Bums everywhere

Keeping up with the Jones'. Love that little bum!

Sometimes all a kid needs is his dog, his banana to eat and his right to be naked. I love that they're such good friends. Sometimes they just sit and cuddle. It's the only reason I keep her around.

Just a nice shot of Tipsy. She loves having us outside in the nice weather.

Things have been pretty normal around here. Gage has been doing a great job of combining words together which is so exciting to me and his speech therapists. Sometimes it's totally voluntary and I gets me so excited! His vocabulary is really growing and I think he's beginning to see the appeal in communicating. He's been asking to go swimming everyday and when I'm up to it I take him but really it's the most exhausting thing in the world. Simply swimming around or enjoying the water playground at the pool isn't enough. He has to be jumping in and out of the water constantly and he prefers to do it without a life jacket on. He gets a lot of comments asking how old he is and how I got him so comfortable in the water. I can't take credit- he just lives for swimming.  So pretty much it's really exhausting to keep up with him with my belly getting huge and his energy being boundless. But I don't mind because I know it will equal him learning to swim sooner and then I'll be able to get a needed break. Actually, I'll be chasing my next boy by then so it never really stops.

 Gage is about 2 weeks into potty training and still has not pooped in the toilet. Yeah, it's a roadblock a bunch of my friends have gone through and I'm not sure how to move on from here. No accidents of pooping on the carpet this last week but he prefers to head to the backyard to poop which also doesn't lead to him using the toilet. He just doesn't like sitting on the toilet. But I'd like to stick with it cause already I'm saving money on diapers and I know he has it in him to understand the whole thing. He's a champ at peeing in the toilet as long as he's naked. If he's wearing anything on his bottom half he'll have accidents. Meanwhile he loves running around mostly or completely naked and hates getting into either clothes or diapers now. Good thing it's summer temperatures outside!

My pregnancy is going well and I'm at the point of either needing a body pillow or getting my own bed because sleep is getting uncomfortable. I've only gained 10 pounds so far in the pregnancy which disappoints my doctors but I'm pretty happy about that. If I can get out of this thing having only gained 25 pounds I'd be thrilled. It would certainly be a lot better than the 40 I gained with Gage! This boy is just like Gage where he sits really high on me and spends most of his time digging his toes into my ribs. Sometimes I realize that I'm barley breathing because it's so uncomfortable and I shift and push on my belly till he gets out of that position. I'm getting so excited to meet him and I think I'm way more excited than I ever was with Gage because now I know that I'm truly growing a little personality in me. Before I just got caught up in the newborn baby thing. But since I don't actually like newborns as much as I thought I would I'm thinking of this little guy as the fun toddler he's gonna be. Mostly I want to know if he'll look like Gage or if I'll have a brunette. That way maybe someone will believe that he looks like me. All we ever get in public is how much Gage looks like Cody so I'm done with being overlooked. My time is now! 

Cody is 2 weeks away from finishing up this semester and I'm so proud of him. It's a lot of work and he does such a good job balancing his family needs with his school needs. Truthfully the family needs probably win out over school needs more than should happen but I love getting Cody to myself sometimes :) He spent all day scheming and talking me into getting rid of our popcorn ceilings sometime in the next little bit and even though we don't really have time to do it I still love that we can be such project people. It really is so fun to do projects together and we've learned so much about communication through it. Our first few projects were riddled with short tempers and hurt feelings but now we do projects without so much as an eye rolling incident. I'd recommend it to any marriage. It's a blast. A part of me would like to spend another 5 years in this house just so we can enjoy getting it just perfect. Well see. Only a year left here for sure and then it's wherever the wind takes us but I know it will all work out in the end. 

 Just some random pictures from the weekend. It was a pretty low key weekend and the highlight was cutting Gage's hair all short. He's just a short hair kind of a kid and he gets so cute with a little buzz cut. Also I posted some pictures of the invitations for my baby shower that some friends down here are throwing for me. They turned out so cute and I couldn't get the sideways one to be the right way so oh well.

 This little guy is getting so cute and rascally. He has the funniest sense of humor and there are times I just want to never let him go. But then it balances out with the moments that I can't take him pooping on the floor one more time!

 It's a diaper invitation for a diaper generating baby shower. My mom is coming for the big day and I'm soooo excited! Can't wait!

Easter with Friends!

Easter this year once again was better because we have such wonderful friends here in Denver. Cody and I were going to cop out and do Easter the day afterwards to get the half-off sales at the store, but our friends the Warners asked to do a egg hunt in our backyard since ours is flat and theirs is sloped. So their five kids, plus two cousins, plus Gage equaled about 250 eggs hidden. Gage wasn't very focused on the egg hunt and mostly wanted to fill his egg bucket with water to watch the eggs float but he enjoyed the initial run out of the gate to get the eggs. He also got very distracted by filling the dog bowl with water and drinking out of it. Remind anyone of someone? I know, he's totally my son! And I love seeing him in undies. It makes him seem like such a big boy! Training is still going well with less and less accidents. Unfortunately, the biggest accident happened on Cody's watch and he had to clean all the poop from the carpet. Poor Cody! It's amazing what a kid can do in a few minutes away from you.

Potty Training and 26 week picture

It's only been a couple of days but I'm just so proud of Gage that I can't wait to blog about it. He's potty training! I don't know what pushed me to start this week but I just kept thinking "I don't have to wait till he speaks in sentences before I start training" so I started two days ago and it's gone great! The hardest part was figuring out how to get him to use the toilet for the first time. Gage has a curious personality so I knew if he used it once he'd be hooked. So I filled him up on liquids, started curious george on my Kindle and we waited it out locked in the bathroom. The minute he started peeing on the ground I got all excited and made a big deal about getting it in the toilet. The first attempt went EVERYWHERE and was quite a clean up but sure enough he thought it was the coolest thing ever. And the candy as reward was pretty awesome too. I'm so glad that I started him standing up right from the beginning. A friend advised me to do it this way because sitting down was really hard for her son. So I built a platform that fit up against the toilet so he could be at optimal firing range. This morning we had our first poop episode. He pooped on the ground so I explained that poop goes in the potty too. So later in the day when he said poop to me we ran to the toilet and got the kid seat on in time for a quick drop in the toilet. That was equally facinating to Gage. So I'm thinking I'll leave him naked for another week while in the house and try undies once he gets it figured. Babycenter claims that leaving them naked at home is the best way to start so I'm going with that. Once again we have beautiful weather so he's happy to be pants-less. In fact I think it's his favorite part of potty training, even over the candy. Twice he's just gone on his own and has come up later to show me what's in the potty and I think that's the most encouraging thing of all. He likes it. And what little boy wouldn't? One site suggested putting blue food coloring in the toilet so with his urine it turns green and I thought that was pretty cleaver. The aiming at cherrio's might work for Gage but he hasn't missed the toilet for a couple of times so I don't think he needs it. So that's my rant about how awesome Gage is and how proud of him I am. Hopefully 4 months of potty training before the new baby is here will keep him from reverting back to diapers. I'm pretty sure it will. I just didn't want to be training with a new baby in the house and with my exhaustion level through the roof. Anyway, hopefully things will keep going good for us. The new baby is doing fine and I'm curious to see if I still measure 3 weeks ahead at my appointment on the 16th. I'm also super pumped because some friends are doing a shower for me May 19th and my mom is coming down for it, which really makes it all that much more special! The invitations we've decided on are to die for and I can't wait to get them ready and post a picture. K- I should probably go get Gage down for a nap. Just wanted to share.

Lots and Lots of Visitors

We had such a fun week this week with guests in town! It was spring break for a bunch of our friends and what started out as just a couple of families coming turned into five families and a bunch of kids. The house was packed and if it weren't for our 1500 sq ft of unfinished basement we never could have done it. Everyone did such a good job pitching in and helping to clean and cook. Plus after Cody's brother and girlfriend took off yesterday Cody helped me clean the house while we listened to conference and that made all those visitors even more worth it. Cody's such a great husband! The weeks activities consisted of being outside, all the time. The weather was beautiful. We had a bounce house that we borrowed from and friend and the jungle gym in the back yard so it was the perfect way to keep the kids out of the house. We also went shopping and took a trip to the state dog park so the kids could play in the river and see all the dogs. They had a blast and the cutest part was teaching Gage and Atreyu to hold hands (which they wanted to keep doing throughout the week). It was pretty disastrous at times cause one kid would run ahead, jerking the one behind him and causing him to shoot ahead, fall and then trip the kid that had lunged in the first place. Both kids usually ended on the ground at first and then they got the hang of it. Denver has all the leaves and plants blooming right now and it is transforming this place into the gorgeous green heaven that it is in the summer. I'm so glad the summer is coming on, although it's making it seem so close which is making the babies due date seem so close. Yesterday was 85 degrees and it made me realize I don't have a ton of time left in this pregnancy. In two weeks I'll be into my third trimester and I can't believe how quickly that happened! About this time last pregnancy I hiked angel's landing at Zion's and although it was a fraction of the effort I managed to do a smaller hike on Saturday. We took Cody's brother and girlfriend to Red Rocks and it was pretty cool. It's a huge amphitheater built into the rocks with some pretty hikes all around it. Someone was even getting married while we were there. Gage had a blast playing on the rocks and he was filthy covered in red dust by the time he was done.

I love these rock cave pictures of Gage!

Bath time happened a lot and everyone had to join in for the fun

Everybody found a friend for the week!

They sure loved holding hands and were the best of buds