Still happy but not so fat

Devin went in for his 9 month well child last week and it was definitely not one of our best visits. Poor little guy hasn't grown since his six month appointment. He put on a whopping 6 ounces. I knew he was getting skinnier and I was crying that his skin didn't look like it was going to pop any more and that I could tell he had a neck, and I worried that he seemed soooo interested in food but wasn't (isn't) the champ eater I thought he would be, but I didn't expect no growth. Oh, and he has on and off diarrhea that concerned me also. The two might be related--food allergy?? It has yet to be determined. The upshot is that my concerns that I attributed to being an overly concerned parent were validated. His poop situation is not normal. His growth situation is not normal. I have yet to have his lack of food intake validated though. The doc thinks that he's getting enough food into his body but that he can't use it correctly. However, if I were going to make a prediction, I would guess there is some kind of food allergy going on (but not gluten or milk), and that there is something going on with his mouth also. Reason being he used to let his mouth hang open with his tongue hanging out like a puppy dog. Reason two being that he pockets food (the food sits in his cheeks like a chipmunk for a while before he can figure out how to swallow). Reason 3 he seems way too interested in food and previously was growing fast enough that what he intakes doesn't seem to be enough to me. For the meantime I've added Pediasure to his diet and I'm nursing him at night when he wakes up and hoping that will do some good until the root cause is addressed. Things to be grateful for: he is still the world's happiest baby and Mike made an awesome candy cane shaped stromboli for thanksgiving dinner b/c I was too fixated on Devin to do anything!!

Do you like our new family picture??

Pretty sweet, huh? Our photographer can even do things like grow you new hair. Mike's always wanted to be a rock star. "Unleash your inner rockstar." Thanks Disney Channel. You've totally inspired us.

Utah Trip

So at the beginning of October I we left for Utah so that I could experience some fall weather and do some fun fall things. We didn't do nearly as many fall things as I wanted, but we did get up to Sundance (in the middle of a HUGE rainstorm), we saw some awesome thunderstorms, we got to see family, Michelle got engaged, we went on walks, we went to parks, Michelle and I almost got blown away trying to run in a windstorm or microburst (whatever they are called), we had a family birthday party for Brayden, we saw Mandy and Eddie, we went to JDawgs (yum hot dogs), we went to Johnny Rockets (my brother's favorite burger place) we saw one of my favorite people ever at her beautiful house in St. George, we got to see three super fun cousins, and we watched a lot of DVDs in the car. How's that for the longest list/sentence ever. Unfortunately all these really fun events were a little too much for a 7 1/2 month old who really likes his sleep, and that resulted in me walking the halls and driving around my cousin's neighborhood all night long one night b/c that was the ONLY way I could get this little one to sleep. But I'm still glad we went. Hopefully Neal and Michelle don't regret agreeing to let us stay in their one bedroom apartment! Thank you sooooo much for letting us stay with you!! We had a great time.

Happy Birthday Brayden!

It is hard to believe we have a six year old. Brayden is a joy. He is sensitive, considerate, smart, attentive, huggable, athletic, tall, very afraid of getting hurt, accident prone, focused, loves to laugh, loyal, a daredevil, and kind.
Fun facts about Brayden are:
1. he is really good on a bike,
2. he loves everyone and really, really misses people when they are gone,
3. he is good at making Devin laugh,
4. he still gets slap-happy very easily,
5. he is the model student in his kindergarten class,
6. he's got a sweet spot for a little girl, Mia, that lives down the street,
7. he is very altruistic, he is always opening doors for people, sharing his stuff with people and looking out for his friends,
8. he is getting pretty excited about reading and loves practicing his sounds and the accompanying actions
9. he is really interested in singing
10. he's a fabulous swimmer and wants to do swim team in a little while.

Brayden and Caleb both had great birthdays, complete with a dinosaur party and way too many kids, and then separate family parties. Caleb got to have Brian and Alia over and Brayden got to celebrate it in Utah with almost everyone in my family. He was even a sport about sharing it with his aunt Michelle's engagement. Both these boys love comfort food for their birthdays. Caleb requested Sharon's homemade mac n cheese for his birthday dinner and Brayden wanted chicken pot pie. This year, aunt Michelle O. made the crust from scratch and I did the innards, and we were told it was the best chicken pot pie ever! Yay for us! And a Cherry boy birthday wouldn't be complete without an oreo ice cream cake. Yum! Yay for good food, good friends, and wonderful families!!

Happy Birthday Caleb

What to say about our big 4 year old?? He's crazy, happy, silly, fun, tenacious, determined, intense, loving, smart, motivated, easily distracted, craves physical attention, has a great memory, has an intense fear of fire right now, usually fearless, and adores his big brother. Some interesting facts about Caleb are:
1. He can count to 100 with a little bit of help;
2. He loves to do Brayden's homework with him;
3. He wants his eggs cooked the way aunt Michelle does them--with sea salt and folding;
4. He loves cooking. He gets right in there and watches and remembers, hence how he knows that Michelle folds her eggs and uses sea salt, which I didn't know;
5. He thinks "drowning" is fun. It makes him "warm." He flipped out of a floaty at a friend's pool and I jumped in and got him, and he was more careful afterwards, but no where near as traumatized as he should have been;
6. He loves to chat/communicate. He is constantly asking to call people on my phone, text, email, etc. He even told me he is a "chatter" like me. :);
8. He does not like his pants being too big around his waist, which most of them are, so he rolls them to get them tighter;
9. He wants to do everything by himself; please do NOT help, it will greatly insult him;
10: He loves to read. He looks at many books every night before bed and can not get enough of books.

Some notable quotables are:
1. I'm too tired to go to bed.
2. I like drowning, it was fun. It felt warm.
3. Caleb: "Dad, what are you doing?" Mike: "What does it look like I'm doing?" Caleb: "Torturing." (Mike was torching some creme brulee)
4. I was telling a Phineas and Ferb story and said "Meanwhile . . . " Caleb interrupted and said "No Mom, nice-while."

We love our crazy Caleb and have had a lot of fun trying to keep up with this busy, busy boy. He keeps us hopping, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Six months

Devin is officially six months old. And someone this weekend described him perfectly--that boy is fat and happy. He is a whopping 18 lbs. 10 oz. and is 28 inches long. So he's 90-something percentile for length and 70-something for weight, and his head is finally starting to catch up. It upgraded to the 37th percentile. He learned how to roll over just after I voiced my concerns that he wasn't moving to the pediatrician. I don't think he'll be a speed demon at reaching his milestones, but you have never seen a happier baby. We went camping this last weekend with a lot of Mike's family, and we just kept hearing comment after comment about how happy he was. Granted, he was in his element--being held all the time by adoring fans who showered him with hugs and kisses and smiling faces. How could you not be happy? Although, even without being in the limelight, he would be happy. The kiddo wakes up in the middle of the night with a blowout and he's still delighted to see you. Other interesting facts, he couldn't wait to get his hands on real food this weekend. We didn't start yet because we were camping but he sucked on a piece of my bread with relish (as in he was excited, I wasn't eating bread with relish on it that would be gross) and ditto with an apple and he stared at everybody's food nonstop. Also, he drools like crazy. The boys like to say "He drools like Charlie Thacker." It's become a little song. Sorry Sharon. I keep waiting for the teeth to pop out but they haven't yet. Devinator isn't sleeping through the night yet, but that's my fault. I'm a total pansy about it this time. I can't let him cry because he sounds so sad when he does and because I almost never hear him cry. But it's only once a night now, and soon, hopefully, I'll be tough enough to finish the job.

Caleb's preschool

So back in AA we had the BEST preschool ever for Brayden. He loved going every single day and they did great things and Brayden had a great time. Since we came to Tucson, we tried Joy School, which was an "epic fail." And so I've worked hard to find a different preschool for Caleb that would reach the gold standard that our AA preschool had set. While it isn't quite the same, the preschool we have now is fabulous!! The teacher is in our ward, has been doing it for forever and is incredibly creative. It is only two minutes away and every day I am amazed at the fun things Caleb got to do during preschool. They have had their faces painted, they have had a water play day, they have made lion headband/crown things, they have had berry days, food tastings, and all sorts of super fun creative crafts. Caleb comes home super happy every time and I was very pleased to find out the teacher was shocked that I was worried about Caleb hitting at school. I am so glad we found something that has worked so well.

Phineas and Ferb are gonna do it all

The group.

Can you say comatose?

Thank you projector.

I am a happy robot!

The clean up. Not bad.

Phineas and Ferb party!! The Disney Channel has been advertising the "longest day of summer" episode for weeks. A full hour of Phineas and Ferb and their race against time to tour the world and have the longest day of summer ever. So we decided we needed to commemorate the date and have a party. I sent out an Evite thinking we'd probably get half the kids and it would be a modest sized group. But everyone from the Evite came plus Brayden talked to some kids on the bus that of course had to come. Sooooo we ended up with a group of 24 kids!! It was awesome. We borrowed a projector and moved both our couches into the family room and put out a bunch of chairs. We ended up cooking 12 bags of popcorn through our hour in a half party. We passed out 2 bags of Skittles, plus of bag of fun-sized Butterfingers and Snickers. And the kids were enthralled. We had kids come in their pajamas and some brought something fun to cuddle with and some brought pillows and blankets. One girl came with a Perry the Platypus stuffed animal. Devin slept like a baby through the whole thing. And I even was able to give away our last two mint green chairs that are probably 50 years old. One of the moms thought they were super cute, so she became the proud new owner instantaneously. Our only casualty was two little boys who ran into each other on the driveway when leaving and gave each other goose-eggs over their eyes. Poor kiddos. But everyone was well behaved and watched the show and we even had a little dance party at the end. Caleb graced us with his Dufenschmirtz-I-am-a-happy-robot dance. I feel kind of bad that in the process he accidentally kicked a kid in the head who had fallen asleep on the floor, but this little boy was so tired that he didn't even wake up. I feel like the night was a huge success. We had a blast.

Kindergarten

Do you like how the school is bright pink? Pretty cool, huh? The southwest is C-RA-ZY!

Brayden started kindergarten a couple weeks ago. I've been waiting to post about it so I could capture a few happy faces on the camera, but now I'm content to just document it. Our first day was complete with drama in addition to the woes of starting school. We tried to meet up with one of Brayden's fearless friends for riding the bus to help Brayden be brave and missed them. They were at our house, we were at their house. You know how it goes. Then we missed the bus because Brayden was about to pee his pants. No biggy, school is five minutes away, and I was going to meet him there anyway to walk him to his class. So we go to school and my baby that never cries cried/screamed the whole time we were there. I don't really blame him though. It was like 105 degrees outside and I've been paranoid about keeping him in an air conditioned house and out of the sun and heat. So Brayden did get to see several friends on the playground before school started and I thought we were going to be okay. He lined up with his class and walked without me into his classroom. But during the 10 minutes it took me to get to his classroom with the hoards of other parents, he couldn't find his desk and freaked out and came barreling outside a bucket of tears. He finally got settled again, and the fire alarm went off. More tears. Finally they got resettled. Then I left, and promised him I'd be back to pick him up. After school when I asked him how his first day of school was he said "It was the worst day of school." I complimented him on his really ingenious rhyme and then listened to the woes.

Now that it has been a few weeks, he's doing much better for the most part. He didn't like the bus and begged me to pick him up from school, but we've worked out a deal that if he rides without complaining, I'll pick him up on Raytheon Fridays when Mike is home to babysit Devin. He likes his teacher who came and did an awesome home visit. She played LEGOs with him for 30 minutes. Sweet! And we've met a couple kids on our street that go to school with him and one is in his class. However, I still get to have long listening sessions where he cries about school--everyone treats him the worst, he wishes people were nicer, this girl kissed him and said she was in love with him, this boy kissed him and wouldn't stop (wierd), someone called him chicken pants, he does everything the teacher asks and doesn't get moved up to maximum power (behavior chart thing) and the bus is too loud. Most of these are okay, but he cried for probably an hour about the girl calling him chicken pants. And because one child called him a name, everyone hates him, he has no friends, he gets treated worse than anyone else, etc. This little boy is boiling over with emotions. We've discovered if he's hungry, these problems are overwhelming and all consuming, and if he's full they are relatively manageable. But still, this is a whole new world for us. I'm assuming Brayden will toughen up with a little bit of time and hopefully the whole world won't hate him if one girl calls him chicken pants.

Monsoons!!

Devinator in his cute rain jacket that I thought we wouldn't use until the winter.

This flooding occurred in about ten minutes.

So who knew in Tucson that it would get all rainy and humid and buggy? Certainly not me. But we have had some awesome rain/thunderstorms. There have been a couple torrential downpours where the street has flooded, our backyard has flooded and the washes filled up and swept shopping carts away. And then there has been just a bit of rain. The kind where it is really fun to go outside with an umbrella, or not if you want to get wet, and play because the rain cools it down twenty degrees and it actually feels good outside. And then there are dry thunderstorms. Like Saturday night when I went to the grocery store for some treats at 8 pm. I watched the sky light up over and over again on my drive home. There was not a drop of rain, but the sky was filled with sheet lighting that would highlight different storm clouds every couple seconds. It is really fun. And supposedly it will go through September. Bring on the rain.

Playing in the Water

So the summer activities in Tucson are a little limited--really, you just want to be in the water. We have been lucky enough to have a few different friends invite us over to swim in their pools, and there is a community pool just up the street that we haven't been to yet, and . . . we've turned our backyard into a pond. And our big, blue ball bucket has become a little pool to soak in. This is probably the boys' favorite past time. We probably do it a couple times a week, and the boys get super muddy and soaked. If we wait until the late afternoon to do it, our backyard becomes shaded and that helps bring the temperature down a bit. We've even had some friends be brave enough to try it with us. We even had a family of mostly girls join us--and they were so into it! It was pure entertainment for me watching these kids. One of the girls kept saying "I want to roll in the mud. I'm like a pig. I want to roll in the mud like a pig." My boys had so much fun that while this family was out of town, Brayden and Caleb kept prepping the backyard for the next time they came over. I still miss grass, but I'm glad the boys have found a way to be outside and have fun with the blazing heat.

Four Months Old

Here's Devin sleeping in his crib. His stats at four months old are 26 inches long and 16.1 pounds. That puts him at 85% for length and 75% for weight and his head is at the 22 percentile. He's sweet and smiley and cries very little. His whole face and body light up when you walk into the room and he does not like loud noises at all. Like when he's tired and I yell at the boys. That always makes him cry. Go me. Devin has discovered his hands, his toes, and loves to pull his legs up. He is starting to bite on things, including me. Ouch. Even with out teeth, ouch. He likes tummy time some of the time and when he gets too tired for it he cries instead of putting his head down to rest. He's super cute and we love him!

Behold, the Devinator

Devin with his cute third cousin Cameron. Although we ignore the "third" part. They are just cute cousins. Poor Camo wasn't very happy in the picture though.

The boys and I really like watching Phineas and Ferb on the Disney channel, and every episode Dr. Heinz Dufinschmirtz creates something "evil" and names it . . . inator (e.g., the shrinkinator, the ball-gowninator). Consequently, we have started calling Devin the Devinator, or when he's being particularly difficult we call him Devinsmirtz or Devin Dufinschmirtz, etc. Anyway, just a little explanation of the title.

So little Devin is not so little anymore (except for his head, which is 22 percentile while his body is around the 70 percentile). And he's discovering new things every day, like his thumb. He's starting to prefer his thumb to pacifiers and he's becoming very social. Today during church he was tired and sad, but he was so excited to see me smiling at him that he kept alternating between frowning with his eyes tearing up to smiling with his entire face and body. It was really funny. He tries to giggle, and he's starting to talk more and more. He likes to trick me at bedtime and even though he can't open his eyes all the way because he is so sleepy he will coo and ahh almost nonstop right before I put him in bed. I swear he's already thinking, if I'm cute enough she won't put me in bed. Nice try buddy. You're still going to bed. But I have to admit he does stall me for a couple minutes so I can enjoy his cuteness.

Father and son camp out

Father, son and twinners. We didn't plan it that way. I guess Mike and I both recognize good camping clothes.

Caleb at the campsite. It came complete with a lake. Yes, we did find a lake in AZ.

Brayden hiding under the ottoman b/c he was sad he couldn't go on the campout.
A couple weeks ago Mike and Caleb went on the ward Father/son camp out. Brayden was supposed to go, but he ended up getting sick. We figured a short night and being around lots of people probably wasn't a good thing to do when sick, so Braydo stayed home with me. I tried to make it fun for him--we ordered a pizza, sausage, his favorite kind, and rented a Diego movie from Redbox and had a slumber party in my room. He even got to watch his Diego movie again the next morning and we played sprinkler soccer in the backyard. The verdict on our great weekend--he still wished he could have gone camping with his dad. All my efforts for nothing! :) Whether he'll admit it or not, I think we had a great bonding experience. And I think Caleb was DELIGHTED to get one on one time from someone. Nothing makes Caleb happier than someone completely focused on him and talking to him. All in all, not what we planned, but I think a good memory. Hence, why I'm documenting it.

chocolate bowls

So I'm a sucker for dessert. Especially if it is chocolate. I found these fun little things on Bakerella and we decided to try them. You're supposed to make the pudding from scratch and supposedly it is "wicked good," but I went easy and just did jello instant pudding mix, which was definitely not wicked good. But the fun part was that to make the chocolate bowls that house the pudding, you melt the chocolate chips and than once it has cooled you blow up water ballons (no easy feat) and than dip the water balloons in the chocolate to create the bowls.

Here's the picture from Bakeralla of the balloons. I didn't get any pictures us doing that. But it was really fun to dip them. Of course we had many popped balloons at first. We think it was because the chocolate was too hot. But in the end Mike got several to turn out and we had fun putting on sprinkles. It was a good Sunday activity.

funny sleeping pictures

This is all the boys sleeping at funny angles at our sister-in-law's house Mother's Day weekend. Too bad this is the only picture I took that weekend. It was a really great weekend.


Caleb loves falling asleep to reading books at night. So one night he decided to park it in front of the bookshelf. This is how I found him the next morning.

"Mom, can I fight that kid?"

So this quote came from Caleb at the park yesterday. Obviously my answer was no. But the two things I found interesting about this question were: 1. Caleb wants to fight. I've always known he was scrappy, and this personality trait is still there. In fact, in play wrestling, Caleb took down a six-year-old last week. Our neighbor was red faced from exertion trying to get away when I made Caleb let go. 2. Caleb asked before attacking the other child. I think this is good news. He's showing restraint. I still worry that he will be the one coming home from school with black eyes and bloody noses and probably half the time it will be because someone wasn't fair to Brayden, but I see it as a positive sign that he asked first and that he obeyed. Incidentally, the other kid took a swing first and Caleb retaliated and than, I guess, wanted to take it further. At least he doesn't start the fights.

Michelle leaves

The best dessert I've ever had in my life. Chocolate mouse torte cake from Beyond Bread. Oh man, I'm in love.


Michelle was not familiar with dead weighting. She told me she never tried/failed to carry someone so heavy. I thought it was pretty funny.


We always try to look our best for self-taken portraits.

Since the end of September, we've been lucky enough to have my sister Michelle living with us. Last week she left for BYU Idaho, and we sure are sad to see her go. While she was here we did tons of fun crafts, she drew countless race tracks on our driveway with sidewalk chalk, she made wayyyy too many desserts, I got to take naps, we had more tears than I've ever seen (I am definitely not the emotinal type, so this was new for me), we had tons of free babysitting, we met several of the male single population in Tucson, we discovered what it was like to have a teenager staying out all hours of the night, and we shared many, many laughs and jokes.

On her last night here, I made Michelle skip institute and she and I went to Beyond Bread for the best dessert ever and than she helped me buy make-up. She knows all the ins and outs of that stuff and I don't know very much, and now that she's not here to do my make-up for me, I figured I better learn. So Mike has often commented that Michelle brings out the goofy side of me, and this night I was particularly sleepy and so I ended up quite slap-happy and goofy. It was a great way to end her stay with us. We're so glad she's in school and getting to start that new, exciting chapter of her life. Best of luck Michelle!

Baby blessing

My dad held Devin a lot for me this weekend. I believe at this point they were both asleep in the chair.

My dad with most the cousins.

Mike's dad with baby Maggie.

Most of the cousins about to play in the river in Sabino Canyon

One of the joys of being in Arizona is we are much closer to family. So when we announced our baby blessing, we were able to get Mike's dad, my dad, and both of Mike's sisters and their families in town for the blessing. It was super crazy to have so many people at our house but also a ton of fun and a really nice blessing. We love having family closer. We had great family talks, we hiked Sabino Canyon and we turned the sprinkler on in the backyard and the kids ate a ton of frozen gogurts. Devin wore a cute little white and blue tuxedo that my grandma made for Caleb's blessing. I didn't get a good picture of it, but it was cute!

April Fools Dinner

So this is a little behind the times, but I still wanted to post it. Most years I never remember to do anything for April Fools. But this year I was trying to cheer up a very sad Brayden one day and I told him about how our friend Sharon made a jello drink for April Fools and the girl she gave it to tried to drink it and it fell out onto her face. I embellished the details here for the sake of the story, and Brayden was gung-ho (sp?) about trying it out on unsuspecting Aunt Michelle. So for April Fools we had Michelle and her boyfriend Ivan over for dinner under the pretense that we were saying thanks to the both of them for helping soooo much recently. I felt kind of guilty because Michelle kept saying, "That's so nice. You don't have to do this. Can I do anything to help?" Haha, this isn't to be nice, it's to be funny! Well, no jello spilled onto anyone's face, and Mike thought for sure none of it would work, and I was totally late getting the food on the table, but I enjoyed our meatloaf/mashed potato frosted cake and our ice cream taco salad and our jello berry drinks. I think Michelle and Ivan did too.

One month old

Sabino Canyon

Last weekend we went to Sabino Canyon and did a six mile hike. We wanted to make it to the top, but I was only four weeks postpartum, and my hips couldn't take it. It was still a lot of fun. We've had a fair bit of rain this year, so the river that runs through the canyon was actually a river. It was high enough that it covered a lot of the bridges that you hike through. It was chilly water, but the weather was nice so our shoes dried quickly. At one point we stopped so I could feed baby Devin and the boys and Michelle (and Michelle's significant other Ivan) had fun throwing rocks in the river. I was kind of paranoid about Brayden because if he fell it could really hurt his broken jaw, but Ivan was really good about staying with Brayden and holding his hand. The actual hiking was on a paved trail, so we put the older boys in the double jogger and Michelle carried Devin in the bjorn. It was a great set up. I even took a jacket to put in between Brayden's face and the side of the jogger so that if we hit a bump Brayden's jaw wouldn't hit the medal bars on the side of the jogger. I really sound paranoid, but based on the comments the ENT made when we had Brayden's follow up appointment, I need to be this way. So this hike was really pretty and we actually saw green trees by the river. It reminded me a lot of Provo Canyon. One of the highlights was when we were near the end, all the bunny rabbits came out and we saw probably 10 or so in the last half mile of the hike. Thus far, it's probably my favorite thing we've done in Tucson. Thanks for being the camera man Mike!