Little Pilgrims

We are on to a thanksgiving theme....to kick it off we made pilgrim hats today! I am babysitting two little cuties today and they became pilgrims as well!

Logan's 4th Birthday Party

Recently we celebrated Logan's 4th birthday. After several ideas were tossed around, he settled excitedly on a dinosaur party! I made several trips to a couple Dollar Tree stores (love that store) and attempted to get creative with my decor to make it awesome. I also made some trips to Home Depot for sand for the dinosaur dig. It was very fun. We had a jungle-like theme of green streamers & balloons...dino footprints leading up to the party, mini dinos all over, cute dino signs on our food and their favors were sand buckets...then they had to 'dig' through sand or rice to find their treasures. Here are some pictures from his super fun day!

Helping

I am trying to teach Carter how to undress/dress himself. He 'tries' and gives up somewhat quickly. Today he was pulling his pajama top, which is buttons. I was trying to explain not to pull and I asked Logan to help him. This is a pic of Logan showing Carter how to unbutton his shirt. So cute. I love them. :)

Ryan

I just love, love, love this picture for whatever reason & decided it was definitely post worthy.

I love this baby....

Smile

I truly love being a stay at home mom. I am very thankful & appreciative of my husband for working hard outside of the home and making enough moola so that I can stay home and raise these boys into fine young gentlemen. I am currently listening to Logan & Carter look at a plain piece of paper, pretending it is a map and they are actually holding a discussion about where the treasure is...saying that they are going through the trees on an adventure.... I just love their imagination & how much they love playing with one another. Sure, there are fights, but I feel there are more adventurous/fun-playing times than there are fights...much, much more.

Just having a happy moment and wanted to share. :)

To share the smile I feel, here is a picture of Ryan from this morning....what a cutie pie! This was after sleeping for 14 hours!

We have a tie breaker!

It's official....Ryan has been spending the last couple months attempting to suck his thumb and today during his neonatal follow up visit, it happened. Logan was a pacifier kid....Carter was a thumb sucker and it looks like Ryan will take after his big bro, Carter, in this aspect. I wonder if he will also adopt a fav stuffed animal like Carter did....

What a cutie....

Morning smiles

I love Ryan's morning smiles!

Home Depot Workshop

Starting last summer (when we learned of this) we used to take the boys to the Monthly Home Depot Kids Workshop. It is all completely free - the kids get to a build something, get popcorn & sometimes some cool give-a-ways. Today they each built a fire truck and the cool give-a-way was a flashlight....plus one of the workers was doing either face painting or tattoos. Here are some pics:

Home Depot Workshop

Starting last summer (when we learned of this) we used to take the boys to the Monthly Home Depot Kids Workshop. It is all completely free - the kids get to a build something, get popcorn & sometimes some cool give-a-ways. Today they each built a fire truck and the cool give-a-way was a flashlight....plus one of the workers was doing either face painting or tattoos. Here are some pics:

A funny Carter story

Background: So sometimes in the morning the boys come in our room & sit on our bed to watch a lil tv. Every so often one of them will be cuddling with John or I and the other will be sitting up front....and sometimes blocking the other persons view causing the other person to yell "I can't see a FING!". They scoot over and all is well.

So this morning the boys raced to go cuddle with Daddy as I was getting ready. They were both 'fighting'....no, it's my turn to lay by daddy....no my turn.... Then Carter makes a genius move and stops arguing and goes to sit up at the front of the bed and says 'haha, you can't see a fing!'. The little stinker strategically stopped fighting & caused Logan not to be able to see the tv. John & I both busted out laughing and wanted to high-five him for his clever thinking skills. :)

Farm Theme

We are really enjoying farm week in school. We've been discussing so many animals & what they do, like, provide us, etc. We also had fun making crafts. Today he painted a farmhouse. While he started getting a bit carried away he did make a square barn with a triangle roof, 2 farmers, a horse with reeeeeeally long legs & a green pig. We also made a paper plate chicken & then he really wanted to do a horse. That was not in our plan so we didn't have a template. Enter Pinterest....and voila! I asked what he wanted to name the horse. He said 'Boobie'. That's right folks....not Bobby....boobie. Laughter ensued & he said "wait, let me try again." Yeah, Logan good idea. :). He thought about it, then said 'Jake'. Much better. :)

We also looked at patterns today and while he was naming a purple circle, brown square pattern, he forgot the name 'brown'. I asked him the color name & he says with such expression...."I can 't believe. I just can't remember". This kid cracks me up !

Here are the pics of his handprint chicken, Jake the Horse (which he traced the letters - very well I might add), one of him cheering that he did a great job writing the number 6 & his farmhouse, which I labeled for clarity. :)

I love him

My Ryan. I just simply love this baby so much! When I pick him up I feel like I could hold him forever. He is a cuddle bug and.....I just love him. Who wouldn't?

They'll sleep anywhere....

Logan & Carter truly can sleep anywhere. Every so often, I capture it. Here is the proof!

Logan was helping me make dinner & I ran to grab something....came back & he was asleep - on one chair. Tricky balancing! Carter then fell asleep on the corner if the couch but hanging part of his body in the empty space. Oy!

Update

Last week was a rough one for school as we didn't do our set routine nearly as often. We did always do our alphabet, counting, color review and our worksheets, but we didn't do most of our projects or things in a certain order.

Anywho we are using this week to get back in order and today went well. Why I waited until Ryan woke up, I just don't know....he doesn't make school easy.

Today we entered a new month & theme - Farm Animals. We did all the usual stuff & read our books, did our worksheets and made our craft - a pig. :). Logan is doing great with his alphabet, colors, months, days of the week and numbers (though 14 & 15 are still tripping him up. He'd rather go right from 13 to 16. He'll get it. He is such a cutie; I'm so proud of him. He also does a great job with printing letters/numbers, though the #4 (printed just like it is typed) was a bit tricky today.

Carter does pretty well with counting up to 15ish...with a little helper here or there. His attention span is not school/ ready, but he joins us for the ride. :)

Here are some pics from today:

Vitamin D free

Well....something like that. :) My little cutie, Ryan, had his 2-month follow-up visit to the Endocrinologist for his vitamin D count. Apparently vitamin D is given to babies mostly in the last 4 weeks and he missed out. Normal numbers are around 23-50ish. In the NICU he was around 750! When we left he was in the 600's...a month later he was in the 500's and today I am happy to say that he is only slightly elevated (he never said the actual bumber). Dr. B said we can discontinue the ergo calciferol (vitamin D) drops. Yay!!!!!!! BUT......(there's always a but it seems) he had ordered a thorough blood check and Ryan 's bilirubin levels were higher than when we left the NICU. So he called my pediatrician (which I thought was super nice instead of just telling me about it and to follow up alone) and they asked him to order more bloodwork (ugh ) to be done this week and to follow up with the pediatrician next week. Which is fine cuz his 4-month well visit is coming up, but it is just another thing.

He did get his stats checked & he weighs 12 lbs 2 oz and is 23.5" long. I don't know where he stands on an. 'Adjusted' percentage but the doc says that he is getting higher on the scale.

We do have a follow up appt with the endocrinologist in 3 months just to make sure that 3 months off the drops his numbers don't increase. Sounds thorough to me.

So we have his 4-month well visit at the end of this month; his follow-up eye appt. in December; 6-month well-visit at the end of December; follow-up endocrinologist appt. in January & his follow-up cardiologist appt. for the murmur in February. Whew! I hope then he can be released from preemie- dome! He truly is doing so well though and I just absolutely love this kid to pieces. Even when he's whiny, I pick him up and just want to snuggle him.

Oh and I brought the older boys to the appt....along with busy bags (thanks Pinterest). It kept Logan occupied, but Carter was requesting help so I was attempting to help while listen to the doctor and smile at Ryan since he was staring at me and smiling. :). Next time I am going to give Carter the busy bag at home so he can get used to how to play with the item and won't need so much help. Today it was a picture I cut out of a magazine (Phineas & Ferb and McQueen) and glued on Popsicle sticks. Another one was craft sticks with Velcro so they could build stuff.

Okay....that is all!