Quick Pics of the Boys

Jase, 3 yrs old. He's a bit big for this seat, doncha think? ha ha ha

I took this pic bc for whatever reason Ian was looking so adorable to me. It came out cute of the both of them.

I love this picture of Ian in his striped romper. Man, I just want to kiss him to death!

A few weeks ago we had an awesome snow storm come through and I thought Jase would love making a snowman outside. WRONG! The entire time he was trying to destroy it. Boys. Well at least I had fun and I was able to bribe him to take this picture!

Another pic of Jase "having fun" in the snow. Ha ha ha. He normally loves it, I guess today was just a grumpy day. But he looks halfway happy in this picture so I should keep my mouth shut. :)

Cute pic of Jasey clowin' around at the table. What's new?

Ian in his black football hoodie. So cute, so big. He's 9 months old in these shots.

Great faces, right? ha ha ha

Another wrinkly nose shot...hee hee

Jase's 3 yr old Stats



jase on christmas morning

As of 12/15/10...

Weight (omg I just realized they left everything in kgs, really???)= 97th percentile
Height = 96th percentile

I finally had enough of our old pediatrician and asked around to find a new one. It's a female, and I think she's German (couldn't quite place the accent). She's 100 times better than our old pediatrician. She was VERY thorough and so cute with Jase. Loved it. I think I will take Ian to her for his next appointment.

Anyways, they tested Jase's eyes (my favorite part-it was sooo adorable seeing him stand on the line and take turns covering his eyes and "reading" the shapes off the chart on the other side of the room) and some other basic knowledge (like colors, shapes, counting) and he did great. He got his blood pressure taken for the first time, too (cool). He was a bit silly & shy for some of the stuff, but for the most part he was really cooperative and spoke well. Oh and he got to wear a cute hospital looney tunes gown! At the end the nurse/aid had to give Jase 3 shots to get all caught up. I warned him it was going to hurt a little (must have because he totally cried, it was so sad) and later he told my mom (gramma)that it hurt A LOT. Lol. But he was over it after about 1 or 2 minutes!

He got to go to McDonalds germville playland for his reward. Let me tell you, it was TOUGH to get him to leave. I had to eventually pick up a screaming & kicking Jase under one arm while toting Ian in the carseat in my other arm. I am sure we were quite the sight to be seen! But once I finally tore him away, he did well getting to the car. We got home and he took a super long nap (yes!) so it made the McDonald's trip of terror all worth it :)

He's not due back for another year! Let's hope he stays healthy so he doesn't have to go back before then :)

Jase & Ian, Catch-up

Man, I am soooo far behind with blogging. Just overwhelmingly so. I almost want to just give it up, but I know I can't. This is pretty much the only "family history" I have for us. I can't quite finish (or start) any other projects that I want to do like Jase's baby book, for example. LOL. It hardly has a thing in it! And poor Ian never even GOT a baby book at all! ARGH! I need an assistant. Oh well, I will try to do my best and keep this updated as much as possible.
Jase. He's 3. Still 3. He went through a phase for a couple of weeks that was VERY difficult for us. Oh my goodness! He was so defiant and sassy! But lately he's back to his normal self...says the funniest stuff, can be so loveable, and can also manage to drive ya crazy from time to time. Like I said, normal. He loves giving and getting hugs! And he's into telling people that he loves them. We built him a huge snow hill in our backyard that he can go sledding on. It is too cool! He loves it, and it's a good way for him to get out some energy. Jase loves Ian, and loves to get reactions out of him. He is always making some kind of noises to see how Ian will respond to them. That response varies from smiling to crying, LOL. Jase wears about a 4T in tops and 3T or 4T in pants. His shoe size is 9-10! Jase's current favorite movie is "Despicable Me" which he is constantly quoting. (We love that movie, too. It's adorable.)

Ian. He's the sweetest thing. Just a few days away from 9 months old. I love how "easy" he is these days. Just keep him fed and he's good to go. He eats soooo much food, it's kind of scary. He can roll around and army crawl, but still hasn't figured out how to really crawl just yet (and i'm ok with that!). He still says "dada" and just yesterday said "mama(or baba, i'm not quite sure)" and makes all sorts of other noises. In the last week or two, he can finally sit up pretty well by himself. He also learned how to do the pincer grasp and feed himself little bits of bread or Gerber baby puffs. I love watching him do this for some reason. It makes me happy. His hair has gotten a bit thicker, and I think soon it will be moving into that "wispy" phase that I LOOOOVE! I can't wait! When he gets excited, he holds his hands up in the air and wiggles his fingers. It's so cute! Right now he wears about 9 month sized clothing, and a size 4 shoe. It's really easy to get him to laugh, too, which is so fun. We still haven't figured out who in the world he looks like?? I guess the milkman's kid? Hee hee. Well it doesn't matter anyways since he's so adorable!

Thanksgiving Day

We spent an early Thanksgiving (spent the real one with Reub's family) at my mom's house with my brother Nathan, his wife, Meredith, and their son, Hibbin. Since we're about 2 hours away from each other, Jase and Hibbin don't get to play together very often. Really, it's too bad, bc as you can see from the video they have a BLAST together. It was the funniest thing. They played so hard for so long that they were soaked with sweat. Jase wore himself out and completely crashed in the car on the drive home! (bonus!) Glad I caught a little bit of their fun on camera. So fun to have boy cousins only 1 month apart!

Potty Training Tales

Thought I'd do a summary of what's been going on this week with Jase and the potty training. He's three now, so I'd been thinking about doing this for quite some time. I have heard a million horror stories about potty training, so I was completely dreading it and fearing the worst. Because of this fear, I had been very careful not to PUSH it with him at all over these last few months. We talk about it a lot, rented some videos from the library, show him how to do it, ask him if he wants to try, but never forced anything or made it seem like a chore.

I use the Babywise book to do sleep training when my kids are little, so I bought the follow-up to that book called Toddlerwise. There's a chapter in there on potty training. I decided to try out this author's idea instead of spending hours and hours reading other methods, etc, and wasting more time. Here's the synopsis of his do-it-in-one-day potty training:

The day before you are going to start, take child to store and let them pick out special treats/candies and some cool new undies. Jase seemed totally disinterested in choosing any of these things. So I "helped" him choose. That night, you role play with a doll on how to go to the potty. We put Jase's undies on Buzz Lightyear (hilarious) and we had Jase offer him a drink. Later we took him to the potty and I had a small container of water hidden in my hand to make the experience more realistic for him. Jase thought that was pretty cool! You also talk it up like it's the coolest thing since sliced bread, and put his treats/reward toys out where he can see them.
His overall point of potty training is that you want your child to keep their undies CLEAN (no pee) and DRY (no poop). You actually reinforce this the entire time you are training. I had never heard this before and I thought it made lots of sense and was pretty cool. So periodically throughout the training day, I would ask if Jase's undies were still clean and dry, and if he said yes, he got a treat. This seemed to work REALLY well. Then we they actually go in the potty you give them double the treats and say "Oh look, bc you went in the potty your underwear are still clean and dry! Good job!"

Anyways, there's a few more things to it but basically you get the idea. So day#1 was harder than I anticipated. You are supposed to give them sugary drinks like kool-aid so it will make your child want to drink a lot (that worked!). My first mistake was not making him go to the bathroom every half an hour. The child had so much to drink he was just peeing all over the place! Ha! But the good part about that was that he quickly learned that it felt yucky to be wet. After his afternoon nap, I started setting a timer to take him into the bathroom and let him sit on the potty. I would read stories, play games, be silly until he went! Roob and I would take turns doing this bc it started to get a bit taxing on me spending all day in the bathroom. Ugh. I'm so impatient!

Overnight he did well (we brought him straight to the bathroom as soon as he woke up) and I was so excited! I had church that afternoon and was completely nervous about taking him with it only being day #2 of training. Well he did GREAT! I took him to the bathroom 3 times which prevented any accidents. I think he had one accident that second day (it's getting hard to remember now). By day #3 he was definitely going on his own initiative for number "2." Ha ha ha. I figured bladder control would be harder to learn (it was). By day #4 or 5 he started going to the bathroom on his own for number "1." Hooray! I made sure not to go anywhere those next few days after the initial potty training day just so he'd have more of a chance to get everything down pact.

We bought a couple of bigger toys that he picked out (one of which was the weeble wobble treehouse--go figure) that we used as motivation to keep him clean and dry for an entire day. I think that was day #3. He got his toy guns that day and the next day was able to earn the big Weeble treehouse. We also had a bunch of hotwheels cars that he got along the way for staying dry...
Yesterday (day #6) I decided to head out to town to get some shopping done. Besides FREAKING OUT about him touching EVERYTHING in the public restrooms, he did GREAT! We left the house at noon and got home about 7pm. No problems! Though, we did take him to the bathroom at least 4 times :)

Anyways, I could not be any prouder of my boy!!! I am still trying to be aware of the bathroom thing, especially if he is playing or doing something really fun that he may not want to stop and go potty...but overall I have to say things went WAY better than expected and I will definitely do this same method when Ian's good and ready. Hopefully that is a long time from now ;)

Ice Skating Night!

If ya know our family, you know Reuben works allllll the time. Major bummer. Well the other night he didn't have anything to do, so we wanted to take the kids and do something fun! We went to the local ice skating rink after a family night out at our favorite pizza place that has the BEST coke (that's for YOU, dad!). Jase was pretty excited about trying on his rental skates! He surprised me by being able to walk around really good in them! We'll get to what happened on the ice in a minute...Here's a picture of Jase and his daddy. It's blurry bc there was definitely some slippage happening at the time...hahaha.
Ah...here I am with the little tootles man. Looks like he's having fun, right? Cheesy grin!

Another pic with me and Jase and some random kid, heh heh. I think it took both Reuben and I about 20 minutes just to get our skates laced up. Ridiculous! I had a pair of what I thought were decent figure skates that I found at the local goodwill shop (DI) for like $1. I was feelin' pretty confident until I stepped out on the ice. I was trying to hold Jase's hand so he could get his feet underneath him and TRY to skate. OMG. Apparently I need to start working out. It was soooo hard! He looked like one of those cartoons where they body is staying in place but the feet are going a mile a minute! LOL! He was all over the place and I needed the Hulk to come and save me from this 40+ pound child flailing wildly beneath me! Reuben to the rescue!

While Reub was with Jase on a suicide mission, I decided to try out my skills and take a lap or two around the rink. Holy wobbles, batman, I was all over the place. I felt like I would roll both ankles at any second. I stopped skating and tried to tighten my skates even more. Once both feet were numb, I figured I could improve. Nope. Misery. The pain was shooting up my legs after just another lap. Argh! I finally went and asked the guy if I could try a pair of their "crappy" rental skates. After doing so, I realized my $1 special on my skates was definitely the price that equalled their worth. The rentals were 1000 times better! I was able to find my legs, not roll my ankles, and at least skate forward with a bit of speed. Wooooo! Ok, enough about me, let's get back to this cute boy below:

I'm so glad they had skates in his size (9-10 toddler). Cutest skates I've EVER seen. He got to skate around the rink (ok, not sure if skate is the correct word here, ask Reub! LOL) with dad a couple of times before the ol' dad was wore out!

Thank goodness for video games set up in the lobby. I think Jase had more fun playing those!

Oh, and yes, little Boppers was with us, too. But we did NOT take him out on the ice! We wrapped him up all nice and toasty and took turns watching him on the bleachers!
Speaking of bleachers...I forgot to mention that this was Jase's other favorite thing to do. Run up and down the aisles! If you look closely, you can see him in the middle of this picture towards the top. We were fussing at him to come back down by us! At any rate, we really did have fun and I'm so glad we got to spend a fun night out together!

Jase's 3rd Birthday

Think he had a good time? I'd say, "YES."

Still having the same "images not in order" problem. I am usually able to copy and paste them around, but for some reason it's not working. Whateva.

Ok so my baby boy just turned THREE. Yes, three. I can't believe it! He's getting so big so quickly! He loves the show Curious George, so I decided to go with that as the theme. Besides, it's kind of fitting since Jase is also very curious and gets into lots of mischief! :) I had grandious plans for this party, but I'm learning that time always gets ahead of me these days and I had to throw a lot of them out the window. However, it was still cute and Jase had lots of fun being the center of attention! My brother Nathan and his wife, Meredith, chillin' on the couch.
Jase's cousin, Emmi, loved helping him open gifts. And actually, he was okay with it. LOL.

Another gift to open!

Cousin McKayla, being silly!

I went to the library and checked out a few Curious George books to place around the house. Turned out cute. Also had to get a few balloons! And yes, we have Curious George playing on the TV, too.

Emmi playing the little horn blower thing. I'm spacing what these things are really called right now...

Here's the two cakes. I was happy with how they came out. It looks like Curious George, right??? The big one is 4 layer chocolate mousse cake, topped with whipped ganache and covered in crushed Heath bar. I do not mess around when it comes to cake! This thing is the BOMBdiggitydog of yumminess!!! I thought it would be fun to do a little banana cake just for Jase on the side.

Better view of my Curious George cake. It's so stinkin' cute! I love it!

Quick pic of one of the table spreads. The lighting is terrible but the food was actually really fun. The marshmallow pops were my favorite part. I just stuck lollipop sticks into them, rolled them in chocolate, then in different crushed candies. Stuck them in some potting foam and covered that with easter grass. Other fun foods were chocolate/banana/peanut butter shakes (forgot to defrost these so that is why the straws are not in them), chips, cut out PB&J sandwiches, and cut out tuna fish sandwiches.

Oh, here's some carrots and ranch, dipped nutter butter cookies, and the sandwiches. I wanted them to be monkey faces, but I ran out of time for that, as well.

Another photo of the birthday fun table.

All in all it was a really fun party! I felt like I took a lot of pics, but apparently, not. Good thing Reuben's brother brought his camera! I have to get a copy of his pics bc mine are surely lacking! I hardly have any of the guests in photos! Well, I am sure I'll get them eventually and can add to this post later on.

And a Happy Halloween it was!

Captain Jase Sparrow and his parrot, E-Boppers.

I don't even have the patience to rearrange these pics. Google put them in here all out of order, and when I try to copy and paste them around it's giving me trouble. ARGH! Ok so I'll try to make this make some sense. Jase's cousin had a Pirate themed birthday and he got a cute pirate patch and earring at the party. It gave me the idea to build from that and let Jase be a pirate for Halloween. Ian could be his parrot! Hardy har har. And so it was. Found this cute Jack Sparrow costume for him on ebay. I looooved the dreads/braids, but since it kept touching his cheek, Jase refused to wear them the rest of the evening. Lame. BUT he was still cute! :)

Another pic of Jasey the pirate.

This is both of us. I'd like to call my costume "what-I-found-in-my-closet-Pirate." It's classic.

He's so silly!!!!

We first went to the local library to check out their Halloween party. It was cute, but in my opinion they either needed to have more game options so the lines for the kids would be shorter---OR give the kids less "turns to try" when it was their turn to play. I ran out of patience quickly. But Jase had fun. So that's good.

Here's a pic of Jase, Ian, and the dad trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. This house always has a cool spook "alley" you can walk through.

It went from moderately raining to POURING raining while we were out. Blech! Because of the rain/weather, I did not get as many pictures as I had hoped. Trying to manage an umbrella, baby and toddler plus a camera is near impossible. Thank goodness Roob was with us. This is a pic of Jase and I riding in the back of the Explorer with the hatch open! Roob drove us house to house and we would jump in and out. Lots of Jase's candy got wet, so I finally dumped it into the car to keep what we could dry. You think I would have thought of this sooner. Actually, it was Roob's idea.

Jase being silly in the back of the car. He's so funny! He was really having the TIME of his life, despite the rain. Of course, rain is FUN to kids. Not so fun for moms. And all I could think was "I knew I should have sprayed these suede boots with the waterproofing spray." Maybe next time.

After trick or treating, we stopped at the local restaurant to get some BBQ. Ian was just chillin' on the floor in his car seat and parrot attire. And yes, it's a pink binky. I forgot to switch it out for green before we left the house. Oops. The restaurant had free popcorn and hot chocolate. That was cool!

This was when we first arrived at the library. Yes, out of order.

Ian getting ready for the library party. A few people mistook him for a jester or clown. I don't think they realized he had a parrot beak on his head. Oh well. Small misunderstanding. :)

Jase waiting while we strapped Ian into the stroller...

After years of waiting, Jase finally had his turn to play the golf game.

All in all it REALLY was a FUN night. It made both Roob and I sooo happy to see Jase having so much fun! Made it all worth it. Wonder what Jase will want to be next year???