Levi's 10 Month update

This cute boy is growing up way too fast!  (Seriously, doesn't he have the sweetest face ever?!)

 

Here is what he has been up to for the past month.

*He is army crawling around like it isn't any one's business.  He is so fast.   There have been a few times I have "lost" him in the house and the kids and I have to go searching for him.  I finally learned his hiding spot. It is usually behind the recliner in the living room quietly playing with the pull string to the blinds....or anywhere else where there are pull strings are available to him.  Speaking of pull strings, he loves the pull strings on the ceiling fan.  Oh my goodness, as soon as he sees the fan he gets the biggest smile on his face, tries reaching for them all the while he is crawling up our chest to get to them.  When we ask him where the fan is he starts looking up for it. 

 

*He is still just so happy, content and laid back smiling at anyone and everyone.  The other week as I was dropping him off at the nursery at church, the nursery worker asked me, "Will he come to me?"  I was like, "oh yea!" and sure enough he leaned right into her and was smiling the whole time. 

*He copies us when we cough.

*Trying to change his diaper is seriously like an Olympic sport.  It is nearly impossible because he refuses to sit still for more than .3 seconds.

*This boy can eat!  He self feeds himself and I think he eats a much as I do sometimes.  There isn't anything he wont eat.  He even eats salmon and tuna like it's his last meal.

  

 

Joshua dropped his snack on the floor and I have never seen Levi crawl as fast as he did once he realized there was food up for grabs.   

*He loves splashing in the water and doesn't mind one bit getting water in his face.  He loves water so much that he no longer hangs out in his little swim float at the pool, instead his spends his time climbing out of it so he can be free in the water. 

 

 

We had a family movie night and at one point Levi was sitting gin front of the T.V. watching it like everyone else.  It was too cute.  But of course he moved as soon as I grabbed my camera.    

 

 

 

He thought the wind blowing the curtain over his face was hilarious.  He was belly laughing.  

Sleeping baby!

His other two favorite spots to play...

He loves playing with these balls and rolling them all over the house.  Funny because with Joshua these balls were off limits but by the time the 3rd comes around, I really just don't care :) 

 

He goes through this hole, crawls back around and does it all again over and over.

 

Playing with Aunt Sydney. 

 

Kayla loves to feed Levi.  She will tell me, "closer" so she can reach his tray.

Munching on Omah's unopened granola bar in church. 

My view while making dinner.

First big boy bath.

After dinner clean up party.  I am cleaning the counters while he cleans up the food from the floor. #teamwork. 

 

These last two pictures crack me up.  Levi was chasing Kayla as she would run around the kitchen island with her stroller.  They both thought it was great fun!  Love my crazy crew! 

Big Girl Underwear

Since Kayla has been randomly telling us that she has to go potty and then most times will go when we set her on her seat we decided to give potty training another shot.  Over the course of several days I would ask her if she wanted to wear big girl underwear and she would nod yes with a big smile on her face. 

She was so excited to finally go to the store and pick out some big girl underwear.

1. 
2. She chose Hello Kitty.

She had to pen up the package and look through all the different designs. 

 

After a few days of testing out the underwear and seeing that she was ready for us to get serious about potty training we went back to the store to pick up more underwear.  As we were standing in the check out line she was holding up a pair of her new underwear showing them to the teenage boy behind us telling, him, "Underwear!!!"   

 

She has been doing fantastic.  Sometimes  I will just walk in and there she is sitting on her potty all by herself.  She is even doing the big number 2!  I am not sure if this is a fluke or not but for the past several mornings she has woke up in the morning with a dry diaper.  I was so impressed because last night she even drank close to a full water bottle right before bed and her diaper was still dry and she went a ton in her potty chair first thing upon waking. 

 

She gets so excited when we celebrate her and gets so excited to get a treat and call Rachel (potty time ap that we used with Joshua and we all love it!). 

 

We are so proud of our girl and we think she is well on her way to being fully potty trained (soon hopefully).  

 

Potty training on the go. 

 

She loves her big girl undies!

 

 

Love this little tooshie!

 

This was one of the first days.  She was all set up with a potty time show, snack, and water.  She had no reason to get off of that potty and every reason to stay.  

Our New Play Set

Our backyard is sloped making it hard for the kids to go out and play back there.  So Daniel and I decided to have part of it leveled off for a play area.  We are so happy with the investment and so are the kids. 

 

We found this fun play set for a great price on Craigslist.

 

What a great view these kiddies have.

 

Papa and Daddy worked hard taking the set apart, moving it and then reassembling it..  We all appreciate their hard work! 

 

The new play set is being greatly enjoyed by all the kids.  The morning after it was set up Joshua came into our room at about 6am, fully dressed, including a jacket and asked, "Can I go play on my play set?"  I think he was excited.

 

All 3 of them love to swing. 

 

 

Along with swinging Kayla likes to swing her babies...

 

 

 

She also spends a lot of time collecting rocks in this container and pretending they are chocolate chips. 

 

 



 

And Joshua?  Well Joshua spends most of his time making traps with string.  He sits out there for the longest time with a ball of yarn and scissors tying the string all over the play set.  I am not even sure he really knows what a trap is.  It is funny to watch both kids maneuver their way around the traps just like they are suppose to be there. 

 

 

See all that yarn?  Yep. those are traps.  And there are more below the fort area.  He adds to this daily.  

My Baby is Growing Up

Today I had one of those moments.  You know, when you look at your kid and think, "when did you grow up?" 

 

I took all 3 kids to our town's weekly Splash in the Park.  It was ca-raaaay-zy and the lines were so long.  Kayla was totally not into standing in any line and Levi was more interested in eating his lunch so Joshua stood in line by himself while I stood close by watching him and keeping the other two happy. 

 

At first when I looked back at him there was a big gap between him and the person in front of him so I had to explain how a line worked and how to move up when the people in front of him move. 

 

As I watched him stand in line so patiently (it was at least 15 minutes and never once did he complain) I just couldn't get over how mature and grown up he is. 

 

Look at my sweet, mature boy in the orange swim trunks and blue swim shirt standing in line with all those big kids. 

 

A random picture from today.  The firemen turned on their truck hose and sprayed everyone! Great fun!

 

As my mom used to tell me when I was little, "my baby's growing up!!!"  Now I get what she meant. 

June

Summer is here and we are trying to take advantage of every last minute of it because we know it will be gone in a flash. 

We spend 2-3 days at our neighborhood pool which all three kids love.   We usually pack a lunch and picnic there.  Kayla loves floating by herself with her floatie, Joshua is so confident and I am pretty sure will just teach himself how to swim, and Levi loves to kick and splash.  He thinks it is funny when he splashes himself in the face. Kayla can often be found roaming around the pool trying to find mommy's hidden snacks, making friends with people who will feed her snacks, and talking to all the babies.   She cracks me up.  She just gets out of the pool by herself without telling me, walks over to our stuff, pulls her lunch out and just starts eating.  The other day after she finished her lunch I saw her then pull out Joshua's lunch so she could eat his too. 

Our first pool trip of the season.

Update on Miss Kayla:
*She is talking so much and in full and complete sentences.  I love this phrase when their language just explodes. 
* One day after her nap I heard her saying over and over, "Mommy, Kay-Kay is awake.  Come get me Mommy."  How could anyone resist that?!  A couple of times I have heard her calling for, "Josh-Josh."
*She absolutely loves her baby dolls.  She can almost always be found holding one.  She sometimes refers tot hem as "Kay-kay's baby Levi."  She loves putting them all to bed in different rooms of the house.  She also likes to put diapers on them which she is getting really good at.  She refers to herself as , "Kay-Kay Mommy."  Meaning that Kayla is a Mommy.  Such a care taker. 

Here she is pushing her baby at the park. 
 

Bath time for baby. 

 

 

 

Bucking her baby in the car seat.

 

Sharing her smoothie with "Grandpa Bobby's baby."

 

 

Sometimes she sleeps with an entire daycare in her crib.  Speaking of sleep, occasionally after naps I will hear her calling, "Josh-Josh!!!"

 

 

 Update on this boy:

*He can be so sweet.  He will randomly tell me, "You are pretty Mommy." or "I sure do have a beautiful Mommy."  He tells Daniel, " I am lucky to have Daddy.  My Daddy sure is handsome." My little charmer. 

*As you can see from the picture, he likes to make his hair all "standy."  I had to get him some gel because he was starting to use globs of soap to spike his hair with. 
*We are still working on reading 3 letter CVC words and he is really starting to get it.  I love watching him learn.  On the nights Daniel goes to the gym I let Joshua stay up a little later so Daddy can put him down.  This is a good time for us to work on reading.  He thinks it is fun because he is staying up later than Kayla.  He likes to string a bunch of letters together and ask me, "what does this spell?" 
*He learned the chant "Eenie Meenie Miney Moe" from some friends and sings it, "enie meenie miney moe, who gets to pick a toe?"

 *Joshua continues to build, create and amaze us with his ideas. 

 

 

Just look at all the details.

 

Joshua was really into map making for a few days and spent a lot of time creating maps.  We had maps to get to the pool, maps to get back home, maps to go to Kansas City and so on. 

 

 Joshua wanted to turn this balloon into a hot air balloon.  With some string, scissors, tape and a little hard work this was his final product.  Then he spent some time trying to figure out how to get the balloon to stay up on its own.  

 



During our community garage sale Joshua and Kayla gave away homemade cookies and lemonade while accepting donations for the Children's Hospital.  He said he wanted to give the money to someplace that would help kids that got bit by rattle snakes.  He was so excited and had so much fun decorating and hanging up the sign for the goodies. 

Him and the neighbor boys might have ate more cookies than they gave away. 

 

Here they are delivering their money.  

Summer living!

The kids were playing outside and I told Kayla put on shoes because the ground was so hot.  So she put on snow boots.  

Here is what our evening walks look like...what used to take us 10 minutes to walk now takes us 30.  But they are sure a cute crew!

 

 

 

 

The kids opening a package form Grandma and Grandpa in California.

Loving her new baby.  She likes how the baby has hair like hers.

Papa keeps saying she is left handed, I haven't admitted that he might be correct ;)

 

Joshua got an ant farm for his b-day and both kids just loved checking on them everyday to see their progress.  Kayla walked up to the ants in this picture and said, "Hi ants."

 

Neighborhood block party.

Joshua and his most favorite girl, Willow. 

 

Joshua loves babies! Here he is loving on our neighbors new baby, Cody.  

 

Perhaps one of the most exciting things that happened this month was we had baby bunnies in our backyard.  They couldn't have been more than a day old when we first discovered them.  They were so new that we didn't know what they were.  We had to Google them.  We started out with 6 and only 2 survived.  The kids loved checking on them everyday and it was amazing to see how much they changed each day. 

Here they are about 6 days old.  So cute and snuggly.

 

They were the hit of the neighborhood.  People were always in and out of our backyard checking them out.  

 

 

J and K on their way to Levi's 9 month check up with their Dr. kits in hand.   

Dr. Kayla.  

"Look Mommy, I am Jesus dying on a cross."

 

They he dropped his head like they show on the movies.  

 

There seems to always be at least one or two, if not more, neighbor kids constantly at our house and the kids love the company.

Joshua is really into David and Goliath so we made this sign to show how tall Goliath was.  It says, "Goliath was 9 feet tall but God is bigger!"

Love when they are sweet to each other!

Watching hot air balloons float by in our backyard never gets old. 

Making ice cream at Aunt Diane's house with Mr. Mike.  

Perfect day for a picnic with great friends.

The play area is finally complete. 

Enjoying their new play set. 

 

Playing in the rain.  

 

The sound of the water rushing in the gulch behind our house was so peaceful. 

Joshua was in charge of snack this day.  Check out the size of that bowl!

 

The kids have had a couple sleepovers/playdate days at Omah and Papa's this month and of course have a blast each time.  Kayla always says, "stay" when it is time for them to come home. 

mud pies with Omah.

 

Gotta get clean after those mud pies.

We celebrated GG's 93rd b-day.  

 

I went to a training for VBS with my sister.  I glanced over at her notes and this I what she wrote, "be mature."  LOL, this is so Sydney