Seth is 3 years 1 month old!

A little late since we were on vacation, but it’s time for the monthly update.

Seth is so grown up for a three year old because he is trying to do everything that Andrew can do.  But he is still three with all the whining and some tantrums that come with that.  It is so cute when I tell him to stop whining because he tries so hard.  But the only way he can control all the emotion is to talk in this tiny whisper voice.  He even had a passing-out tantrum because he didn’t get to the car first when they were visiting his uncle Tomo.  I thought he was all over those!

Seth wants to be just like Andrew.  He is learning to write his letters and can write quite a few of them.  He also tries to read and sound out words.  He isn’t quite successful, but he watches Andrew and is trying so hard.  It is so cute!

After talking to my Aunt Karen, I realized that Seth is not a morning person.  I guess I just always thought of him as a little grumpy, but he really takes a while to wake up and be happy.  What insight!  Seth is really a good sleeper, though.  He isn’t napping much anymore (maybe a few days a week), but he usually sleeps later in the morning if he needs it and goes to sleep pretty quickly.

Seth’s coloring is really improving.  He is definitely past scribbles and is making more of pictures – though they look more like curving lines everywhere.  He loves to make pictures of cars or to draw maps.  He adds lots of details.

Seth definitely is more of a home body than me or Andrew.  He always resists going anywhere.  He is like that at home, but he was like that on our trip, too.  He usually enjoyed where we went, but boy, would he complain about having to leave Aunt Karen’s house where we were staying.

Seth’s voice has turned incredibly loud!  And it is still very high.  Cute, but loud.

Seth really tries hard to obey, but sometimes he is just full of energy (okay, always).  He has a hard time not running or climbing all over everything.

Seth is very loving.  He is always telling me how “I only love you” or “I love everyone in your family”.  He is very particular about who he loves. I guess it is true that no one loves you as much as a little boy that age.

Seth always wants to be independent and do everything himself.  He is also very helpful with chores.  He loves to dust and also to put away dishes from the dishwasher.

Well … mostly, the rest I can think of is our trip.  So …

Fun Things We Did This Month:

• Surviving the heat.  It has been SO hot this summer in St. Louis, hotter than almost the whole country.  We have had 11 days over 105!!!!  That is the hottest ever by that metric in St. Louis.  And with the humidity – geez, we’ve been under heat advisory for a good chunk of the summer, and when it’s that hot, unless we had swim lessons or something, it is hard to get out to the park.
• Seeing a Magician at the library.
• VP Parade downtown. We watched it from Union Station this time, so we could sneak in for AC as needed since it was a hot hot day.  Seth wanted to see the whole parade this time and didn’t seem to get bored.  We were going to see fireworks from Katsu’s air-conditioned work, but then there was a water main break and significant flooding, so we couldn’t go. Seth didn’t seem too sad because we got special snacks and watched it on TV while the boys laid on their futons.
• Science Museum – boys enjoyed playing in the digital area, which we really hadn’t played with much before.  I think we went twice this month.
• Zoo – we saw the new Seal Lion exhibit which we have been waiting for for almost 2 years. Seth was super excited to go in the underwater tunnel and see the seal lion swim over his head.  The boys were disappointed, but I made them wait for a day until the high was in the high 80’s.  Mean mom!
• Seth had his first friend birthday party at the park.  I only planned it a couple days in advance, but we had a good turnout.  His friends Matias and Lucas (and family), Mason (and family), Carson (and family), the Gage family (they just moved in and I can’t remember their little boys name), Owen (and mom).  A couple other friends were going to come but were sick or out of town.  And everyone brought presents which Seth was pretty excited about.  We went to a park with a huge splash area and everyone brought their own picnic.  We brought cupcakes, but Seth wanted to eat one as soon as we got there, so we all just ate cupcakes whenever and didn’t sing or anything.  He also opened the presents as they came.  But he had so much fun!  They got wet and ran around the playground.  And it wasn’t too hot in the shade.  I think it was a perfect friend party except (typical for me), no pictures because I forgot to take any.  I even brought the camera.  Seth’s favorite present was probably bubbles – he got a huge number of wands and loves playing with them!
• Finishing both summer reading programs. He won Cardinals tickets – we are going on Labor Day again.  I am hoping it is cool!
• Visiting Utah
• Seth enjoyed spending time with all the family members and talking about how much he loves all his family.  He enjoyed playing with his cousin and second cousins.  He also enjoyed wrestling with his great grandparents – who knew they had so much energy!
• Friday we visited Lagoon.  As soon as he saw the Ferris Wheel, he was super excited, because Dora rides in one in one of our books.  So, he had to do that.  Andrew wasn’t interested, so Seth and Katsu rode it twice, as well as a really big water slide twice, and the chair lift.  He also loved doing the bumper cars with Andrew.  It took him a couple times to figure out how the steering wheel worked, but then he did it over and over and over again.  He also liked the little kid rides.
• We went to the Rodeo.  Seth wasn’t sure about the bull and horse, but he really liked the parachuters.  He really wanted to buy curly fries, so we let in and they munched away on those.  We left early because it was already past 10 and Seth was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to see the motorcycles.  I was hoping the couple he saw as part of the Buffalo act would be enough.
• We finally saw fireworks on Pioneer Day at Karen’s house.  We were trying to get the boys to sleep, but gave up.  Seth was so excited and kept shouting and pointing whenever he would see one.
• Temple Square with Katsu.  He really liked the top of the Conference Center and would follow along to see where the water was going. 
• Seth really enjoyed playing with Lincoln Logs at Karen’s house, learning to play Shark, playing with water balloons, playing in Great Grandpa and Great Grandma’s fountain, picking berries, eating candy at their house, and having so many adults to play with.  Of course, if you asked him, he would say “Nothing”.

Logan

Guess who can crawl and is also cruising all over the furniture?  It’s amazing what a difference a week can make – he is all over the place now and cute as ever.  And his first two teeth are making their appearance – just waiting for him to start sleeping better again.

Andrew is 5 years 2 months old

Well, the month has been filled with ups and downs, but we are only about 1 month away to kindergarten – hooray!  I am excited for Andrew.  Maybe I will feel sad, too, but right now I am mostly excited.  He really needs time with other kids and thrives on structured time with someone (i.e., the teacher) teaching him things and giving him positive feedback.  Plus, he really loves learning.  So, I think it will be great.

I am SO glad I started teaching him to read this summer.  It has given him so much confidence and he is so proud of his abilities.  We are on lesson 53 and he has started wanting to do 2 lessons a day many days (we still forget and skip days sometimes).  He still guesses and hates to sound things out, but his reading speed is SO much faster now – he doesn’t have to sound everything out anymore and he has pretty good reading comprehension, too.  I am impressed.  He has the hardest time trying to remember the sounds that short and long vowels make, but he does pretty well.  I think he is probably reading at a level they would expect exiting kindergartens to read at, but I am not sure.  He does need more work with sight words though.  He is not too impressed with words that don’t sound out at all.

I reread the book “The Explosive Child” and realized that it describes Andrew to a T.  He has really poor impulse control, but thankfully in not too many situations – namely, when he wants something because he has a good idea for it but someone else has it, when he does not get to make the choice he wants, and when Seth upsets him by taking something.  And he obviously is very verbal, so thankfully communicating (at least communicating poorly or too little) is not a problem.  But his situations are really spur-of-the-moment, so the solution of planning ahead doesn’t work well.  I never know when Seth will take something of his and suddenly Andrew will explode.  But at least I can better recognize his behavior and try to work on his anger management and impulse control.  And it helps to read that Andrew is not the only one, anyways.  I think the summer when we are all home all the time really brings the issues to a fore.

This has been a SUPER hot summer – we just got over a streak of 10 100+ degree weather days with most of those being high, like 105-108.  It has been MISERABLE.  And Andrew had outside swim lessons twice a week, so that was tough because we not only had to be outside the house, but also had to walk there!  Swim lessons went well.  I can definitely see progress.  He is not thrilled about taking them, but swimming is a life skill – deal with it.  He is a lot more comfortable going underwater but he still tenses up.  He floats well, but he has a hard time keeping his body horizontal when they are practicing swimming.  We will start up lessons in September again and just keep doing them until he is proficient.  Swim lessons are cheap and close.  Andrew doesn’t really want to do any sports and I’m not going to force him.  We may or may not do gymnastics again.  Andrew seemed to enjoy it some, but only a bit.  He mostly liked racing back and forth with the other boys as a warm up and getting a sticker at the end.

Andrew is back in Primary, hooray!  He still is not a fan of church, but his teacher promised them these cupcakes and he seriously talked about them for a whole week.  And then it was fast Sunday so he didn’t get them.  So he talked about it for a whole nother week!  It must have been one fancy cupcake!  But at least he is going.  He always encourages us to read scriptures and loves to have me read him stories out of our set of Book of Mormon kid books.  I think the boys have already gotten more use out of them than we did when we were kids.  Of course, they are also used almost every day for forts and army strongholds, but you know …  I swear, Andrew is going to know the scriptures stories better than anyone I know.  The boys have loved learning about Gideon, Samson, Ruth, and Samuel this week in Family Home Evening.

Andrew’s drawing and writing keep improving.  He is really into doing activity books and sheets now.  He also has started making mazes this month.

Andrew has spent quite a bit of time playing elaborate battles this month, by himself and with Seth.  He also has been building huge creations with Trio blocks, usually pretty much every block, with secret hiding spots for soldiers and like 10 wheels so it can roll around.  They still get a lot more play time than the Legos, though he likes those, too.

Andrew loves playing with Logan and is really kind to him most of the time.  He really loves his brothers.

Fun Things This Month:

• Surviving the heat wave!
• Swim lessons – 7 sessions over the month – with his teacher, Chris.  He really liked his teacher and worked really hard.
• Finished Gymnastics lessons.  Enjoyed learning all the routines.  Most especially enjoyed getting stickers – he collected all of them on one shirt and refused to let us wash it.
• A couple baptisms with Daddy, one for a friend.  When I asked him how it was, he replied with all the refreshments, as a classic Funai.
• My parents came to town.
• Botanical Garden – saw the Chinese lanterns with them and ran around the Children’s garden. 
• St. Louis Basillica – Andrew was really excited to try to see all the Bible stories he knew.
• City Museum – Andrew had a lot of fun exploring everything, though he wasn’t quite as adventurous as Seth. 
• Chinese Buffet and Mr. Wizard’s frozen custard.
• Blueberry Hill – the boys loved the décor.
• Playing with (and probably injuring) Grandpa.
• Seeing a Magician at the library.
• VP Parade downtown.  We watched it from Union Station this time, so we could sneak in for AC as needed since it was a hot hot day.  Of course, Andrew wanted to see the entire 2 hour parade and collect lots of candy.  He was really excited to count each balloon that he saw and make sure he saw them all.  We were going to see fireworks from Katsu’s air-conditioned work, but then there was a water main break and significant flooding, so we couldn’t go.  Andrew was heartbroken (probably still is), but we got special snacks and watched it on TV while the boys laid on their futons.
• Science Museum – boys enjoyed playing in the digital area, which we really hadn’t played with much before.
• Zoo – we saw the new Seal Lion exhibit which we have been waiting for for almost 2 years.  Andrew was super excited to go in the underwater tunnel and see the seal lion swim over his head. 
• Picnic with friends at Tilles Park for Seth’s Birthday.  Andrew had lots of fun playing at the splash park.
• Finishing both summer reading programs.  He won Cardinals tickets again –now if it will just cool off!

Logan is 8 months old!

What a month!  Again!  Medically, this has been a bit of a doozy for Logan.  He was super super fussy when Katsu was out of town and I couldn’t stand it.  So, I finally brought him in to the doctor to have that and his bum checked out.  Well, he didn’t have an ear infection, but his perianal abscesses were draining.  I didn’t know exactly what they were at the time, but he’s had them since he was one month and they just keep coming back and now they are at two spots and whenever there is no abscess, there is a hole, which was kind of freaking me out.  Anyway, so they cultured the abscess and it cultured e.coli, so the doctor decided to put him on a different antibiotic.  Which was fine, until he got the stomach flu.  Plus, we made an appointment with a surgeon, who we finally met with today, and they surgically drained the abscesses (so sad to watch!) and she talked to us about what it is – probably a perianal fistula, and so if the abscesses come back, then they will probably do surgery.  Now that I understand what it is and was able to read about it, I feel a lot more comfortable about the whole thing, though I am still a little unsure if surgery is necessary.  Although he has had them for like 6 months now and they aren’t resolving.  So, that was a lot.  And the stomach flu – he had a high fever and vomiting and diarrhea and it was just AWFUL.  I feel like I haven’t slept well in a month or two.  Oh, well.  Poor kid.  And he is always so happy through it all.

Logan LOVES to stand and pull up and is even starting to cruise a bit on the furniture.  He LOVES pulling up and pulls up on everything.  He was even pulling up on a mirror the other day – so cute, and pretty tricky.  He is not a fan of just sitting and will bend over, roll over, and almost kind of crawl to get what he wants.  But once he realizes he is on his tummy, he rolls right off.  He is wiggly, wiggly, wiggly, and doesn’t want to sit still.  He has fleeting interest in toys, but mostly wants to stretch those muscles.  He does like dumping and he likes any of the big boy toys.  He also likes toys that make noise and also anything with mirrors. 

Logan is still just a happy happy baby.  Loves giving everyone smiles all around.  He is still a bit shy and likes to hold onto me when there are strangers around, but he is usually happy as long as we are in sight.  He even seemed to like Grandma and Grandpa quite a bit.  He is pretty affectionate and loves Mom best.  He gives me SO many kisses.  Especially whenever anyone else was holding him.  It’s like, “oh, good, I have you back.  I missed you so much.”

Logan is still a pretty quiet baby, but he makes a few noises every now and then.  No babbles, though.  He likes to laugh.

Logan still does not like being spoon fed, so we pretty much gave up on that.  He eats some finger foods, but chokes a lot.  Mostly, he likes to eat pizza crust.  That is his absolute favorite.  He is still mostly just breastfed.

His first tooth came in and I think I can see the lump of the second one.  He was pretty fussy for awhile before that came in.

He is napping much better and takes usually one long nap (1.5-2 hours), 1 shorter nap, and sometimes a late cat nap.  He was waking up pretty early, but is waking up more like 6-7 which is much better.  We have been using the fan to make white noise and that seems to be helping.  Night awakenings has kind of been all of the place, mostly due to illness and teething.

He isn’t growing much any more.  He has hardly gained any weight the last couple months, but he still looks huge because he was so huge to start with.

He had fun with Grandma and Grandpa and mostly had a fun month.

Fun Things This Month:

• Trailing along to many swim lessons and gymnastic classes – pretty boring for Logan, but he is pretty much always a good sport.
• Botanical Garden with grandma and Grandpa.
• Lots of splash parks – Logan likes to get his feet and legs wet.
• St Louis Basilica – not only was this place gorgeous, but Logan just kind of seemed in awe all the time and loved to look at all the lights.
• City Museum – Logan had a lot to look at here, and even walked through a few things with me, but mostly just observing.
• Magician – Logan liked to watch the juggling, of course.

Seth 3 year stats

Seth had an adventurous well-check on Friday.  He is up 5 whole pounds this year to 29 lbs and in the 25th percentile.  He is only 10% for height at 35.5 inches (up 1 3/4 in from last year).  So, a small guy.  He has another snaking “rash”/birthmark on his arm that is showing up now that he is tan, but the doctor thinks it is fine and we don’t need to see the dermatologist again, which I guess is good.  Unfortunately, the doctor also found a bead in Seth’s right ear!  Who knows how long that has been there.  She and another doctor spent a good 20 minutes trying to get it out, flushing his ear, tweezers, etc. but to no avail.  I guess the bead is exactly ear canal shaped.  So, tomorrow we are off to the ENT at the children’s hospital.  Hopefully, they can get it out.  Seth still denies putting it in.  The hospital’s webpage said that parents should know how dangerous putting something in your ear could be (well, duh).  Hopefully they are nice.  Seth was a pretty good sport at the pediatrician – let’s hope he’s good tomorrow.

Seth is 3 years old!

Today was Seth’s 3rd birthday.  I can not believe he is so old.  And I can’t believe he’s lived in St. Louis all his life (it still doesn’t really feel like home to me).  So crazy!

Seth is definitely more of an introvert.  He likes to sit and spend time by himself, looking through books, singing songs, playing, and talking to himself.  He is becoming louder, though, but I think it is mostly to compete with Andrew and all the commotion that is going on in our house.

Seth’s favorite activities:

• Reading books – he likes to look through himself and also loves being read to.  His favorites right now are superhero ones (like Superman), Fly Guy, Berenstein Bears, Arnold, Dora.
• Playing starfall on the computer.  He is very interested in all things electronic – playing on the computer, watching TV, pretending to play video games.  He doesn’t watch much TV, but really loves Dinosaur Train and Sesame Street.
• Coloring and writing.  He can write some of his letters and his pictures are starting to resemble something – not usually scribbles anymore.
• Playing with cars.  He is always asking me “which one do you like” and then they run races.
• Playing games.  He could play games all day.  He especially loves dominos (doesn’t quite follow the rules), Hi Ho Cherry-o, Go Fish (though he shows all his cards), and Memory.
• Helping – he likes to do chores (putting away the dishes), dusting (mostly when I use dusting spray), feeding Joe, and helping cook.  He also likes to play in the sink.
• Running around – he has started to do his flip shows and dancing and jumping off the furniture continuously.  He does crazy things, like somersaults from running and starts them while in the air.
• Building – he likes to play with his Trio and train tracks.  Often, he will find a picture he wants to replicate and wants me to help, but gets mad when I actually try to make it and just ends up doing whatever he wanted to do in the first place.

Seth is starting to be in a trantrum-y phase again.  Of course, Andrew is always teasing him, too, which is hard.  But, he tends to just kind of fall apart when things don’t go well – kind of all of a sudden.

Seth is still an adventurous, athletic kid.  He loves to run around and do what the big kids do.  He was broken-hearted when he couldn’t do gymnastic class yet because he wasn’t old enough.  He is also so sad when he can’t do things quite as well as Andrew because he isn’t too big yet.  He is pretty fearless when it comes to physical things and is always willing to jump into things (literally) and try it out and see what his body can do.  He was all over the place at City Museum, going way up high and doing all the slides and ladders that even adults were scared of.

He still wants to do everything that Andrew does.  He wants to do reading lessons, too, so we have done a few and he can sound out some of the letters.  I think he is too young, but it is too hard to tell him no, so I guess it won’t hurt him.  He also tried so hard to do workbooks, but doesn’t quite get it yet.

Seth is still not a big eater, but boy, he loves sugar.  He loves to eat icing off the cookies from our neighbor and leaving crumbs all over the table.  He still disappears halfway through dinner whenever he decides he is done.  He is not a fan of bread, but likes rice and meat and a few vegetables.  He likes most fruit and also cereal, but begs and begs for all the sugar cereals.  He doesn’t have a huge appetite, but it is much bigger in the morning than in the evening. 

He is still pretty small.  We’ll see how big on Friday.  He also drools all the time, which drives me crazy.  He also has a new weird pigmentation “rash” on his arm – we’ll have to see what that is.  His body is always covered in scratches, scabs, etc.  He usually hates band-aids and won’t let you put it on and runs away and won’t even let you look at it.

Seth is a sweet boy – he loves to sit in my lap for stories (when Logan doesn’t get insanely jealous) and seem to be in a “I love my mommy” phase, which is nice.

Fun Things This Month:

• 2 Visits to the Botanical Gardens – once just me and the boys and once with the grandparents.  Poor Seth just can’t stop running and he got in trouble for running in the Children’s Gardens (he really has only 2 speeds – run or not run).  He started crying and said “But where can I run” – poor kid.
• Trip to the Art Museum – we were making Van Gogh paintings and we wanted to see them.  Seth seemed to enjoy the museum and is really enjoying doing his own paintings at home.  He loves paint.  He also is loving coloring all over the walls with crayons … ergh.
• Trip to the Zoo – he tried so hard to touch the sting rays – it was hard because I was holding Logan and couldn’t hold him much, but he was pretty excited to try.  He really wanted to pet the sharks, but they never came close enough.
• Lots of park and splash park visits, especially since Andrew started swim lessons.  He is a good sport during the lesson and then we all play at the park afterwards.
• Two summer reading programs.
• Dentist visit – oh, how Seth cried, but he did fine in the end, and no cavities yet (thank heavens).
• Magic House with Andrew’s preschool.  Seth loved running around with all of Andrew’s friends and was having the time of his life.  Katsu told him to say that he was “3” so he could ride the slide and then Seth was confused for a couple weeks about how old he really was.  There has been quite a bit of drama about that.
• Lots of babysitting lately – Seth loves having a babysitter.  It is a new adventure.
• Memorial Day picnic – Seth really enjoyed swimming at a friends’ house afterwards, but got pulled into the pool by a friend.  Katsu jumped in to rescue him, but it all gave us a scare.
• Bowling – Seth won the second game.  He really had fun – he rolled the ball down a ramp thing.
• Grandma and Grandpa visit – Seth was SOOOO excited and talked about it for a long time beforehand (I think the fact that his birthday coincided with his birthday made it all the more exciting).  He had so much fun with them and was so excited for them to come over from the hotel each morning.  We also did lots of fun and exciting things with them.
• St. Louis Basilica – this place was gorgeous.  Seth had a fun time trying to find stories that he recognized in the mosaics.
• City Museum – Seth had the time of his life.  He and Katsu climbed where all the rest of us were scared to.  He went so high.  Once, he jumped down and Grandma didn’t know where he was jumping and it scared her half to death.  He did climb across a wire where we didn’t think he was tall enough.  When I finally let him do it, the whole time across he said “I knew I was tall enough”.
• His birthday – we made cupcakes and had chips and soda.  We also went out to Blueberry Hill for lunch.  Seth really loved the Pac Man room and did not want to leave, but me and him had to leave the restaurant a little prematurely.  Hopefully, we will be able to scrounge up enough of his friends sometime to do a friend party.  It’s tricky because they are all in and out of town.