The Harvey Family: March {2016}

This month Brett:

likes eating oatmeal for breakfast. This kid would live on fruit pouches if we let him so when he wouldn't eat Sunbutter or any other normal protein filled breakfast option I decided to try oatmeal. I don't like it chunky so I like my oats ground in a coffee grinder so this is how he eats it, topped with maple syrup. It's quite delicious if I say so myself.
takes out and brings in the trashcans from the curb. He is definitely in the middle of a phase where he wants to do a lot of things himself. He tries to take out the trash but most of the time it's too heavy for his little body to control. However, after the cans are empty, he has no trouble getting them back up to the house and he even parks them in the garage with the handle facing out. I had no idea how closely he paid attention to that!
has been talking a whole lot more. He's even putting together sentences. The other night he said "Dada, more blah" which means he wanted Daddy to play the Baby Einstein video again as soon as it ended. He especially likes to mimic sentences that people say. He'll get a lot of the sound right too. He loves the alphabet song and will sing the ending part with me "Now I know my ABC's...".
has to have 2 spoons every time he eats something the requires a spoon. This is mostly oatmeal (oh-mic) these days. He'll ask for a spoon so I'll give him the kid sized spoon, and he'll say "one more" and that means I need to hand him the smaller baby sized spoon (which actually does fit in his little mouth the best, plus it is good to make sure he doesn't scoop too much).
got a new bed. His portable crib was getting pretty small, especially once we added in a pillow. He never seemed to want to put his head on it so he was down to a really small area to sleep in. Now that Blake got a new bed, Brett got the crib handed down to him. It is nice and roomy and he seems to like it! He got a new flannel pillow case too that he will rest his head on every now and again.
is down to 1 nap. He has phased out the morning nap unless we are in the car for a while and that is normally only on the days where we drop off Blake at school and then head over for his MyGym class. I try and keep him snacking or reading books so that he'll stay awake. Sadly, 11:30ish is his prime nap time it seems like so he definitely can't make it all the way back to pick up Blake without falling asleep on that day and then he's up once we pick up Blake. Most days he's been going down around 1ish and he'll sleep 1.5-2 hours.
still hates having his teeth brushed. Even with his new electric toothbrush and eye teeth in he still puts up quite the battle. He's seen Blake get his teeth brushed a couple times now and there is a hint of copycat so hopefully he gives in sooner than later.
won't let me set him into his car seat. He has to climb into the front seat of the car and then climb to the back and get in his seat that way while I stand waiting next to his seat. Most times he stops along the way to mess with some AC settings on the dashboard and then once he makes it to the back, he'll sit down on the cup holders for a minute and try and engage Blake in some sort of conversation.
started wearing size 5 diapers at night. He was in size 4 Pampers Swaddlers and he kept getting his clothes wet in the middle of the night so things have been much better since the move thankfully. He was waking at 4am and I'd have to change his clothes and diaper in the dark and hope to not wake him up too much so he'd go back to sleep.

This month Blake:

has loved watching Leap Frog videos and Taratabong (the melodities) on Netflix. Most recently he started watching Mighty Machines (which was after a lot of fussing and him saying he'd hit me on the knee if I put it on). There really aren't any shows on regular tv that interest him more than being background noise.
loves salsa music. I had a country station preset in the car that I hadn't turned on in a few weeks and when it was time to try it as a last resort, we realized that the station had changed to salsa music. Blake loves it and requests that we play it in the car all the time now. A lot of the upbeat stuff is refreshing, I must admit. =)
got a new bed. Since Brett needed the crib passed down, we got Blake a new big boy bed. He seems to be sleeping so much better and it is great that I can sit on the bed with him!
got the chicken pox vaccine last month when there was a breakout in the public school system in our county. We took both boys to get them together in case one had a contagious reaction. Blake is old enough to know that shot are supposed to be scary so he wasn't too happy about it, but Brett took it like a man and didn't even flinch.
funny quotes: "Are you serious?!", "Was that hilarious or what?" (Brett always replies: "What.")
wants to do art 24/7. He started making space in the pantry that he called his "drying rack" and he'd end up with like 10 different pieces of art in there at a time. This started getting in the way of food so I found a way to make him a drying rack online that used some wire storage cubes and zip ties. Now he has his very own drying rack with 10 spaces and he feels compelled to keep them full all the time.
has pretty much dropped his nap. There were 2-3 days where he just fought his nap so badly that we ended up just giving up and switching his bed time to be earlier. He now sleeps roughly 7:30/8PM-6:30/7AM. He finally is following the alarm clock that turns green when he's allowed to get out of bed (6:30AM).

Pics:

After I took Blake's 4 year old pictures, we took a few with Mimi and the boys.

Gotta love the personalities.

Brett's new bed. It is much roomier than his old one!

And Blake's new big boy bed. We just got a mattress and a bunky board so that it wouldn't be too high off the ground. He absolutely loves his new bed and I think he's sleeping much better in it. I'm really loving that I get to snuggle with him before bed at night too. It wasn't as much fun when the weight limit of the crib was 50 lb or something and I had to reach over the side rail to rub his back before bed.

To celebrate getting new beds all around, we went to JoAnns and picked out fabric for new pillow cases. Brett wanted "hoo-hoo" owls, and Blake basically picked the same fabric as last year but with different color arrows.

Either fighting over the same car or riding it together.

Brett loves to help vacuum.

Blake never has to sit in time-out alone if Brett is around...

If Blake gets to use glue, so does Brett apparently. He's really getting the hang of it surprisingly.

Art time, all the time.

The stained glass artwork that Blake got for his birthday that he made.

Dying Easter eggs was a little stressful this year. Blake was fine, but Brett did a lot of high altitude dropping and trying to stir the eggs in the cups which resulted in a lot of splashing.

The eggs did turn out really pretty though. Sadly, I still never cook the eggs enough so they were only soft boiled. So much for all the "perfectly cooked hard boiled egg" tutorials online.

So the easter egg hunt at Blake's school wasn't exactly a "hunt" as much as it was a "clean up". This was the pile of eggs for the 3 and under group (we figured it would just be easier to have the boys go together). All the eggs were empty so you just got as many as your basket would hold and then you took them back to the church and dumped them in a big container and picked up a little goody bag on your way out.