Froggy Footage

I've been trying to get Fisher's "crawling" on video, but he just hasn't cooperated until yesterday. It's a short clip, but you'll see why Gran Gran calls him the Frog.


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In other Fisher news, Fisher's second tooth arrived Tuesday for Gran Gran's actual 80th birthday!

Gran Gran's Party

On Sunday, we had Gran Gran's 80th birthday party at our house. The party was lots of fun for everyone, but I think Barrett had the most fun.

Barrett loved playing with his cousins, Will, LeeAnn, and Morgan. His best buddy, NeeNee also came to the party.

The kids played in the pool for a long time, and then it was time to come in and eat.Barrett thought it was so cool to sit at a little table with Morgan and Will to eat.




After we ate, the kids had a blast playing with everything in the house. The most entertainment ended up coming from Barrett's great-uncle Glen and great-uncle Mark.

Glen played bad bull with the kids, and they were laughing and screaming as he tried to buck them off. Barrett didn't really want to ride, but he had a ball taunting the bull. (Maybe he'll be a rodeo clown!)


After they wore out the bull, they decided to let Mark read a story to them. Mark ended up reading Barrett's current favorite, Everybody Poops, quite a few times. Here is a portion of his storytelling.



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Apparently, Mark missed his calling to be a pre-school teacher!

Barrett was so worn out when everyone left, he couldn't even walk without almost falling over.

Fisher had a great time too. He loved being held and hearing everyone talk about how cute he is. I think his favorite part of the party was being loved on by his cousins.


I think we need to have the cousins over again. Maybe next time we'll just leave Mark and Glen to babysit!

No Jesus Mommy!

Lately, I have been trying even more than usual to pray with Barrett.

I have friends with kids his age that claim their child prays every night with them. When I have asked if it really is them praying and their child is just kind of "playing along", they have told me that their child actually prays on their own. (I won't get in to whether or not I believe them.)

Since Barrett is WAY ahead in the development of his talking skills, I figured I need to really get going on the praying thing.

So, each night and nap time when I take Barrett into his room, we sit in his rocking chair. He loves for me to sing to him, which considering my singing ability, I need to sing while he'll still let me. Instead of singing the usual Old McDonald, I have attempted to change to Jesus Loves Me.

When I would start to sing Jesus Loves Me, Barrett would yell, "No Jesus Mommy, sing animal song."

I'm not sure how the big man feels about the whole "No Jesus" statement, but I would assume that it is probably frowned upon.

I thought I would have to give up on the song change until I found a compromise.

Our new song is, "Old man Noah built an ark, EIEIO, and on this ark he had two..."

He now asks for the "Man song", so at least I'm hitting a Bible story.

Our prayer time pretty much is limited to me asking what he wants to thank Jesus for which he usually says a list of people and toys then I throw in a few of my own prayers. Even though I know he doesn't really get it, we'll keep saying it.

Since we have a system for nap time and bedtime, I thought I'd start throwing random prayers in his day.

On Sunday, I had the perfect opportunity.

On the way home from church, it started raining again. Barrett looked out the window and said, "Mommy, no rain again."

I responded that I couldn't make it stop raining, but maybe he could talk to Jesus about it.

In the backseat he said, "Jesus, no more rain please."

I tried to tell him that it was very good to ask Jesus and that Jesus heard him, but that doesn't mean that Jesus will choose to stop the rain.

He had NO clue what I was saying.

He again said, "Jesus, no more rain."

As we turned into our neighborhood, it not only stopped raining, but the sun started to shine.

Barrett was laughing in the backseat. I asked him if he was happy, and all he said as he clapped was, "Yea, Jesus, no rain!"

I think he gets it more than I know.

Remember?

One of Barrett's newest things to say is, "remember".

I was driving the other day, and out of no where Barrett says, "Mommy, remember the fireworks. They go boom boom."

Since then, he keeps saying things he remembers. It is so funny.
As I was typing this, he came in to climb on the chair and play with the mouse. He said, "Mommy, remember me's type."

Yesterday, when he was playing with Fisher, he decided to show Fisher his elephant.

When you watch the video, after he tells Fisher what the elephant says, he asks him if he remembers seeing the elephant at the zoo.



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He amazes me that not only does he remember seeing an elephant at the zoo, he also remembers that Fisher was there too.

I love that you can just see how much Fisher loves his big brother. If only that mutual love would last...

Angel of the Morning

Besides going to gymnastics today, we've pretty much done nothing. Barrett has been so bored that he actually was playing with Fisher.

(I did video it to post on here, but my computer acts like the disk isn't even in the drive. Some disks work and some don't. It is making me crazy!)

Nana gave Fisher a bear for Easter. Barrett thinks it is wonderful. The bear sings a "lovely" little song.

I am the angel of the morning,
No need for feeling blue.

I am the angel of the morning,
I will make all your dreams come true.

I am the angel of the morning,
I'm watching over you.

If I hear this bear singing this song one more time, I am going to scream!

For some reason today, Barrett is completely attached to it.

He isn't carrying it around like most kids would with their stuffed animal.

He is concerned that the bear is not entertained.

He keeps positioning the bear where he can watch tv or watch Barrett play. Every time he moves the bear, he pushes the button that makes the bear sing.

Tonight, the bear is leaving to go on vacation for a while.

Froggie

Today we went to Gran Gran's house to discuss her 80th birthday party we are having at our house on Sunday and to eat lunch.

Gran Gran babysat Barrett (or maybe it was the other way around) while Fisher and I went to order her cake. I could have gotten her a really pretty flower cake, but there was one there waiting to be picked up that was too cute. I ended up going cute instead of fancy. I can't wait to see it, and I know she'll love it!

Fisher and I went to pick up Gran Gran's meatball sub, and then we went back to play and eat.

Barrett had Gran Gran on the floor with plastic eggs, random nativity figurines, and some tractors. He was having a blast. He told me and Fisher to leave until Gran Gran said she wanted us to stay.

While we ate, Fisher was on the living room floor. He apparently really wanted one of the eggs because he made it across the room to get to it!

It wasn't as much crawling as it was frog hopping.

He would get on his knees and hands, stick his butt in the air, start rocking back and forth, and then hop forward.

He hopped all over the place.

By the time we left, his hopping was looking a lot more like crawling.

It looks like this is going to happen even faster than I was already dreading.

Time Flies

Wow, Fisher is already five months old today, and Barrett is only one month away from being a two year old.

I looked back at my post from exactly 18 months ago when Barrett was 5 months old.

I can hardly remember him at that age, and it's strange to think about not remembering exactly what Fisher is like right now.

It scares me to think that with Barrett at this age, I was talking about rolling over being somewhat new. Fisher mastered that a LONG time ago. He's now on to bigger things.

Scary, isn't it?

Ok, maybe not for you, but I am going to be chasing two boys soon.

I was trying to take a picture of both boys today, but I had to give up. Barrett was not cooperating. He thinks he has better things to do.

Fisher, on the other hand, was all about the camera.

Besides working on crawling, Fisher loves to play with anything. Lately, he's happy for quite a while in the exersaucer thingy.

When I looked back at pictures of Barrett at 5 months old, he apparently was happy playing there too!

Time is going too fast. I'm afraid that I am going to wake up one day and suddenly have teenagers.

One Down, Too Many to Go

After about 6 weeks of bad sleeping, gallons of drool, and countless hours of chewing, Fisher has finally cut his first tooth!

Three days ago, I could feel the tooth had broken through, but you couldn't really see the little white chomper. Today, you can see it. It's only a little white spot, but it is there.

I'm not sure which day to say he got it.

With Barrett, I always saw it the same day you could feel it.

Although, I know if I went ahead in time about 8 years and asked Fisher, he would tell me he cut it on the 10th not the 13th.

I know with having boys this close in age, there will always be competition.

If I write the 10th in the baby book, it will be one less thing they can argue about.

There would be no way to say who was better or faster in the category of first teeth.

There could be no argument because Fisher getting his first tooth on July 10th would mean that Barrett and Fisher were the EXACT same age when they got their first teeth.

And everyone has told me that siblings will never do anything the same!

Feet

For some reason both of my boys have been obsessed with feet lately.

Whenever it is time for us to put on shoes to go somewhere, Barrett either wants to pick out which pair of shoes or he insists on, "bare feet, no shoes."

I don't mind him picking which pair of shoes to wear, but occasionally, he insists on the rubber boots that Doug's cousin passed on to us. That might not be too bad, but he can't really walk in them either.

The other night after his bath, he wanted to put shoes on. He ran to his room, barely gave me a chance to get a diaper on him, and he grabbed the boots.

It's a nice look, isn't it?

Fisher seems to love his own feet lately. He is always grabbing them and smiling.

Although he loves to pull on them, he likes chewing on them even better.


His feet must taste really good because he's not the only one that loves them.

Barrett is constantly grabbing Fisher's feet, saying, "kiss Isher's feet," and then kissing them over and over again.

I'm sure when they are teenagers, Fisher will love reminding his big brother how much he loved kissing his feet!

My New Favorite Memory

Just a little while ago, Barrett and Fisher were both playing on their own in the living room while I sat on the couch enjoying a few minutes of television that wasn't Dora, Diego, Barney, or Baby Einstein.

Barrett climbed on the couch and obvioulsly wanted my attention. I muted the tv and asked what he wanted me to do.

We read Everybody Poops, his new favorite book, and then he stood up and put his nose to mine.

He does this when he really wants me to listen to what he has to say.

With his nose still against mine, he put his hand gently on my cheek, looked in my eyes and said, "Love you Mommy."

I almost cried.

I told him I loved him too, then he kissed my nose and again said, "Love Mommy."

Because I giggled, he continued to keep his hand on my cheek as he kissed both my cheeks, my chin, my forehead, and then my lips.

After he gave me all the kisses, he put his nose on me again and said, "Mommy loves Barrett."

I cried.

I cried and told him I didn't want him to get any bigger.

One day, he won't want to kiss me and tell me he loves me and that breaks my heart.

Why do sweet little boys have to grow up to be men that don't love and kiss on their mommies?

Boom Boom Boom

We've been listening to fireworks for days!

Our neighborhood is great. It's not in the middle of Houston, there isn't a ton of traffic, there are a tons of kids all around us, but there is one downside...

Fireworks.

There is no law against any person setting off as many as they'd like at any hour.

I like them on the 4th of July, but I do not like them until 2 in the morning for days on end.

Barrett, on the other hand, loves them.

He loves saying boom after hearing them. The first night we heard them going off, he ran around saying, "boom, boom, boom." I think he thought it was guns being fired.

Last night, he actually got to see fireworks. We went to Doug's aunt and uncle's house to celebrate the 4th and to celebrate his cousin, Christopher, who is in the Army, being home from overseas.

When we first got to the party, Barrett immediately spotted Nana, and then he saw the bouncy castle.

He loved to bounce almost as much as he loved getting in and out of it. He pretty much blocked the entrance the whole time he was near the thing.

Once some big kids bounced with him, he started to understand what it was about. He was completely unafraid of other kids landing on him.

Nana even got in to bounce with him!

He was MAD when we made him get out so the big kids could really bounce.

Fisher just enjoyed being held.

Great-Grandpa held him for a long time, but once he sat down, Fisher wanted to bounce like his brother. Grandpa said he was just too hard to hold while he jumped on his lap. Paw took over, and Fisher stood on his lap and jumped and jumped!

Once it was dark, the fireworks started, and Barrett was loving watching them.

Fisher was less than thrilled with the noise, but he liked the bright light.


Unfortunately, with the dark came the mosquitoes, so we didn't stay for all the fireworks.

When we got home, our street was full of people setting off fireworks. Barrett and I headed down to watch for a while.

He was having a blast with all the little girls. He ended up laying on a blanket with NeeNee and another little girl to watch the fireworks. He was less than thrilled when I picked him up to take him home, but it was 10:30.

He went to sleep as soon as his head hit the bed, and he is still asleep at 9:20 this morning.

Maybe fireworks aren't so annoying after all! :)

He's Fine?

The other day while Barrett was napping and I was arguing with the computer, Doug was in the living room "taking care of" Fisher.

After about 20 minutes, Doug came in to inform me that Fisher was asleep in his bouncy seat so he was going to go outside to do whatever it was that he thought he needed to do.

I guess I was crazy to assume that "asleep in his bouncy seat" meant that he was safely buckled in.

Here is what I found when I went to check on Fisher a little while later.

Doug swears he wasn't like that when he went outside to play.

I guess since Fisher survived, it's ok. After all, he looks pretty happy to me.

Fisher Playing

Here is a short video of Fisher playing. He loves to lay on his mat and pull on the toys.

I think I figured out what went wrong on the video of Barrett when it had a blank black screen after the clip ended. Sorry if it made you think you missed something. :)

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Dancing Fool

Yesterday, we were really bored because of the bad weather.

Hopefully, today might get better. When Barrett got up this morning, he walked into the living room, pointed outside at the falling rain, and said, "rain, no, rain again."

Since we didn't have much else to do, I ended up taking a bunch of pictures and videos.

I haven't tried to upload video yet because to be honest, I hadn't gotten anything blog worthy on film until now...

Barrett was having fun dancing, and as you'll see, he obviously got his dancing ability from me.

(Ignore the mess in the background. Like I said, we were inside all day.)



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You couldn't actually hear the kiss he gave himself, but that's one of his newest things. I think he got tired on waiting for me to kiss things better, so now he just kisses his own boo boos and moves on.



I'll try and add a video of Fisher soon, but now that I have Barrett's video here, I can't remember how I did it. Ugh!

Arizona

Our trip to Arizona was lots of fun especially for Barrett.

We started our trip by driving to Austin the afternoon before we left so we could watch my cousin play baseball.

He has made it to AAA, and while I am anxiously waiting for him to make it to Houston, I liked the minor league stadium much better than the stadium here. It had all kinds of activities for kids and was very clean. Even though Mark didn't win the game, I loved going to see him. Barrett was way more excited about the mascot than the actual game.

The real adventure in Austin was staying in a hotel with both kids. Barrett thought of a king size bed as more of a play land and not a place to sleep.

While Doug was getting Fisher to sleep, I went to bed with Barrett. I tried everything I could to get him to calm down and sleep. I did not have any luck. Doug put Fisher in the portable crib, and he came to bed.

We had Barrett surrounded, but that didn't help.

He just kept talking, rolling, jumping, laughing, and NOT sleeping. We considered putting him in the crib and having Fisher with us, but the thought of possibly waking the only sleeping kid we had was just too risky.

Finally, Doug and I turned our backs to him and ignored him. He got really still and quiet, and just as I started to think I was going to sleep, Barrett scooted close to me, wiggled his fingers, and said, "tickle, tickle, tickle."

I laughed which led to another half hour of his bed aerobics.

Eventually either he fell asleep or we did, I'm really not sure.

At one point in the night, after Barrett had busted my lip with a kick to the face, I was sleeping across the bottom of the bed, Doug had his pillow on the nightstand, and Barrett was happily snoring.

Mental note to self: NEVER try that again. Barrett will be in the crib next time.

On Friday morning, we made it the the airport with no problems.

Barrett was thrilled to watch all the planes.





When we got on the plane, we had a 45 minute delay, so Barrett was pretty restless.

Fortunately, as soon as we were in the air, I turned on the DVD player, and he was perfect the whole flight with the exception of requesting DVD changes every 5 minutes. (Thank you Gigi for that wonderful Christmas gift!)


Fisher slept through his entire first flight.



Once we got to Tucson, Barrett was excited to see Papa, but more excited to see Digger and Brandy, the dogs.




When we made it outside, Barrett saw that Papa had a "big pool" in his yard. He ended up in the water before we even got his suit on. So, I ran in, found my suit, and swam with him. We hadn't even been there 15 minutes.

Later that night, Uncle Ray and Kristin drove in from Phoenix to stay for the weekend. Fisher was already out cold, and Barrett was nice and grumpy by then.

On Saturday morning, all the men went to play golf, and Kristin and I swam with Barrett.


While we swam, Mary held Fisher inside. (Fisher was held the WHOLE trip.)






Once the men came home, we all played in the pool while, once again, Mary held Fisher in the air-conditioned house or in the shade outside. We did the same thing on Sunday too.

Barrett loved swimming with Uncle Ray, Papa, and Daddy.


Barrett became an expert with the water gun. He could shoot anyone at any distance.

He also shot himself a few times too!

His other pool time entertainment was throwing golf balls in the pool for all of us to fetch. Papa was kind enough to pull out the bucket of 50 yellow range balls that Doug and I dove for over and over again.

He doesn't have the balls in this picture, but this is one of the places where he sat to throw and roll the balls in.

Doug thought that he was going to get to play with Papa's cool water toys, the remote control jet ski and boat, but Barrett had other plans.

On Sunday evening, Ray and Kristin went home, but the water fun continued the rest of the trip anyway. We just had less pairs of hands to help us.

Barrett not only loved the pool, but he also loved the sprinklers. He thought running through them was big fun, and he was mesmerized by the wet footprints on the ground.

Here is his footprint next to Papa's.

On our last day there, we of course, swam all day again. This time, Fisher actually made it into the pool once it was shaded in the evening. He didn't like the cold water at first, but once he got over the initial shock, he loved it.

He even managed to hang out in the big float too.

Overall, the trip was lots of fun with the the exception of the journey home. Barrett is still talking about the big pool with guns and golf balls.







Thank you Mary and Papa for having us out to your house. Maybe next year the boys will come on their own for a week or two! :)