Mohawks

Nelmo has pretty long hair for an almost 5 month old so a couple weeks ago I had the idea to do mohawks with the boys. Chico still talks about it, he thought it was so much fun. Nelmo looks like he's got some attitude in this first picture, cracks me up. :)

And now it's time for the part of the post I like to call Chicoisms:

Chico makes us laugh all the time, one time in particular was when he said to Grandma W, "I wanna dink a water!" She didn't understand him and she said, "huh"? So he assumed she just hadn't heard him and he yelled to her really loudly, "I wanna dink a water!!!"

Chico will say, "I'm a fine boy" all the time. I've also heard him say things like "I'm a poopin' boy", "I'm a sleepy boy", and the most common one is "I'm a happy boy". One morning he woke up in our bed and I asked him how he was, and as he was stretching he said with a content smile on his face, "aaah, I'm a happy boy".

He knows the ABCs... kinda. It's so cute to hear him sing it. One time in the car this is how I think he sang it: "A B C B it's a G H I J K LMNO Pee Pee Pee in the toilet seat..." and I didn't hear the rest because I was laughing too hard.

He's in the "why" stage. He asks me "fwhy?" or "swhy?" all the time. I'm not sure why he adds the f and s, but it sure is funny. Though it's getting a little old hearing him asking that over and over again.

Valentine's Day

Brent "had a sniffle" on Valentines day so his germophobic co-workers wouldn't let him come in.  SO I got to have him home with me which was really nice. We put Nelmo in Chico's bed and he asked for us to take a picture, so we got out the camera and as soon as we were ready, Chico was done.

This next picture shows the cute brotherly bond these two have going. It also shows how patient Nelmo is with getting pushed stepped on crushed, and smothered by his adoring brother.

Nelmo's brown eyes are so handsome.

Well after all of this picture taking was done we went and enjoyed pancakes.  But not just any old pancakes.  We had pancakes with a heart design in the middle.  The idea was inspired from Brent's creative mind! We just saved out a portion of the batter and dyed it with red food coloring. After you pour the pancake you pour the different color in and use a knife to make it into a  heart.  We'll have to take a picture of it sometime, it was so cute!

So, in the past we've been a bit of non-comformists when it comes to Valentine's Day. We like to show our love to each other when we're not expecting it rather than on a day when the stores expect us to show it.  For example this year I made Brent a special candlelight dinner the week before Valentine's day and surprised him with it. Anyway, this year we started getting in on the fun of Valentines though... hearts in the pancakes...then I made heart shaped sugar cookies with Chico... then Brent went and bought me a Symphony Bar and got some cute Valentine's balloons.  Before he went and bought that stuff I was still thinking we were of the non-comformist mentality, I mostly made the cookies because it was something fun to do with Chico. But then Brent went and conformed and when he got home with my Valentine's gift and I wasn't preparing a special meal he jokingly asked, "where's our special Valentine's dinner?!" And I defensively/jokingly replied. "We don't celebrate Valentine's day!" after I said that we both looked around at the heart shaped cookies and balloons and both started laughing.  Well, I guess we're gonna celebrate it now and ALSO do fun random things to show our love for each other.

It was a fun evening, here are some pictures from just hanging out that evening:

I love love love this picture:

The Symphony bar is almost as big as he is:

Does this remind any of you of a movie?

Here's a hint... "Like it?!... It's positively sinful!"

The balloons were a HUGE hit with the kiddos.

Grandma gave this balloon to Chico, it was so cute because he was so happy to get it and he went and showed it to Nelmo. He really trys hard to include Nelmo as much as possible. It's so dang cute.

Before I close this post I want to quickly record some more Chicoisms for journaling purposes:
He has started to say this adorable phrase quite frequently when you ask him if he wants to do something, he replies in his cute Southern Bell accent, "I sure do!" He says it like this: "ah shuuur do!" and he says it with such enthusiasm. We love it! When you give him a snack of some kind if he wants a lot he says, "Both hands!" Oh and when he's asking for something, sometimes after he asks for it he'll say "Please please please please!!!"
He obsesses about owies and spiders. He's in a phase where he likes to help me mix things up with our Kitchen Aid so we've been making a lot of unhealthy food lately!
:)
Now for Nelmo:
He is an official two finger sucker. He trys to put anything he can in his mouth (as evidenced by pictures above) but his favorite thing to suck on are his pointer and middle finger. I love it for those times when it pacifies him, it's much better than mommy being the pacifier!

Chinese New Year

We are now the happy celebrators of the Chinese New Year, thanks to the new addition in our family.  Brent's Mom married an awesome man who is from Hong Kong.  Simon and Brent's mom decided it would be fun to bring some of his family's traditions into our family! Simon really made this fun and special for us. He cooked up an array of yummy Chinese food and then gave ALL of us, including the babies, "Lucky Money" in red envelopes after we said something to them in Chinese and then wished them something for the coming year. It was a lot of fun!  We're glad Simon cares so much about all of us and feels comfortable enough to share his traditions with us.  He's a great addition to our family and so wonderful for Brent's mom.

Here is some of the yummy Dim Sum: 

Nelmo couldn't eat the food but he did enjoy the lucky money for a bit.:)

Simon also made us some Mango Pudding which I'm modeling below.  Nelmo was eying that too... I should have given him some, I think he would have enjoyed it.

Everyone just had a grand old time hanging out at Grandma's and Grandpop's.

Chico's best bud is starting to show a lot of interest in Nelmo and really wanted to hold him (with his daddy's help), so cute!

potty training is going well

(knock on wood!)

I've been so scared to potty train Chico, but so far it's still going well.  He finally has succesfully had a b.m. in the toilet twice!  He mostly only has accidents when we're distracted. Saturday he had a couple (we were way distracted Saturday, it was a busy day!) and this morning he pooped in his underwear.  It was so funny this morning when I was getting the piece of poop out of his underwear, he was watching me and he said, "Careful Mommy, that's poop."

What a goof.

Today we went to the aquarium. When we were leaving I asked Chico if he had fun and he said, "yeah, fun finding Nemo!" When we were looking at the penguins Chico told me to pick up Nelmo so that he could see them too. I think it's cute that he's aware and cares about his little brother. Yesterday my Grandma gave Chico a Valentines balloon, Chico went and showed it to Nelmo like he was sharing it with him.  I love seeing how much they love each other.

Nelmo gets the hugest smile on his face when he's either getting kissed on the cheek or neck, or when he's trying to get you to kiss his cheek or neck.  His mouth is open so wide, it's adorable.  He likes to eat my cheek after I've been kissing his.  It's so much fun being a mom, I feel so grateful.

Pictures from our Chinese New Year Celebration and Valentine's Day coming soon. As for now, I gotta go exercise off all the chocolate I've been eating the last few days!

Workin' Hard

Chico is growing up so fast and wouldn't you know, we decided he was ready to be a big boy and get potty trained.  I thought I'd give it a try and Chico is doing pretty good.  He's had a lot of accidents but that's to be expected I guess.  The second day of potty training started out on a bad note, he had an accident while I was Visiting Teaching. I know, I shouldn't have brought him but I couldn't find my keys to take him to Christa's, I should have kept him on my lap but there is an awesome toy room and I knew he'd throw a temper tantrum if I made him stay on my lap, besides which, Nelmo needed to sit on my lap and it was only going to be a short visit and he had just had an accident before we left. Bah! The lady I was teaching had brand new carpet in her newly remodeled house.  It was a disaster of a visit, I sure learned my lesson.   I hope she'll let us come back.  And yeah, I'm not bringing Chico again.  So I threw a diaper on him at her house and was ready to just leave it on him and try again in a few months.  I was talking to Christa and she just finished potty training her 5th kid and has had lots of different personalities to deal with and I asked her advice.  Her advice was to keep at it and not give up because she wished she hadn't given up with one of her sons that reminds her a lot of Chico.  Anyway, so she let me come over to her house (since I was going crazy) and stay ALL day and share their dinner and family night with them.  Brent is at school late the night I was there so it was a HUGE blessing to me.  Chico loves being there and loved going potty in their toilet.  He still won't TELL me when he needs to go, I just have to keep my eye on him to see when he's acting weird.

Possibly as a result of this potty training Chico has developed a love for changing his clothes every 5 minutes (I thought only little girls did that?), and only wearing pajamas.

He also cleaned his room all by himself for the first time yesterday, he was so proud of himself, he kept saying: "I'm cweanin' up!" at first I tried to help him put the stuff in the right spot but he freaked out about that and so I just let him do his thing. :)  We just had to take a picture of it, it was so dang cute!

This whole potty training thing sure is exhausting.  I feel like I have to keep my eyes on Chico at all times.  Even Nelmo is feeling a bit tired from it all... look at the poor kid, he fell asleep in his exersaucer!