6-months and all is well...

Here's a shout out to little Miss Lei has made it through the first half of her first year of life. To start with here are her stats:

Weight: 17 lbs 2 oz (75-90%)
Height: 27 3/8 in (95%)
Head: 16.4 cm (off the charts, yep she's a Shum alright!)

A few facts about Kalei:
-She sits completely unassisted and loves to reach around as she does so
-She can steamroll/scoot to whatever she has her mind set on
-Her favorite food is frozen blueberries (I put them in those netted teether things). If she's ever upset, put those in her hand and she's instantly content
-Other foods she's had: poi, rice, applesauce, banana, green bean, mango, cream of wheat, carrots, potato, mixed cereal). Still haven't given her any real baby food, just not much a fan of them.
- She has a heart-melting laugh and no one can make her laugh harder than Brayden. He can get her absolutely rolling.
-She loves to ride around in her sling so she can watch everything I do.
-She's very social and does not like to feel left out of ANYTHING
-At one point she was an incredible sleeper, went down at 7 and slept until 5:30. Now she wakes up A LOT but we'll give her the benefit of having a minor ear infection and Daddy being gone. It'll be interesting to see how she's doing in a few days when Junior gets back and the anitbiotics do their thing.
It truly has been such a joy to have Kalei in our lives. She is a VERY smiley and happy baby. It doesn't take much to get a huge grin from this little girl. She loves life and loves to explore the world around her. I just love this stage when they have this wide-eyed wonderment at everything they come in contact with.
We love you Lei Lei!!!

Realization

Yesterday was just one of those days that every parent with a 2-year old goes through. There was hardly a minute where I wasn't ready to hang him out in a tree for a little while. The day started at 4:30 (yes, as in am). Tavita woke from a nightmare, can't blame the poor kid for that, but once he calmed down rather than going back to sleep he wanted to read books, eat cereal, and play. The ENTIRE day consisted of him getting into stuff, tearing stuff apart, throwing fits (I'm one of those mean moms that won't let him have candy for breakfast, a 3rd orange in 2 hrs, run out in the 30 degree weather with nothing but his underwear on). Long story short, I was exhausted by the end of the day. I put the kids to bed (my favorite time of day by the way) and set to the task of cleaning a torn apart house. I had just finished cleaning, cut myself a big slice of pumpkin roll (if I really was a single mom, I'd weigh 300lbs. Every night Junior has been gone, I eat some treat at the end of the day to destress), had the heating pad all warmed to relax my siatic nerve, and was one step away from that moment of euphoria when I can sit down and say, "Ahh, the day is done." I gathered my treat and was about to head to the couch when I heard a dreaded "thump." Not dreaded in that I thought someone was hurt but in that I knew someone was still awake.
I head upstairs and there's Tavita sitting at the top of the stairs draped in floss with trails of floss everywhere. I go in his bedroom to find deodorant all over the place, books strewn around, the entire contents of an almost full bottle of fish food in with "Soopy" the fish, and just an overall minor disaster. I looked at him and glared. He jsut gave me a grin and said, "Hi, Mommy." While trying to keep my voice down (both to keep my cool and to keep from waking his two sleeping siblings) very firmly told him to get in bed NOW! He responded with a very innocent, "Okay Mommy." I was trying to clean the mess up and asked him where his binky was. He told me he didn't know then got a big grin and ran up to me, while pointing to his ear said, "Here, check here." We always play a game with him when he can't find his binky that it's is stuck in his ear and we pull it out, it's one his favorite games. I grumbled that it wasn't the time for it and what he did was very naughty. Again he gets and innocent look of "Why I naughty, I feed fishy." I was not in the mood to discuss anything, I simply told him that once he's put to bed it's not okay to get out. I cleaned the mess, put him to bed, shut the door, and went downstairs.
As I sat and thought more about it, I realized he probably didn't think what he did was all to naughty. Sure it's wrong for him to get out of bed, but other than that the resulting mess was simply him exploring the world around him. The fish was hungry, so he figured he'd feed it. Wanted to read books so he did. The deodorant smelled good, and you can't really see it so he was just helping the room smell better. The floss was very interesting, it just kept coming and coming from this tiny little box. I realized that I need to take more time to think on a 2-year old's level before flying off the handle, or in this case just ignoring them all together. The world looks and functions compltetly different in their eyes. I might be a lot more relaxed and happy in life if I took the time to realize how facinating floss really can be.

Random sidenote: Brayden was eating an apple today. I overheard him, while giving his apple a good examination, "You're going down apple bah ha ha"

The 3 P's

And these three p's would be: Prayer, Political Correctness, and Pyrex

Prayers:
Tavita is finally getting to the point where he wants to say prayers. Before whenever we'd try to help him say a prayer he'd just say, "No". Anyway, yesterday he asked to say the prayer at lunch. I was helping him along and he was doing great. Prayer went something like this:
He'd generally repeat everything I said but where there's a parantheses he inserted himself.
Thank Thee for the food, Thank Thee for our house, Thank Thee for "pumpkins".....Please bless Daddy in "Auntie" (I giggled and repeated "in")"Mommy" in "Bray"....
I was trying to say "Please bless Daddy in Australlia" He thought I was saying "and" and he kept trying to figure out who else we were thankful for.

Politically Correct:
Brayden has a slight fetish with UPS/Fed-ex/any type of delivery driver. He fondly calls them "Boxmen". He loves a visit from them because more times than not they come bearing goodies from familiy. We see their trucks often because the guy across the street from us owns some sort of online business and is constantly sending and recieving thing.
Janessa has gotten a seasonal job as a "Delivery assistant" with UPS. We went to drop her off for orientation and as we were pulling through to go back out Brayden saw the endless lines of UPS trucks...
B: "Ohhh, so this is where all the Boxmen come from."
M: "Yep, now Auntie is going to be a Boxman."
B(with HUGE awe-struck eyes): "Wow, cool...wait, you mean she's gonna be a BoxWOMAN."
M: "Sorry, you're right she'll be a Boxwoman."
We went to go pick her up and I told him to keep an eye out for her.
B:"Is she wearing boxman, I mean woman, clothes."
M: "No, just regular clothes, she'll wear her boxwoman clothes when she drives on the truck."
The second Janessa got in the car.
B:"Auntie let me see your clothes. This is so cool!!!"

Pyrex:
I've heard a lot of stories about how Pyrex sold their copyrights to some company in China. They changed the make up of the glass in order to produce it at lower cost. However, the new components cause the glass to spontaneously explode. I didn't think it all too common until last night. I pulled some funeral potatoes out of the oven and was about to set them down with the other end of the glass just burst. I hadn't set it down on anything hot, hadn't knocked it, nothing. It just exploded in my hands. Luckily it was the other end and I didn't get cut. However, it's happened to me a good handful of other people I know. I'm now in the market for a new set of non-pyrex bakeware.

A few giggles

Junior has our camera in Australia right now so I don't have any pics to post, nor will I until Thanksgiving. I decided that despite that I still needed to take the time to blog, especially so Junior can know our going ons over here.
Today the morning started with a conjested Brayden saying he was too sick to go to school. He did have an ugly sounding cough but other than that was acting fine. Tavita was the same way except he had a runny nose more than a cough (that kid's nose runs non-stop if the weather dips below 50). Even though I know he would have been fine at preschool, I didn't think it was fair to the other kids in case he was sick. Brayden was bummed about missing school so I told him we'd do school at home. He got so excited. "You'll be Miss. Katie and Tavita gets to be in my class today! I'm so excited."
I looked at the schedule and saw todays lesson was supposed to be on the First Thanksgiving and ovals. Brayden already has his shapes down pretty well and Tavita was kind of taking part in the whole school thing pretty intermitintly. I decided to skip the oval thing and focus on Thanksgiving. While I tried pulling a lesson togther I told Brayden to practice writing his name, which is how he starts his day at preschool. Note that when I try working with him at home it's like pulling teeth to get him to even trace his name. He just keeps saying he can't do it, he needs help etc. Anyway, he sits down and in two minutes is back, "Here you go Miss. Katie."
I was shocked when I looked at the paper. Granted he spelled his name "Bradyeb" but he had all the letters (except the n) there and they were all very legible. Before I could really say anything he asks, "Would you like me to write Tavita's name?" I reply, "Sure, that'd be great." Thinking there's no way anything is going to come of it. He comes back with a paper that says "Taat". He at least had an idea of what Tavita's name consisted of.
I asked: "Brayden how come you always have such a hard time writting your name for me, but do such a great job for Miss. Katie?"
His response: "I don't know Miss. Katie just tells me to do it so I do. Right now your Miss Katie so I did it."
Apparently if I ever want anything done I need to put on the Miss. Katie hat.
We then had a lesson on the First Thanksgiving, talked about the pilgrims and indians, found items around the house and compared them to what the pilgrims had (thing of soap/pilgrims had to make soap, a lightbulb/pilgrims only had candles etc).
Then we talked about chores pilgirm boys and girls would do.
We finished the day by making little tabletop turkey decorations out of paper bags. This was the one part of the lesson Tavita was totally involved. The boys loved it and they came out really cute.

Other funny things said today:
Brayden playing around with Kalei. Stops, looks at her and says whole-heartedly, "Leilei I love you so much, one day I'm gonna marry you. When you're all grown up, we're gonna get married."

At dinner today Tavita was being a stinker about staying put so I strapped him into his booster seat, which he was not at all happy about. Brayden had finished his dinner and was running around playing. He was goofing around by the couch and playfully yelled, "Help, I'm stuck!"
To which Tavita responded as he pulled on his straps that were restraining him, "No Bray, I'm MORE stuck."

We were acting out Samuel the Lamanite for FHE. Brayden was playing Samuel and had run away from the wicked Nephites (Tavita)who was threatening to kill him. As he was leaving I was playing the voice of the Lord and commanded him to return to the city. He was so into his part. He looked up the stairs and all around as if trying to figure out where the voice was coming from, rolled his eyes, then said, "Okay, if you say so."

I was vaccuming and Tavita starting chewing on the cord. Janessa stopped him and explained that doing that could electrocute him, give really big owies and he could die. Shortly after he slipped and started crying. She picked him up and said, "Did you get an owie?
"No, a really big owie, I'm gonna die."

More Toilet Humor

Okay, I know that I've been posting a lot of this stuff lately. There's just something about kids and how they respond to the call of nature that gives me a good laugh. The other day we were eating dinner and Tavita went upstairs to use the bathroom. Somewhere along the way he slipped in and couldn't figure how to get out. Apparently it didn't bother him too much because he never called for help but rather continued sitting that way, and took care of business. When we went upstairs to see what was going on he just gave us a look like, "Huh, look at the mess I got myself into." He really wasn't bothered by it at all.

And then she blew!!!

I have to start of by apologizing to anyone who finds this blog gross but I had to document it.
Anyway, Kalei has been having some issues as far as digestion and elimination goes. In fact today marked day 4 of no doodies. We stopped giving her solids and have been pumping her full of prune juice (had to use a syringe to spray it in her mouth) and even gave her a little Epsom salt. We were preparing to take more drastic measures (aka a suppository) tomorrow. I was dreading having to do it and was wishing and praying she'd take care of things on her own. This evening we were getting dinner ready when Junior called me over to take a look at Kalei. I looked in her bouncer and noticed a nice little puddle of baby poopy next to her. This is when I had a defining moment as a mom. I found myself cheering for nasty, gooey poop.
I went to pick her up and realized it was on her other side as well, picked her up some more and realized it was all over her back and front as well. We stripped her and I was utterly shocked at the sheer volume of the mess. I was anticipating a decent sized explosion given there was several days of build-up, but I've never seen anything like it. She was wearing a bigger diaper (we accidentally opened an old pack of Tavita's size 4s instead of her size 3s) and the thing was filled beyond capacity in every direction. It was all over her chair and CAKED all over her little body.
The boys were running around plugging their noses, announcing to the world how bad it smelled (remember she'd been pumped full of prune juice). Junior was just cracking up at the whole situation, though he was kind enough to hold the sprayer for me. Janessa was a champ and took on the task of cleaning up the bouncer while I washed the culprit.
After a good spray down and a bath, Kalei was as good as new. She had a blast drinking from the sink as we washed her, after she had her fill of drink she played with the faucet absolutely enthralled with the running water.
All I can say is after 3 kids of my own and a lot of babysitting, Kalei hands down wins the award for biggest explosion I have EVER witnessed!
This picture was part way through clean up but gives you a good idea of what we were dealing with.

The proud producer!

Quick side note. As you know Brayden and Tavita see no point in reserving dressing-up for Halloween. They decided to spread the cheer and were made up into monsters for other holidays. Brayden was the 4th of July monster and Tavita was the Christmas monster, note their coordinating colors. Oh the things that entertain little boys.

"This is Haloween..."

Well another year of Halloweening and trick-or-treating has come and gone. Now enters the phase of sugar overload and rotting teeth!
The boys had a blast again this year. Anyone that knows my boys know how much they love to dress-up. Having pirates, cowboys, superheroes and dinosaurs running around are a daily occurance at our house. Haloween is great for them cause all their friends dress-up with them, and then of course there's the candy!
The first night to dress up was on Thursday for the ward Halloween party. Only problem: Church rules is no masks. I told the boys this as we were getting ready to leave and they insisted on changing costumes, they were supposed to be Wolverine and Spiderman.
Brayden quickly transformed into a ninja. Black ninja suit, a headband, chinese writing on the cheek and a pirate sword turned ninja sword and he was set.\
Apparently Ninja's have a very particular face and sign

Tavita (remember he is on a clothing strike) was running around in underwear and a fireman's hat shouting, "I fireguy." He was refusing to put any other clothes on and since "Fireguy" covers quite a few words for him I convinced him he should be a "fireknife dancer" (this word is covered in "fireguy). Quick wrap of a lava lava, a wrapping paper tube with balls taped to the end, some duct tape and tissue paper we had ourselves a fireknife dancer. He was a hit and did several performances at the party. Brayden is now insisting on being a fireknife dancer next year, we may have to head home to Hawaii so he can trick or treat in it!
Chee-hoo

Kalei was already geared up to be a cat (she was going to be Catwoman) but as I was digging through the dress-up bucket I came across a gorrilla suit. We stuck her in it and then she fell asleep. So she was "Queen Kong" half the night and Catwoman the other half after she got to hot.
"Queen Kong" already had the top pulled off, cause she was too hot. It was one of those where the hood looked like the face.

Now she's a cat

Ready to Go!

Hangin out at the party

Junior playing Halloween twister with some of his scouts

On Halloween, we stuck with original costumes and headed out for trick-or-treating. Kalei and I tagged along for our cul-de-sac and the next one over and headed home to pass out candy. Good thing we did since we got a whole 5 groups of trick-or-treaters. There was only us and one of our neighbors home and passing out candy so every one just skipped us. Needless to say those that did come got hooked up and we still have a TON leftover. Good thing I was sure to by mine and Junior's favorite kind of candies in case this should happen! The boys had a blast and Tavita keeps asking to go "Halloween" again and doesn't like our answer of, "Next year."
Our little Trick-or-Treaters



Oh yeah, she may not take a bottle, but she loves a sippy cup!
Must have it!

Got it!