Stockings

Forgot to post this back in the season. We took pictures of all the other kids shoved in stockings, so it was fitting to shove Bryson in one. As we shoved him in his stocking the other two wanted to shove themselves in one. Great times with the little ones.

Bryson 7 Months

Our lives are about to change more as this man is almost on the move. He is starting to roll around a bit more on the floor, but he is great at army crawling around the room to get to chew on whatever he sees. He is pulling up on all fours, but not picking up arms or rocking too much. It just makes him move backwards at this point. He would much rather sit up and watch the world around him and he can sit up on his own now and pitch himself in the direction of the toy he desires. He loves eating and will eat anything you put in front of him. He would probably fill up on just Cheerios if I let him. He is sipping from a cup, but has a lot of room for improvement. He is still nursing and sleeping great through the night. He remains a happy baby as long as he isn't the only one in the room.

Birthday Party Fun

Doing three with 1,2,3 fingers is harder than doing 3 with the ok sign. She is working on it! She requested a Little Mermaid cake despite Rob's attempts to tempt her with a How To Train A Dragon cake. She held strong to her desires.

She really enjoyed eating her cake! I kept telling her to give Rob a hug, but he wouldn't allow it!

We gave out some fun glasses in the goodie bags and took a picture of all the kids at the party! Cousin Cody and his fiancee Brittney were great sports being in the kid photo.

Ellery requested that we go bowling for "real" for her birthday. We play a lot of bowling on the kinect and she loved playing it for real.

Happy Birthday Ellery

Oh my, they grow and change so much in a year! Where do I start with this one. She is my head strong girl. I can bend and mold Mason, but I already have to chisel Ellery. She knows what she wants, when she wants it, and exactly how. Rob says she is a mini me, charming as ever, but don't cross her path when she doesn't want it crossed. He says it is a compliment, and most times he is correct, but sometimes it is a curse being particular! I know I am better than what I used to be, so we can have hope for little Ellery.

Here are some ramblings about her as I think of things in no particular order.

Her favorite food is pizza. She requests it for every meal if given a choice. She is a meat eater. While Mason goes for fruits and veggies first and meat last, she is opposite. She goes for the meat, fruit, and then veggies. She loves snacks and will remind me that she needs a snack if I don't offer one. She loves playing with Mason and is starting to show some interests of her own. She is loving puzzles and coloring. Her favorite color is pink or purple. She loves watching Elmo, but adores the movie How to Train Your Dragon. She pretends she is a viking princess. She likes her bows, but is showing more interest in barrettes these days. She still allows me to pick out her clothes, but she likes to give input and picks her own shoes even if they don't match. She can say her ABC's and loves singing other songs as well, not sure how high she can count, but she can get to 20. Knows all her colors and most of her shapes. With Mason we knew everything he knew, and worked with him a lot more than we ever do with Ellery. We have no doubt she is sharp as a tack and much more manipulative at age 3 than Mason ever thought about being. She loves books and still brings tons to bed with her every night. It isn't uncommon to find her in her room looking at books an hour or two past bedtime. She also loves her green blankie, silky blankets/objects, and sucking her two middle fingers. We are working on stopping the finger sucking. A bandaid still makes everything feel better no matter what the degree of injury. She will ride her bicycle around our whole circle without any problems and jump on the trampoline without fear. She still hates getting her teeth brushed, but is more tolerable now with the battery powered tooth brush. She likes to help me cook or cook in her play kitchen and every time I get the vacuum out she goes for her toy vacuum and cleans with me.

Kindergarten Round Up

We have been rounded! I can't believe Mason will go to kindergarten next year! He went to kindergarten round up this morning and came out asking when do I get to start. He is really excited about the big school adventure. He seems ready for it, but I am not so sure I am! Do you realize it is an all day adventure? Plus I hear they only get 20 min for lunch, I think he is going to starve. Not to mention he has been served his whole life. We have a lot of things to work on between now and then, so wish me luck and say a prayer!

A Trip to the ER and Fish Cupcakes

Oh the joys of parenthood. I should be thankful that we haven't ever needed a trip to the ER officially until now. Unofficially, we took Mason in to have a cut looked at for a second opinion. Rob's opinion was correct so he wasn't admitted or treated. This time we had to get treated in the ER. Ellery is my frequent flyer in making night time appearances. As I reached out to greet her in the dark, I accidentally poked her in the eye. She was crying already and was consolable so I took her back to bed. She wasn't consolable when she woke up in the morning. She wouldn't open her eye for me at all and cried a lot. I felt so bad, I knew I poked her the night

before, but didn't think it was that bad. I woke up Rob and he went ahead and took her to the ER at Children's. After all of my eye stuff, I never want to mess around with eyes so off they went. She had a tiny little scratch so she got some numbing drops along with goopy antibiotics in the eye for 24 hours. So 2 days before her birthday I traumatize her with an eye injury. I have memories from when I was 3 so I am hoping this one is forgotten. We had planned to make cupcakes for school in the am, but had to switch our plans to the afternoon. You can see her eye was still a bit puffy and red, but she really enjoyed helping make fish cupcakes. I think they turned out darling!

Mason's Valentine--Ellery

Mason is our sweet and sensitive man. His project at school was to draw something he "lobed". He drew a picture of himself with Ellery and said he loved her because she was his baby sister. Ahhhhh

I Lobe You

Mason is starting to read and sounding out his own words when he writes in a card. We were signing our Valentines Day cards and he wanted to write I love you on Rob's. I told him to sound it out and when I came to check on his progress he wrote "I Lobe You." We don't love anyone in our family anymore, we now LOBE them!

Kinect

Oh we did it! We bought a Kinect and we are all having a great time with it! Rob sent me to the store to buy it and I told the associate I need a kinect and he kept saying do you have an xbox and I kept repeating, "No, I want a kinect." After a 5 min conversation I finally understood that I had to have an xbox to play the kinect through. Oh, how I felt old. The associate and I both had a good chuckle and thought our conversation could have been used in a communication class.

Mandi Vs Snow Bank

Mandi vs Snow Bank

Snow Bank 1

Mandi 0

I can hear my dads words now. Never reverse any further than you have to! Great words of wisdom, sure wish I would have listened. I can also hear Rob saying look at this fancy camera you have on your rear view mirror, I don't understand why you don't use it. All great advice that I will now be using! Along with the car sensors. All things I wish I would have done or used!

Another interesting car story happened in the parking lot of Ellery's new "school". I was squished in our car door by another car reversing out while I was buckling Ellery into her seat. Ouch. I am fine, but the other drivers car mirror hit our open door and scratched my car while closing me inside the door. I had to arch and try to crawl into the car so the squishing would stop! At first I held my ground thinking it was just a kid trying to wiggle through, until I look and see the mirror coming at me. I start screaming and then try to confront the driver once they are satisfied with their reversing efforts only to be met with hand gestures and a speedy departure. The parking lot became a bee hive of moms going crazy. Someone screams, get the license plate quick, while another questions if I am ok, while another one can't believe she just hit me and drove off. I go inside and ask the teacher who the mom was that I saw in the hallway and then to the front desk to get "Cami's moms" name. Ironically "Cami" is in Ellery's class and I can assure you she won't be coming over for a play date nor will I become friends with her anytime soon. The front desk attendant isn't sure what the rules are on giving out information, I reiterate...she just hit me and drove off. As the director is coming out to talk to me the phone rings and it just so happens to be "Cami's mom". I ask the secretary to make sure you ask her if it is ok to give out her information to the person she hit. Arrrhhhhh. Needless to say, it is just a car and "Cami's mom" did apologize. Doesn't make it right that she hit me and drove off, but we are over that now. The funny thing is when we park at "school" now I park way far away and Mason's quote was "Good choice mom, you shouldn't get squished here."

Our New Pets

Rob built Hudson a dog house last fall and I never took a picture of his finished project. I was shocked the first time I saw Hudson use it, but he does go into his house. Probably the unbearable NE wind that drives him to use it? It has also become a hot spot to play. The kids pretend one person is the dog and the other is the owner. Not that original, but they love playing!

Another Career

Rob has many many talents and I am amazed at all of them. If the doctor business or the FBI fall through, he could always become a photographer. He captured all three of our precious babies looking at the camera. This is now going to be a 16x20 canvas. I bought it through groupon and time slipped away from me so we were forced to take our own picture so it wouldn't expire. Thanks to Rob I will have this memory hanging on our wall. His patience pays off and I could take some lessons from him on patience. THANK YOU ROB!! Now all I have to do is wait for it to come in the mail.

Teeth

We got new battery operated tooth brushes. Ellery makes it dreadful to brush her teeth. She screams and cries and acts like I am pulling her teeth rather than brushing them. Night after Night after Night after Night........ of Ellery screams. Ahhhhh I love them so much that they got new battery powered tooth brushes for Valentines Day with a catch. The rule is if you cry with this tooth brush you have to go back to manually brushing your teeth. So far it is working.

Guess who has one little tooth? The bottom right tooth has decided to join us. I have to say we have been blessed, we had no idea he was teething other than the constant chewing. Not a lot of fussing going on. Also, neither of the other two had any interest in chewing on the food pieces inside the mesh, Bryson is loving it! The kid will eat anything you put in front of him.

Brotherly Love

Bryson is getting more and more interactive and it seems to attract his siblings to him more and more. He isn't the slug just sitting in the corner now. He tries to scoot to where we are and rolls all over the floor. He is starting to pull up on all fours and is never in the same spot you leave him. Baby proofing is going to be a bit more challenging with this one. Say a prayer for us, I think we are going to need it!If Bryson ever feels the need to tell Mason to kiss his butt, Mason can tell him he already did! Hilarious.

Happy Valentines Day

Hugs and kisses from all of my Valentines. My wonderful husband surprised me with a spa treatment and an As seen on TV foot shower exfoliate/cleaner. Hilarious, and so me. I am not really a believer in the big day, but maybe I will start believing. Always thought it was a card holiday, but gifts are always a treat! I did get Rob a treat, but he got a boring shirt and tie. I was going to buy him an IPAD, but the new ones aren't out yet. Oh darn!

We made our Valentines again this year. I am dreading the day when Mason realizes that we could go to the store and buy them, but those aren't near as much fun to make. We asked our dentist if he would donate tooth brushes for our Valentines and he was happy to help. We found smile stickers to add to Mason's picture and taped everything together that said "You Make Me Smile". The smile stickers also came with eyes and Mason didn't want to add either to his picture at first and then quickly changed his mind and wanted to add a smile and eyes.

Swim Lessons

Since we still have to put on these life vests while swimming, we decided to start swim lessons for these goggle loving kids. I hope they learn enough before summer hits so we don't have to lug these vests to the pool. Plus if Mason learns to swim he will be able to go down the slides!

Rockin Rosie

We hit the Rockin Rosie benefit and had a lot of fun. The theme was Rockin the Silver Screen. We might not really be rockin the big silver screen, but we think we rocked as MASH characters. Rob worked a 24+ hour shift the day before and will work another one tomorrow, so I thought it would be in my best interest to make our costumes fun and simple. Not to mention comfy. It made my pitch easier to pitch to Rob on convincing him to go with me. We had a fun night and my highlight was when I went up to the bar and the bartender said "what can I get for you Hot Lips Holihan?" It was hysterical, I didn't even have a name tag on and people said hello to Margaret all night long.

We were fashionably late so I didn't get a picture of the wine table full, but snapped one quickly after we arrived. I am proud to say they sold all the bottles and someone even asked what professional service they used to wrap them. They were a topic of conversation and turned out cute and fit in perfectly with the black, white, and red theme!

Baking

Aunt Laurie gave Ellery some adorable metal pans to play with in her toy kitchen. They are so cute and they could actually be used for real baking. Some are officially for tarts and we didn't go all out and make any tarts, we just made some cupcakes in fluted edge pans, bread pans, and tart cups! FUN. I let the kids pick what color our cake would be and they picked green for me, awww how sweet. They also chose to make the frosting purple. I told them they had to pick one color together and that is what they were able to finally decide upon after minutes of persuasion to make it blue or pink from both sides.

49 Bottles of Wine

Instead of singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall I sing 49 bottles of wine to curl. I am pleased to announce that I finished wrapping, cutting, and curling 49 bottles of wine for the Rockin Rosie Guild. I should have taken a picture of all of them together and if I remember my camera I will take one. They did turn out pretty darn cute. Who would have thought curling newspaper would turn out so pretty. I do have to say it was a family effort. Rob sat and cut strips for me while we chatted one night, the kids helped cut ribbon and organize all the bottles.

Allergy Visit

If anyone is looking for a wonderful allergy clinic, I would refer you to Midwest Allergy and go see Dr. Nelson. We were seeing Dr. Hopp and he was ok, but Nelson is great!

I learned so much and won't bore you with all the details. We are still allergic to milk and will get retested at 1 year. We were concerned about giving him soy for multiple reasons so the Dr. tested him for a soy allergy and it was negative! Big Yahooo on that one. So Bryson and I are staying away from milk these days and I still carry an epi pen, but now it is for either Mason or Bryson! We have a pretty good chance of outgrowing the milk allergy and still a slight window on the peanuts, so keep us in your prayers!

PS. I'm not crying over spilled milk, I'm crying over throwing out all my frozen breast milk.

Launchers

I came upstairs to find my room rearranged a bit. I am proud my kids are smart enough to move or remove objects they could launch themselves on. I continue to be amazed at how well these two play together. Makes me sad that Mason will be gone at school all day next year and break the pack apart! I guess she will then latch onto Bryson and they can become close buds. The difference is she will be the older sibling so it is highly likely that cars and trains will be replaced with Barbies and babies?

Mom....Mom....Mom

Two things happened today while feeding Bryson two separate times.

I am sitting on the couch feeding Bryson and

1) I hear the baby gate at the top of the stairs close and click shut. Kids play for a bit longer and then I hear "Mom we are stuck upstairs, please help." from Mason. I could have walked upstairs and freed my children, but I made them wait patiently at the top of the stairs until I was done.

Again, I am sitting on the couch feeding Bryson later in the day and

2) I hear Ellery calling my name repeatedly from the kitchen. I finally give a losing my patients "what do you need Ellery" where she tells me she is stuck. She was playing feed the baby with Mason where she was the baby and Mason got bored with the game and left her buckled in Bryson's high chair.

Maybe I am onto a new game and we'll call it Stuck. I might like this game!

Squash

We ventured out and tried some squash with Bryson. We captured him taking a first taste of something different and we didn't dilute it on purpose just to see the bitter face he would give us. After we got our shot we quickly added some breast milk and cereal to it to help bland it down for him. He is a great eater, messy like the other, but a good eater!

Trial and Error

Maybe the best parenting is doing it by mistake.

Ellery is officially potty trained and has been for quite some time. We don't have to remind her to go, it is nice. We put our pj's on early the other night and left Ellery in her undies. We still will put a diaper or a pull up on her at night. She wakes up wet sometimes and other times dry. Or she wakes up and tells me she just peed in her pull up. We have tried bribes such as if you have a dry pull up in the am you can have M&Ms. It worked a few times, but the two M&M she got wasn't worth it. Maybe she should have upped the ante of M&M's? Well, we didn't put one on her and she woke up dry. She got her reward and now the dilemma to put her in undies or pull ups at night. Clearly she can do it, but if she does have an accident I would rather sleep than change sheets. I think this is a complete convenience for the parent move, but maybe I'll let her try again next month!

Allergies

It is official, Bryson is allergic to Milk. Rats.
I challenge you to go read labels in your house, milk is in EVERYTHING!!!
I am very disappointed in my Dr's office in answering my questions. A normal range for not having a milk allergy is 0-0.34 and Bryson came back at 0.38, a very low number. I had a bucket full of questions that my Dr's office didn't, wouldn't, or couldn't answer. Basically I was told to stay away from "big" milk products myself because I am breast feeding since it hasn't seemed to bother him this far and we would recheck his level at his 9 month check up. Well, that wasn't good enough for me so we are off to the allergist next week! On a positive note, a lot of kids out grow milk allergies. Also, FYI lactose intolerant is not the same as a milk allergy.