The Harvey Family: April {2016}

This month Brett:

eats 3 fruit pouches for breakfast every morning as soon as he gets out of bed. He is not a very good eater these days. He doesn't eat anything with protein in it. He'll try a bite of meat (normally with dinner) and he'll chew it for 5 minutes and then refuse to swallow it. So dinners never seem to fill him up and then he wakes up at 5AM and is too hungry to go back to bed (this is the only time where it would be nice to still be nursing) so he just wiggles around and fusses until he's allowed to get up around 6:30. Then he comes darting out of the bedroom requesting fruit pouches with his sign language that we made up for them.
is down to one nap. He normally takes his nap from about 12:30-2PM because he falls asleep on the way home from picking up Blake from school. If we're in the car too long in the morning after dropping Blake off at school, he's also been known to fall asleep on this car ride. He's almost always still tired in the mornings because he wakes up too early because he's hungry. We're getting the boys sleep times more aligned at least which makes nighttime a little easier (I think). They go to bed between 7:30/8PM and "wake up" (get out of bed) at 6:30AM.
likes salmon. Well I thought he did. We've had it a couple times this month and I was so excited that we might have found a protein food for him to eat, and then he did the "chew it for 5 mins then spit it out thing" the other night so I guess I'm not so sure now.
is a parrot these days and will repeat almost anything. He especially loves repeating anything that Blake says and he is getting really good at it. A lot of what he says is understandable but obviously a whole lot of words he says can only be recognized by either me or Blake since we're around him the most. One of my favorite words he says now is helicopter, it is adorable!
is talking in sentences. He definitely puts 2 and 3 word sentences together and they don't have connector words unless it is a common phrase that he hears all the time like "be right back" and then he'll say the whole phrase. He's been getting frustrated a lot because he wants to do things by himself and we couldn't figure out why he was throwing tantrums, so we told him if he wants to do it he has to say "Brett do it" and about 20 minutes later an issue came up and he totally said it!
can do 12 and 24 piece puzzles by himself. He was mastering all the shape puzzles so I decided to introduce jigsaw puzzles just to see what he could do and he just took off with them. He would do the 12 piece ones over and over and over until he basically had them memorized and once it seemed like he'd done them a million times, I brought out the 24 piece ones for a challenge. He did a couple of those enough times with help that he ended up being able to do them on his own too! I was shocked when he did it while I was packing up for our trip to Tennessee. I'm really looking forward to doing giant puzzles with him as he gets older.
finally goes to bed at night by himself. The few sessions of sleep training we've done along the way have been so painful that we kept putting it off. I figured with our trip to Tennessee looming, that it was time to try again since we wouldn't have his rocking chair on our trip. I was shocked when he did amazing the first 3 nights! I told him step by step what we were going to do and showed him that it is the same routine that I do with Blake and he was totally ok with it. Now, instead of having the boys get ready separately, we all get ready at the same time which has helped a little with the teeth brushing issues. He's slowly getting better and more cooperative there.
can jump. He has had the urge to jump like crazy so he's been practicing a lot. He loves to jump while saying the word "jump" and has recently started counting to 3 while jumping.
says "poop" all the time. He thinks it a hilarious answer to almost any question. (what do you want for dinner? what song should we sing while we get you out of the bath? which pillow do you want to lie down on?) He'll even scoop up a pretend handful of it and try and feed it to you with a devilish look on his face and I'll ask what am I eating? And he'll say "poop" and laugh his evil laugh. Once he gets Blake going with the laughing, they're unstoppable.
sees pictures of girls and calls them Kynli (Kin-ee). After we got back from Tennessee he would see pictures of girls in books and on TV and just call them Kynli because he had such a great time with his cousins on our trip.
counts up to 4, then he'll skip 5 and count the rest of the way to 8. He surprised me out of the blue one day with counting something on his plate. He had been counting 1,2,1,2 and finally he just had a switch flip and he counted to 4! We're still working on it but he seems to know the numbers just hasn't practiced saying them enough yet. He has very little interest in learning his letters, but the numbers and colors seem to have his interest lately.
can drink from a cup without a lid. I normally just let him have a dixie cup when I'm drinking my kombucha and give him a tiny bit. He isn't perfect yet but he'll have it mastered soon. He's much too unpredictable to let him drink out of a cup that way all the time so he'll be using sippy cups for a while I'm sure.

This month Blake:

is really into the tv show Mighty Machines on Netflix. It is pretty much our go-to show right now and it is pretty much requested as soon as Blake gets out of bed and at every meal or any moment where I don't have something else planned. Brett seems to like the intro music but isn't as into the show itself and will keep asking for different episodes so he can just hear the music again (I'm really tired of the intro music now).
got into Bill Nye the Science Guy for a few days but since Brett doesn't like it, he'll scream and fuss if Blake watches it.
stopped taking the Atarax. He was getting really cranky (I think from being tired all the time) and it didn't seem to make any difference in keeping his itching away so it only made sense to give up on it.
quotes: "I love you so much Brett, all the way to the moon and back." "That's the special thing about me, I can blow my own nose."
had some crazy bad allergies. His poor eyes started getting itchy and red just before our trip up to Tennessee and we forgot to bring his prescription eye steriods and while we were up there and the poor boy was miserable and his eyes ended up bright red and swollen. We ended up keeping him on Benedryl while we were up there just to keep him comfortable. We still don't really know if it was Tennessee or Florida allergies that made it so bad. We were outside for a lot of our trip which is different than normal for us. We rarely spend that much time outside in Florida because it is either too hot or buggy so it could've just been the amount of time we spent outdoors in general this time of year. Interestingly, his prescription eye medicine was filled almost exactly a year ago so it seems likely that it is just an allergy that happens this time of year.
helps Chris on the computer. Chris recently decided to move his music collection from CDs to the computer and he taught Blake how to do it so now he has been helping make the new digital collection.

Pics:

Brett was very busy making something in his little oven. So cute!

Brett says "Bubba back" and points to his back so Blake will get on top of him.

The new Spinnyo game the boys got is really cool.

Some shots of them playing nicely together. =)

So sweet playing with the robot.

*Love*

Blake requested photos of him and Brett (and his foot).

The newest obsession in our house is corn on the cobb. Sadly I think they boys' tummies don't like it nearly as much as they do.

I was impressed by how well they did. Brett eats every last kernel and then grabs Blake's and finishes his off too.

The boys making a birthday present for Daddy. I think this was Brett's first time finger painting and they loved it!

And the final products!

Brett attempting some of Blake's mosaics.

The mirror wall in the playroom has gotten out of control. I tried just putting things out of Brett's reach but then both boys decided to hang their own things in the space below so now there is almost no mirror left.

The playroom looks like this quite a bit lately. There are always multiple puzzles all over the floor.

I'm not sure why they have to play the monster trucks on the table, but I guess it's more fun when they get to the end of the track and go crashing to the floor.