A little update on the boys...

Boy #1: Still my sweet, sensitive, affectionate boy with a side of wild. I can't wait to see him with his new brother. He tries to hug and kiss Dawson constantly but usually gets a smack in exchange so I keep telling him he'll get to snuggle his new brother as much as he wants.
We've also been in the sneaking and lying phase for a little while now. He's constantly sneaking food and "hiding" the evidence (on at least 3 occasions I've found 4 or 5 granola bar wrappers stashed under the couch). Here he is on "job day" at school. His first choice was an astronaut so I had to suggest a couple other alternatives that were a little easier to pull off. Judie whipped up this chef's hat the night before (I know...no big deal, right?? She's wonderful):

Last week Bennett added a new antic to his arsenal- shoving something up his nose. This was a new experience for us, one I thought we'd avoided with this child. He and Dawson were playing in Dawson's crib together in the morning (one of their favorite spots to play) and suddenly I heard Dawson screaming and Bennett saying, "I'm sorry Daws! I'm sorry Daws!" I ran in to find blood running out of Dawson's nose and all over his sheet. I grabbed him out and asked Bennett what happened and he showed me a plastic medicine dropper with a tip about an inch and a quarter long that they had in the bed and he said "Dawson put it in his nose". After getting the blood to stop (and calling the Dr. to make sure I didn't need to bring him in) I asked Bennett why he was saying "Sorry, Dawson" if Dawson put it in his own nose. He admitted the truth so we of course had a long conversation about not EVER putting ANYthing in our noses or any other holes in our bodies because it could really hurt us.
Well, apparently he wanted to test this theory on himself. That SAME evening, he was playing with his cousins at John & Judie's house and came up from the basement to eat dessert. He started sniffing and making a face like he had to sneeze. I asked him if he needed to blow his nose and he said, "no, there's paper in there and its making me sneeze!" After about 20 minutes with tweezers and a flashlight, Jon removed a pea sized piece of blue foam. Wow. Needless to say there was a punishment this time around instead of a lecture!!

Boy #2 helping himself to a chocolate bar for "breakfast" (he's currently standing on the 2nd shelf):

There are still a lot of days that feel like he spends about 50% of it whining or crying but thankfully he's so hilarious and cute the rest of the time, it balances out. Judie watched him the other night during the Super Bowl, and right before bed he said to her, "Order a pizza, Nana".

And boy #3:

Not much to say about this little one other than, I am more than ready for him to make his appearance. Nobody wants to hear me grumbling and complaining about how uncomfortable I am so we'll just leave it at that!! I got out the hospital stuff we'll need and stocked up on Pampers Swaddlers and nursing essentials after panicking one night because I was having pretty painful contractions. So we are READY!

Life with Dawson: A Constant Costume Party

Dawson has always loved wearing goofy stuff. He's constantly coming to me with things he wants me to put on him. This started very young, as evidenced by these photos:


For a long time, the first thing he would want to do when he got out of bed in the morning or after a nap was put shoes on; any shoes he found. He still loves shoes but has expanded into many different areas.

He loves wearing this batman mask when he goes to Nana's. This particular evening he wore it around her house for a good hour or so.


Then we went to IHOP for dinner and he left it on the entire time, including while he ate!

This was the getup he came upstairs in this morning. He needed help getting the trunks on over his jammies but the rest was all him:

The other night he wanted to put on Bennett's Tow Mater jammies (size 5...might help you envision it a little better) over his own. He wore the shirt all night (I had taken the pants off to change him) but as soon as he got up the next day he wanted the pants back on over his jammies again.
And every now and then Bennett will come up with a few inspired looks of his own (notice the one flip-flop Dawson wanted to wear):



And just for the pure sake of cuteness:

Tour of the Mid-South

Last week we took a trip down to Memphis and then over to Bentonville, AR where Jon's Aunt & Uncle just moved to. We actually had planned to go with John & Judie down to Georgia to bring Jon's Grandma to stay with her sister, Lucy, for a few weeks (still following??) but Aunt Lucy recently got sick and the trip sort of fell apart at the last minute. But rather than cancelling altogether, we decided to still take the trip to TN & AR just for the fun of it. Might as well break up the winter blues, eh? I wasn't at all worried about the stress of traveling with the kids Dawson (you barely even know Bennett's there!), since Nana and Pop would be in the car! I've never been so thankful for Dawson's carseat being able to turn 360 degrees! I love this pic:

Bennett was in absolute Heaven. He got the iPad all to himself for the 22 combined hours of the trip. He'd ask how many hours we'd be in the car that day and then cheer when I told him!

First we went down to Memphis and stayed for 3 nights with my parents. I kept thinking how lucky my boys were; all 4 of their grandparents under one roof for 3 days! We went back to Shelby Farms park so John & Judie could see the cool playground, we went to church with them on Sunday, the 3 women got to do a little shopping together (so many great shops around Memphis, including a Pottery Barn/West Elm outlet! My hubby's so glad about that, let me tell you. [major sarcasm intended]), and no visit with my parents would be complete without lots of yummy food involved.
We went to a fun restaurant called Humdinger's. My parents have a card from the manager that lets pastors in the area get 50% off their bill every time they go. Such an awesome idea.


Bennett loving his grilled shrimp kids meal:

Dawson watching Tangled at Nonny & Grandad's. The only 3 things he'll currently sit and watch: King Kong, Elmo and Tangled. (Notice his plastic King Kong watching with him):

A very rare sight--Dawson won't even nap on the 10 hour trip to TN. This was on the second leg-the 6 hours from Memphis to Bentonville after he was totally sleep deprived from the previous 3 nights of staying up late and getting up early.

Jon's Aunt & Uncle listed a couple things we could all do together while in Bentonville. One of them was a drive-through wildlife safari. We all thought that sounded like fun so we decided to give it a try. Boy were we all blown away. It was literally one of the coolest experiences of our entire lives. Big John said it was even better than a safari he'd been on in Africa!! It was $10 per adult and worth far more than that. There were so many different animals there and a lot of them came right up to the van (click on the pics to see them larger). There were bigger ones like lions and tigers and bears (ha!) in cages but you could still see them fine from the car and they were all way more active than the animals I've ever seen at a zoo.

Dawson was saying something hilarious in a high voice here. I think he wanted to feed them:

A cute little hippo just a few feet from our van:

The emus were by far the most curious and there were several of them there:

So amazing to be this close to a zebra!! There were also huge camels that came right up to the car but my camera was full and I didn't get a pic. We figured out that if you started to crack your window, they'd hear the noise and come right up to the car but it made Jon's Aunt Judy so nervous :)

A petting zoo area:

This was probably my favorite. I was just giddy being this close to the kangaroos. They were pretty skiddish and would hop away but if you moved really slowly, you could get close enough to pet them. They're as soft as a bunny.

This peacock was so beautiful-half regular, half albino:

Checking out the sloth:

This little monkey was the best part. He would stick his hands out of the cage and clap really fast to get your attention. And eventually we figured out that he'd grab onto your finger if you held it out to him!! I'm sad I didn't have room on the camera for video. I just kept saying the rest of the day, "I petted a kangaroo and held a monkey's hand today!!"

There was also a huge chimp outside and typing this out won't do it justice but it was so funny I have to try to describe it. We were watching him for a while. He had a water bowl outside the bars and would reach his hands through, lift his bowl up and take a drink through the bars. Then he'd climb up to the top and starting swinging, pushing off the bars with his feet for momentum. He was really going fast and all of a sudden on the forward swing (towards us), he spit a mouthful of water at us! We were behind a fence about 10 feet from his cage and he managed to hit Jon and Dawson! It was hilarious. We all screamed (or probably just me) and jumped back. He'd had the water in his mouth for at least a minute. Then we watched him repeat the whole thing again, drink water, climb up, start swinging and spit water at us. We were ready for it the second time but it was so funny. Ever since then Dawson keeps saying, "King Kong spit on us!" If you're ever traveling anywhere near there (or even within a few hours), it would be so worth going out of your way to stop. Seriously, way better than any zoo you'll ever go to. It was a great end to our trip! http://www.wildwildernessdrivethroughsafari.com/

Christmastime is here...and gone

The ubiquitous Christmas post. I'll try to keep it short and sweet since these things really aren't that interesting unless you're part of the action :)

For the first time in 9 years of marriage this Christmas was different. And even though its definitely not a good thing that my parents aren't in Des Moines anymore, it was great to have our Christmas spread out over two days instead of all crammed into one. We had Christmas eve at our house--it's become a tradition for Jon & I to host and we all eat soup and appetizers together after church. And since Christmas was on Sunday and John & Judie had to be at church, we had such a relaxing quiet morning letting the boys open their stockings (as you can tell we went overboard with the stocking stuffers! They didn't nearly all fit inside. But that's all we get for the boys since they have so many aunts & uncles and grandparents buying for them). I can honestly say I understand now why some families are adamant about being in their own homes on Christmas morning. We've always rushed off to my parents house first thing. This year that time with just us was the highlight for me.

I didn't even bring my camera to the Colyer's that afternoon! Shame on me. And I didn't take photos of the Ottley Christmas we had on Monday. I don't know what got into me. Oh wait, yes I do. A baby (literally). Getting the camera out probably would have meant climbing up the stairs an extra time or something.
Bennett and Dawson are beyond thrilled to have all of our family at our house. Bennett took advantage of Uncle Graham & Aunt Sarah and played lots of his new games with them (and since they don't have kids yet, they always seem to have endless energy for ours. They're so great with them).

A favorite gift this year: Magna Tiles (below). They're super expensive so I asked Judie to just compile the boys' money together after a close friend highly recommended them (Thanks, Kim!). They both absolutely love them and I can tell they'll be worth the money.

All four kiddos with Aunt Sarah:

I'm sure there will be more pictures soon on my sis's blog, newly titled, The Daily Be. Ok, too many late nights this week. My pillow is calling my name.

The Big 3-0

Nope, I'm not 30 years old yet. But I did reach 30 weeks in this pregnancy! Amazing, huh? Its crazy how much faster it goes with each pregnancy. I can't believe we'll have a real live baby in just 10 weeks! I really can't wait. Although I do get panicky whenever I'm groggily feeling my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, thinking about the nighttime feedings. But aside from that, I'm so excited to have a newborn again and for Bennett and Dawson to have a new little brother. I just need to start petitioning now to have my mother-in-law move in for the first 2 months ;) How does a mom of 3 do it for the first 8 weeks without live-in help?? That's beyond me at this point, but I guess we'll find out soon enough!

Woops...I sort of forgot to take a pic for 7 weeks!

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I really started feeling pregnant--in that way where its just hard to do anything involving bending or climbing stairs or lifting or getting up from the couch or bed (yeah, that covers 90% of the day). I honestly do not know why women complain about being pregnant in the summer. I would take that any day over wearing super annoying maternity jeans that have to be pulled up any time you bend over or sit down. Not to mention having to tie shoes...oy vey. Maybe I'll start pretending I'm Japanese and just wear socks with flip-flops.

And other than intense heartburn and Braxton Hicks contractions all the time (some are already super strong), I suppose I'm feeling as good as possible at this point. No back pain, thanks to visits to my wonderful chiropractor every 3 weeks and a memory foam mattress! Boy am I thankful for that right now. Last pregnancy I pulled our air mattress onto our bedroom floor and slept on that for the last couple months!

A small bite of the Big Apple

Jon decided it was time to part ways with his beloved BMW since it has passed 250,000 miles and with traveling every week, the constant repairs were getting too much. He needs something more reliable and could use something with much better gas mileage. So he started shopping around the US via Cars.com for his perfect match. He found his new lovely lady (an Audi A6) in NYC so lucky for us, we got to take an unexpected babymoon and spend a couple days together in the city. It was actually my first time there so we just hit the major highlights and then drove home over 2 days.

Jon was able to use his points from all his traveling to get a free hotel right in SoHo (yes, there are some benefits!). We had dinner at a great Italian place that friends recommended in Little Italy where everyone was named Anthony or Joey and brought dessert back to our tiny hotel room. It was so strange to walk out of our hotel the next morning into a city full of people. It really felt like a different world than little old Des Moines (and I noticed how out of place we were since I'm pretty sure we were the only ones in the city not wearing leggings or skinny jeans...or all black :)

We walked around Times Square and Rockefeller Center and then went to Chinatown for lunch.

We had Dim Sum (which we learned were "small bites" served in steamer trays that they just walk around offering to you one after another) at a very authentic Chinese restaurant. It was a fun experience. I enjoyed watching a four generation Chinese family at a table nearby with a little baby eating noodles off of her mom's chopsticks.

We went to the park near the statue of liberty that overlooks Ellis Island. It was amazing to think about Judie sailing into that exact spot on the Queen Mary when she was 7!

It was the perfect little short visit. We had so much fun together, like we always do when we have a little break from the rigors of parenting. It's always so refreshing to be able to focus only on each other and to still feel so in love with my adorable hubby! :)