Happy Mother's Day

We had a lovely, relaxing day today to celebrate Mother's Day. We have a mildly sick baby and the doctor said to keep him away from other kids for a couple days so we skipped churched this morning and headed straight to breakfast with Grammy. After breakfast we headed home and just hung out the rest of the day. I am so blessed to be a momma to such an amazing little boy (who woke me up with an adorable "Happy Mother's Day Momma!") . It has been the greatest privilage to be his momma. I have been so blessed to have a wonderful mother as well. She has been great example of how to be a good momma to my baby.  So Happy Mother's Day to you mothers, moms, mommies, and mommas!

He definitely doesn't look any sort of sick making his cheese face!

With both my babies

Little Chef

 Jake has been such a little helper lately, but his favorite place to help has been the kitchen. Anytime we are in the kitchen doing something Jake comes running, yelling "Wanna help!" He has a chair that he pulls up to the counter and hops on up there. We usually let him help, especially when it is stirring or pouring ingredients in.

Making pancakes

I'm pretty sure this is his favorite part of helping!

Making muffins

Peeling garlic

Oh, hi Cosmo. She has recently discovered how to get in the highchair, which leads to the table.

Potty Training Trained

Obviously this is a post about pottying, so quick disclaimer, there are bodily functions mentioned frequently, if that bothers you I would suggest skipping this post.

Wow. So we have been letting Jake take the lead on potty training mostly. We bought him a potty a while back for him to have and practice on but other than a few times, he wasn't all that interested, but he showed all the physical signs of being ready. When we went to his 2 year check up the pedi she said to not mention the potty at all for a month. So we didn't and I just figured we'd wait until later to really work on it and just try to sit on it occasionally. 
 
Last Monday just on a whim, I sat Jake on the potty and he went. So later that day I tried again and he went again. He went 3 times on Monday and three times on Tuesday. Since he had finally figured out HOW to go I thought we would make a real effort on Wednesday. He went diaper free at home and wore training pants when we went out and only had one (poop) accident. I was totally impressed. I was not expecting that at all and the first real day of potty training with no pee accidents is awesome. I know pooping in the potty can take longer so I wasn't too concerned about that. So we went out and bought some big boy underwear. Jake picked out Cars underwear. I bought a small pack not really anticipating them being completely successful that quickly. Thursday he wore underwear and made it almost until nap time with no accidents. He had a small pee accident right before lunch, but the rest of the day he great peeing and pooping in the potty. Friday was a repeat of Thursday, but he did great while we were at the gym and story time and had no problem going in the bathrooms at both places. So I figured out that time right before lunch we needed to make sure he went. Saturday morning we went to Grammy's and came home after lunch pottied and took a nap. No accidents at all Saturday or Sunday or Monday! Whoa! Unfortunately Jake has had some tummy troubles the past two days so he has had one poop accident each of the last two days. Diarrhea and a newly potty trained kid is not a good combination. But both times he was able to tell me and finish on the potty! Hopefully the tummy issues are better tomorrow.


I am just beyond impressed that he has done so well and so quickly! He wears underwear at nap time and hasn't wet the bed at all and while we still have him wearing a diaper at night, he has woken up dry since Friday. Josh and I are so proud of him!


Although we are now having to completely rethink how our vacation this summer is going to work with a potty trained kid instead of a diapered one! But I will gladly take that challenge!

Finally a picture...

Of Jake's big boy bed/room. 

He still loves his big boy bed and his new room. He has done better than we ever could have hoped for with the transition. He goes to bed in there no problem (although I do still rock him). When he wakes up in the morning or after his nap he just sits in his bed and yells "momma! momma where are you?" until I come get him. He has only gotten out on his own twice, both at nap time. He sometimes just goes into his bedroom just to play on his bed and he loves to tell us that he loves his new room. 


Other than the new paint and bed his room hasn't changed much yet. It is a work in progress though and we have big plans for it when it is done!

Easter

I swear we haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. Our computer is on it's last leg and only occasionally lets me upload pictures from the camera and a bunch of posts without pictures is boring. So my only other option is to go to the store and put the pictures on a CD, but I hate to do that with only a few pictures so I wait until I have a bunch. After this weekend's festivities I had enough to justify getting them.


Saturday morning we had our community Easter Egg hunt at the big park. There were a ton of people there this year. The Easter Bunny was there and initially Jake wouldn't get too close, but by the end he was stalking him and getting in everyone's pictures with the bunny. He was really excited for the egg hunt though. So excited he ran to the older kids area and started picking up their eggs before we directed him to his age group area. He had no problems picking up almost every egg he saw this year and ended up with a basket full. We hung out at the park with some friends for a while after it was over. (We've recently made friends with a few families on our street) In the afternoon we dyed Easter eggs. Jake was loving all of the colors and picked out a color for his egg. (Oh yes, in breaking and super exciting news, Jake has apparently outgrown his egg allergy!!!! We have slowly been giving him more and more things with less diluted eggs and small amounts of just egg with no reaction.)


Sunday morning Jake was so excited that the Easter Bunny had stopped at the house! First thing he did was open an Easter egg and eat jelly beans. Then he went on an egg hunt in the house because the Easter bunny filled so many eggs they wouldn't all fit in his basket or the decorative basket or the egg plate with our dyed eggs on it. He was pretty impressive with his egg finding skills! We headed to church after breakfast and met Grammy there. As usual Jake provided good entertainment for everyone around us during Mass. After lunch and a nap we headed to the Morrow's house for yet another egg hunt and Easter dinner. Jake had a blast with the girls (Aunt Ham, Aunt Nikki, Aunt Kissy, and Aunt Meshow) and all the dogs. And once again impressed everyone with his super egg hunting skills. Dude is good at finding those things! 


Overall a pretty great weekend. Josh's rugby season is over for about 6 weeks so we get him on the weekends for a while which will be nice. I am going to attempt to catch up on the last few weeks during this week!

Wearing his egg hunt basket on the way to the park

"Look it's the Easter Bunny!"

Checking out the colors for the eggs

Coloring eggs is so fun!

Spring Break Adventures

Fort Worth Zoo

We headed to the zoo with the Goff's on Monday. Austin and Jake are 2 weeks apart so we figured it would be fun for them to go together and we don't get to see them as often as we'd like. We got there as soon as the zoo opened anticipating that it would be crowded. And we were right, they had police directing traffic into the zoo. We rode the train when we first got there and Jake was so excited (for the next two days he asked to ride the yellow train) and was really sad when we had to get off. The morning started out just a little chilly but as the day went on it really warmed up and the nicer the day got the more crowded the zoo got. I think Jake's favorites were the elephants and the monkeys. We had to drag him away from the elephant exhibit!  

 

 The boys

 

 On the train

 Checking  out the otters

They were fascinated with the buttons

Looking at the elephants

Talking about their day at the zoo

 

 Hugs

Dallas Arboretum

Today Jake and I headed to the arboretum with our next door neighbors, Carrie and Savannah. They invited us to go about a month ago but the weather hasn't been great on the days we had planned to go. So we finally had a nice day that we could go. We ended up meeting Carrie's family out there so we had 7 kids out there. It was a busy day there too, but it never felt crowded because there is so much space. We took picnic lunches out there and got there early so we spent about 4 hours out there enjoying the gorgeous flowers and weather! Jake loved running around free (I didn't take the stroller) and loved playing with the other kids. He made friends with everyone, until he hugged/tackled Savannah. She didn't want him by her after that. I guess we will have to work on how to gently hug our friends!

 

FREE!

 

Pretty flowers

 

Looking at the fish

 

Hugging Savannah, before he tackled her

 

Rolling down the hill

 

 

 

Big Boy Bed in a Big Boy Room

Big day in our house. Grammy picked Jake up early this morning and took him to her house for the day. Then Josh and I got started on re painting Jake's room, transforming it from a nursery to a big boy room. After a long day of painting, Grammy brought Jake home and he checked out his big boy room. He said it was "Jakey's new room." He was a little too excited to sleep in his big boy bed. He wanted to read in his bed and didn't want to rock at first. It ended up taking him about an hour to fall asleep, but we aren't sure if it was partially the time change since he fell asleep around his normal bedtime. He did stay in his bed so we are hopeful that this is a smooth transition!

We have a big day tomorrow, we are headed to the zoo with the Goff's. And both Josh and I get to hang out with Jake all week for spring break.


Pictures of the big boy room coming soon!