Tyler is 4 1/2 years old

Tyler is 4 ½ years old... and he keeps telling me that he’s almost five... and that he has big plans for his birthday party... and that he’ll be going to kindergarten soon. Yikes! I know five will be here fast, but I’m not quite as ready as he is! :-)

The past six months have been pretty big for my little guy. Every time I turn around, he’s doing something that makes him seem more like a “big kid,” as he says. The biggest- starting Pre-K! He loves school and looks forward to going (he only goes twice a week, but he wants to go everyday!). His teacher, Mrs. Mary Ellen, is SO great and I’m impressed at all the things that he has learned in such a short amount of time. I love that he goes to a Christian Learning Center and that in addition to learning a normal Pre-K curriculum, he has been introduced to God. I’m embarrassed to admit my lack of knowledge when it comes to the Bible and such, but I really enjoy hearing stories from Tyler about what he is learning. I find myself googling things like God’s gift of the rainbow and Noah’s Ark after he tells me a story and become interested in learning more myself. Mrs. Mary Ellen speaks highly of Tyler and says that he has a “kind soul.” I definitely agree and I’m happy that she notices!! He had a few friends already attending CLC when he started- Tanner, Trace, Macy and Madelynn, and he has made several new friends in his class that he talks about all the time- Carter, Ethan, Aubrey and Joshua A. He has even included Joshua A. in family pictures that he draws. ;-) His favorite part about school is playing on the playground because all the Pre-K classes go together, so he gets to enjoy time with all of his friends that are in different classes, Stretch-N-Grow (like exercise class) on Tuesdays and Chapel time. We usually hang out after school for 30+ minutes and he gets to run around with his friends some more. I really am happy that we decided to start him in Pre-K and feel a little silly about all the anxiety I had beforehand. I do have a funny story that I have to remember and want to share. Part of my anxiety was worrying about how other kids would treat Tyler and we recently got a small preview of kids just being kids. Tyler came home one afternoon from school, slicking his bangs back with his hands and telling me that he wanted to get his hair cut like Joshua A. (Joshua has a buzz cut). I told him that I loved his hair and really didn’t want to cut it. After telling me several more times that he wanted to cut his hair, he finally told me that the reason he wanted to was because a girl on the playground told him that he had hair like a girl (because of his bangs). As minor as that seems, it really bothered me that he was bothered and feeling self conscious about her comment. I could have said a lot, but I managed to compose my thoughts and told him that he was lucky to have such beautiful hair and that if the little girl ever mentioned it again, tell her that he likes the way he looks and for her to not worry about him and then just ignore her. I mean, what else do you say, right?? He told Travis the same story that evening and Travis simply said, “You go tell that girl that she has a BIG butt just like her momma!” HA! I’m sure we’re in for some interesting times in the school years ahead! :-)

Tyler is officially sleeping in his room all.by.himself! Anyone who knows, knows this is BIG! I took advantage of Travis being gone on a 3 day fishing trip to get Tyler excited about sleeping alone. I took him to Build-A-Bear to get a new sleeping buddy. He was able to pick out his own bear, have it stuffed, pick out clothes and name it (birth certificate and all!). He named his new friend, Teddy Barrett. Get it... Teddy Bear...ett. Haha! Tyler came up with that one all on his own, but he doesn’t find it amusing at all when I make the comparison. It’s Teddy Barrett and he’s very serious about that. It still cracks me up! I moved Travis’ bed out of the room and Tyler loved having all the extra playing space. After sleeping alone for a week, we rewarded him with his very own TV in his room!! He was pretty excited about that and Travis has only caught him a couple of times watching TV at 3am. ;-) He’s been sleeping alone since October 20th and I am still surprised at how easy the transition has been. I think it was harder on Travis because he didn’t know this was happening while he was gone and felt like he got “booted out.” I get it, but it had to be done. They would have been content with being roomies until Tyler moved out of the house. ;-)

Other notable big kid stuff that happened months ago: he learned to write his name (he felt pretty accomplished knowing this prior to starting school) and overnight diapers/Pull-Ups are a thing of the past (he’s obviously been out of diapers for a very long time, but he still wore something for bedtime for the occasional accident). He had his third dentist check-up and is still cavity free. He can completely buckle himself in his carseat, which makes my life so much easier when we’re out and about! I just have to do a quick double check and then we’re off. He is more confident in riding his bike (still with training wheels), sliding and jumping off things. He loves drawing and is very descriptive in his artwork. It’s actually pretty impressive to see his drawings. He can finally color in between the lines, too! He likes Rock & Roll music and he has a few new shows that he enjoys watching: Doc McStuffins, Mike the Knight and Ninjago.

I think Tyler and Kinley are going to have the classic sibling love/hate relationship. Tyler is often annoyed with her because she is pestering him (he definitely does his fair share of bugging as well) and they are always fighting over the same toys (like we don’t have enough toys to entertain an entire daycare!). When he's mad, he says that he doesn't like her, but I know better. He definitely loves her! He's always on her side and he always defends her. I have seen him really upset with a friend for accidentally hurting her (and even held a grudge about it for a month, despite it truly being an accident) and he protects her when other young kids are just not being that nice (taking things from her, hitting, etc). He gets full on mad if anyone messes with her. It's the old saying, I can do [whatever] to my sister, but no-one else can type-of-thing. And unfortunately, this loving quality often gets him in trouble with Travis and myself. If we try to punish Kinley for whatever reason, he turns on us and yells and screams ugly things to us. He can be so upset with her for something that she's doing to him and then immediately take her side if we try to correct her, making us the bad guys! It has been very difficult at times, but I can secretly appreciate this overprotective quality because I remember being very similar with my brothers growing up and I'm glad that he's in her corner. When they aren't bickering like normal brothers and sisters do, it really is entertaining and fun to watch them play together. :-)

We really are having a ton of fun with this little dude.....

Happy Halloween!

My poor kiddos and Halloween... You may remember that Tyler had to miss trick-or-treating last year because he got sick just an hour before we were supposed to head out with friends. Kinley went in his place and brought back a lot of goodies for him.

Fast forward to this year and there wasn't a shortage of sick little ones surrounding our Halloween fun. We planned to go to Boo-da Fest (the week before Halloween) and Tyler came down with a high fever and nasty cough that afternoon. He took a FOUR hour nap when he got home from school and slept right through the festival. I took Kinley for a little bit so that she could bring goodies to her sick brother once again. He was pretty disappointed that he missed out and didn't quite understand that we couldn't just go to the festival the following day. He ended up being sick for 4 days and we even had to cancel our plans of taking a little family trip to Galveston for the weekend. :-( I was so glad that he was feeling better by the time that Halloween rolled around and excited for Kinley to go trick-or-treating, but then Kinley started feeling bad and coughing just hours before our friends were meeting us at our house for trick-or-treating! I still took her to a few houses on our street for picture purposes, but she was pretty much done after that and didn't enjoy the rest of the evening. Tyler collected the goodies this time. Kinley got worse after that evening and I took her to the pediatrician a couple of days later to find out that she had developed croup. I'm telling you... my poor kids and Halloween.

Kinley at Boo-da Fest




Halloween~
My attempt at making a Spiderman mask. This wasn't intended to be complete, but we never finished it.


Pizza and fun before trick-or-treating


The Spiderman duo- Tyler and Zayd




Neighborhood friends plus Zayd. :-)


Kinley decided to join in~


Spiderman~


Black kitty~




Jacob & Leigh


Candanosa Family


Silkenson Family


Kinley's first real run at trick-or-treating.






*Notice no pictures of Tyler and actual trick-or-treating because he was 1 house ahead of me with his friends the entire time. ;-)*

Happy with their loot~




Other Misc Halloween stuff~

Tyler & Tanner at their Fall Festival at school~


Painting pumpkins~

Smores with Poppa

YUM!

Kinley is 19 months old

Kinley is 19 months old and we have had a BIG change this past month!! Kinley is no longer nursing to fall asleep during naptime OR bedtime OR during the middle of the night!! I am feeling guilty over how it all went down because she wasn’t quite ready and I pretty much cut her off cold turkey, but she would have been content nursing for forever if I let her and our sleep troubles would have continued to be out of control. I had to take advantage of an opportunity. She came down with a little head cold that resulted in a nasty cough at night. I nursed her to bed like normal (on Wed, October 3rd, to be exact :-)) and woke up Thursday morning, realizing that I didn’t nurse her at all during the night. Her cough woke her up every few minutes during the night and even though we were up all night, she was just so exhausted and able to fall back asleep without some nursing help. I decided that we’d just go for it from that point on. She cried and screamed and clawed at me for at least 30 minutes each time I tried to put her down during the first week of weaning and I almost gave in so many times, but after having a mastitis infection 36 hours into it, being on meds, and pulling out my pumping equipment again, I knew we couldn’t turn back. It has definitely been rough, but we’re getting there. Like I said, the first week was the worst, but I stayed with her, consoling and loving on her and the second week wasn’t quite as difficult. She finally started taking a sippy cup of yogurt/water to bed, which helps to calm her down initially and then she eventually falls asleep after about 30-45 minutes. I have definitely been a little sentimental about weaning, which is crazy because I felt SO done a long time ago! Tyler initiated the weaning process for him and I never felt sad or guilty about it, so I’m not sure if my feelings are just because I forced her into weaning or because I didn’t know the last time I nursed her was actually going to be the last time or because I’m not certain if I’ll ever experience nursing a baby again or what! I think this has my hormones all out of whack. ;-) However, the best part of this is that she’s pretty much sleeping through the night now. Amazing how that happens! I haven’t had a 4+ hour stretch of sleep in forever.

Another big thing... Kinley had an apparently pretty common injury that still sounds pretty major to me just four days after we stopped nursing, which is one of the times that I came seconds away to giving in and shoving a boob in her mouth for comfort since that’s what she wanted. Travis was trying to keep her from going to the road and accidentally dislocated her elbow. Seriously! We had no idea at the time that anything happened, but her left arm became completely non-functioning throughout the evening and she cried anytime I tried to touch it. Travis finally realized it was the same arm that he had pulled on, so I called our pedi that night after she went to bed. Anna knew exactly what it was... it’s called Nurse Maid’s Elbow and she walked me through the steps of trying to pop it back in place. After watching about ten You Tube videos and feeling less than confident, I attempted to fix it with no luck. We went in to see Anna the next morning and she popped it back in place in two seconds and after the initial freak out from Kinley, she was immediately using her arm again! It was definitely an easy injury to fix, but one that we’ll have to be very careful of in the future since she is now more susceptible to having it happen again. She scored a pretty fancy shopping cart out of the deal from her daddy, who was feeling slightly guilty. Hey, you know us girls have to milk it when we can! ;-)

She has added a few new words to her vocab: nink (drink), up, down, out, rock, boot and book. I’m sure there are more, but it all sounds so similar. She loves playing outside and the weather has been great lately, so I’m really looking forward to Fall getting here and being outdoors with my little girl!







Kinley had a photo shoot crasher! :-) I love any opportunity to take pictures of my babies together!

Pumpkin Patch