Let's See How This Goes...

For conquering the pooping in the potty, we gave Connor new Buzz Lightyear pants yesterday. Today we reinforced the good behavior with Thomas the Train underpants. Well, first of all, he wanted to wear them with the butt in the front b/c he couldn't see the fun pictures with the butt in the back! But tonight, he refused to wear his Lightning McQueen Night Night Pants to bed. He wanted to wear his Big Boy Thomas Pants. I figured what the hay~ he has a plastic mattress. So we shall see how it goes. My mother-in-law swears that Mike asked for big boy pants one night and never wet the bed from that point on. Wish me luck!

Caitlyn Zetta 3 Months

I took Zetta to go get her 3 month photos. We took them in her blessing gown that was made for her by Mike's Aunt Zetta that lives over in Ireland. When we went to visit last October, I asked Aunt Zetta if I named the baby after her if she would knit me a dress for the blessing. She was more then willing. She is very excited to have a namesake! Aunt Zetta I promise to have your photos in the mail soon!

I loved this photo because it showed the beautiful dress and the beautiful baby both so well. It even shows her dimple that her dad didn't believe me that she has.

The Hair Controversy

You may have noticed that there is quite a discussion going on in the comment of the "Life isn't fair" post that I did about Tara and Connor's hair. I am sensing a bit of hostility...I just want it to be known that it is 95% Mike's doing! It was 100% but in the humidity, I have to admit that it is quite cute. But, the idea was that I would put a vote on the blog and go with the results. You will notice to the right that the DO NOT cut it's won! Now I have no leg to stand on with Mike. So Carol, please know that it is all your son!

Oh and I have heard from a few people now that they or someone they knew had soft red hair until they cut it. And then it was that hard brittle red hair.

Piston Cups!

Yea! This morning Connor woke up with all is Piston Cups! For those of you that have no idea what I mean, on the Cars pull-up training pants, they have little Piston cups that disappear if they get wet. AKA if the kids pee on them. Connor woke up once last night to go pee. And this morning, he still had all of his Piston Cups! Way to go Connor! So now the question is, do I get rid of the training pants at night and just go for the gold? I mean obviously he is going to have some accidents so the question is, am I ready to deal with that in the middle of the night?

Day 2 of PT

Day 2 of Potty training went very well. We had only one accident! Yea Connor!

Successful yet frustrating as heck day!

So potty training has been the one thing that I have been dreading most as a mother. Today we conquered it! Well, kind of! I started out potty training them both. I had lots of salty snacks so they would drink lots of liquid so they would have lots of opportunities to go peeps in the potty. Connor did AMAZING!!! HE only had 3 accidents all day! They were all 3 on the way to the potty. Well, the last one was on our family walk and he was crying so it leaked a bit. But both the first and the second one I could tell he was trying to make it because he peed a bit in his pants and then he did a lot more in the toilet.

Child # 2 is either not ready (even though she asks me to go all the time) or she was mad that Connor was "winning" the competition. Connor went first and got candy. She was ticked at me the rest of the day. We only had one successful peeps and MANY accidents. Many of those MANY accidents were standing in front of the potty after sitting on it for 15 minutes or more! GRRR!! At nap time, I put her back in a diaper. I just couldn't handle both of them.

The most frustrating thing about the day is that my camera was out to document the day and it fell off of the mantle and BROKE!!!! ACCCCCCKKKKK!!!!! I am heart broken! YEA!! I just uploaded the photos up above and they work. So at least the camera takes photos. So it appears that it is just the screen on the back that is broken. And when I say broken, I don't mean cracked. I mean It is just black. I can't see a thing. Which is fine for taking photos (I still have the old fashioned peep hole) but not so fine when it comes to needing the on screen menu to delete photos after uploaded to my computer or for setting the timer or things like that. GRRR!! So it looks like it will be no fancy work for me. My birthday, mother's day and our anniversary are next month but I have already asked for a computer for those to add to this one that is very SLOW due to my many programs and low budget processor that we bought. If I am going to do my scrapbooking online, I need it to be faster so I will sit and do it without wanting to tear my hair out b/c it is so slow!

Today was exhausting. It was promising but definitely exhausting! I just have to remind myself that it is going to get better and easier each day with him... And then, I get to start with her!

A few more things...

Some of my Tara favorites:
I love when you ask her a yes or no question...ie. Do you want some milk? Instead of answering yes, she says "ok!"

Instead of saying thank you for things, she says "welcome."

She is also into the "I help" "I cook" and I do it" phase.

Last week Connor and Tara helped me make dinner. We made the Heavenly Pear Jello salad from our family cookbook the Bodell Bistro. I pulled the jello out of the fridge right before dinner and then got pulled away by crying Zetta. When I came back, Tara was digging into the Jello salad with a measuring cup. She looked up at me and said "I cook."

Last night I went down into the kitchen to find Tara on a chair that she had pushed over to the counter digging into a pan of brownies. I walked closer to find that she had finished them off! "yummy Chocolate!" she said

She loves to dance! Especially when Grammy sings "dance little dolly" to her.

It is funny though, because despite her love for everything princess (even though she has never seen a full princess movie), dolls, cooking, shoes, and pretty hair, she is still her daddy's little tom-boy who loves to ride bikes, play in the dirt and jump in the puddles!

She really is growing up so fast!

Tara's Baby

Tara has become very interested in her babies this past 2 weeks. We found the box that had her doll stroller in it. When I got it out, I could not put it together fast enough. She was so excited! She has carried or pushed her babies everywhere. Yesterday, it was so cute! For Christmas, she was given a doll from a friend that has a second outfit (pj's). The outfit has hung with the original strings in the little bag it came in since we got it. I don't know if she never noticed it, or if she just never really cared about it or if she has just gotten into "playing dolls" recently or what. But she brought in the bag with the PJ's and her baby and said "mommy help baby pj's." She was so excited as we changed the babies clothes. I totally started to tear up! My baby is so grown up! It is a good thing I have another one!

Life Isn't Fair

Some people are blessed with beautiful locks of hair:Others are not so fortunate. Tara has very thin stringy hair. I can now put it in pig tails which is pretty darn cute. But after nap time she looks like this:Oh and then there are the times that I do it cute in pigtails and we get in the car and she pulls them out and she looks like the above photo too! That is always fun for church!

Strong Will...

Tara is quite the strong willed child. I used to see kids out with their parents dressed in hideous outfits that the children insisted on wearing. I always thought, that won't happen to me. I am going to show my child who is boss! Boy was I wrong! I definately have to pick my battles with this strong willed little girl! This is the outfit she picked out the other day:
On days when we are staying home, I let her pick out her clothes. On days when we are going out, I wear the pants! But man, it is not easy!

Drama Queen

Tara is quite the Drama Queen! She makes this face that you just have to laugh at:but then she will follow right away with this:
she is a crack up when she fake cries.

Pretty Pink Pen

I went to Utah for the sealing of my Nephew Cole the beginning of April. I took Zetta with me and left my cute husband at home with Connor and Tara. Apparently Tara made a visit to daddy's office and escaped with a pink marker:
She was very random about what she colored on. It was the downstairs wall right outside Mike's office, the street toy in the upstairs playroom, and a plastic case in my bathroom. It could have been a LOT worse. If I had pictured her with a marker with 5 minutes alone in my house, I would have pictured marker all the way up the stairs, on all the doors and every toy. This is why I don't keep ANYTHING to write with below 4 feet in my house! No markers, crayons, pens or even pencil! My sister in law Ashley was talking on her blog about how she leaves a stack of used papers for her daughter Leland to draw on the backs of...NOT ME!!! That would require having some sort of writing utensil accessible to her too!

Shoes

Tara has always been infatuated with shoes. I think she gets this from her Uncle Chuck! Anyway, from the time she was old enough to get her point across, she would always want her shoes on. We would get her up from a nap and she would point to her feet. Now she very clearly says "shoes" first thing when she gets up. A good friend of mine, Karen Hill, sent her two pairs of princess shoes, Jasmine's pink sparkley shoes with gold tassels and Tinkerbell's green sparkley shoes with white puff balls on them. She LOVES them! The problem is that the Jasmine ones fall are now a bit small and fall off every 3 minutes. But she keeps insisting that we put them back on her! The other day she would not leave the house in anything but her Tinkerbell shoes so she ended up wearing her green tinkerbell shoes to Walmart. She had so many ladies come up and comment on what beautiful shoes she had. (Thank you ladies for fueling the fire!)

If is isn't her princess shoes, it is mommy's shoes:
Sometimes even daddy's shoes!

Now for Tara Mei

I did many posts on the life of Connor las week. Now I want to write a few things about the life of Tara Mei...

Fun Game...Pictionary Telephone

Remember that game telephone? The one where you sit in a line or a circle. The first person thinks of a phrase and whispers it into the next person's ear and so on until the last person reveals what they heard and you see what the phrase has become? We had a small group party for our church and played games at someone's house. They played a fun version of this game. There was 8 people so we each got a stack of 8 blank papers. (about 1/4 sheet of 8.5 X 11 paper.) On the first page, everyone wrote a phrase or saying. Then you passed the papers to the next person in the circle. The second person would have to read that phrase and then flip that page to the back. On page 2, the second person would draw a photo of that phrase then pass to the 3rd person. The 3rd person would see the photo, and then flip to the next page and write on pg 3 a phrase that went with that photo. This goes around until you end up with the photo of what your phrase has become. It was quite funny! Try it some time.

igoogle.com

So I had heard of Google Reader but I just found out about igoogle.com. This is a really coolio site! just go to igoogle.com and check it out. You can set it up so your homepage on your computer shows many things at once. My igoogle page has the following:

• google reader- tracks all of the blogs I read so it will flag me when a new post is made by any of you
• gmail- shows me if I have new emails in my gmail account
• date and time
• world clocks- you can put in time zones and it keeps a clock of all those times. I have CA/NV, UT, NC and Ireland
  
• birthday reminder- you input all of the birthday's you want reminders of and it will do a count down of them all.
• To do list- and typing this post is not on it. Neither was setting my mom and dad and mike all up with their own igoogle pages.
  
• Weather
• driving directions- has a to and from field and will give you google map directions
• Movie Times- gives me the times and locations for movies in my area
• Calculator-
  
• dictionary
• New Clips- tells me the headlines of the latest news
• LDS Temples- Gives me a new photo each day of an LDS Temple
  

You can also have it tell you your stock portfolio or your favorite comic or even have your favorite game. I had frogger on mine but I was spending more then the time I should on it.

It is pretty cool. I am impressed. I am liking it much better then my yahoo home page.

Connor Bang!

We had our first Biking incident last night. Connor fell and his his eyebrow. Ouch! This was about 15 minutes after it happened. This morning it is very purple.

Time Out Daddy!

On Monday night when I got back from my trip to Utah, I was walking up the stairs holding Connor's hand. He looked up at me and said "Mom. No go back to airport ok?" Then a few steps later he said "I missed you." It was very sweet. He takes good care of me. Yesterday in the car I started to cry a bit b/c I had had such a great time with my family in Utah and I was missing them. Connor said "mommy, stop crying. Be happy!" Then he continued to remind me of all of the things there are in life to be happy about. "Look mom! An airplane. You happy to see airplane?" "Look mom! Chicken! You happy to see chicken?" and about 8 other items to be "happy" about. Then about 2 hours later, he asked me if I was happy to see something. When I replied yes, he said "are you happy now mom? Daddy was naughty! Daddy needs to go to time out!" Apparently he thinks daddy is the one that makes mommy cry.

New Bike

Also at this garage sale, I got a bike for Connor and one for Tara. We have done a lot of bike riding. They love to be outside. We didn't do a lot of outside stuff in Vegas so they are loving this. He rides up and down the driveway again and again. As you can see, our house is in a little inlet. It isn't quite a cul-de-sac but it is an inlet. In the middle of the inlet, there is a man hole. I told him he can't go past that circle. So he will ride right out to the circle and then scoot his bike around and come back.

Monkey George

Speaking of reading books, his favorite is Monkey George (aka Curious George). Can you tell we read these a lot?

Like Father Like Son

Connor loves his dad. He loves to play with him and be like him. The other day he put on his dad's hat and said, I put on daddy's hat. He loves playing soccer outside with daddy in our new huge backyard that has GRASS! He loves it when daddy reads books to him.

Where's Connor? Where's Tara?

Connor and Tara are really into cubby holes to hide in. This is them inside one of the kitchen cabinets before I filled it with stuff. I also bought them a tent at the garage sale for $1. Best Dollar I ever spent. Connor loves to just sit in there and play his computer (that I got at the garage sale for $5. Best $5 I ever spent.) He has done so well with his alphabet thanks to that computer. It was really funny. The other day I asked him where dad was. He said he was downstairs working. Then he told me he was going to go work. He went into his room and sat at his Little Tikes Desk. Then he looked up at me and said "I need my computer! Where is my computer?"

Humidity

Humidity does wonders for Connor's hair. One day when we were biking, it was VERY humid. This is what his hair did. You really don't want to know what mine did!

Trains, Trains and More Trains- Connor

Connor loves everything Trains. Tonight as I was putting him to bed, he was snuggling with 3 of his trains. I said here is Thomas and James (a blue train and a red one. I was impressed that I knew which ones were which colors. "No mom! That is Edward and Mike!" Sure enough, I had picked the wrong blue and red train. I flipped the trains over to see that it wasn't Thomas and James but it was Edward and Mike. Funny Kid!

More Trains! There is a set of train tracks by our house. One day when we were driving over the tracks I said I should look up the train schedule and find out when it comes by here so we can see the train. He said "we go back and see trains today mom?" about every day for 2 weeks. After two weeks, we were driving to return our rental car. I was following Mike in the other car and there was a train. The one time I couldn't pull over to let him watch it b/c I had forgotten my cell phone and Mike was too far ahead to see me pull over. "My train, my train Connor sobbed as we drove away."

Backpack, Backpack! -Connor

Connor is really liking Dora right now. I got a pink backpack at a garage sale last week. He has worn it EVERYWHERE despite the fact that daddy says "boys don't wear pink!" I told him we needed to go to the store and buy him a green or blue backpack. He reminded me everyday for a week. "We go to store today to get green/blue backpack for Connor?" Finally when I was in Utah for the weekend, I got an ugly Backyardagains backpack for $2 at Toys R Us. Now they each have their own backpacks. But for some reason, Tara's is still full of Connor's Thomas Trains.

Fix Sandwich- Connor

He wants me to fix everything! Including a broken Sandwich. He doesn't understand that you can't just fix somethings. Sometimes this is a problem. Like one day when I cut his sandwich in half and he didn't want it in half that day. He kept telling me to put it back together. It is nice to know that he thinks of me as a super hero.

Connor Loves Zetta

Connor is such a sweetheart. He is such a good big brother...to Zetta. He is a good brother to Tara too...sometimes. The two of them want the same item too often. But the way he acts toward Zetta just melts my Heart! He is always wanting to hold her or "snuggle" her. Today when I told him it was time to take a nap, he said "ok, but I snuggle Zetta in Connor's bed first?" So I walked up the stairs with him and laid her in bed next to him. They both enjoyed the snuggle time. When I make my smoothies in the morning he will yell "Shhhh! Mom! Zetta sleeping!" When we are getting out of the car, he tells me to get Zetta first. Yesterday, he wanted Zetta to play in his tent with him. When he talks to her, he talks in a high pitched voice.


It is also a little funny how ticked Tara is that she is not the only love in Connor's life. OK, it is also a bit sad too.

So many things to do...so little time!

I have so many things that I want to do and not nearly enough "Mitzi time" to do it! I want to blog so many stories to remember them always. I also would like to finish my baby announcements and work on the kids scrapbooks. I am also working on an online scrapbook for my mom.

I decided that my announcements can wait. If I don't blog these memories now, I will never remember them. So here are a whole bunch of posts in a row:

The News

Connor has been watching WAY too much TV while mommy has been unpacking the reasons I know this are because:

1. He has learned how to use the Tivo remote to turn on Dora.
2. Yesterday he was watching Dora live on our upstairs TV and he went downstairs to get the Tivo remote and brought it back up and said "I turn Dora on upstairs mom." He doesn't understand the concept of live TV vs. Tivo TV
3. This morning he just turned on the TV and said "I watch News mom." Sure enough, news came on when he turned the TV on. Seriously, how does my kid know that the news is on in the morning at 8am?

I am so greatful for educational shows like Dora and Super Why so mommy doesn't feel quite so guilty. Goal for today, let the kids ride bikes for at least an hour.