Fa-Fire Love

See this cute little boy...

Well he has two loves in life.

One is the show Little Einsteins - lovingly referred to as "ein-tine"! He frequently throughout the day will bring you the remote and demand "ein-tines! ein-tines!". This most often occurs first thing in the morning, any time any other TV show other than Einsteins might be on one of the TV's, and most especially when waking up from his nap.

The other love is his pacifier - lovling referred to as "fa-fire".

Really, for a long while, he's only been allowed to have them while in bed sleeping. He knows when he gets up that he needs to leave it in his bed and would very obediently do so. Only now that he is getting older and bigger and wiser he has realized that he can sneak up to his room, reach in his bed, and get them whenever he wants. He will appear downstairs with it in his mouth and big grin on his face - to which it would promptly get taken away. You'd think he'd realize he shouldn't be quite so proud and showy about it. Anyway... so PJ gave me an ultimatum...pick a day and they would be gone. Monday (the 19th) was the day I had commited to. And he held me to it. He even started having Dylan toss them in the trash on Sunday night... a little premature if you ask me! Here is a little video of him right before he had to throw them all away...

Although it sounds like he is saying something closer to "ba-ba" than "fa-fire" but oh well...

So how has it gone?!?? Not incredibly well but it could be worse. For the first few days he would cry and scream and ask for them by name. Then he was just mad and would cry and scream whenever it was time to go to sleep. We had to temporarily move Tyler in to the guest bedroom due to all the noise and ruckus Dylan was making. He would scream for a good 1/2 hour to hour every nap and bed time all week long. And he doesn't transfer as nicely from the car to the bed if he has fallen asleep and such. But last night was the first time he went down without crying so things are looking up. He and I have both survived... so far.

Gym & Swim

Brynn and Tyler got to go to Summer Camp at the Y this week. It was called Gym & Swim and went from 1 - 4pm Monday through Friday. They had a 45 minute swim lesson each day, did arts and crafts, were introduced to different sports, and got to play. I, personally, had big plans to get stuff done this week during that time... I wasn't so productive but at least the kids had fun.

The first day as we were getting their backpacks ready to go, Tyler came marching down the stairs with his sleeping bag. He was not very happy with me when I informed him his sleeping bag would not be going with him and I couldn't figure out why in the world he thought he should take it. He said I told him he got to go camping and he would need it to sleep. Oops, had to clarify what day camp was...

When I picked them up later that day I had the following conversation with Brynn on the way to the car...

Me: Brynn, what was your favorite part of the day?

Brynn: Well not the last thing we did. Cause all we got to do was sit there and watch big guys do karate. And then Tyler punched two people and jumped on me. And I really don't think that's what they should be teaching him to do!

Me: Oh Tyler, did you punch and jump on people?

Tyler: Huh...I don't know.

Then somewhere around day three Tyler walked out with a little bit of a fat lip and we had the following conversaton...

Me: Tyler what happened to your lip today?

Tyler: Man!! I hit my mouth on the table and I had blood!

Me: Were you brave or did you cry?

Tyler: Mom, my blood was yellow. Blood is suppose to be red. Why did mine change to yellow???

Me: (???????)

Brynn also informed me that Tyler kept getting in trouble. I wasn't sure how truthful she was being. Sometimes I wish I could just secretly watch them doing stuff like this so I know how they act in these situations. I really would love to see and know. But anyway... one day when we walked in their leader said, "Here's Tyler! Our little wanderer!". So I asked her about it. She said he doesn't really get in trouble he just has a hard time staying focused and not wandering off. Guess it really isn't that surprising since every time I met with his preschool teachers last year they always told me he had a short attention span at carpet time. But at the same time all the camp counselors all thought he was a cute little boy and told me so... so I guess I can't be that frustrated with him since they weren't.

I can't believe they only have a week and a half til school starts now!? Mixed emotions on my end...

Pioneers, Pageants and Petersons

This weekend we got to take a quick, but very fun, trip up to Nauvoo where we met up with our good friends the Petersons (who were visiting Chicago from Arizona).

(Jill, Parker, Jon, Mia, Abby, Kelly, Tyler hiding, Brynn, Dylan, PJ)

(PJ & Kelly in front of Nauvoo Temple)

When we got there Friday evening we headed over to the Frontier Country Fair (pre-pageant entertainment).
The kids had a blast playing pioneer games,
and participating in and experiencing pioneer activities,

Sure it was a little muggy out...

...but thanks to Jon's connections we had awesome 2nd row, dead center, seats where we could relax and take in the pageant that night.

Saturday morning was a little rainy - which was ok by us since we spent the morning in the hotel pool.

(Parker, Jill, Brynn, Abby, Tyler, Mia, Jon, Dylan, PJ)

Dylan didn't love being in the water so he stayed entertained by throwing things at us...

Then for the afternoon we went and toured Nauvoo (and had wonderful cloud coverage to keep the sun off of us).

The kids were well behaved and had fun playing more and learning about everything from printing presses to brick making, from iron working to shoe making, and on and on.

Then that evening when they'd had enough we headed over to a funplace called Adventure Zone where we spent the rest of the night in their huge playland and eating pizza.

Oh, but being Wilsons we did need to top off the night with some fresh, custom made custard...

...the kids were very intrigued by the "smoke" that was making their ice cream (aka liquid nitrogen).

Then Sunday we woke up and headed over to a park, and looked out over the Mississippi River, before saying goodbye.

Good friends, good memories, many more to come...

Meeting Baby Steven!

Julia was out and about in Indiana and Illinois these last few weeks visiting her family and was so sweet to call and ask if she could stop by. We were thrilled to see her and finally meet baby Steven for the first time!
Baby Steven was so happy and the kids couldn't get enough of their little cousin. Tyler kept saying, "I love this baby!"
He was pretty cute. We can't wait until we get to play with him again at Thanksgiving!

Dog-gone-it!

On our trip over to Indiana July 4th weekend, Dylan discovered this kid-loved-parent-hated blue puppy dog of Brody's that sings the Alphabet song. It became his new favorite thing, and he played it over and over and over, and consequently learned the alphabet. Pretty cute, maybe, but it drove us all crazy. And about 20 minutes in to our 4 hour ride home in the car, we discovered that Uncle Clay had hidden a stow away in our car... yep, the dang dog! And there was no getting it away from Dylan once he found it. And while I immediately called and threatened Clay, there wasn't really much I could do about it. And so we've had the pleasure of the ABC dog's company for way too long.

Thankfully, the blue ABC puppy dog got to go home with Brody after this past weekend. I hope Clay has lots of fun with it upon its return.

A showering of love...

On Saturday, my dear sweet friends Brandi Hartman & Rebekah Williams threw me a beautiful baby shower!

And it involved one of my favorite meals...brunch...

Brynn ran away and played with her friends for most of it, but was very excited to help me open the presents for "baby sister"...

She and I both love to get all giggly over the cutest, littlest girl stuff - something that the boys in our household just can't seem to appreciate. We are very excited to have the boy to girl ratio in our family evened out :)

Thank you for all the love and support at this exciting time!

(Pictured: Ingrid Gray, Brandi Hartman, Rebekah Williams, Me, Cheyenne Hughes, Katy Warren, the Mom Peper)