Potty Training, Easter Wreath, and Third Trimester

The title of this post pretty much covers everything we've been up to lately.

We've been working on potty training, so underpants and all things bathroom related are hot topics in our house. O is earning a skittle each time he goes and putting marbles in a jar to work toward a special reward. He vacillates between getting a marble tower and a wooden train set.

He's been doing great and has many days with no accidents. We're still working on his remembering to go on his own though. Mostly Mom or Dad have to remind him or drag him to the bathroom, so we still have a ways to go.

The other day we made an Easter wreath for outside our door. It was so easy and O did most of it by himself! He did such a great job, too!

He's getting to be such a big boy! Just a couple days ago he pretty much made our cornbread muffins by himself. He poured everything and did the mixing and filled the muffin cups, it was awesome!

Where did my Little Man go?

The baby is doing great! Elliott is such an active baby, he kicks and stretches all the time! He makes my belly move and bump so much, I love it. I am 29 weeks now, so already one week into the 3rd Trimester. I can't believe it's going so fast, the weeks are just flying by!

Here I am at 28 weeks.

It's been a couple months since we've seen our lizard friends, but we found two outside our door today. O was having so much fun chasing them around and trying to touch one.

Here's a video:

Mike is pretty much just doing the same thing poor man. School, school, and more school. Last night he stayed up until 2am to finish writing a paper only to go to class and find out it had been postponed, so it was a rough day. I hate it when that happens!

We love you all!

A Digital Concert

At lunch the other day O was singing away, so I caught a couple songs on camera.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

One Little Monkey Swinging in the Tree

One Little Monkey Jumping on the Bed

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat

For a little while he was doing a mash-up of  jumping on the bed and swinging in the tree and it was so cute! I was trying to catch it, but didn't quite get it.
Snapped that Monkey

Jumping on the Bed

Then he just got crazy!

I hope this brightens your week, it sure has ours!

Sensory Fun and Our Garden

Lately we've been trying to help Oliver start eating more. He's a pretty good eater, but has a hard time with textures. He'll try something and seem to like it, but gag or vomit before he can swallow. I did some research on the internet and found another family who was struggling with the same thing. This mother said they started doing sensory play each day and it helped their little one with his texture issues. So, I did a bunch of pinning on Pinterest and we started our sensory play.

Here's O's first sensory play: fun with dry macaroni.

We try to do something different a couple times a week.

He loved this shaving cream day...

At first he thought the shaving cream was pretty gross, but then he started to get used to the texture and by the end he was covered with shaving cream from head to toe!

We've also done flour and some different textures in gallon-sized bags. The easy part about sensory is that he often encounters new sensory experiences as we go through our normal day. The sandbox at the park is a good one, or the leaves and grass, just anything I can think of that would have a new or different texture. I think Thursday we're going to do boiled spaghetti noodles, it should be fun!

We've already seen it starting to help his texture issues, too. He's a much better eater now and hasn't vommitted at dinner for about a month, yay!

Two weeks ago I had a bit of an energy boost and it is still continuing, so we've knocked several things off the to-do list, hooray!

First was the garden.

Our last lawn maintenance person would only mow when he would come, and if there was anything on the lawn then he mowed around it. I can't believe they actually paid him, how does that even count as lawn maintenance? Whatever. So, it meant that the weeds around our apartment were crazy huge, especially lately since we've been getting quite a bit of rain. We had been planning on tearing them all out and planting a garden anyway, so we weren't too worried about it. Then, I actually started to work on pulling the weeds out and it was exhausting and took forever!

Here's O and I's progress on Day 1:

This chunk took me about 1 hour.

We only needed this front bed on the right clear to plant in, but I was going to do the strip on the left and the back bed on the right so we could actually see our sidewalk and it didn't look so trashy. I could see it was going to take me forever after I finished this first day, so I hit it for an hour a day as often as we had sunshine. Mike came home one afternoon and helped me do a chunk and then helped me finish it last week, woohoo! He would have helped me more often, but he almost always gets home after dark.

Then, this awesome thing happened... a guy showed up to do the lawn maintenance. This was surprising because we hadn't actually even seen the lawn guy for months. He mowed... then he edged... then he blew the clippings off with a leaf blower! What?! We love this new guy, he actually does something! Woohoo! This meant I didn't have to clear out the strip on the left or the bed in the back, since he knocked them down with the weed eater, yay! So much faster than a pregnant lady with a two-yr-old and a hoe!

Here's the friend O made on our first day:

I don't know what this thing is, but I was trying to be brave for O. No one wants their boy to be afraid of bugs! When we first found him I was a little surprised and I said, "Oh!" and jumped back. When O saw him he said, "I don't like him, let's run away!" I felt the same way, but I said, "Oh no, he's our friend! Look how cool he is!" O talked to him the rest of the time we were out there. We found him again the second day we went out to weed, lovely! Haha!

On later days we found a worm and a grub, both of which O took to immediately. He called them his friends and held them for awhile. He even wanted to kiss them, but I drew the line at that, no kissing critters! Unfortunately for his friends, he's not very gentle yet and neither of them survived the day. He didn't mean to kill them, but I'm pretty sure they didn't make it, poor little guys. Too much love I guess. We'll have to work on that.

Here's our spot all cleared out and planted, yay!!

We have two short rows of lettuce, a couple pea plants, and two short rows of carrots.

Now we wait... and weed! :)

O's been trying out his photography skills, here are some of his prints. :)

It definitely gives us an idea of what he sees... silly boy!

Baby Mitchell

I've been a horrible blogger lately! Maybe it has something to do with the fact that all I can seem to do is keep up with O and the house and then collapse into bed shortly after getting Little Man to bed. This pregnancy is kicking my trash! I don't remember being so exhausted when I was pregnant with O, but I guess I also wasn't chasing a 2-year-old around and Mike wasn't working through Grad School.

Anyway, I thought I should do a post on the upcoming new addition!

When people ask me about how it's going, all I can tell them is how excited we are for this little one to come.

It might seem vague to them, but that's really most of what we're feeling. After losing our little one last January, it feels almost surreal for everything to be going so smoothly and we couldn't be happier!

A couple Sunday's ago I was sitting at the organ during Sacrament Meeting and it hit me how different that Sunday was from the first Sunday in February last year. I sat at the organ last year on the Sunday after our miscarriage and held back the tears as they announced the birth of a sweet baby to a family in our ward that week. It's sometimes hard to mourn the loss of a sweet little spirit that most don't know existed. This year though, I sat at the organ already bulging enough to make it difficult to use the foot pedals. While I still miss the little ones we've lost, I feel so incredibly blessed to have another sweet spirit on it's way to our family.

As for the pregnancy itself, it hasn't been too bad.

I was horribly sick during the first trimester, but Mike and I just considered it a blessing and a daily reminder that there was still a little one growing in there. (Mike had a little easier time at looking at the bright side of my morning sickness then I did, lol!)

6 weeks is a little early to see a baby bump, but I wanted a record just in case our time with this little one was short.

After I hit the 2nd trimester my sickness cleared up and I've been feeling pretty great, just exhausted.

I had a little problem with heartburn, but was able to clear it up pretty quickly, thank heavens!

I have spider veins and vericose veins, so I get to wear these incredibly fashionable compression socks around the house, which is pretty awesome.

20 Weeks

Here are all the pictures we have of our sweet little one.

 Profile

 Isn't it so tiny and cute?!

 Face

We're excited to be delivering him in Bear Lake. Especially since the office I've been going to here has forgotten I was there 4 times in the last 4 months I've been going there. Seriously? You can't even keep track of the patients you have checked-in? How could I possibly trust you to deliver my baby without forgetting about me or something?! 

After discussing it with my doctor here and the doctor I'll be delivering with in Idaho, I've decided to try for a VBAC. In order to VBAC(vaginal birth after Cesearean Section), I have to go into labor on my own, so we'll see how that goes. The plan is to give my body until June 8 and if nothing happens by then, then we'll have the baby by C-section that day. I'm a little nervous. What if it works and I actually have to deliver this baby?! I've never done that before. Last time I just laid down on the table and the doctor took it from there. I know that sounds totally ridiculous, but it is a little scary, right?

That pretty much covers this pregnancy, except for one very important detail:

Our little one's name!

We've already picked it and O loves it.

His name will be Elliott Dan Mitchell

O's middle name is after his Dad and Papa Mike, and Elliott's middle name is after Papa Dan. Both are incredible men for our little men to look up to!

Oliver is so excited, he talks about baby Elliott all the time:

"And then we will play with him and love him"

"I'll teach him how to run and run and run so fast!"

"Baby Elliott Dan kicked my face!"

"I love baby Elliott Dan!"

So do we, little one!

June 8th, here we come!

Pre-Trip

We seem to have dropped off the blogging world once again, but we're back!

Here's an update from before we left...

Aunt Tauna sent O the cutest Halloween shirt and I don't think I shared it on here. He loves it and still wears it all the time, even though Halloween is obviously over. Being a bat is totally acceptable any time of year, right?

We finally got O's last birthday present ordered and he loves it!

He was so excited about it that when he first got it he'd get up from bedtime and play in the dark. Later we'd find him fast asleep on his new mat.

A couple weeks before we left, O and I decided to make a playhouse out of a washing machine box we had. I cut out the doors and windows. O decided on the shapes of everything. He loves it! He calls it his house. Sometimes we decorate the outside or inside with markers and crayons. Sometimes he likes Dad or I to go in there with him. It's a tight squeeze, but he thinks it's so much fun! :)

The only surprise about his house was that we got it all fortified and then tried to put it in his room, and it didn't fit. So, now we have a playhouse living in our living room. Oh well, what do ya do?

Other than that, things were pretty quiet. We were just getting things ready for us to go on our trip to Idaho to meet baby Kirra and have fun with Nana and Papa Fisher and then to Washington to visit our family for Christmas.

Here's a picture from when we were packing and a silly video from about the same time.

Festivals

The last two weekends we've gone to two very important festivals.

First, Train Fest!

O loved Train Fest. We drove to Jackson, LA, about 45 minutes away, and spent the morning checking out all the neat model train layouts the Baton Rouge Model Train Society had on display.

They had every size you could think of. From Z scale, where the whole layout fit inside a suitcase, to O scale outside. We even got to see them refill the steam engine outside so O could see how it works.

We met one of O's friends there that also loves trains and had a great time!

I think this garden layout was O's favorite. It had a trolley running up above and he loved it!

That night we tried on his ghost costume to see how it fit and he wanted to wear it all night.

The next weekend we had our Ward Fall Festival.

Mike was sick and I had spent the day helping set up, so we were a little tired by the time we got there, but we all had a great time!

O was such a cute ghost! He loved going around to each of the carnival games and then thought the trunk-or-treat was awesome. He's so cute when he says, "Trunk-or-treat!" He's also getting better at putting his hands up and saying "Boo!"

I made this bean bag toss and I think it turned out alright! :)

O and I have also been feeling a little crafty.

We decided we needed some Halloween decorations, so we made some...

The third eye was O's idea and I think it was perfect!

I've been wanting to make a wreath and we had a crafting Relief Society activity the other night, so I took advantage of the time and whipped this up. I like how simple it is. :)

Now we're just getting ready to go meet our sweet new niece and see everyone over the holidays!

O's First Pet

While we were outside playing this week O found a new friend.

He was suctioned to the side of our shed in the back, so we pulled him off and brought him in.

I got a plate and put some water on it and our friend very slowly emerged.

O loved it!

He watched him a talked to him all day!

Here he is:

He's a tiny little guy and O named him "Snail."
He would say, "Let me take your picture, Snail." "Are you scared, Snail?" "Do you like having your picture taken, Snail?" It was so cute!
We got him a couple leaves to eat and the next time I turned around O had covered him with the leaves. "He's sleepy," he said. What a sweetie.
After we showed Dad that night, he and O went out and set him free. Now we visit him by the shed sometimes.

A couple weeks ago Mom wanted me to pick out a new dress as an early birthday present. I was so excited! We found a new company that we love called Lindy Bop, you should check them out!
The only drawback was that they're in Europe, so shipping took awhile, and then conference came so I had to wait another week. I finally got to wear it to church this week and I love it! Thanks Mom, you're the best! O said, "Mama looks pretty!" He was looking pretty handsome himself! :)