Ethan's 3rd Birthday

Well the countdown calendar I made did the job...Ethan has been excited for his "dirthbay" for WEEKS! Yesterday the big day finally came and it was a big partay!

I stayed up late decorating the house the night before his birthday. When the birthday boy came downstairs he yelled, "what in the world!?" as he saw these decorations. And from that second on he was revved up!

For breakfast he got pancakes and to open gifts from grandparents!

That night some of our friends joined us in "Radiator Springs" for a fun party!

We played "Can you find the Piston Cup?," "Pin the wheel on Lightning McQueen," and "Bowling with Mater for Tractors." We ate yummy snacks and visited with our friends. This video shows Clark and Caden playing "Toss the baby through the tire."

Then Ethan got to blow out the 3 candles on his cake. This video shows how excited he was, he sang, "Happy Birthday" to himself before the rest of us could start.

Then the birthday boy got to open some great presents! He loved everything!

Caden was more excited about the present he gave Ethan than the birthday boy. (He didn't even cry when Ethan accidentally swung it into his head later in the night).

A new firetruck! Yahoo! Life can't get any better for this 3 year old!

This morning I showed Ethan the pictures from his party and he said, "please momma, can I go to that party again?!" What a fun celebration of a fun little boy!

End of an Era

Caden now has 2 teeth on top, this is the first picture I was able to capture his 4 tooth grin! It cracks me up!

Right now this little guy is upstairs sleeping peacefully, and I am not taking one second of it for granted. The last months have been terrible for sleep around here. I dreaded bed time and the full on fit that would be thrown every night when we put the little guy down. Caden had been sleeping in a pack n' play at the foot of our bed. Every few hours during the night he would wake up, stand up, and scream at us until we put him in bed with us. Then we would have a few hours with nursing, thrashing, crawling over and head butting Clark (Caden did this, not me), kicks to the face, etc. Not a very restful sleep for anyone. We knew we were creating a sleep problem, but we had nowhere to put the kid so we dealt with it.

Last Thursday night Caden woke up at 11:30 pm, we tried to put him in our bed, but he just wanted to play, until 4 AM! It was bad. Clark wasn't happy when his alarm went off at 5:30. When I woke up after a few hours of sleep Friday morning I knew that this era had come to an end. I changed the bedding in Ethan's crib, put the crib bumper back on, and told Ethan it was time for him to pass on his crib to his brother. That day I quickly read through my books on sleep training babies and we made a plan.

The first night he woke up every few hours and screamed for awhile and we let him. The second night he made it 9 hours! And last night the cute little Caden slept 12 hours straight! Halleluiah! It has been amazing how he has started eating more solid food (another concern) now that he isn't nursing all night long!

Now we are ready for the next step...we moved Ethan to a little make-shift bed at the foot of our bed (we figured this process with Caden would take a while). We want the boys to share the room but are a little apprehensive that they will keep each other up all night. Any suggestions?

I loved the early months of snuggling all night with this little guy...but he's growing up (10 months old in just a few days) and it is good that this era has come to an end.

All this growing up is bringing other fun changes too:

Caden is now standing on his own without holding onto anything for a few seconds at a time. He holds up burp cloths and blankets in front of his face to play peek-a-boo. He waves, the first time I thought for sure it was an accident, but now when we wave to him and say, "hi Caden," he waves his little arm back at us. He also has mad pinching skills. It is one of his comforting behaviors, so if you have a loose piece of skin (especially on your neck), I'm warning you stay back, because it hurts! He's used these pinching skills to peel stickers off of things and to unplug the little safe guards we have in the outlets that apparently make them "baby proof" but not Caden proof.

His favorite nicknames are: Caderade, Cade, every once in a while I call him Cadey (then Clark gets mad because it sounds too much like Katie), Love Dove (one of mine), my little buddy (Ethan's), that little guy.

We love our Caderade!

Kite for Four

Yesterday was a windy day with a little Spring in the air. It reminded me a lot of a day about a year ago, I was 9 months pregnant and really wanting to do one last outing with Clark and Ethan, just the 3 of us, before the baby was born. We walked to a park in our neighborhood to fly a kite. I remember feeling a little melancholy realizing that everything would soon be changing, I was so happy being our little family of 3.

Yesterday when Clark pulled out our shark kite it reminded me of the day we bought it and flew it over the Pacific Ocean in California back when I was pregnant with Ethan. I was pretty happy then being our little family of 2.

If anyone could have told me what was coming I wouldn't have been so hesitant about change because flying a kite with our little family of 4 is the BEST! Life does keep changing and it keeps getting better and better!

It was a perfect kite day, the kite could pretty much fly itself. I showed Ethan how to fly a kite while lying on the ground, he came to join me and did a full on running body slam on top of me! Brown Dog crashed into my hands and the end of the string went flying. The wind was so strong our kite took off, Clark tried to stop it before it got to the road with no luck. We ended up stopping traffic. Ethan thought our kite was doomed!

Clark retrieving our kite, and Ethan looking quite dejected that the fun was over.

The kite was saved, but the string not so much! That ended our little outing, but it was okay because the BYU game was starting in 15 mins. so we had to get home quickly!

A Lucky Day

This morning I felt like I had run a marathon just getting our stuff together and my two little leprechauns out the door so we could make it to the St. Patrick's Day Parade on time....but it was well worth it! It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun having beads and candy thrown at us, literally at us, Caden took a string of flying beads to the face, everyone was so excited that the baby caught some beads until he started to cry, poor kid.

Shannon, Caden and Ethan waiting for the parade to start. I took this picture right when we got there, 3 seconds later Caden's cute frog hat was in the mud puddle below his stroller.

Margaret got us prime seats right on the curb.

Unfortunately, the day care group next to us had all of their kids form a line on the street right in front of us! But Ethan just muscled in and joined them.

I felt pretty lucky enjoying a fun parade with my two boys today!

Peek-A-Boo

Tonight while we were having a little family Just Dance party, Caden got high centered on the train. After realizing he could see us through his legs he started giggling and we did too!

My Singing E.E.

Little Ethan loves to sing! I love to hear him sing, its normal to hear him singing in his bed when he wakes up, while he plays, while he eats, pretty much all the time.

This first video is him singing, "If You're Happy and You Know It," apparently it is too hard to sing the words, "then your face will surely show it." It cracks me up!

This video is him singing another of his favorites, "Jingle Bells." He was watching the video camera screen of himself while it was recording...that is why he looks so serious.

And this is pretty typical, singing while he runs around and around and around. The song "Oh How We Love To Stand," was turned into a mix of a rap/Jingle Bells.

Birthday Countdown Calendar

When I was a kid my mom made me a countdown calendar for my birthday. Since my birthday is around Halloween I got to put up a piece of a spooky haunted house scene for the 28 days leading up to my birthday. My brother Weston had a turkey countdown, and James had the letters to hang across the fireplace that said, "Happy Birthday James." It was always something I looked forward to each year, and it built excitement for the big birthday.
Since Ethan pretty much asks me every morning, "is it my dirthbay yet?," I decided it was time for a countdown calendar. I wanted to make one that I could use with all of my kids, so I went with a birthday party theme.
When I do projects they usually end up a little bigger than I anticipate...this one definitely turned out big, it's wider than the door I had planned to hang it on, and taller than Ethan! It took many after bedtime hours, but I'm really excited about the end result.

It is all made from felt, ribbon and velcro.

Ethan got to put up "day 5" today. He is loving it!