The Harvey Family: April and May {2018}

This month Brett:

has been reading beginner books for a candy reward. It has taken forever to get him motivated to read, but candy seems to be enough to get him over the hump. He's starting with the Bob book series and we're VERY slowly making progress. If he would just put his stubborn mind to it, he'd be reading level 2 books by now.
loves Wonder Woman. He has been really into superheros since we've been playing the Marvel and DC Lego games. At some point he decided that he wanted to to Wonder Woman on the game all the time. When I asked him later what he wanted for his birthday he said he wanted a Wonder Woman t-shirt. I looked for a while but for some reason they don't make them for boys so I decided to get a red shirt and iron on transfer and made him a one-of-a-kind shirt. He loved it so much, he wore it for his birthday party and later told me that he "just loved it so much".
hates all his hand-me-down shirts that are solid colored or striped (basically anything that doesn't have a superhero on it, or is the color red). He asked for a whole new shirt wardrobe for his birthday because the only one he would wear is a green TMNT one. Thankfully he is all stocked up now.
wants to read superhero books before bed every night. One day at the library I saw a superhero book on the shelf and realized that it was such a perfect fit for the boys, so I grabbed a couple. The next time we went back, we filled up a whole basket of ~30 books or so. Then did the same the next visit. At some point in the near future we will have read all the DC and Marvel superhero books that the library owns, but for now we're enjoying learning the origin stories of all the superheros and getting to see what the non-Lego characters look like.
his favorite shapes to draw are hearts. There have been a lot of birthday cards, Mother's Day cards, and other random drawings lately that have been filled with Brett's hearts.
is done with diapers! One night I realized that he had been keeping his night diapers dry for a while and our morning routine of me running to the bathroom with him to catch the diaper that he would always throw somewhere, was getting old so I just told him that he would have to go last minute before bed, and then he needed to go first thing when he woke up and he's been just about perfect! It feels amazing to have reached this major milestone.
loves running. I think he would run a lot at the playground with his friends from school and now he just loves it. One day we went on a pretty big loop at the park and while Blake rode his scooter, Brett just ran. He has short legs so he has to move them a lot to get anywhere, but he is just so happy when he's running full speed with his blonde hair blowing in the breeze.
has had a terrible time with allergies. We had had him on Allegra to help with the usual runny nose stuff this spring but after one day where he went over to his friend Beckett's house, he came back with uncontrollably itchy eyes, sneezing, and it got worse from there. He ended up with a nasty cough (which the allergist thought was exercise induced asthma), red itchy bumps on his neck, face, arms, and legs, sneezing, runny/stuffy nose and his eyes were bothering him so much that they almost swelled shut and the whites of his eyes were red. We have had him on Benedryl during the day and eye drops as needed and we're finally feeling like things are under control. We've also been really consistent with getting him in the bath right after being outside and keeping sheets as clean as possible.
started drinking prune juice mixed into his apple juice/water mixture to help keep his system moving. He really likes the prune juice so that was an easy transition. Hopefully it keeps him regular once we finally wean him off the Myralax.

This month Blake:

started his obsession with Clash Royale. He uses our old Samsung GS4 which isn't running super smoothly these days, but he has somehow managed to get good enough on the game to get up to a high level as fast as or faster than Chris was able to get to the same point.
loves playing Lego Batman on our PS3. He keeps getting better at video games and he knows how to solve most of the levels on his own just by figuring out which character is needed to solve each problem that they encounter. It also helps that he can read all the screen prompts in his head.
favorite quote, "Because... why not?"
reads books in the car. If I put a few superhero books in the car next to his seat and we're going somewhere that is more than a couple minutes away, he'll usually grab one and read it.
can read basically anything and everything. He even finished his first chapter book in less than an hour. He is taking part in a couple of the library's reading programs because you can earn prizes and rewards that you can collect, and he loves collecting things. For the Mason Library, you color in a quarter of a circle for every 15 minutes that you read so he carries around a timer with him while he reads so each minute is accounted for. Each 15 minute block earns you a bead, and once you get enough they can be traded in for specialty beads to ultimately create your own necklace.
can add 3 digit numbers in his head. He has always been really quick at learning math, but even this surprised me. He can almost figure out answers before I can do it in my own head.
has become more recently obsessed with Clash of Clans. It is similar to Clash Royale, but it takes a lot longer to play. We really thought he was going to lose interest in it because of all the waiting, but he's still going strong and can't stop talking about it and thinking about it at all times.

Pics:

Brett brought this crazy cup of grass home from school. Apparently they grew it and gave it a couple "haircuts" at school.

Sports fields are not the best place to take pictures, but here is Blake in his Tee-ball uniform before his official pictures were taken.

Brett and his water squirter. These boys love their water.

Gotta keep those plants hydrated.

And the gardening pictures have commenced. I'm really excited about these Golden Tomatoes since we had some from a friend's garden last year and they were the best tomatoes I've ever had.

We're trying lunchbox sized orange bell peppers this year. As long as we get more than 2 we'll have improved on last year.

Assorted Marigolds to add some color to all the green.

Blake wanted to try strawberries this year, so we'll see how that goes.

Brett loved his 3 year old class, and now he'll be moving up to the 4 day 4's class.

The last week of school had a theme for each day, and this was what he came up with for "Wacky Wednesday".

Brett and I went to see Blake for the second half of his field day. The gym teacher had a huge bubble pit set up for the kids to play in. It was a big mess but it looked like so much fun.