Bennett buddy

Monday, August 11, 2014

Bennett's prayer for Aria

"Heavenly Father, thank you for we see baby Aria, thank you for the doctors helping Aria, thank you for we go to sleep, bless baby Aria for getting better, Amen."

So sweet.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

When you play with Playdough you use cookie cutters just like most kids do, but you do it a little different. You take a cookie cutter and push pieces of playdough into it until it's full, then pull the cookie cutter away. Daddy showed you how to do it this way because you were getting too frustrated that you couldn't roll the playdough out and cut it that way.

What a big boy you are becoming! Look at those long limbs!

Your first pony ride.

You usually are immune to the cold, but when you are cold you really revel in it. On this morning I had to tuck you and your sippy all into the couch under 2 big blankets because you insisted you were freezing.

Haha. . .how does this even happen?? You must have been really sleepy! You had started out sleeping on the couch, then woke up a bit but fell asleep again on your way down from the couch.

Lately we've noticed that you often watch tv out of this one eye. . .we can't quite figure out if you just see better out of your right eye, or if it's just a mannerisms thing.

You are building some pretty impressive tracks these days!

Aunt Amanda and Uncle Joe came for a visit. You loved playing with them. Amanda introduced you to Lincoln Logs.

We went to the Thanksgiving Point gardens and you slept through the whole thing! Which is just as well, because we ended up renting a golf cart to drive around and you would have been begging to drive it if you were awake.

Concentrating hard on your artwork at the Leonardo Museum.

This picture is impressive for 2 reasons: 1 - You took this picture with my phone, 2 - Lydia intentionally posed for you.

Daddy took you on the train ride at the mall. You were so excited!

April pictures

The game of the month - hiding in blankets and saying "come find me!"

Superman from head to toe!

Somehow you found your way into our bed for a few Saturday mornings in a row.

Reading a book to Grandpa

You wanted so desperately to help with your room renovation at the new house. I let you take the spackle into your closet and "paint" the walls. When it dried I didn't sand it down, I just painted over it. So there are some nice little Bennett designs in your closet :)

Ah, the life of having a little boy. Few things make me giggle more than coming into the kitchen to see a nakie bum in daddy's shoes casually getting himself a snack.

You were already starting to resist naps before we moved, but even more so once we moved and you didn't have blackout curtains in your new window. So most naps take place on the couch after you fall asleep watching a movie or something.

You are obsessed with the hose spigot at the new house. I can pretty reliably count on coming down the deck stairs to see you playing with it.

I don't mind these naps where you fall asleep on me! Although I don't have much lap these days thanks to baby.

Helping some more with your room renovation. You do a decent job of filling in the paint cracks!

We had Ellie over to our house. At naptime you both swore you would sleep if I let you both sleep in my bed, but of course you didn't.

This is a little Indian outfit my cousin Jeevan gave you soon after you were born. It finally fits!

Hunting for Easter eggs at Kav's house.

Look at that booty!

Opening your Easter card from Nana and Papa. You loved it and gave the chickie a big hug.

Helping me work the garden beds.

Very proud of the cupcakes you helped me fill. Later, you were equally excited to eat them.

Grandma Beverly and Pop-pop sent you this bunny for Easter. Here you are feeding him the "carrots" (orange Reese's Pieces) that came with him. You named him Bunny Bunny Pete, our guess is you got the name from a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Easter episode.

3 year update

Dear Bennett,

What a big boy you are becoming! Let me tell you some things about you at 3 years old:

You have such good manners! Strangers who overhear you in public are constantly commenting on your manners and how well you talk in general. More than just "please" and "thank you," it's very common to hear you say something like "excuse me please, but can I play with this?"
You play very well on your own with your toys and make your toys have conversations with each other. It's so cute! You would much rather have a playmate though if you had a choice.
You still looooooove trains. For most of this last year your Matchbox cars have been your favorite thing, but within the last couple months you have gone nuts over trains, especially Thomas & Friends brand ones and those cartoons.
You tell tales, suddenly. You will tell me that Daddy said it was okay for you to do something when I know very well that he did not. And vice versa. We always remind you that we don't say things that aren't true, but aren't too worried about it since we know it's just a normal part of being a toddler.
You don't like us to wander too far. You still follow me around the house when I go downstairs or outside. I'm fine with that since you don't insist on being in my arms constantly or anything, you just want me within eyesight.
You have a funny goodbye routine with the pups. You give them a hug, a kiss, and a tickle - tickling under their chin and saying "tickle tickle tickle!"
You will NEVER turn down an opportunity to play in water, no matter the weather outside. I just love this new house because if I ever want to wear you out in the afternoons, all I have to do is put a few inches of water in your little pool and put your slide in it and you'll play for a good hour before you get too cold. You slide over and over and do tricks and constantly yell "watch this mom!"
Speaking of which - you insist on calling me "mom" instead of "mama" now. I was devastated. For a while I would correct you and make you call me mama instead, but we've moved past that.
Favorite foods: hot dogs, cheesy eggs, juice, Gogurt, mac&cheese.
Favorite movie: just depends on the week. You love Monsters University, Toy Story, Curious George, and Thomas the Train pretty reliably.
You are a whiz at anything electronic and always have been. You can work our phones and ipad with ease, picking up tricks in games that we hadn't discovered yet.
You get excited about making new friends and it only takes you a couple minutes to start playing with them.
You are starting to be particular about what clothes you want to wear when I get you dressed.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Potty Training

I bought your first potty chair about a year ago, and every few months would give potty-training a big of a go for a couple days. It was always very casual and I didn't expect much, but I just would pick times when I had at least a few hours at a time for a couple days in a row to work on it and see what happened. I'm glad I did, because it seemed like each time your potty awareness grew a little bit with certain skills, which I think really helped to make this official round of potty training go so well.

You first peed in a potty chair right before you turned 2, which I was excited about but didn't want to pursue since we were going to NY in a couple weeks. After we got back, I wanted to try again but it just seemed like it was never the right time. If we ever sat you on the toilet and encouraged you to pee, you would, but you would never ask to do so on your own so I didn't push it.

In the fall, diaper changes were becoming a horrible experience for everyone (usually involving a fair amount of bribes, threats, and sometimes tears). I decided that we should try really hard over Christmas break when Daddy would be home to help and see if we couldn't convince you to be potty trained. Then a couple weeks before Christmas we were surprised to find out I was pregnant, and I was so sick that I gave up all thoughts of potty training because I knew I would have to wait until I felt well enough to commit.

That time finally came this March! I finally stopped being so sick around the middle of March, a couple weeks after we moved into our new house. Toward the end of March we had been in our house for 4 weeks and I felt like you were doing really well with the transition. I had 5 full days off of work in a row including a weekend (which was a miracle. . work was crazy this winter) so I decided we would commit hard-core for those 5 days and see what happened. I still wasn't convinced this would be "it" because it didn't seem like any of the other kids your age were potty trained, and everyone kept telling me boys potty trained later than girls anyway, but diaper changes were awful still and I didn't want to have 2 kids in diapers if I could possibly help it, so I decided to really try!

I used a lot of the tips from the book "Pottywise" (part of the Babywise series, which worked perfectly for us). For the couple days beforehand I told you about how soon you would only go potty in the toilet. I took you to Walmart and let you pick out a bunch of candy but wouldn't let you have any yet because they were our special potty treats. I also picked out some little toys and books and wrapped them up to be special "poop presents." We started March 26th. When you woke up in the morning, I took your diaper off and told you that you would only go potty in the toilet now because you were a big boy. I took you into the bathroom and sat you on the potty and told you to pee, which you did. Then I let you pick a potty treat from the jar I had put them in. Well, you were very interested in that! I told you that we only go potty on the toilet now and that every time you did, you could get a treat. Then I let you be nakie-bum for the rest of the day since in the past you were more likely to have an accident if you were wearing undies. I let you have plenty of juice and snacks. For the first couple hours I would remind you every half hour to go potty. You got tired of that pretty fast so we would make deals like "I'm going to set the timer and when it dings, you go potty" Thankfully, it only took one accident for you to "see the light" as it were - you started to pee in the toyroom and immediately said "uh oh! I go pee-pee!" I rushed you to the bathroom and sat you on the toilet and you finished in there. We talked about how you had an accident and how we should only go in the toilet. And that was that! You didn't have any accidents the rest of the day! You still required quite a bit of encouraging to stop playing and go potty, but overall I was amazed at how well you were doing. You even told me a couple times that you needed to go without me reminding you first.

Starting Day 2, I put you in undies. Same as the first day, you only had one accident where you started to pee but caught yourself and ran to the bathroom exclaiming "uh oh!" the whole way.

Day 6 was a big one. I was (and still am) putting you in diapers for bedtime, and every couple days you'd wake up with a poopy diaper. I had known of other little kids in our old ward that took a couple months to poop in the potty, so I wasn't terribly concerned yet. But today was the big day! You were VERY aware of the fact that there was a bag of presents sitting on top of the fridge that were waiting for this special occasion, so as soon as you finished you proudly announced "I poop on the potty and now I get a present!"

Check out the excitement in your eyes at unwrapping a filled Easter egg!

About an hour later, you pooped again and got another present - a Superman Pez dispenser. You were in heaven that night.

Ever since then, things have really gone pretty smoothly! You haven't had any real accidents since then. I put you in Pull-ups for your naps and diapers for nighttime and even then you usually wake up dry. You still refuse to pee on strange toilets, but slowly you are becoming more courageous. You've had successful potty runs at Grammy, Rachel, and Kav's houses. Other than that I just have to make sure not to take you out for more than a couple hours at a time in case you need to pee, but since Grammy and Rachel are your main babysitting houses this hasn't presented too much of a problem. And the best part? You don't use the potty chair. You just use a stool and climb onto the toilet. So no clean up for me!

Or maybe the best part is all the fun undies. . . .you have all the Justice League and Pixar characters.

I'm sure proud of you Bennett! Potty trained in just a week, and at 2 1/2 years old. Yay!!

March pictures

A couple days after moving in to the new house. I don't know why, but for a couple weeks you were very interested in using the rug as a blanket or hiding under it.

Chocolate face

Just chillin' with Pocket in the yard.

You've started resisting naps and only end up napping about half the time. This was a day where you didn't nap, then fell asleep on the way home.

Can you see yourself? :)

Look at those curls!

I made up this game which has been brilliant - I'll bring a little bucket of water and a paintbrush outside and let you "pain" the deck or patio. It's perfect for the days where it's too cold to play in the sprinklers (which has been almost every day, so far)

This is one of my favorite pictures of you right now. I took it while we were waiting in a drive-thru to pick up our food. You just look so happy and carefree, just everything a 2 year old should be.

I wanted to take a picture outside our new church building.

Daddy took this picture while I was sleeping one day.

Snuggling with Daddy and watching a movie.

I wish I had taken more pictures - you helped me put together a shelf for your toyroom. I was so impressed by the natural talent you were showing with where things should go.