floor with it - kind of like a hockey stick.

Micah is a happy, easy going boy most of the time.

When he is tired he can be very grumpy. He will throw himself backward at the slightest provocation and scream and cry and arch his back. It is a very impressive tantrum for one so small.

He can entertain himself very well, which is really nice.

He also loves to play with his brothers. His brothers can be very good about playing with him. In the picture below Conner built a road and then let Micah wreck it. Unfortunately, Alan and Conner can be quite rough with him too (mostly Conner). He is a very tough boy. He will fall or bonk his head and I will see it happen and think "oh, that looks like that hurt" and expect him to start crying but he will just get up and keep going or he will whimper and then just rub his head and take off again

A favorite pass time - emptying my tupperware drawer

His absolute favorite thing to do is play in the dishwasher. He can empty it almost as fast as I can load it.

Micah figured out how to go backwards down the stairs around the same time that he turned a year old. He is very confident on stairs now - he goes up and down with no problems.

Also Micah loves to climb. A couple of nights ago I was folding laundry on the couch and Micah was climbing onto the couch and pulling the clothes off. I set him behind me on the floor and the next time I turned around he had climbed onto the couch and was standing on the arm of the couch about to climb onto the end table (same height as the back of the couch). He always seems to be looking for new and higher heights to test out his climbing skills.

A week before his 1st birthday Micah got sick with a fever. He was up most of the night with one of us holding him. When I took him to the doctor he confirmed my suspicions: ear infection. So we started antibiotics. The next week I took him in for his well child check and his ear was still infected. Bah humbug. So we started a stronger dose of antibiotics. That seems to have done the trick but sometimes I still wonder if his ears are bugging him. When we get him ready and lay him down for bed he tugs and pulls on his ears and I think he just does that as a bed time ritual but I am not 100% sure.

Micah is not a good sleeper. He was sleeping through the night most of the time but after the ear infections he started waking up again. He still wakes up once or twice most nights. No matter how bad the night he usually wakes up at 6 a.m. or a little before that to get up for the day - no sleeping in. Also, he is a horrible napper. I consider it a good nap if he sleeps an hour. He usually only sleeps 45 minutes at a time. I think part of the reason that he is such a poor sleeper is that he hasn't attached to anything. Alan and Conner both attached to stuffed animals and that helped them to go to sleep and stay asleep but Micah has rejected every stuffed animal and blanket I have offered. I am looking forward to him dropping his morning nap and then I will work on making the afternoon nap last longer.

His stats for his 12 month well child measurements are:
height: 29 inches (about 25th percentile)
weight: 21.4 inches (about 25th percentile)
So he has measured shorter than our other two although I am not positive that they measured him right - he was screaming, writhing and arching his back when they tried to measure him.

Well, that's a quick look at the youngest member of our family!

The best toy ever

This is what we spent all of Labor day doing: building a sandbox. It has been very worth it in my opinion - the kids can spend hours out there playing. Now I just need to convince them not pour the sand on each others heads.

Happy Birthday Micah!

We celebrated Micah's first birthday with both sets of his grandparents and our family. I love first birthdays because everything is new to them.

Conner, Alan and Micah with their birthday hats on, ready to get this party started!

We started with presents. Micah was far more interested in climbing on them than actually opening them. He climbed up on this box and was so happy with himself.

Conner helped Micah open the present that he gave him. Then he showed him the book:

Here is Alan's wrapping paper. He wrote "GO MICAH GO" all by himself. Each of the boys got Micah a book because a lot of our board books have fallen apart due to Alan and Conner's love.

Micah checking out his new trucks

Then we moved on to the cake. For Alan and Conner's first birthday I made a cake that represented the stuffed animal that they attached to, that helped them sleep at night. Micah has never attached to anything to help him sleep at night so I had to come up with something else. One thing that he really loves is dirt. He loves to eat it. I would even call him a dirt connoisseur - he has sampled dirt from our back yard, sand from our sand box, the wood chips at the playground and many of the green plants around our yard such as grass, weeds and basil from my garden. So I made him a dirt cake. I frosted it with chocolate frosting and then I crushed up oreos to look like dirt. Alan and Conner helped me add gummi worms, chocolate rocks and construction trucks to make it look more authentic:

Make a wish!

Micah picked the frosting off and tasted that and decided that it was good. After that he went to work on getting as much in his mouth as he could.

He wasn't at all concerned about getting dirty

He LOVED the ice cream. We actually gave him some ice cream about a month before his birthday and he loved it. We usually wait but we had a hard time since it was summer and we were eating a lot of ice cream and he was extremely jealous when he couldn't have any.

Yum! That's a big bite for such a small mouth.

Trying to get the last bit out of the bowl

Micah liked playing with the balloon that was attached to his high chair - what a cutie!

Looks like he enjoyed himself

Then it was off to the bath tub for a scrub down and then down for a nap. Happy Birthday Micah!

First day of Kindergarten

When Alan was a baby I used to have lots of older ladies stop me in the store or at church and tell me how cute my baby was and then they would always conclude by saying "enjoy every moment because it goes by so fast". At the time a part of me knew that what they were saying was true but the other part of me was thinking "that's easy for you to say, you aren't getting up with him 3 times a night and changing 8 - 10 diapers a day and walking and walking and walking him when he is crying". Well, now that Alan is starting school I agree with them - the time has gone by so fast. When I look at him now he seems so big. When I went school shopping with him I had to buy size 6 pants and size 7/8 shirts. Also he jumped 3 shoe sizes since the last time I bought him shoes (he's now a size 2 in boys). Looking back I can say that it hasn't always been easy but it has been so fun and rewarding to stay home with him and watch him grow and develop into the handsome, smart, funny, loving boy that he is.

Alan on the first day of kindergarten

I think this picture captures some of Alan's feelings that morning:

Alan was excited to go but he was also a little nervous. The nervousness was gone by the time he got home and he was just plain excited. It has been fun to listen to him tell about his days when he gets home: how his teacher talks funny (she has an Alabama accent), how he met a boy that is "slowly transforming into a friend", how he got a hand stamp for being good. He also informed me that he did really good at school the first day and he thought it was because of his pants, so he had to wear those pants for the rest of the school week. He called them his "smarty pants". It has been harder than I thought to figure out lunches for him - the first day he came home really excited and told me he ate chicken nuggets on a tray. I guess he didn't realize his lunch bag was in his back pack so he got the hot lunch. The next day I showed him where his lunch was but when he came home only the sandwich was gone. Alan said that he didn't drink his juice because not everyone had a juice and he didn't have enough for everyone and he didn't eat his apple or cookies because they didn't have snack time. I explained that the apples and cookies were part of his lunch and that the other kids had something else to drink so he could still drink his juice. After a few days we finally got all the kinks worked out.