Family Weekend!

I had a surprise call from my brother that he was going to be in Henderson, NV the next weekend. This was a shock since I hadn't seen him in over 2 years. He hadn't even met or skyped with Grant yet. So I was so excited and thrilled. We had no problem deciding if we should or could go. We just would because the family all being together after so long was really important to us and mostly me.  My sister Amber was already planning on being in town so the timing was perfect. We drove down Friday and hung out with the sisters. There was also some hot tub time for my sore shoulder from driving. We went to garage sales on Saturday on the scooters.
  Megan, her boy, Perry, and I had planned a little outing to the temple Saturday as well. On our way of course something went wrong with our car. Its just old I guess and the things you don't think about are wearing out. So the right bearings were completely disintegrated and some of the metal was welded into the spindle. It was a damper I can say that mainly because of the cost to fix it but we spent some quality time getting to know Megan's beau and of course good conversation with everyone. Incidentally Blake was arriving in town just when we would need picked up. He picked us up and we met with the family at Jason's Deli for some  Linner. After we just enjoyed family time again and also played some fun games and met Deanna, Blake's girlfriend.
  Sunday we had church and then spent some time napping and chillaxing and later in the evening once again played games and had a family dinner. My mom unfortunately came down with something and didn't feel well the rest of the trip. Monday we were in Limbo trying to figure out if we were going to be getting our car back yet. But we did make the most of it and went to the park with Grant, Trey, Blake, Perry, Megan, and Dad. We shot some hoops and played on the playground. Basically we were trying to make the most of this sunny weekend. We found out the car wouldn't be ready until 6pm so we decided to stay another night because nobody wants to drive at night! We ordered Jason's Deli again and watched The Bachelor and went to bed. We left at 8am and had a lovely incident free drive home. Thank goodness. And we have officially decided to rent a car from now on for our little driving vacations. It is totally not worth the headache and money. I would much rather have car problems while in my home town than on vacation. We got home, I unpacked the car while Perry was teaching a class and we had a nice evening in. All in all I really enjoyed our trip and look forward to Christmas when the whole family should be together once again! And we need to get a family picture because we forgot! Can you believe it! lol. Oh well. Good times! Pictures to come.

Kicks kicks kicks

So its all very exciting when the living growing baby inside of me decides to really make him/herself known. So instead of just waiting to hear a heartbeat at every visit to make sure things are going well (baby still alive) I have kicks to enjoy and anticipate. I feel them much more frequently now. I think I felt the baby roll too, but barely. And the baby has given one really good jab which might have made my skin move a tiny bit. But overall the baby is still weak you know and its just little kicks in a row. It makes me happy and calm. That is all.

Drumming Maniac

This post is a little late in timing but still everything depicted is as it is today.

Grant is the drumming machine. We have observed him for his whole life lol as you know and he has taken a liking to drums. He loves to pound them as hard as he can and he is slowly getting more rhythmically talented the more he drums. He is also able to copy simple drum beats. So we decided to pool all the money he got from family, us and whoever else gave us money for his birthday and Christmas to buy him a legit drum set. It is considered a "toy" less of a toy than the ones at the store. Like the drums are wooden and the kick pedal has the padding whereas at the store everything on the drums are plastic. Also another feature that isn't on the store drums were than we have a tuning key and the drums are different, one is a snare and the other just another type of drum. It's pretty exciting. I couldn't wait for it to arrive in the mail. We bought it off a "buy now" on ebay. I researched all the kid brands and reviews and Union drum sets for kids are the best quality for your money. I think when Grant is 3 or 4, if he still has the drumming passion we will get him the "Junior" drum set which is a little bigger and also a little better quality.

So the day we got the drum set Grant spied it while him and daddy had gotten home from some outing. Grant said "Play that drum set?" (there's a picture of it on the box) and Perry looked around thinking "what?" and there it was 2 days earlier than it was supposed to arrive. So we brought in and kept telling Grant that we needed to wait until his birthday. My plan was to grab it from outside during nap time, before he knew about it and wrap it up. Oh well. Then we thought, what the heck. Let's just let him open our gift early and get him something real small for on his birthday. So we set it up, sang Happy Birthday, and he played and played and played.

The next day he played the entire day. Now he plays it for 10 minutes, shoots hoops for 10 minutes, vacuums for 10 minutes, and then plays his drum some more. I think he has a good balance lol. He has gotten even better since we got the set with his drum beats. I will search for a video or take one to give you an idea of his skill level so far. Let me just say he is just the happiest little toddler.

And it appears that we have no pictures of him playing the drums just videos. So here are some building pictures and then a video of him playing it many days later.

Opening the box.

Helping to build it.

Daddy building it.

16 Weeks

My belly is really starting to swell now. Most pregnant ladies feel "chubby" at this stage but since I started out pretty in shape I feel like I'm barely not fitting into my clothes.  I think I have figured out how not to get heart burn, but every month I have gotten a cold and now I have a sinus infection on my outer cheeks. Its kind of annoying but since I feel good other than that its not so bad. I feel the swelling and growing pains. I am still tired and I have been napping everyday at nap time.
As far as the doctor appointment goes, it was as usual. My weight was 158.  I gained 1.5 pounds in the last month. I'm quite pleased with that. Every thing  is normal. Blood pressure is good 124/76 and they took a urine sample. I guess my prenatal panel was all normal because they haven't brought it up.  Oh and of course I got to hear once again the surreal sound of my babies heartbeat again (147 bpm). It always brings me back to reality a little that I'm pregnant since the nausea isn't there constantly reminding me and my growing pains have eased a little. I used to feel the growing pains constantly or if I got up or bent over or stretched side ways. I think its because I finally have that little baby bump. Which by the way is cool yet again that its so small right now and I'm almost halfway with my pregnancy. I can't believe I'm having a baby in August. I do sadly keep reminding myself though that there is always a possibility of stillborn, miscarriage, or baby not living but a few minutes after birth. There isn't any reason for me to prepare for this. If it happens I will be just as distraught as if I hadn't thought about it. But my mind is always a little bit eased after hearing the heartbeat each month just to make sure....
All in all I can't wait to find out the gender! My ultrasound is on March 23rd. But I won't find out until March 24th mid morning at our gender reveal party! Basically  it will just be a a family party with a few good friends. Yay! I will be so anxious and impatient and it will drive me crazy but what better time to find out with close family and friends there at the same time. It will be great. It may not be a bad idea to have my brother and a couple other family on Skype watching the big reveal moment. Lots of planning and preparing yet to do for that one!
 Also today I think I felt the baby for the first time this morning. I was laying on my back and the baby was pushing on my left side and then I felt a flutter like the feet were kicking left center. That was pretty cool. I can't wait until the movements are more obvious.

4 Months

The Big number TWO birthday.

So I wrote a post all about Grant and that's really all this blog is meant for, until another child comes along, and the last post about his birthday was for journaling's sake and remembering him at age 2. So this post is about the day of his birthday. HE is 2. It is a weird feeling. This morning he woke up around 8:15am and I made sure everyone else was up too we all went in to sing Happy Birthday and give him his first present: Elmo Balloon from Grandma Flora and Grandpa Jim. It was from the dollar tree! Score! Anyway, he was very thrilled. He was confused then happy excited about the balloon and all of us singing.

We had some french toast breakfast with strawberries and of course then it was time to play with everything in his room. He's pretty much got the dream bedroom with every toy possible and pretty much all of it is second hand. Love it because I have spent hardly anything on him his whole life. So they say having kids is expensive, well if you are frugal, and I have to be during this stage in our lives, its not that hard.

So anyway, then it was a mad dash for us to get his party all ready and decorated. We put up the games, streamers, decorated the cupcake/brownies, set up the food table, pick up pizza, cut up the fruit and pizza, blew up balloons, and finished the party favors. I was very nervous/anxious and excited. I had never thrown a party for kids before. Grant's first birthday was a family party and Grant only went to one toddler party ever and we were late so we didn't really experience it much. Anyway so the guests arrived. We invited 8 toddlers. My mom thought I was crazy for inviting that many children but I thought it would be okay.

Four kids were there at the beginning and I thought, okay this will be good. Everyone got their lunch. Then after everyone was satisfied we started the games. First, Pin the Nose on Elmo. They each got their own nose and they seemed to like taking turns. Then throw Dorothy the goldfish (Elmo's best friend) into the fish bowl. Grant's cousin that is his age really like that activity. They each got a turn putting the fish bean bags into the bowl. Then we let the kids just play those games some more. Once I noticed Grant getting bored and asking for his other toys we knew when to move the party along. At this point three other guests arrived. We let them get comfortable and get turns on the first two games. Then we did the pull string Elmo pinata. Its didn't break and I didn't think it would. Perry muscled it and then they got the fruit snack treat inside. Then it was cupcake time. We forgot to think of matches and our good friends had some emergency matches in their car. They saved the day! lol. The alternative wasn't working very well (burning some paper on the stove until lit on fire). We sang the birthday about four times by the time we got the candles lit. Then he blew out the candles and all the kids were even more happy campers. After that it was basically the end of the party. Perry pulled out all our push toys an the kids "vacuumed" and "lawn mowed" to their heart's content. The all also got a bit crazy from the sugar. The kids then filtered out and Grant was very good about giving the party favors to his friends.

Overall the party was a complete success. I think next time I will do a cupcake mix rather than a brownie. It was kind of hard to get the paper off the cupcake liner. We didn't open presents because I was afraid the kids might have a hard time sharing the new toys and also right after the party is typically nap time and it would have been hard for Grant to part with the toys right after opening them.

After the party Grant played with his yard toys and got really messy in his sand box. He really had a lot of fun. It was so sunny and nice out.

Party Boy enjoying his spread.

Elmo! The eyes are too big or the nose is too small.

Delicious.

Costco combo for the adults. MMMmmMMM!

Sophie and Natalie the cousins.

My pride and joy.  I made it out of a balloon and foresee many more homemade pinatas for future birthdays.

He has been asking to hold it for a month. Now he finally can!

Abbey, his girlfriend from church.

Cupcake brownie time.

Sand/water soup that he actually tasted, but I think the fact that he was "making" soup made him more prone to eat the soup my mom made for dinner that night. 

The presents!

The late goldfish named Orange.

The promised elmo ice cream.

Two Years!

So most people say they can't believe how fast time flies. And I think they imply that its because life was a breeze and everything was great the whole way. Well lets just say it feels like he is two years old because it feels like it took that long to get here. I'm not saying I didn't have fun. Grant and I have tons of fun. Lots of tantrums and more to come due to the stereotypical "terrible"twos coming up. But you know, since I know that I can embrace it and be validating and understanding and try to keep my cool when I'm hormonal, which happens, and really no one can help that, we have the good times too.

I love my little boy so much. He is no longer my baby. Especially since there is a new one coming along and I don't want Grant to be considered a baby when a real one will be here.  He is full of energy. He is very smart. He is very social and always wants to play with me, but does well by himself if I have something I need to do for no longer than 10 minutes straight. Let me just say that whatever my to dos, they are done in little chunks through out the day. I never need to plan learning activities because Grant seems to engage himself in activities like that anyway. Grant knows his colors and shapes by just playing and reading books with me. He knows a couple numbers by their symbol but can count almost to 20. Grant knows many letters and can almost sing the alphabet by himself. Speaking of singing, as you know he sang "I am a Child of God" by himself this week during family home evening. The day after for nap time he sang his own lullaby song with all the right words to himself while I rocked him. He has a sense of humor and likes to joke and trick us. He has an astounding long term memory like months of not seeing some one and then knowing exactly who they are when he sees them again. I know this is a bragging blog but I have got to document what my little barely two year old is like for journaling sake.

Grant loves to cook, clean up, vacuum, help me with my projects, DRUM, sing, play any music really but  drumming is his favorite, loves to read, do puzzles, play basketball, golf, or baseball. Eating is usually a disturbance in his day but he loves snack time, and I love snack time because it improves his mood and we get to sit at the table and talk a little. I feel basically that Grant has that zest for life that everyone wants and he seems to know he has no limit to what he can accomplish. He  will always try and want to do new things and help me with everything.

That about sums him up. And it really is a summary because one can never describe a person with just words, you have to see them in person.

A couple days old.

One year birthday!

At his 2 year birthday party...on his birthday.

Matchy Matchy

So grant has very particular things that need to be in order. He is quite the cleanly baby or I mean toddler and he hates messy hands, does the "clean up" song a lot and just needs things to be right. So anyway, besides all that the other day I saw a new side of order for him. I let him pick out his outfit. The kicker was when we were picking out which slipper shoes to wear and as you can see by the picture they totally match. He chose the shoes and then said to me "brown shirt, brown on shoes!" Wow. He knows how to match! That was pretty cool. So anyway, my boy is quite the character.