Super P Turns 3

Preston had a Super Hero Party for his third birthday.  We rented a gym and the kids enjoyed riding scooters, playing balloon keep up and even had a laser beam face off (staring contest).  I made capes for all the kids as party favors.  Some of them also put on masks.  It was a super good time.  Hallister puts his cape on just about every day, and when I took all three kids to the zoo I had them wear their capes so I could always see them.  Enjoy the pics!

My Favorite Season is Fall......Asleep

Are you tired yet of this catch up we are doing with the blog and all our updates?

OK good because here is another one well over due.

It has been a rough couple of months with potty training and night terrors.  I think we are finally back to everyone sleeping through the night at least until 6:30am.

Hallister, 4 1/2
Personality: Very, very talkative.  From the moment he gets up he asks: where are we going, what are we doing, what is for breakfast??? He has started to enjoy building with "real" Lego's.  He is very creative.  He always wants to be with someone except with the Lego's, he doesn't seem to mind playing quietly with those while the others nap.

Sleeping: Three month's ago we moved him into Liberty's room.  Preston was keeping Hall up, getting out of bed.  It worked quite well moving Hall in with Liberty.  We would watch on the video monitor that if Liberty woke up early (around 6:30am) Hallister would crawl in her crib and entertain her until we came in to get them (7am).  It was very sweet.  Despite him and Preston not getting along we are so thankful he is still nice and helpful with Liberty. He has complained lately about being in a girl's room, so we moved his bed back in with Preston two weeks ago and just didn't bunk them.  We moved all the toys to Liberty's room.  That has worked out quite well.

Food: His favorite food is chicken nuggets with honey mustard and pepperoni pizza. For breakfast he loves pancakes or waffles with cool whip and strawberries and also he looks forward to his every Saturday morning trip out with Jonathan to get donuts.  He will only eat apples without the peel.

Shows: He enjoys some new shows on Netflix, The Neverland Pirates and Bubble Guppies.  They have good lessons about sharing.  He is at an age where he is just absorbing everything so we try very hard to filter out stuff he doesn't need to see or hear.

Education: Our friend in Lifegroup is going through school for Speech Pathology.  She was assigned a speech test to perform on 7 kids to tell where they are at speech wise.  We were happy to let her do the tests on the boys. Her results for Hallister showed he can talk as well as a 5 year old.  That was very encouraging!  Thank you all for your prayers about our education decision.  We feel peaceful about sending Hall to Texas Montessori and God provided a way financially for us to send him there.  He will start Preschool there going three days a week in September!

Size: Hall wears size 4T shirts now, some 3T pants are too short for him but 4T is too long, so we have to roll up the waist.  He wears size 10 shoes.

Preston, 3
Personality: He is still our funny man.  His smile and laugh are so cute. We call him P-man, which actually became a funny nickname when we started potty training two month's ago.  He is pretty quiet and likes to play by himself.  His vocabulary has really increased and he says complete sentences, not just mumble jumble. He is like Jonathan in the sense that he wants to know how things work and will take them apart to figure it out.  The problem with that is we are the ones that have to put it back together. :)

Potty Training: We felt it was time and wanted him to be trained before swim lessons.  He rarely has an accident during the night.  He does great out in public, telling us when he needs to go and not being scared of strange potties, but at home he does not always say something.  We take him about every hour.  I know that if it gets quiet then he is laying somewhere playing and probably about to go #2.  He has even held it in for three days, but laxatives helped with that.  We have now figured out he goes #2 after breakfast and right before naps.  We set him on the potty with the Mobigo (a small hand held kid video game) so that he will relax and "let it out". HA, I know, too much information.  We don't give him liquid after supper and that seems to help him not pee in bed.  Although he does wake up usually between 6-6:30am having to go.  He won't yet go get on the potty himself but call for us to help him.  At least we are down to one being in diapers.

Sleeping: The hardest thing with Preston lately is not being consistent with his naps.  I will put him down then he will use the excuse of needing to potty to get up.  I'll set him on the potty with the Mobigo, go do laundry, come back and he has fallen asleep on the potty.  If he doesn't nap then often he will fall asleep in his high chair at 5:00 while eating supper.  As soon as I try to transition him to his bed though he wakes up.  This has been a consistent struggle and since I don't get a break like I used to I feel more worn out when it gets close to supper time.

Doctor Visit: Six months ago when he went to the allergist and we found out his allergies we stopped giving him things he is allergic to.  He doesn't have tomatoes or ketchup. He drinks Lactaid or Almond Milk. Trooper, the cat we fostered, went back to be with her family.  The allergist had said his tonsils were enlarged and adenoids as well.  Preston still puts his hands in his mouth and drools some, but not as much.  We took him to an Ear, Nose, Throat doctor thinking she would suggest getting his tonsils and adenoids out. She actually said his tonsils were NOT enlarged and his ear echo results showed his adenoids were not enlarged as well.  She said to keep giving him Zyrtec regularly (to help with his grass and molds allergies) and Nasonex every night before bed may help him not have to breathe with his mouth open.  We were all ready to hear he needed surgery but since he has not had tonsillitis perhaps things are getting better and that is not what he needs.

Education: Our friend in Lifegroup performed the same speech test on Preston and we learned he has the vocabulary of a 2 1/2 year old.  She was encouraging though and said once he is not around Hallister as much he will start to talk a lot more. He will go to Mother's Day Out in the Fall, we are not sure yet if it will be one or two days a week.

Size: Preston wears 2T and 3T shirts, and 2T pants.  In shoes he wears size 8.

Liberty, 20 Months
Personality: Very talkative, and surprisingly enough she says more words than she does sign language for now. She always likes to be with someone, sitting in their lap or close to them.  She loves bath (still does the sign for that) and likes to put things in things....such as bracelets in her purse, blocks in a basket or even cars where they are supposed to go. She loves to sing "If you're happy and you know it" and likes to dance.  She also likes to be chased and play hide and seek. Basically whatever her brothers are doing she wants to be doing.  We learned she can climb up the playhouse ladder and also get on the trampoline by herself.

Food: Lib still has her Tyson chicken nuggets pretty much every day.  I make gluten free waffles or give her the frozen gluten free Eggo's that HEB has.  We have tried new foods and it seems that if the wheat is frozen she doesn't itch after eating it.  She can now have Pillsbury frozen biscuits and Gorton's MSG free fish sticks. She seems to rotate between strawberries and apples if she likes them.  We have tried giving her greens, cucumber and celery. I am not sure how much she actually swallowed, I think more of the cucmber than the celery.  I also found Glutino pretzels and she loves those.

Sleep: Just as Preston and Hall had night terrors, Liberty has gone through her phase of them.  I think now it has passed, but about two months ago she would wake up during the night crying and not be consolable. She has never been one to like rocking so we pick her up and walk around the house a little but while patting her back. I would change her diaper, pick up the three pacifiers that were most likely on the floor and hand them to her, then put a sippy cup of water in the crib. (We did find that she was soaking her diaper during the night so we now put her in overnight diapers.) She typically sleeps from 7:30pm to 6:45am.

Education: She is going to Mother's Day Out this summer.  It has been very nice to have a break and good for her to socialize.  There are only 4 kids in her class.  It is neat to glance in the doorway if I arrive early and see her playing with girls. This past Spring there was not room for her in a class.  She doesn't always nap at MDO so when she gets home she will sleep for two hours.

Size: Liberty weighs 24 pounds and is 30" tall.  In clothes she wears 18-24 months.  She still fits in some 12 month pants.  In shoes she is between a size 4 and 5.

Sorry for the very long update, but hope you enjoyed it.  We are thankful for the moments we have as a family.  We know that this tough, restless season will pass and we will grow closer together.

Talent Show

 

The church we attend had a talent show last month.  We entered Hallister into the show to say the Pledge of Allegiance.   It was so moving to see adults stand up as our little 4 year old led everyone in saying the pledge.  We are so very proud of our little Hall.

Menu Planner

I know we have all been there.  You get to the store with your grocery list, and you can't remember if you have some things so you grab one just in case.  You get home to find not only did you have that item but you had five, and you missed two items that you needed for supper tonight.  HA!

Well that was me and I was getting tired of it. I used to have written on a piece of paper the order of HEB aisles.  As we ran out of items we would put them on our grocery list on the fridge.  Before going to the store I would rewrite the whole list in the order of the aisles.  Sometimes I would leave an item off though accidentally.  Once I got to the store I would see something we might need, I'd call Jonathan to see if we need it.  I would try to think ahead of stuff to make for supper the next week but couldn't remember every single ingredient.

We then downloaded a free App called Grocery Gadget.  I figured we have these smart phones, might as well get smart and use them to our advantage.  That App was nice.  We plugged in the aisles of HEB in the order we go and the ones at Walmart and the order we take there.  If we needed an item we check it, and it showed up on mine and Jonathan's phone.  We were able to put in the amount at each store, which was very nice.  Since we use the cash system we would know exactly how much we were about to check out with.  If we didn't have enough cash left in our envelope then we could put back the things we didn't absolutely have to have.

That App was good but I wanted an App where I could pull in recipes while at the store or look in my "pantry" while at the store and see if I had certain items.  After researching a week I found it - MENU-PLANNER.  This is probably the biggest plug I will ever give for an App.  I absolutely love it and it was only $4.99.

It took me a weekend to plug in all the items in our pantry, arrange the aisle order for HEB and Walmart, but it was so worth it.  It also has a scan barcode feature!  I can scan an item and it will pull in all the info for me, I just program what aisle and the price.  We have 45 recipes saved so I can organize what is for breakfast, lunch and dinner each week.  If I don't have the items in our pantry then this App will add those items to my shopping list!  How cool is that! As we go through the week, and say I made spaghetti, then my amount of spaghetti jars will decrease from 2 to 1 in my "pantry". If it goes from 1 to 0 then it gets added to my shopping list.

If you are a Mom, you have a smart phone and you do the shopping then you need this App!  It saves so much time and makes grocery shopping fun.  So there is my plug, let me know if you try it.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

To save on our expense of laundry detergent I decided to make our own.  We have been using ALL Free and Clear since it does not make Liberty break out.

We have been very happy with the homemade stuff.  I included the recipe in case anyone wants to try it.  I made half the bath the first time, just in case we didn't like, and that $10 batch lasted a month.  It was not difficult to use a cheese grater and shred the Ivory soap.  The laundry smelled so fresh and clean. I also ordered the scent Quiver from Scentsy and added it to our second batch.  It smells SO good.

We also noticed how clear Liberty's skin has been as well, since we started using it, which is a wonderful benefit.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients-

• 1 (4 lb 12 oz) Box of Borax- Found in the detergent aisle
• 1 (3 lb 7 oz) Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda- Found in the detergent aisle
• 1 (3 lb) Container of OxyClean- Found in the detergent aisle
• 2 (14.1 oz) Bars of Zote or Ivory Soap- Found in the detergent aisle
• 1 (4 lb) Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda- Found in the cooking aisle
• 4 Bottles of Scentsy Washer Whiffs- found online or through a Scentsy Representative

Instructions-

1. Grate soap with cheese grater or food processor.
2. Mix all ingredients together in a large bucket.
3. Use 2 -4 Tablespoons per laundry load.

Preschool Graduation

So.....yeah we are a little behind on blog updates but here it goes.

As you know Hallister was in the Preschool class at Crestview Church of Christ this past year.  He really thrived in his class of 6, even with him being the only boy and the youngest (4 when all his friends turned 5).  His teacher Ms. Renee was awesome and his best friend was Katie.

This past May he got to walk with his classmates in the graduation ceremony.  He was so small and cute!

We are still praying about where Hallister should go for Preschool in the Fall.  We registered for him to go to Castleman Creek Elementary, which is right beside our house, but we aren't completely peaceful about him going to a public school with a big class yet.  The problem with this school also is that we won't find out if he made it in until August 21st.  That is too late to register anywhere else. ("Getting in" for Preschool is based on low income, if you speak Spanish and/or if your family is in the military.) We visited a new Montessori school that opened up and really like their concept of learning sounds of letters with letter shapes, before ever writing with a pencil.  The problem is this school is very expensive and not currently in our budget.  God would definitely have to show us if He wants Hall to go there by providing extra finances.  Perhaps I can pick up so extra freelance design work.  The other option is for him to just go to a Mother's Day Out program.  Please be praying for us to have wisdom about where to send him because education is so important.  Thanks!