An Easter Post

I swear holidays get better and better as Porter gets older. It's so much more fun to have holiday traditions when he's actually becoming aware of what's going on around him.

This Easter, I took Porter to the Saturday morning egg hunt at a local park. TONS of people, but it was lots of fun. We didn't go for the whole thing, so we missed the Easter Bunny. But we got to see and pet baby animals and hunt for Easter eggs with the thousands of other people crammed into that park! Luckily, I had my mom and little brother there for back-up. My mom took Porter to collect his Easter eggs. She said at first he tried to pick up eggs and put them in other kids' baskets for them. Such a funny boy!

On Saturday evening, we dyed & painted our Easter eggs.

Sunday morning, Porter woke up to find yarn strung all the way through the house, leading to his hidden Easter basket. I think he liked the yarn more than the basket! I intended to have him do an Easter egg hunt in our backyard before church-- but we ran out of time. I also planned to take pictures of him in his Easter outfit-- but that didn't quite work out either. Oh well! He was cute, you'll have to take my word for it!

After church, we went to Brian's parents' house for a family dinner and another egg hunt. Aunt Katie helped Porter find his eggs this time.

While we were there, Grandpa Nye brought out his 4-wheeler with a trailer and pulled all the grandkids around the backyard. I cannot even tell you how delighted Porter was as he was on this "ride." He was in heaven and would have gone for hours if he could have!

And here's our official Easter family photo:

Porter throwing a tantrum, Brian trying to fake a smile, and me being stubborn about everyone sitting together for a nice family picture. Oh well- maybe we'll get a good one next year!

Little Moments

Yesterday, I watched Porter squeal for joy, then glue himself to the window to watch the garbage truck come by to pick up the trash.

Earlier, I helped him open up our caterpillars that came in the mail (part of our butterfly-growing kit). He was so excited to watch the "buz" (bugs) move all around the cup and just had to carry them around, ever so carefully, for quite some time.

And while I was folding laundry in his room, I couldn't help but smile at his leg-kicking position as he played with the iPod on his old crib, waiting for me to finish so we could play.

All those moments yesterday (plus a hundred more) made me so grateful that I have this week off to enjoy every minute of the day with my little boy. But it also made me a little sad. These little moments are happening every day while I'm gone. I hate that I'm missing out on these things. And while I absolutely love teaching my first-graders how to read and write and be responsible citizens, I think I'd rather be home blowing bubbles with Porter.

Hopefully, my stay-at-home-mommy days will come soon. And when the day does come, I really hope I remember to enjoy all of these little moments and not take them for granted.

Potty Training: Day 1

Being on Spring Break this week, I figured I wouldn't get a better time to potty train Porter. And so yesterday we began. I tried to do this "Potty-Training in One Day" method that I found on Pinterest. We made it to 1:30 before I gave up.

The method was really great and Porter did learn a lot from our morning, but he didn't quite respond the way that was expected when using this method. He wore the underpants all morning and learned that it's bad to go pee pee on the floor (and in the underpants, and on the chairs, and everywhere around the house!). But the part he didn't quite get was how to overcome his fear of actually going in the toilet. So I ended up with a little boy sobbing by the toilet, trying not to go potty where he wasn't supposed to and scared to death of going potty where he was supposed to. It was heart-wrenching. So I finally got out a diaper and put him down for his nap. He (and I) slept for 3 hours, then woke up just as Brian was coming home.

After venting to Brian about our long, unsuccessful day, Brian and Porter went upstairs and I started vacuuming. Within minutes, I heard Brian shouting over the vacuum sound to come upstairs because Porter just went potty. I didn't believe him . . . but it was true! After months of me trying to convince Porter that it's fun to sit on a toilet and an entire morning of practicing . . . every . . . 15 . . . minutes, he finally went -- for Brian. Of course!

So I've decided to give it another shot. We'll try again today- maybe with a few adjustments and hopefully less tears. Wish me luck!

Growing Tummy

I often stand at the door, greeting my students as they file into the classroom each day. As my pregnant tummy's grown larger, the kids will sometimes comment on it, pat my tummy, or talk to the baby as they come in. It's a little strange, but my tummy really is at their eye-level so it's hard to avoid.

I've gotten some winner comments. But last Thursday's took the cake. First, let me tell you that I spent Wednesday night in tears because I'm reaching the stage where my stomach is so large and so uncomfortable that I really can't stand it (and I'm sure hormones are helping with my little meltdowns). But as I greeted the students coming in on Thursday, one little boy exclaimed,

"WHOA! You are WAY fatter than you were yesterday!"

And he decided to follow it up with another winning comment on Friday:  "You just keep getting fatter and fatter every day!"

Kids are brutally honest. But luckily, what they say is usually so hilarious that you're too busy laughing to ever feel offended. Plus, it's the truth-- so there's no sense in fighting it.

Thirty

Not sure if Brian's going to be mad at me for posting his age or not. But it is a pretty big deal. Last week, he turned 30! He's still trying to cope with the whole entering-a-new-decade thing, but I think it's pretty exciting. We didn't do too much to celebrate on the big day. He had class all day long and church meetings all night. But when he got home (around 10:00pm), we celebrated with a cheesecake dessert and a "Happy Birthday" song before going to bed.

Sadly, these are the birthday gifts he requested I pick up before he came home that night:

 Poor guy.

But the next day, I got a substitute for my class and we spent the whole day together as a family. We ate out for breakfast, spent the day at the dinosaur museum, came home to take naps (all of us!), then we got a babysitter and met his parents for a nice dinner in Salt Lake. All in all, a much better way to celebrate.

Strawberries

I'm happy to say that we have a camera again! Brian found a replacement part online for $10 and a local camera shop who charged us $12 for labor. Seriously! And all along I thought we were going to have to spend hundreds to replace the lens. This was a very happy blessing.

So now you can enjoy pictures of our everyday life . . . like Porter eating strawberries. He calls them pah-pies. And he likes to eat them frozen. Sometimes his words for things make complete sense to us and we don't realize how obscure it is until other people give him clueless looks. When my little sister was babysitting him, he kept going to the freezer and asking for pah-pies (strawberries, of course). But, unfortunately, it sounded a lot more like pot-pies to her.

And yesterday, when I picked Porter up from the babysitter's, I told him to tell her 'thank you' as we walked out the door. Being the well-mannered little boy he is, he complied with 'goo-goos' (which means thank you . . . of course). But the babysitter laughed and repeated 'crackers' instead. I never realized his thank you sounds like 'crackers.' It makes me laugh to think how many other people might think he's telling them 'crackers' every time they do something nice for him.

Oh well. Someday he'll be able to communicate with the rest of the world. But for the time being, I'll just enjoy the fact that we have our own secret language amongst ourselves. And really, I'm just grateful that we can finally communicate!

A Glimpse of Porter

I know someday I'll forget all these little details that make up our life with Porter. But I don't want to forget them. So here they are:

1. Porter can spend 15+ minutes just running back and forth across the length of the kitchen while declaring "Fast!" or "I fast!" That kid is very proud of his speed!

2. Porter is a picky eater, but will never turn down "treats." As a result, we have told him that go-gurts, peaches, strawberries, and fruit snacks are all called "treats." Now when he demands treats and won't eat anything else, we trick him into eating fruit instead!

3. He calls waffles "Foffles." It's really cute.

4. He calls his grandpas "papas." When we're going somewhere, he often asks "papas?" to see if we're going to see them. Or he cries for "papas" when he's sad. He only sees Grandpa Nye about once a month and Grandpa Sudweeks even less, but somehow they've become his favorites and he talks about them everyday!

5. Orally, Porter can identify about 24/26 letter sounds on his first try. Visually, he can identify about 20/26 letter sounds. He calls letters "E's" and has starting telling us whenever he sees any letters on signs, papers, or anywhere.

6. Porter loves receipts. Mostly because they have letters on them.

7. Some of my favorite Porter words:

Oink - "Ike"

Water - "Ah-boe"

TV - "Gigi"

Phone - "voe-muz"

Arthur (pbs show) - "Hey!"

Love - "Mama"

Porter - "Poe-poes"

Farm - "Eieio"

8. Current obsession: trains

9. When Daddy tells Porter to tickle Mama, Porter goes all around the house, whispering, "Tickle, tickle, tickle" until he finds me.

10. Porter loves singing and dancing. He sings along with Old Macdonald, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I Am a Child of God, Hot Dog (from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse). He dances to anything.

11. We taught Porter to say "Sorry" after he hits or does something rude. But lately, he also says "Sorry, sorry, sorry" when we're passing and bumping into people in a crowded hallway. No idea how he picked that up, but he sounds very polite!

12. Porter loves things that fly: balloons, papers he throws, himself (when Daddy throws him on the bed). He shouts, "flies!" The other day we took him to the aquarium. He kept saying "flies!" when he saw the fish swimming/flying in the water!

13. Porter sleeps from 7pm to 7am usually. We are very spoiled. 

14. Porter would play outside all day, everyday, if we'd let him. We don't . . . poor kid.

15. Porter knows more about navigating an iPhone than I do.

16. We started putting Porter to sleep with a cd recording of vacuum sounds when he was a baby. Two years later, he still sleeps with it.

17. Porter refuses to be covered up with blankets. Ever. Even at night.

Picture-Less

I have this unspoken rule that I usually will not post on my blog unless I have a picture to go with it. I'm sorry, but that rule's going out the window! I've been holding off on posting for weeks because I don't have good photos, but it's time to get back to documenting our life whether I have photos or not.

It's a funny story really . . .
About 6 months ago, our point-n-shoot camera died. Brian took it apart and somehow fixed it so it would start taking pictures again. But the screen was officially dead. We got to go back to the old-school way of looking through the view-finder and not seeing our pictures until we uploaded them to the computer.

That was inconvenient, but still okay since we had our big dslr camera. Kind of a pain to lug around, but it worked- and took better pictures than the point-n-shoot anyway. Until about 2 months ago. Someone broke it. Someone very carefully set it on the top shelf of the closet, in it's protective, padded bag . . . and it fell. Then someone assumed it probably survived the fall until a week later when she took the camera to a restaurant, pulled it out of it's case and the lens was completely detached. A piece that keeps the lens on the camera was laying in the bottom of the bag. She sheepishly told her husband, then burst into tears . . . in the middle of the restaurant. She sobbed for about 10 minutes, then continued bursting into tears throughout the meal. (Well, she is pregnant, after all!)

Now it's been terribly inconvenient since the broken point-n-shoot has been our only option for taking pictures. Until a week ago. No, I didn't drop that one too! It just finally gave up the ghost and stopped working altogether.

So while we're in the process of repairing and/or replacing our cameras, there won't be too many pictures on this blog.

Far Away Family

My family is pretty spread out- living in different states. It's hard being so far from my brothers and sisters, but it's gradually getting harder and harder as we add more nieces and nephews to the family. I hate knowing these little kiddos are growing up so fast and we aren't there to see them.

But we've been very blessed in the last little bit. We've gotten to see each of the nieces and nephews on my side recently. And, of course, it's only made us miss them more!

For Thanksgiving, we went to Texas to see my older sister and her family. Her kids were the first to get into my heart, so I've had to miss them the longest. Texas is way too far away.

At Christmas, we finally got to meet our nephew, Mark, for the first time. He just turned 1 and it took us this long to meet him! But, oh my goodness! He is so handsome! We loved having them near for those few days before they headed home to Arizona.

And when my little brother came a week ago for business, we finally got to meet his little miss Claire. She cried when I held her, but she still managed to tie a string around my heart to make me miss her. She is such a cutie and it was hard to see them go back to Washington so soon.

Everyone's doing great things in the places where they live, but I'm determined to find a way to see them all more often. In the meantime, we are feeling very blessed to have Brian's family all within driving distance!

Terrible Twos . . . Already

Victim: Mommy

Assailant: Porter

Scene of Crime: Post Office

Charges: Throwing larger-than-life tantrum in the 15 minutes we waited in line. Complete with smacking Mommy in the face, pulling her hair, kicking, and screaming for 14.5 minutes straight.

Witnesses: About 10-15 fellow townspeople. Not available for questioning . . . but we can all guess what they were thinking.

You can't? Oh, well here are a few examples:
"What is wrong with that mom? Why can't she control her kid?"
"That lady needs to learn how to give a spanking/timeout/(fill in your own punishment here). I bet she's never disciplined him a day in his life."
"What did she do to make that kid behave so badly."
"She must spoil him." 
"I saw him holding her iPhone when they walked in, she's exposing him to technology at too young an age."
"I hope she's not hiding a pregnant belly under that winter coat- she definitely can't handle 2 of those."

As soon as we got out to the car, Porter got a prompt timeout (nope, I'm not a spanker). Porter then cried the whole way home and I shed a few tears myself as I tried to figure out where I went wrong in my parenting philosophy.  When I got home, I pulled out my parenting books and read chapters about countless other parents who went through similar situations with young children. And some of them are even qualified to write parenting books now. So I can't be too terrible . . . right?

Last night, as Porter and I sang songs together while we baked and ate cookies, I found myself wishing all those people at the post office could have seen this moment instead.

But I suppose parenting will have its ups and downs. And unfortunately, the downs are probably bound to be witnessed by a room full of strangers more often than not.