Lily Bug

Lily is one of those girls who is not afraid of bugs. She's always searching for potato bugs to keep as pets and is willing to touch almost any type of creepy crawly, including slugs.

One day we went out to visit our friends in Tooelle. They live by a field and had massive amounts of grasshoppers. I've never seen so many grasshoppers in my life. The grass literally jumps as you walk through it, the sidewalks are completely brown, they are eating their flowers and even the screens in their windows! Lets just say Lily had a ball catching grasshoppers with Dylan and Aiden that day. As far as our house, we've only seen one grasshopper.

I don't mind, as long as they stay outside.

Cedric's First Haircut

Well, our dandelion boy is no longer. Cedric's trademark fro eventually had to go. My grandma told me that my dad had the exact same hair when he was a baby.
This is the before picture.


We went with the traditional free haircut at Nana's house. Cedric wasn't sure what to think, but he was very good for an eight-month-old attention span.


Once his attention span was gone, we decided to give him his first sucker.

Now suckers work good for the sake of keeping a child from wiggling, but it doesn't work so good when there's little bits of hair flying everywhere. Of course, when I was little we always got a sucker when we got our haircut.

Here's a nice drool shot.


With literally baby-fine hair it's impossible to catch every piece of hair, but overall I thought it turned out quite cute.
Here's the final look.

I always thought Cedric looked more like Lily, but with his new big-boy hair cut he looks a lot more like Jeff. And yes, I saved some locks for his scrapbook (if I ever get around to doing one).

The Faith of a Child

Last night when Lily was supposed to be in bed, she got up because she was scared. We had the following conversation...
Me: It's only your imagination that's scary, try to think of something happy.
Lily: Playing with my friend Sammy makes me happy.
Me: Good, think about that as you go to sleep. You get to play at Sammy's house tomorrow.
Lily: But she's sick (she had the H1N1 flu and Lily made a get well card for her).
Me: She's better now.
Lily (with moist eyes): Maybe Heavenly Father read my get well card and made Sammy feel better.
Me: Why don't you go say a prayer to thank Heavenly Father for making your Sammy friend better. You can also pray that you can fall asleep without being scared and not wet the bed (she had wet the bed the previous four nights in a row!). But you have to have faith that Heavenly Father will answer your prayers. Do you know what faith is?
Lily: It means to believe.
Me: Right. Go try it and tell me in the morning how it went.
-That night Lily went right to sleep and didn't wet the bed!

This morning...
Lily: Mom, my prayers were answered! I believed Heavenly Father would help me and he did!
Me: I'm so proud of you. Make sure you say another prayer this morning to thank Heavenly Father for answering your prayers.
Lily: I also prayed that everyone can have courage, except the bad guys.

I know Heavenly Father answers our prayers. I know that through faith we can receive those answers. I am grateful for Lily and the strong spirit she has. I hope she will always remember these little experiences.

"Every Time I Turn Around"

As a child my favorite TV show was Punky Brewster. I remember going to Hawaii with my extended family when I was eight. My cousin, Alana and I would sit on the balcony of the hotel and color in our Punky Brewster coloring book. That's when the love for Punky was started. Alana and I would always dress like Punky, watched every Punky episode (if I missed one I'd call her to find out which episode it was) and Alana even said she'd name one of her sons Brandon (Alana, is that still true?). So for Christmas a few years ago Tom got me season one of Punky Brewster on DVD. About a week ago, the kids discovered it and now watch it over and over almost everyday. They've even started using Punky slang like "gross-a-roo". Surprisingly enough, it's Jefferson who's more into it than anyone. Of course after hearing the theme song 10x's a day, my love for Punky is starting to sour. And those 80's outfits! What were we thinking?! It does bring back memories though. I never thought twenty years ago that my own children would love Punky like I did. Punky Power!

Kindergarten Field Trip

I was invited to go with Lily and her class to the Tracy Aviary. Although she's in afternoon kindergarten, they combined all the classes and we went in the morning.
Lily was so excited to ride on a school bus for the first time. Here she is singing "The Wheels on the Bus" on the way to the aviary.
We enjoyed a beautiful morning of bird discovery. I was in charge of nine students and only lost them twice. The first time I lost four of them (panic), found them still feeding the ducks. The second time I lost one boy (panic again) and a worker overheard me and immediately got on her radio and was asking me to describe the kid (it's pretty sad that I had no idea what his hair color was. Of course, he was wearing a hat which I failed to remember when giving his description). He ended up being about 50 yards away standing with the teachers group of kids (embarrassing).
Lily was very hungry and tired by the end. This is Lily on the bus ride home.

Milestones

It seems like in the past few weeks all of my kids have hit big milestones.
Cedric got his first tooth about a month ago. Then he started crawling about two weeks ago. He's already figured out how to pull himself to a stand, go up stairs and even "cruise" around things. My other two didn't crawl until 9 months, so to have a 7 month old this mobile is a bit challenging. He's very mischievous and has already been found with several small things in his mouth, vents pulled out of the floor, the dishwasher de-railed, cupboards and drawers opened, some falls down stairs and a scraped up face from the front porch mat (just to name a few). He's also going through a very bad sleeping phase. He seems to wake up prematurely from his naps, and has been getting up for the day around 6:30am! I am not a morning person, so it really stinks.










Jefferson has been wearing underwear for a week now. After he turned three he said "three year olds don't wear diapers" (he also said they don't take naps or go to nursery either, but I told him they do. However, he has started cutting back on his naps and seems to only need one every few days. Also stinks for me, the nap queen). Anyway, since I was done with preschool (graduation was on May 21st) and he showed such strong interest I took advantage of it. Last Tuesday I took him to the bathroom every 20 minutes, we had treats, a baseball sticker chart, and cheerleaders (Lily, Mom & Cedric). The next day we set the timer for every hour, and continue to take him about every hour since then. He still has an average of two accidents a day, but he refuses to wear diapers and is sticking with it. I've exhausted about every childhood development game I know to coax him to the bathroom (the best is reverse psychology saying jokingly "don't go" or "you don't know how" because he always wants to prove me wrong or make me "mad"). One problem we've been having is on the days he does take a nap I always find him with his underwear or pull-up off and Lily's bed is wet (or his bed is wet and he's asleep in Lily's bed). He's never wet the bed when he's been asleep for a nap (just naps, he's a long ways from night potty training), it's when he's awake he purposely wets the bed! Potty training is one of my least favorite milestones.
Lily's big milestone is learning to read and finishing her first year of elementary school (her last day will be Friday). Lily loves to read anything and everything. She's on a 1.8 reading level (first grade, eighth month) and is also a good speller (unlike her mom). In fact one of her favorite games is to spell what she wants to say instead of saying it, "Mom I'm S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G". It's actually quite impressive.
Being a mom has it's challenges, but it definitely has its rewards too. I'm so proud of all three of my children!