WYATT TURNS 2

Well, back in MAY (still catching up), we had Wyatt's second birthday!  I cannot believe my little dude is now two!

When I was pregnant with Wyatt, everyone used to tell me, "oh boys are so different than girls", and I never believed them.  Well, they were right!  Wyatt is a tough cookie sometimes.  He's very stubborn and wants what he wants when he wants it, but at the same time he can also be sweet and unbelievably charming.  He also loves attention and makes us laugh multiple times a day.  I love the little guy so much!

Age:  24 Months

Stats: 22 pounds and short - I don't remember exact numbers, but he's small for his age.

Teeth:  I know he doesn't yet have them all.  He actually sees the dentist for the second time next week!

Clothes:  Barely in 24 months.  2T still seems too big although I don't understand the difference?

Favorite Foods:  Eating is a nightmare with Wyatt.  Rowen ate anything and everything.  Wyatt just wants to snack.  Fair warning, hardly any of his diet is healthy, but right now we are just working on getting him to eat something!  So far his favorites include...

• Mac N Cheese
• Crackers of any kind
• Corn dogs
• Spaghetti O's
• PB&J's
• My protein bars (ha)
• Noodles with Butter
• Oranges and occasionally a banana
• Frozen French Toast sticks

Milestones:

• Can count to 15
• Putting together 3-4 word sentences
• Can name every character in the TV show blaze, but cannot yet identify all of his colors, ha.
• Can sing about half of the ABC's
• Brushes his teeth (with our help)
• Becoming very independant - shuts the doors, wants to put on his own shoes, turn off the lights, etc.

Favorite Things:

• Trucks - can name all types of trucks if he's shown a picture.
• His push lawn mower
• Anything Lightening McQueen
• His "scooter"
• Nick Jr's. Blaze and the Monster Machines
• The bounce house
• His truck pajamas

Least Favorite Things:

• Sharing
• Most foods 

Sleep:

• 10-12 hours each night.  Sleeps in his crib, thinking toddler bed this winter
• Takes one afternoon nap (2 hours)

Recent Pictures:

Summer 2017 Favorites

Our summer months this year look a bit different than in year's past.  Reason being, we decided to hire a nanny!  Normally, both kids spend their summers with their daycare providers.  However, to give Rowen a fun summer before kindergarten, and to lessen the burden of having two kids at two separate daycare facilities, it was the best choice! So far it’s gone very well, and the kids are having a blast!

When we were packing to move last summer I ended up donating a lot of toys we weren’t using.  Included in the donation box was a lot of their summer toys, pool noodles, water guns, etc.  By that point we’d had them for a number of years and they were starting to get gross so I just decided to do away with them to help lessen the load for the move.  Well, fast forward another summer and I realized I needed new stuff to keep the kids entertained!  So today I thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite summer items (links for everything in descriptions below)...

1. Intex Wishing Well Pool -  I initially bought this pool because I liked the idea of having two pools in one.  I liked the fact that Wyatt could easily play in the middle portion and Rowen could swim in circles around the outer ring. So far both kids love the outer area the most!  Wyatt loves to put his cars and trucks in the pool and drive them along the edge!  It's the perfect pool for toddlers because they can easily step in and out without assistance.

2. Aruba Mesh Beach Tote Bag -  We use this as our pool toy bag.  It's a cooler/bag combo!  The top 3/4 features a mesh bag (perfect for wet toys) and the bottom 1/4 is an insulated cooler. Whenever the kids visit the pool or splash pad they want to take along toys and it's usually pushing lunch time or dinner time when we are there so this is the perfect solution!

3. WooHoo Toys Big Children Playhouse Pop-Up Play Tent -  My oldest loves to play pretend so I thought this would be fun. Some of the other fold-able tents I found weren't very big, but this one is huge - you can easily fit multiple kids inside!  Unlike other play tents, it doesn't require poles, it simply pops up and folds back down for easy storage.  Bonus is that it comes with stakes so that we can take it outside as well!

4. Splash Balls -  An obvious necessity when it comes to summertime and the occasional water fight with dad! :)

5. Sportspower My 1st Waterslide - We've only put this up a handful of times this summer, but it's a lot of fun, my neighbor kids love it, too!  Much like a bounce house it uses a blower and inflates within minutes.  So far the quality seems to be great!

6. Dew Drop Ocean Beads Ocean Animals Adventure Kit - These water beads are a total hit with my kids!  They're cheap and great for sensory play.  I keep them in a plastic tote out on our deck, under the umbrella and send the kids out to play daily.  This particular pack of beads comes with small ocean animals to play with.  I love to play with these too, there's something very relaxing about them! I bought these Squeezy Tweezers, which are great for little hands, too!

7. Wiggle Car by Lil' Rider - This is by far my daughter's favorite thing to play with outside when we are not in the pool.  The speed she has when she's on this thing is crazy - they are low to the ground, very easy to ride, and come in a bunch of different colors. I highly recommend it for younger kids!

Well, hello there, Stranger!

It's been awhile...a year and four months to be exact!  Reason for my blogging hiatus was simply the amount of effort (which was very little) I was willing to put in. For those of you that don't blog you may not understand, but blogging is a lot of work.  However,  I can't even tell you the number of times in the past year I've referred back to my blog to look at pictures, to recall the baby stages of both kids, or to find a recipe!  It's so nice to have things documented, which is my main reason for getting back at it.  I hope you'll continue to follow along!

Last I left you I had a three year old and a six month old and life was hard.  However, now that the kids are older life is a bit easier (sometimes) and I thought it would be beneficial to give a brief update.

The Kids:

Wyatt just turned two years old!  It's crazy to think the last time I blogged about him he was only six months old!  His favorite things in life are his lawn mower, his cars, and macaroni and cheese.  He challenges us on a daily basis, but he's an awesome little dude and we couldn't imagine life without him!

Rowen will be turning five (insert cry face here) at the end of July!  She recently finished her last year of preschool and is headed to kindergarten in the fall!  She is very excited to ride the bus and we are thrilled to have one less kid in daycare!   This past year we enrolled her in a dance class and she loves it.  I never pictured myself as a dance mom (more like a soccer mom), but i'm learning, and I'm happy she's found something she seems to love!

The House:  

Life is funny sometimes.  So funny that you decide, on a whim, to up and sell your house so that you can build another one right up the street.  Yes, it sounds crazy, but that's exactly what we did. We were faced with some decisions to make when it came to our previous house.  Decisions that meant either pouring a bunch of money into a basement so we had room to grow, or sell and find something we could call home for the next 20 years.  The market was good so we chose to sell and we couldn't be happier with where we are now!

Ryan and I:  

Not a ton has changed for us in the past year, I'm still working full time, so is Ryan.  Long story short, we are just trying to enjoy life as it comes.  I wont lie, it's challenging at times, but life would be boring if it wasn't, right?  Stay tuned...

Emergency Situations with kids. What if...

I’ve been thinking a lot about emergency situations and “what if’s” when it comes to my kids.  What if something happened to me when I was home alone with the kids, would Rowen know what to do?  What if we had a fire, would the kids (or me for that matter) know what to do?

About a week ago, I was cooking dinner and trying to tend to the kids after work as usual.   Things got a little chaotic and I completely forgot I had something in the oven and burned it, which then triggered the smoke detectors in our house. 

While I was not happy that I burned our dinner, I WAS thankful for the situation because it made me realize that Rowen had NO CLUE what the alarm from the smoke detectors meant.  This of course then got me thinking - how can we explain fire safety and other emergency preparedness information to a three year old?  I know the kids' school will also teach some of this, but I think they need to hear the information from us, too.

We haven’t done it yet, but we plan to talk with Rowen about all of the above soon.  In the meantime I’ve been gathering (what I hope will be) some helpful discussion tools via Pinterest!

{Books}: We have this book and have been reading it!  It addresses"stop, drop and roll" and helps explain what firefighters do!

{Fire Safety Videos}: Rowen loves her ipad and watching videos, so these will be great!

{Crafts}:  An easy way to keep her busy and to help visualize the "911".

 Songs:  Rowen sings 24/7 so these will be a hit!

{Info Sheet}:  While I know she can't yet read, this is something that I think every family should have hanging on their refrigerator!