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.