The Harvey Family: October {2015}

This month Brett:

loves veggies. I call him the vegetarian since he rarely will eat more than one bite of meat but he'll eat tons of veggies and rice (he's obsessed with sticky rice which is a nightmare to clean up) and fruit. I cook most of our veggies in bacon grease and it really makes them super tasty. After dinner he always has a shiny face from where he has gotten grease all over his hands and rubbed them all over his face (either from trying to get finger food in his mouth or from just rubbing food on his face or hair just because he wants to make sure to keep me busy by cleaning him off).
sways to music. I can't tell yet if he can pick up the beat but he is so cute when he hears music and he starts to sway or bounce up and down a little bit. He knows I'm watching him most of the time so he'll smile and look my way for a reaction.
got his room finally fixed up. We got new wood floors put in his room and fixed up the baseboards ourselves (which was way more work than it was worth) so we'll be moving him back in there very soon. We chose wood because it was the least likely flooring option to off-gas but it had a smell so we decided to let it air out for a few weeks before moving him back into his room.
says uh unh all the time and shakes his head. I'm not completely sure he means "no" when he does this, but sometimes he does. At MyGym he'll say it if someone new looks at him or even tries to talk him him. He definitely has a bit of "stranger danger" going on right now.
drops his head and looks up at you with a blank stare. He gives this look a lot and it is pretty hilarious. This normally follows his head shaking: "uh unh" then stare. Clearly he has a lot he wants to communicate but we haven't broken the talking barrier with him yet.
says a few words but everything else is "dudin". I guess this is the equivalent of Blake calling everything "ck" before he had his language explosion. I've had minimal luck getting him to make other letter sounds like P, C, T and L but he's good with M, D, and B sounds. Some of the newer words he's been saying include trash (ash), balloon (da-dudin), ball (bah), and lizard (ll-zudin or something like that, it's always a little different but starts with an L). He also says "woof-woof" when he sees a dog or any other animal.
is starting to get the hang of puzzles. He can figure out where a piece goes a lot of the time but has trouble spinning it around until it fits just right. Although he has had a few days where he even gets the second step working right. I keep hoping one of my children will want to do jigsaw puzzles with me one day!
started a new sleeping schedule. In an attempt to make bedtime earlier and have nighttime sleep be more smooth we decided to shift around the nap schedule a bit. Ideally, we'd like to get Brett sleeping for 1.5 hours or so right after lunch, but with all the car rides taking Blake to and from school he will normally fall asleep in the car sometime in the morning but it is rarely for more than 30 mins and then he has a really hard time keeping his composure long enough to make it to bedtime without another short nap at least. We've moved bedtime up to 7:30-8 and he's been doing better making through most of the night. He still can't make it much past 5AM without waking up and wanting to nurse although he's made it to 5:30AM before. After that he goes back to sleep (sometimes after a LOT of tossing and turning) until 6:30AM or so (sometimes as late as 7:30AM). The other change at bedtime has been that Chris puts him to sleep and it seems to be going well.
constantly pours things in and out of containers. He will do it with any toy and any container, even having food in a snack cup is fun because he'll go find a bowl or cup to transfer the food back and forth. Of course the water table outside and the bath allow for tons of fun as he pours water into containers as well.
got sick the end of the month and hasn't wanted to eat much solid food so he's been eating a ton of pouches. Good thing he likes veggies since he can get fruit and veggies really easily with the pouches.
likes to hide then jump out and say BOO (bah). He saw his brother hide behind the shower curtain and he of course had to try it and now he'll hide behind that, the vertical blinds, and even hanging clothes and he'll start giggling and show himself so you can tell him what a good hiding spot he found.

This month Blake:

loves helping me with the recyclables in the kitchen. We have a piece of counter where the recyclables pile up before getting moved to the recycling bin in the pantry, and Blake keeps an eye on the counter and will ask to help move the recyclables to the pantry. After the bin fills up there, he and Brett help me fill up a trash bag that then gets moved to the garage. After a few bags get filled up in the garage then we take them to the recycling center and dump them in. Blake likes to help me do this to, while I park the car in such a way that Brett can see from his car seat. Blake has a t-shirt with a recycling symbol on it and he likes to wear that on the days we drive the bags to the recycling center... it's pretty cute.
sneaks up on us like a ninja. Thinks it's funny when he can walk really slowly and quietly up next to someone and surprise them when they notice he's there. This isn't as funny for me when I'm trying to get him out the door for school and he's trying to sneak up on me from somewhere really far away. He's also gotten a lot better at hide and seek because he'll actually keep quiet instead of laughing or making noises to give away his hiding spot.
went to the doctor for his 3 year checkup. He did great with his hearing and vision tests! The doctor said only about 10% of 3 year olds could do the test where they put on the headphones and you have to lift your right hand if you hear a tone in your right ear, or left hand if you hear it in your left ear. For the vision test he had to stand back and read the letters on a really tiny line and he was perfect (except for one letter I think). We colored on the table liner paper to pass the time and he did great with everything. He finally got his MMR shot and there were definitely tears, but he got a cookie as soon as we got to the car as a reward for his bravery and good behavior and everything was good after that. He weighed in at 35 lb and measured 38.75" tall.
is obsessed with using the bathroom in every store we go to. As soon as we enter a store he asks to go the bathroom, not because he has to go, but because he wants to see what it's like. We can go from one store to the next and he'll repeat the process. I don't know what prompted him to go from being scared of all bathrooms to wanting to experience them all. He does still walk into them with hands over his ears and scanning the whole place as quickly as possible to see if there are any hand dryers. I think it might have stemmed from school where they went into a big bathroom on their way to the playground and he really liked it.
has learned to do a ton of new things on his own: open his car door from both sides (inside and out), open the refrigerator door (by using his foot to push off the cabinet), put on his shoes (once he's told which one goes on which foot), and take off all his clothes on his own (his shirt was the hardest thing to take off).
says poo poo all the time. It's just something he says when he's bored or wants to annoy me. He'll just repeat it over and over in different voices that he thinks are funny.
wants to be funny all the time. He says things that he thinks are a joke or are funny and he asks if I think it was funny. Most of the time they are not. There are lots of things he does that are hilarious because he isn't thinking about being funny and I guess he likes that compliment and when he starts trying to be funny he ends up just being annoying because he'll ask over and over if each new little thing he does is funny.
wants to do art all the time. The child is obsessed with art. He likes doing paper stamps, stickers, cutting with scissors (a new skill that he's doing really well with), drawing with markers, and painting with fingers and brushes. If he has time, he immediately asks to do art. I'm pretty excited about it since I have always loved doing arts and crafts and hopefully we'll be able to do them together for years to come.
is starting to drop his nap. He doesn't get tired until about 4:30PM most days which is too late for a nap so we started letting him go without one and then putting him to bed earlier. The problem is that he won't sleep long enough at night to allow him to skip a nap for more than 2 days in a row. By the third day he is acting out from being overtired and if we're in the car after 1PM he'll pass out for sure. The best schedule for him these days is for him to have a shorter nap around 2:30/3PM.

Pics: My editing computer just broke so this is all we have until we get a new computer up and running. =(

We didn't get a good pic of all 4 Harvey grandkids, but here are 2 of the best 3 (the other one is stuck on my broken computer). Blake was clearly not into pictures this day.

He must've been concentrating really hard.

The 3 Musketeers.

Breelyn loved having a little baby to love on.

Peekaboo.

Brett enjoying the see-saw.

Brett and Breelyn on the see-saw.

These girls just loved having their own little baby to take care of.

Brett's updated room. Entering the room: before.

And after.

Toward the closet: before.

And after.

Brett is so excited to climb up on the kitchen chairs. I'm really hoping this excitement wears off soon. It's exhausting lying the chairs on their backs every time I have to leave the kitchen for something. They slide on the floor so I can't let Brett climb on them because he'll get up on the table and the chair will slide out from under him. We've already had a few close calls.