Little Bums

When did this happen? How is this possible? What does this mean?



The boys can fit in the same size diapers!! This can only mean two things….

1. Wyatt is getting way too big way too fast
and
2. Dax seriously needs to get potty trained


How do I make time stand still for one and skip into the future with the other??

Disclaimer: The boys fit in the same size diaper, but they don't wear the same size. To give Dax some credit, he does wear a size 5, I just thought it was funny that if I did get in a bind, they could wear eachothers.

Wake up Call

The house is quite as Dax plays quietly and Wyatt sleeps soundly in his room.

Suddenly, Wyatt wakes up and he’s happy. He chatters softly and squeals at his animals in his crib.

Realizing Wyatt is awake, Dax takes off down the hallway towards his room; the area of the house he has been forbidden to play in for the past hour in a half.

I follow closely behind reminding Dax to be soft as he barges into Wyatt’s room.

As soon as the door opens, Wyatt stops talking and listens and waits.

Dax climbs onto the crib and peers over the side.

Wyatt starts squealing again and kicks his legs and flails his arm.

Dax looks back for me to inform me, “Wyatt’s awake, mom”.

Then he looks back down at Wyatt and says “Hi Baby” five times in a row.

Wyatt smiles and keeps kicking and flailing.

Dax says, “Wyatt’s happy to see me, mom.”

I say, “Yes!”

Dax says, “Pick Wyatt up, mom”

I pick Wyatt up and proceed to kiss his face off.

I kneel down so Dax can kiss his face off.

Dax says, “He’s proud of you, mom.”

Dax goes running out of the room.

Wyatt and I follow.

We find Dax sitting on the couch with his arms out, “I hold him, mom.”

I sit Wyatt in Dax’s lap and they both smile at me.

Then Dax says, “Take a picture of us, mom”

I get the camera and snap away until Dax pushes Wyatt off his lap and says, “You hold Wyatt, mom” so he can see the pictures I took.

Wyatt whines because Dax manhandles him.

Dax says "Wyatt's tired again, mom".

Then I go into a mini-speech that includes how "we need to be soft" , "Wyatt's just a little baby" and "when he squeals you need to stop whatever you are doing to him".

Dax says, "Okay, mom"

Then the same things happens at least one more time each and every day. You can imagine the number of pictures I have of these two sitting on the couch!

My Tag

My cute friend Amera tagged me with this game a few weeks ago and I totally ignored it (I’m so sorry Amera!!!). I was just too lazy to play. Then my sister tagged me with it too, so I thought I better put on my thinking cap and get to it. So here it is…..

How To Play This Game of Tag:List: 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, and 3 random surprising facts about yourself.Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog!

Joys:
1. My little family. They themselves alone bring me more joy imaginable, but I instantly came up with three things each of them does that brings me joy. When Austin comes home with flowers. He does this on occasion for no reason at all, and it isn’t even so much the flowers that bring me joy (even though I love the way they look on the table), but that he stopped on his way home and got them for me. When Dax sings. He has just started doing this and it melts my heart. His favorite is Row Row Row Your Boat and I love the way he tries to say “merrily”. After each song, he says, “You like that song mom?” YES! Wyatt’s smile. He has the greatest smile. It melts my heart.
2. When I successfully bake something. I don’t know what happened, why I’ve been plagued by this, but I cannot bake worth a lick. I cook well, but baking is a whole other ball game. Cookies aren’t soft, cakes don’t rise, and cream cheese mixtures never get smooth enough. I can follow a recipe perfectly, but somehow, 9 out of 10 times I can’t get it right. So, that one time, when I bake something successfully, that brings me pure joy!
3. Taking a child to Disneyland. Last year we took Dax for the first time and I have never had more fun there ever. I grew up with a season pass; I’ve been a hundred times, but nothing beats watching a child experience it for the first time. This summer, when we go back, I think he will love it even more!

Fears: (NOTE- This was no fun thinking about)
1. When a new baby is in the house I cannot help but think about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. That would be one of the worse things ever to experience and for some reason with Wyatt I thought about it almost constantly when he started sleeping in his own room. This is definitely one of my worst fears.
2. I fear the day that one of my children, for whatever reason, don’t love me and cut me out of their life. I have no idea why that would happen, but I’m not sure there could be a worse feeling then your child not loving you back.
3. Memory loss has always frightened me. That would be awful to experience or to see a love one experience it. I couldn’t imagine not remembering who people are, or wonderful memories about childhood. I dread getting old for this reason!

Goals:
1. I really want to learn how to make baby food for Wyatt. I only have a few weeks to figure this out, so I better get started. I think it would be so fun and rewarding and probably save a little money along the way. Anyone have any tips?
2. Like Nicole, I would love to get Dax potty trained by the time we go beach camping in August. I think I can handle only changing one sandy diaper bum rather than two.
3. I would love to put up crown molding in our living room, so I guess this goal would be to get Austin to do it for me!

Current obsessions/collections:
1. I wash my hands A LOT. I wouldn’t diagnose myself as OCD about it, but I think I’m probably pretty close. In turn, Dax gets his hands washed all the time too. I know most moms probably try and keep their kids’ hands clean, but I probably over do it a little bit. I know Austin has given me weird looks before about this one.
2. My closet is color coordinated and all my clothes all hang in the same direction and usually in the same spot. It throws me off when Austin puts laundry away and hangs a shirt up in the wrong spot.
3. This is all the fault of my dear friend Kat. In her kitchen she has all plastic utensils in one drawer (spoons, spatulas…), all rubber and wooden utensils in another (spatula, wooden spoons), and all metal utensils in another (knifes, whisks, pizza cutter…). In Utah we didn’t have enough drawers in our kitchen to do this, but since we’ve been in this house that is absolutely the way things are organized. If something gets put in the wrong drawer, it makes me a little crazy. I love when Austin helps out, but sometimes it just makes more work for me to go back over what he’s done. But I still love him for trying! J

Random surprising facts about myself:
1. I can’t blow up a balloon. I seriously can’t. It practically gives me a headache to try.
2. I hate anything new that comes sealed that you have to peel off using a tiny tab. Like a brand new bottle of syrup, ketchup, mayonnaise, and lately the milk at Costco. I always manage to pull off the tiny tab, and then have to get a knife to puncture the thing and then get my finger all gross trying to peel off the rest of the seal. It makes me crazy!
3. Up until a few months ago I did not like olives, not even a little bit. The smell even grossed me out. Now all of a sudden I do. Kinda random?

Now, if you want to play, tag yourself!

Happy Faces

"One big circle. Two dots. And a smiley face. Look mom. Look dad. I draw a happy face.”

Holy crap! That’s really good.

Dax doesn’t color much. He just doesn’t. He plays more with the crayons then actually uses them. They fit perfectly into the bed of his trucks and make a nice track for his Hot Wheels. We’ve bought coloring books for him and had little lessons on staying in the lines, but he really doesn’t care. His nursery pictures come home with one blue line. One. He just isn’t that interested in creating a masterpiece I guess.

He does love his little Doodle Pro though. I think this is our third one and it keeps him more entertained during Church than anything else I bring. He will sit on Austin’s lap and tell him what to draw. A shark. A dog. A crocodile. A lion. A bee. A lizard. A snake. A daddy snake. It’s mostly animals, but sometimes there is an occasional transportation something. A choo choo. A plane. A car. Then, after each picture, he shows me, so proud, as if he drew it himself. I never draw on those things. If Dax wants me to draw, which is only if Austin isn’t around, I stick to the alphabet and numbers. Once he called my dog and elephant, I gave up. I have no artistic ability.

Yesterday we were hanging out on a normal Sunday afternoon and he was drawing on his Doodle Pro. He asked me to draw a picture. Austin was sitting right next to me and he asked me to draw a picture. Talk about pressure! I stretched my artistic abilities as far as I could; a happy face. I said, “One big circle, two dots, and a smile.” He laughed. Then he tried. One big blob, 65 dots/marks, and another squiggly somewhere outside the “one big circle”. Then he laughed again. We erased it and did the same thing over about 30 times. I would show him how to do it, and then he would try. We got the 65 dots down to a few, but they were nowhere close to resembling eyes. Nothing in fact was really resembling a happy face. Austin helped a few times too. Then we got distracted while Dax kept working…..

“One big circle. Two dots. And a smiley face. Look mom. Look dad. I draw a happy face.”

Holy crap! That’s really good!!

So, here you have it, Dax’s first masterpiece!

P.S He was so proud of himself. I can NEVER get him to smile like this when I'm trying to take a picture.

His Shadow

In Arizona, one of the major questions when you are buying a house is the direction it faces. When it faces north/south, you’re in pretty good shape, but when your house faces east/west, it’s worse because it is the same direction where the sun rises and sets. And, with the Arizona sun being so blazing hot, this makes for VERY hot mornings and evenings. Lucky for us (read: NOT so lucky for us) the home we fell in love with was facing east/west. I’ve whined about this little predicament since about the day we’ve moved in. We’ve added sunscreens, added ceiling fans, added thicker curtains and blinds, but to no avail. The sun still blazes through those windows at dinnertime and makes me miserable. It’s the hottest time of the day and during these summer months, I hate it. That is, until last week. Who would have guessed that that blazing sun would be the destiny for our son’s new best friend?

Yup, Dax has a new best friend. They play together so well. Dax is always happy when they are playing. This friend does exactly what he wants him to and they never fight. It’s so nice when he comes over to play. Lately, it’s every night around dusk.

If we leave our bedroom window blinds open, stick Dax in the doorway, and face him towards the wall, this is where you will meet his new best friend, his shadow.

Austin rarely picks up the camera, but I have to give him credit for taking this picture. Dax was so mesmerized seeing his shadow on the wall and watching him do all these silly things. He liked touching his head, and then his toes, then turning to the side, then dancing, and seeing his friend follow right along.

Now that he and his shadow have met, he’s showing up everywhere. He’s there when the TV is off and Dax sees himself in the screen, when he’s running through the house and sees him in the window, when he’s playing soccer outside and sees him on the grass, when he’s riding his bike and sees him on the sidewalk.

We really love this new friend. He makes Dax so happy.

Now, if we could just figure out how to deal with all the crashes and accidents he’s causing around here because Dax is too busy watching his shadow to pay attention to what he is doing!

Lemon Juice

I used to be naturally blond. All my older sisters had darker hair like my mom, but Jamie and I were blond. I guess we inherited it from my dad because he was a cute blond little boy. Plus, I lived at the beach. I went ALL the time. That natural sun bleached my hair during those long summer days next to the Pier at tower #3. It always felt so good to be sun-kissed with glowing hair. I also played softball nearly every weekend for close to 8 years. My pony tail would always be blonder than the rest of my hair.

Then, I moved to Idaho. No more beaches, no more sun, and no more blond. That summer after my freshman year I headed back to the beach with dark hair and pasty white skin. It was awful.

The solution? Lemon juice. I don’t even know who told us about this, or why we thought it would work, but everyday me and my sister and whoever was with us would go down to the beach. We took a spray bottle filled with lemon juice and a comb. We would spray and spray that lemon juice until there wasn’t a drop left, comb it through every piece, and then we would sit. We would sit on the beach waiting and praying it was making our hair blonder. And while we sat hoping to be blonder, we looked a complete hot mess.

Long hair, plus sea-salt air, plus ocean breeze, plus lemon juice = one crusty, tangly mess.

Miraculously, we thought it was worth it. We would get home, shower, blow dry our hair and convince ourselves that this lemon juice solution was truly turning us blonder. Who knows if it ever did?

Well, I’m a bad mom. Last week I put it to the test. No, not on myself, on my two year old son. We were headed to the pool before swim lessons and I knew it was going to be a long day in the hot sun. So I lathered Dax up with sunscreen, and I pulled out the spray bottle. He looked at me funny, but I have a trick. Referring any shirt, shorts, shoes, sandals to “surfer”, and I get my way. When he doesn’t want to put a shirt one, I tell him it’s a cool “surf” shirt and he puts it on. He never wants to wear shoes, but cool “surf” sandals he likes. So when I started to spray his hair and he wouldn’t hold still, I told him he was going to have awesome “surf” hair.

We played out in the sun all afternoon. Even after the pool and swim lessons we played on the slip in slide in the backyard. It was a long day and we were exhausted. After Dax’s bath I patiently waited for his hair to dry to see if he was blonder. I couldn’t tell. A little later Austin came home from work, not knowing what I had done. Within a few minutes, after saying all his hello’s, he looks at Dax and then at me and says, “He looks so blond to me right now.” What? Lemon juice really does work!!

Just so we don't think we're crazy, he really does look blonder, right?

before lemon juice

with lemon juice

after lemon juice

Just Me and My Dad

We went camping, just me and my Dad (and the rest of the Fathers and Sons in the Ward)

Dad drove the car ‘cause I’m too little (even though I put up a big stink and layed on the horn a few times in protest as I climbed into the back seat).

On the road I ate Twizzler and drank Dr. Pepper ‘cause dad said we were on a “road trip” (and mom wasn’t around).

When we got to the campsite, I was dirty in no time. Dad said that just meant that I was a boy and was having fun.
We roasted hot dogs for dinner, played Frisbee and got more dirty. I found a tree stump that I really liked.
When it got dark we started a fire. Dad said not to get too close so I wouldn’t fall in. Anyone who knows me, knows that that was good advice!

After playing awhile it was time for bed. Dad bought me my very own, brand new alligator sleeping bag that I thought was so cool. Cool, until I figured out dad was sleeping in another sleeping bag next to me. I gave my dad a big hug so he wouldn’t be scared (wink wink) and decided to sleep with him in his sleeping bag on a twin air mattress. I went right to sleep.

I made lots of new friends and everyone in the ward got to know my crazy personality a little bit better. Mom made me take a bath right when I got home.


We had fun camping-just me and my dad.

--Dax, age 2 1/2

A retold Little Critter story, Dax's favorite books

June!

Happy June! My little guys adore their dad so much, obviously Dax wants to be just like him. Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there! Wishing everyone happy wishes this month---it's a BUSY one!!

2nd: Happy Birthday Mom MacGillivray

3rd: Happy Birthday Scott

4th: Happy Birthday Kobi

10th: Happy Birthday Ryder

15th: Happy Father's Day

16th: Happy Birthday Michael

21st: happy Birthday Joe

23rd: Happy Birthday Misti

25th: Happy Birthday Josh & Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad MacGillivray

29th: Happy Birthday Trevor