Three's CraZee!

My BABY turned THREE on Monday!  I didn't get a post up, due to the fact we were off enjoying a few days off as a family.  Tyler is on Fall Break for two weeks, so Adam and I took Monday through Wednesday off work.  But more about that in the next post-now all about AJ!

So what is AJ like at 3 years old? He is wild and silly and loud!  He's definitely more willful than Tyler, he definitely knows the word "no" and we're working hard on getting him to understand that he isn't allowed to tell us know when we ask him to do something!  He makes us all laugh though, he's truly such a character!  His favorite thing in the WORLD is to be tickled!!  He's constantly asking to be tickled and then saying "Again!" over and over!  He really can't get enough!

Tyler and AJ are really very different kiddos.  Physically, Tyler looks more like me, and AJ resembles Adam.  His hair is pin-straight, just like Adam, although it's lighter in color than his daddy.  He's also got daddy's double "swirl" in the back of his hair, which makes haircuts a challenge!  He's big for his age, while Tyler has been on the more petite size since about a year old--In fact, AJ is only 5 inches shorter and 10 lbs lighter than his big brother!  He's more rough-and-tumble than Tyler was, more confidant and physically active.  He loves to run and jump and climb and keep us on our toes!  Tyler was such an advanced talker, and while AJ definitely makes himself heard, it often pretty tough to understand him!  It all means something to him, but sometimes we're left shrugging!  Tyler is actually pretty good at translating for us!  I'm not worried about his speech at this point, he's come a long way, but it's different for us to have a child that doesn't speak as clearly as Tyler did!  My favorite word from AJ?  Chocolate!  It sounds like "Twacwate"!

AJ's likes and dislikes at 3:  He loves cartoons, particularly Paw Patrol, Bubble Guppies, Blaze and the Monster Machine, and Team Umi Zoomi.  They are all on Nick Jr and he got a lot of toys from  Blaze and Paw Patrol for his birthday and he's having oodles of fun with them.  He's got a great imagination, he is always acting out little scenes with them.  He still loves playing with his Thomas trains, but he doesn't watch the shows very often any more.  He likes to read, though he prefers to sit on his own and look at books over sitting and reading them together. He has to be in the mood to sit still to do that, and it doesn't happen often!  He loves to be outside and free to run around.  Food wise, he's less picky than Tyler by far!  He loves pretty much all fruit, especially strawberries and cuties.  He loves chicken nuggets and pizza and sausage links with scrambled eggs and toast, and macaroni and cheese with applesauce (I always make applesauce when I make kraft mac n cheese and now he can't have one without the other!).  He only tolerates drinking milk, so much so that we started strictly giving him juice only if it's thinned by half with water.  He doesn't like a lot of vegetables, so we're working on that, but he ate a bunch of cooked broccoli at a buffet last week and we were thrilled.  He doesn't really care for cake or ice cream, so his preferred treats are cookies, especially Oreos, or candy, especially m&ms.

Dislikes: Bedtime!  He usually says "Aw!" or whines a bit, and he's actually been acting scared when I try to put him down, so we're working through that.  He also gets absolutely PETRIFIED by the most random things, like Barbie commercials or the movie Frozen!

We celebrated AJ's birthday with a small family party in the backyard.  We grilled out hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausage.  We also made scalloped potatoes and had lots of fruit and veggies, chips, and cookies and cupcakes for dessert.  The weather was gorgeous, warm but with a nice breeze and sunny.  AJ had a great time running around the yard with Tyler and Toby and Lizzy (his cousins)--we usually make him stay close to the patio, but we let him roam and he was loving it.

I can't believe my little rainbow baby is a big three year old boy.  The time has gone so quickly!  He's got such a great little personality and I can't remember what life was like without him! 

Here are a few pictures from the party!  Love that little bugaboo!

Hipster wears his hat backwards

Aunt Chall on the far left, Dad, Aunt G and "Uncle" Jon

This pic killed me, he's shrugging his shoulders up like "Aw, for me?"

Presents!

Not overly impressed with cupcakes

Tyler hanging out in a tree

October 15th

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. As I've written about here before, in 2011, I became one of the 1 in 4 woman who have experienced such a loss. I know far too many women who have felt that pain.  Tonight I lit a candle for my butterfly baby and another for the countless other babies that have been lost.





If you are one in four, my thoughts are with you tonight as well.

A whole lot of a whole lot

I'm such a bad updater!  Is it bad that this blog has pretty much become an update blog?  I don't know how enjoyable it is for others to read, but I really like being able to document the memories here, and I guess that what counts!

So what's new??  I actually had to go back and glance at my last few posts to figure out where I left off!  Work has been really busy, mostly with doing OTHER people's work!  I get tapped to fill in for others quite a bit, sometimes other's that do the same job as me in other locations, and some totally different jobs.  It works out ok, because my own workload has been lower than normal recently, but it can be a real struggle sometimes too.  I think the majority of that is behind me for now, and I'm a little relieved.

So let's see.  As I mentioned, Tyler is back in school and has been doing great!  He got his first report card of the year last week and he got all A's!  He also had some very nice comments from his teachers.  AND he was Top Dog in Art class a few weeks ago and he is Top Dog in his class this week!  Thursday, he's going on a field trip to an apple orchard and I'm going to chaperone, so that should be fun.  After this week, he's on fall break for two weeks, so Adam and I are going to take next Monday-Wednesday off work to try and do some fun stuff.  We're considering going to the state park nearby, maybe to the pumpkin patch, and I think Adam might take Tyler to the Children's Museum, because they are having an exhibit on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  We'd go as a family, but it's SUPER expensive and I think AJ is still a bit young for it, he's not quite to where he will listen and stay with us and not take off running.  

Another big thing happening next week--MY BABY TURNS THREE!!!  How is that even possible?!  I really don't know.  We're having a little family party on Sunday, so that should be fun.

What else?  We close tomorrow on a refinance of the house. We decided to go ahead and do it because our mortgage payment is REALLY High and it's going to save us around $300 in a month, even if we sell the house next year.  We're also going to get some cash back so we can finish our renovations, so I'm sure we'll be getting back to that very soon!

I recently had doctor's appointments with our new family doctor and my rheumatologist as well.  My yearly bloodwork all came back good.  I'd been a little worried about my lupus bloodwork, since I'd been really hurting for a few weeks and feeling run down, but it all came back fine too, so she thinks I just have a hard time with the change in seasons/weather.  That makes sense, I can remember feeling similarly in the spring.

Adam and I have challenged each other to a little weight loss battle.  We "started" on October 1st, but it's been a slow start so far!  I did my Jillian workout Sunday for the first time in ages and although I'm still pretty sore, I did remember why I like her programs!  Doing a move for 30 seconds and then moving on works for me, as does her 25 minute workouts!  Hopefully the scale will show it and I can be consistent about it, and better about my eating habits!

I got on an audio book kick the last few weeks, and when I was working on mindless stuff at work, I listened to audio books I borrowed from the library.  First I listened to "The Help" by Kathryn Stockton, which I actually own in audio and paper versions.  I had read it and listened to it before and I've seen the movie as well.  It's such a great story!  Then I listened to another book I recently read: "As You Wish" by Cary Elwes.  It's all about his experiences while filming the movie "The Princess Bride" and he reads for the audio book as well. It's wonderful, he is very witty and humble and really seemed to have such a great time making one of my favorite movies of all time.  A lot of the other actors and crew contributed too.   After that, I read "On my own Two Feet" by Amy Purdy, the paralympian snowboarder who lost her legs to meningitis at 19 years old.  I saw her on Dancing with the Stars last year and just thought she was a really inspiring person, so I've been wanting to read her book.  It was exactly what I thought it would be, inspiring.  I rounded out last week by listening to "It's not about Perfect" by Shannon Miller.  I happened upon that one while browsing audio books on the libraries website. I've always been a big fan of Shannon's (if you don't know, she is an Olympian gymnast from the 1992 and 1996 games who later battled ovarian cancer) and her book is really beautiful.  She talks about growing up, discovering gymnastics and then competing in both Olympics. I was obsessed with the 96 Atlanta games, with the American gymnastics team, dubbed the "Magnificent Seven" won the gold. Seriously, I nearly wore out the VHS tape I'd used to record the competition.  After listening to her book, I even spent AJ's nap on Sunday watching footage of those Games on Youtube!

When I haven't been listening to books I've been writing one!  My friend Kelly and I have been working on a project all year and I recently finished my first draft of revisions.  We make an interesting team!  The main idea and the characters are her creation, but she claims she's an idea's kind of writer, but not a great technical writer. She doesn't care about grammar and structure.  I've been calling what I've done something between authoring and editing.  I'm definitely bringing ideas and evolution to the characters and their stories, but the concept is really her baby.  I've got one more set of her edits to do and then I really just need to run through it again, to catch anything I missed grammar and formatting-wise.  Then?  I'm not really sure. I think she's going to pass it on to a friend of hers that knows something about publishing, so we'll see where we get from there.  It's a real true novel in terms of length and storyline.  It's geared toward a mature young adult and I think it could have potential, so we'll see!

So that's what we've been up to! As always, I leave you with photo evidence of our busy-ness!

Brothers riding in style!

AJ decided this was his throne

Monkeying around at the park!

"Again!"

Seriously, my kids are the CUTEST!

Riddle me this

I stumbled upon a link on facebook to a set of riddles and thought they were really fun!  I thought I'd share them.  Real content soon, I promise! 

What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?

The letter "M"

What has 4 fingers and a thumb, but is not living?

A glove

Which word in the dictionary is spelling incorrectly?

Incorrectly

We hurt without moving. We poison without touching.  We bear the truth and the lies. We are not to be judged by our size. What are we?

Words

Give me food and I will live, give me water and I will die. What am I?

Fire.

What flies when it's born, lies when it's alive, and runs when it's dead?

A snowflake

What gets wet when drying?

A towel

I am always there, some distance away, somewhere between land or sea and sky I lay, you may move toward me, yet distant I'll stay.

The horizon

I have keys but no locks. I have pace but no room, you can enter but can't go outside. What am I?

A keyboard

I can only live where there is lights, but I die if the lines shines on me. What am I?

A shadow

Every night I'm told what to do, and each morning I do what I'm told. But I still don't escape your scold.

Alarm clock

Excuse me while I brag

I am such a proud mommy!! Tyler had his first tests at school and he didn't miss one question!!! Math, spelling reading, and sight words, he got them all!  He's such a smart boy!!!

The State of the Fair

Shew, we are feeling the heat in the midwest!  Or maybe it's just because I'm coming off a weekend of yard sale and State Fair?  Well, it's hot, regardless.  We did a 3 day yard sale and then the very next day we spent the entire day at the State Fair.  I learned my lesson, we were almost too tired to enjoy the fair this time around.  My feet hurt after about an hour.  Still, we had a good time, especially the kids, at least until AJ's naptime came around, then he MELTED DOWN big time, so we called it quits.

I'm feeling short on words today, so I will default to pictures! :)

Pony Rides! (I want to crop myself right out of these pics)

AJ is excited for his turn.  Daddy is excited watching Tyler ride, I think.

Ach, he's so big!

He LOVED it!  Grinned and chattered the whole time!

AJ running, free of the stroller for a moment

Farmer Tyler--This tractor had a TV screen inside that simulated the view from a real tractor, so cool!

Goofing around at lunchtime

This was a remote controlled robot-thing.  AJ was terrified of it.

Another type of horse!

Tyler and Daddy take on the Ferris Wheel

AJ loved the train! Until it was over, anyway.