Bradley - [7 Months]

Bradley is 7 months old!

• His face lights up any time you look at him. His smile melts my heart...
• He is very even-tempered and laid back.
• He loves being around people, especially his sister and brother.

• He is a master roller and can get around the room quickly. He has also started getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth, so I'm sure he will be crawling soon!
• Still no teeth!

• Still weighs about 18 pounds... not really any change from last month.
• Has started "eating" food. We are trying "baby led weaning" so have just been giving Bradley food that we are eating. Over the last month, he has tried avocado, cucumber, carrots, banana (the only one that he didn't seem to care for), cantelope, orange, strawberry, toast crust, whole wheat penne pasta, chicken, red pepper, and applesauce. He also likes the Gerber puffs.

• The other big thing this month is that we did sleep training. I was TIRED of getting up with Bradley multiple times in the night. Sure, he would just eat and go back to bed, but I hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep since he was born. I was actually amazed at how quickly the sleep training worked - it was much easier than with Tyler. After just a couple of nights of crying, Bradley mostly sleeps through the night now. He might wake up and cry for a short time in the middle of the night, but usually falls back to sleep pretty quickly. He has been waking between 5:30-6:30, and after I feed him he goes back to sleep until 7-8. It is lovely,

• Loves playing with toys. Everything goes into his mouth.
• Speaking of everything going into his mouth, he loves grabbing my hair and trying to eat it.
• He LOVES kicking and splashing in the bathtub. I'm surprised his heels don't get bruised from all his kicking. I might as well wear a swimming suit while I bathe him because I'm pretty sure I get as wet as he does.
• He is now a pretty decent sitter, and can sit for quit a while.

Spring Soccer

Kylee has started up spring soccer and is loving it. We've loved watching her play and seeing how much she and her team improve from week to week. It's still pretty funny how they all clump around the ball, but this season they have started putting one girl in as defender and you can tell they have been told not to cross that middle line :-) Kylee has been in at defender quite a bit and has played really well there. Maybe she will follow in the footsteps of her aunts!

Yesterday Kylee made an AWESOME goal. Man, I wish I had been recording a video of it. The girls at this age often keep the ball too long before trying to shoot... but yesterday, when Kylee got just close enough, she booted it and made the most gorgeous goal. I think Matt and I were more excited than Kylee even, haha.

Adventures in Potty Training

I have been wanting to start potty training Tyler for a while now, I just needed the right window. I was looking for a few days where I had nothing on my calendar and could focus on just him. We have been prepping for a while. I bought him a little "potty" for his birthday. We have been talking about how he would get candy and money if he went to the bathroom on the toilet (I'm not beneath bribing). We bought some Cars and Thomas the Train underwear. I was ready to start several weeks ago, but then decided to wait until after our Spring Break trip to start... I really didn't want to have to deal with potty training while we were on vacation. Soooo, a couple weeks ago I bit the bullet and we started! The timing was actually really good because we started on the Thursday before General Conference, so we didn't even have to leave the house for church!

The first couple days, I started Tyler in underwear, but after a couple of accidents first thing in the morning, we went to bare bottomed. I just made him stay on the hardwood all day so when he did have an accident it would be easy to clean up. I was SO exhausted these first few days! On day one, Tyler made it to the toilet about 15 times, but had quite a few accidents. That meant a lot of cleaning for me. Days 2 and 3 were better - 17 times in the toilet (each day!) with only 3 accidents... but that's still a LOT of times going to the bathroom. Needless to say, he filled up his sticker chart quite quickly (which he liked way more than the candy/money bribing) and by Day 3 had earned a trip to McDonald's for an ice cream cone. I was SUPER proud of the fact that he wore underwear to McDonald's and stayed dry!

Since then, Tyler has typically had 2-3 accidents a day, with only one day of zero accidents. We even had one day where Tyler woke up dry after his nap (although training at naps/night will come later!) I have been trying to keep him in underwear at home and have been using pull-ups when we leave the house for my sanity. Tyler has started telling me more on his own when he needs to go to the bathroom, so that's nice, but it's not super consistent yet. I have loved the last few days where he comes running into my room in the morning saying, "Have to go bathroom!" Not a bad way to wake up when you're potty training your child. Here's to hoping this just gets easier and easier... I'm sure it will, but I look forward to when I can not stress about him being in underwear!

Out of the Mouth of Tyler

This kid tries my patience pretty much every single day. He can be soooo difficult. But just when I think I'm at my wit's end, he can be the sweetest little boy ever. Here are some of his latest sayings:

• "You happy?" - He doesn't like anyone to be sad. He will often ask us if we are happy, and if we aren't, he will try to make us happy.
• "Please" - Tyler says please all the time. "Yes, please" when we ask him a question. "Please" when he wants something. I love his manners. Speaking of manners, he also says "Thank you much". I love how he has added the word "much" onto the end of "thank you". He says thank you unprompted all the time.
• "Two minutes." - This is his latest. He asks us to lay in bed with him for "two minutes" in his broken sentences. "You, lay me bed, two minutes, please?" Not sure where he got the "two minutes" from, but it gets me every time. Sure, I'll lay with you for two minutes sweet boy.
• "It's mine now." - This one is so funny. The other day, Tyler grabbed an eraser of mine off the couch next to where I was sitting. Matt and I both asked him to give it back to me. I told him it was my eraser. Tyler responded, smile on his face, "It's mine now!" It was actually so cute and stinkin' funny. I couldn't help but laugh.

I'm sure there are other things, but that's all I can think of right now. I'll finish off this post with a few more photos.

"Mommy, cookies please?" 

Building "towers"

Loving the scooter from Grandma and Grandpa Nye.

Tyler LOVES popcorn. He especially loves air popping popcorn with his dad.

Tyler put his little people in "time out". Wonder where he learned about time out? ;-)

More tower building.

Baby Clothes Quilts

Aren't these just beautiful!??! I had seen baby clothes quilts on Pinterest and knew I wanted to make some for my boys (unfortunately we don't have any of Kylee's baby clothes). The only problem is, I'm not a quilter. My Aunt Kathy came to my rescue! She drove over from Washington and came over every day to help get these done. All I really did was help cut some of the squares and iron on some of the stabilizing fabric on the backs of the baby clothes squares. Kathy did all the rest, including all the sewing and quilting. I have had these blankets just laying in the middle of my living room for a couple days now because I don't want to put them away. They make me smile every time I see them. I can tell you about pretty much every fabric square on the quilts - sooo many memories! I just love them. Thank you, thank you, Kathy!

Tyler's Prayer

Tyler has started wanting to say prayers, both at meal time and at bed time, which I absolutely love. Tonight, he insisted on saying the family prayer. Up to this point, we have told him most of what to say, but tonight he wanted to say it on his own. It went like this:

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for this day. Thank you for Kylee. Thank you for Bradley. Thank you for Mommy. Thank you for Daddy. Thank you for Kathy. Thank you for my book. Thank you we could call Rachel again. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

We spent some time with my Aunt Kathy today because we are working on a couple quilts (more on this to come in a later post). "Rachel" is a person that he knows from the "Signing Time" YouTube videos who also has a "Potty Time" app... on the app you can "call" Rachel when you've had either a successful trip to the toilet or an accident. Tyler hasn't had an accident since we downloaded the app, but we have called her several times where she has told him how proud she is of him. Anyway, I thought his prayer was so sweet. It almost made me forget what a pill he was all afternoon :-) And just because I didn't want to make a post without a picture, here's a sweet one of Tyler holding Bradley. He really is sweet sometimes.