NOLAN
- Nolan loves writing and creating right now and I'm here for it. Just last week he authored 3 books. He'll come to me with a stack of papers and ask for help stapling them together, then he'll spend hours writing a story. His first one even had a synopsis of the story on the back (how cute is that?!). He also asked me to draw a castle on the front cover and then broke it up into 6 chapters. Justin and I were just talking about how fun it has been to watch him create something and be so incredibly proud of his work.
- He is also very in to the piano right now. He can play the Jurassic Park theme really well and has learned part of the Home Alone theme. His new thing is he likes to see how fast he can play songs and it's so fun to see his fingers fly. He really has a natural talent with it! He will play around with 'new' chords and he'll hear a tune somewhere and try to recreate it on the piano. In fact, once I remember we were coming home from a piano lesson (this was really early on) and he said to me, "mom, I think I figured out the doorbell sound... E...D... (and kind of sung it)." I mean, what 6 year old does that?! Oh, and he also hosted a concert with all of his Christmas songs and charged $1 a piece. I loved it!
- He will avoid taking a bath at all costs because he doesn't like being cold when he gets out. Not gonna lie, he's pretty good at slipping through the cracks too. We'll get C and B into the bath every few days, but it's not uncommon for a week to go by and we realize that somehow Nolan has avoided bathing!
- Lastly, he relates most things to TV shows. For instance, he has an ongoing "show" with episodes (complete with episode titles and everything) that he'll periodically want us to watch. It's usually a fight with his dinosaurs, Star Wars guys, dragons, and Imaginext toys. The only issue is that he wants it to be as long as a regular show so he'll tell us the episode is 22 minutes long and we can't play with him, we have to just sit there and watch. And if we miss a scene or he catches us not watching there is a good chance he'll make us get the fake remote and 'rewind.' Haha, it's pretty adorable though.
BRANSON
- For a couple of months now if I were asked to paint a picture of Branson it would be of him upside down. This silly boy is always upside down - on the couch watching TV, in his room while listening to scriptures, headstands against the wall. I keep looking for a tumbling class of some sorts for him because he's actually pretty talented. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if all of the sudden he's able to do a headstand without any support! Sometimes we wonder if he's losing brain cells and we should stop him haha.
- Our current Branson is also super sensitive right now. Oey. The slightest thing will elicit this ear piercing scream-whine that makes me want to run away and hide (but you can't hide because you can hear him anywhere in the house!).
- He loves playing in the bath, but hates getting his hair washed.
- Potty. Ohhh potty. We're STILL working on it. That's right, it's been over a year. I feel like we've tried everything. Some days I can be patient, other days I lose it on him (I feel so bad, but UGH it's so frustrating!). I feel like we come up with a new game plan about every 2-3 weeks which usually includes some kind of bribe or threat, but it just doesn't work and he eventually breaks us and we just give up and don't follow through. We've also tried just leaving him alone and not making it a big deal, no bribes, no yelling, no threats. I lasted longer on that one than Justin surprisingly haha. Oh and another funny thing I noticed. For the longest time (I'm talking 6-9 months) as soon as we'd sit down to dinner or get him up on the stool to brush his teeth before bed he'd inevitably have to go. I remember one specific time I pre-empted him and asked him to go potty before we sat down to dinner. He screamed that he did NOT need to go! "Whatever," I said. Then asked him to say the prayer. He starts talking and immediately he's dancing in his chair (this was literally 5 seconds after he insisted he didn't need to go). The craziest thing is that just last night for probably the first time ever I had Branson brush his teeth before watching a show instead of after (so probably an hour before the usual time we brush teeth. And guess what? Like always, he got up on the stool and immediately started the pee dance. I couldn't believe it! It's like Pavlov's dog or something! Also, here's a sampling of just a few of the many places Branson has tried to hide his dirty pullups.
- The big boys are super into dinosaurs after watching Camp Cretaceous!
CADEN
He's walking everywhere now! It's so fun to watch him, especially because it really seems like he's proud of himself and loves his new mode of travel. It's still the wobbly, old men type of walk and I love it 😃
- We really need to teach this kid the art of snuggling. The other boys still come into our bed every morning and snuggle us (my favorite thing EVER), but Caden just comes in the bed and moved around, climbs over us, cries, etc. Oey. I guess it's possible the other two were like this at his age, but I seem to remember them coming in the bed and just drinking their milk. Caden will have nothing to do with it. He doesn't get up ridiculously early, but we're still not ready to get up get up, so finally we just threw the show Cocomelon on the TV and miraculously it kept him still for awhile. So we've been doing it almost every morning for 2 weeks or so and now he totally expects it! In fact, this morning he threw a fit when he thought I wasn't going to turn his show on. I probably shouldn't, but it's pretty darn cute watching him be so into this little show haha.
- He loves bath time. If we leave the boys bathroom door open he will almost always go straight to the tub and start screeching for me. He doesn't like to be in for too long though. About 10 min and he's done. In fact he'll start trying to get out himself by sticking his cute little foot over the side.
- He gets into EVERYTHING. For instance, neither of the other boys ever tried to get into the toilet - we've always closed the lid so I guess they just weren't interested. But Caden goes for it all the time. He likes getting into the trash, unrolling the toilet paper, pulling down all of his dad's ties, getting into every single drawer and cabinet. With the other boys we never put child locks on our cabinets, but with C? Everything is locked up. In fact, we were just thinking the other day that we might need to add a few more locks.
- He must get this from his big brother, but he loves standing on his head and looking back at you between his legs.
- Probably one of my favorite things he does right now is how he backs up to get down the stairs. I'm actually really proud and impressed with how quickly he learned to safely go down the stairs, but it's absolutely adorable how he does a 4 point turn to find the edge. He'll back up and hit a corner, then try again. It's seriously so cute.
