1, 2 buckle my shoe

Are you supposed to teach numbers or letters first? I think I may have done it backwards.

ParKer can almost count to 10 all by himself!

The only numbers he misses are 5 and 9!! He counts everything now and it is so cute! My little man is growing up faster than I want, but it is so much fun watching him.

We have been singing him the ABC's every night before bed for the past 4 months or so...but nothing seems to be sticking there. He calls every letter, "the letter M". Once I was watching Wheel of Fortune and he started shouting out all these random letters! It was so cute.

I'll try and see what videos I can catch of Parker counting. He is really good at it and it is cute....but he hates the camera and he gets a little shy when he knows someone is watching. And next time I post I'll try and put up some pics. I just got a funny video of Eli eating baby food Ham and he is gagging!

And I still haven't bought my washer and dryer yet, but I think I am going to go with the Kenmore. I looked again and I don't like the GE anymore. When we were at Sears on Thursday they had 2 sets of the Kenmore's left. If they are still there on Monday they will be like 30% off and so I am taking my chances. If they aren't there it obviously wasn't meant to be and I'll wait for the next sale.

Stumped...

I have been researching Washers and Dryers now for about 2 months. I am getting really excited cause I am finally going to have a set that actually work (hopefully). I have read so many reviews and comments that I just don't know what to do anymore. There are alot of really bad comments about almost everything. I am guessing that just means that people who are not satisfied take the extra time to tell people, and the people who are satisfied don't even go back to the site to say it cause they just really don't care (or they are busy doing laundry :) ! )

So thanks to alot of help from alot of people and their advice and all the people who listened to me even if didn't want to hear all the stress....I have narrowed it down to 2 different sets.

This is the Kenmore Elite HE3t

And this is the GE

Only it won't be in Red cause I missed that chance. I guess the customers who said they didn't want it really did want it-so because I was so stressed I missed out on a really good deal. I like to think that maybe I did someone a favor by not buying the set because then they would have had to reorder them a new set and who knows why the people wanted them....they could be really needing them. Anyways now the set I am looking at is the same model only in white and more expensive. Dang.

Well Brian is going to come home and get me and take me and the kids to Kenai to go look at some more washers. I don't know if this will help anything or make things worse. Hopefully I will just make up my mind and get things over with.

P.S. is ALOT one word or 2 (A LOT)??? My spell check thinks it is two but I know when I was in school we learned it as one.

Good Morning Parker!

It is always so fun to go into Parker's room in the morning. You never know what funny things he is going to say or what he is going to be doing in his crib. He usually wakes about between 9 and 10 (I'm know I am spoiled cause my kids sleep in). Unless we are in a hurry to get somewhere we usually just let him sit in there and play and talk until he calls for us to come get him out. Sometimes its an hour! I'm not sure if this is healthy or not, but it nice for me!
This morning I went and Parker said, "Look Mummy, CIRCLE!" He was sitting in a circle with his stuffed animals and his blankets! He is so funny. He just talks to them like he is the boss. It usually sounds just like something I say to Parker, "Sit down, K blankie?? K baby?? K?? K??" Everything ends with "K??"
On Sunday after his nap I went in to get Parker and he said, "Look Mummy, I'm feedin the baby milk!" He had his arm out of his shirt through the neck and he was trying to feed his baby milk! What a funny kid. Brian thought it was a little disturbing, but I took a picture. Blackmail. I'll post it next time I have a chance to upload some pics.
Just for journal purposes...
The other day Parker had something sticky on his finger and he went over to the baby and said something like, "Here baby! Eat it Baby! MMM, it's candy baby!" Then he tried to stick his finger in the babies mouth. Luckily I was right there cause I honestly don't know what was on his finger!

Did you ever wonder....

What I would look like with a

mullet???

I found this little beauty when I was looking for Taren's Zoo pics. I'm pretty sure Brian was laughing at me one morning and decided to take this. There are other funny ones I'm saving for later!

Alaska Zoo!

We finally made it! I have heard a few different times that the zoo was lame and not worth the time to check it out. We had to drive to Anchorage on Wednesday to get Brian's car and we had nothing else to do besides stop at a couple stores, so Brian wanted to take Parker to the zoo to check it out. We almost didn't go because Parker was being so grumpy and naughty, but it was on the way out of town so we stopped anyway. I am so glad that we did too because as soon as we got there he was being so good! We had 2 hours until it closed, and that was plenty of time to see everything. It was pretty cold, but luckily we had some jackets in the car.

Eli ended up sleeping through most of it, but I think he had a good time too.

There was this crazy muskox there that was obviously in the rut, and it made him pretty angry! It was funny because it would just charge the fence at us. Parker was a little nervous, but I think he liked it! (I posted a video at the end)

Parker really liked the bears. We asked if he wanted to go in the cage with them and he was like, "OK!" He got all excited! But when we asked him if he wanted to ride the camel he got all scared and almost started crying! I think he is a little confused!

Although alot of the animals in our zoo can be seen up here in the wild, there were some that we can't see too. Like the super rare Snow Leopard....Brian's favorite animal. There was two there and they were awesome. There were also 2 Tigers and I think they were my favorite. It was just fun to let Parker see all the animals that we teach him about all the time, and they were actually alive, not mounted on the wall or in a book! Poor kid is destined to be a hunter. If he sees a gun, lately he's been saying, "Bear Gun!" I guess he's just like his dad.

We'll Probably wait until it is warm again, but we will definitely go back! It was a blast!

Invaded Continued...

So have you ever seen the movie, "Mouse Hunt"?? It has been several years, but I can still remember most of the movie and feeling stressed for those poor guys. I would never be on the mouses side. Anyways after the kids went to bed on Wednesday night Brian and I were getting ready to set a bunch of traps to try and get the mouse. I bought 4 more and we found a bunch that I had bought in the past in out in our garage.(I think that I bought them and told Brian to set them and that he never did, but told me he did.)

Back in the corner where I have been hearing the stupid thing chewing we set 2 traps on Tuesday and the dang thing pushed them out of the way! Are they really that smart?? There was a pile of carpet, wood, cardboard, and carpet padding all over back in the corner so I could tell that the thing had been busy and it was making me mad. I think Brian could tell that I was getting pretty upset when I started threatening to move out! So he decided it was time to really catch the thing.

Brian told me that I should start cleaning out under the sink so we could set some traps in there too. So while I was busy in the kitchen just talking away to Brian and he was getting some other stuff ready in the living room. Right in the middle of one of my stories he said, "IT JUST RAN UNDER THE COUCH!!!" I freaked out and jumped up on a chair. I am so afraid of them. Seriously. So Brian starts getting all excited and starts picking up the furniture, and he went and got the broom cause I guess he thought he could get it with that! LOL! Anyways it disappeared, stupid thing.

So I went back in the kitchen and ended up finding the mouse pioson that was under our sink when we moved in and Brian told me to open it up and when I did there were like a billion tiny bugs all over it. it was so nasty. I left it under there though cause I really think the mouse was after it.

I felt like there were creap crawlies all over me and I was trying to relax and we decided to watch a movie. So I sat on the couch and while Brian was picking a movie he turned to ask me which one and the freakin vole poked his head out from under the couch where I was sitting!!! OMG...I almost freaked! It ran under the other couch so Brian went and got the broom and flipped over the couch again and I saw it running around and then he dropped the couch on it. We had a bunch of traps set by its hole where we figured it would run, but none went off. I was getting so frustrated!

We talked about it for a minute and then decided that I was going to go to the store to get some sticky traps. We were going to get this thing. I am not going to live with some rodent running around all over my floor. That is disgusting. So I called Fred Meyer and of course they were already closed. Who buys mouse traps at 10:30 at night anyway? Safeway was still open so I called to make sure they had the sticky kind and they said yes, they are on isle 12. I hurried over there and what do you know...they don't have any sticky traps. Liars. There was some kooky guy there telling me to get out the shotgun and kill them. Yeah right, while my kids are sleeping? Crazy. So I bought some ice cream instead!

When I got home I just started laughing. Brian was in the dark house with a head lamp on all the furniture moved and he had the base board heater all taken apart. He was using a bone saw to cut the carpet that was under the heater where we thought the mouse was hiding. Then he found had all these pieces of cardboard cut and he was making roadblocks under the heater for the mouse to come out and hit the traps. Next thing I know he's got the shotgun shells out....just incase he said! Was he really thinking like the Safeway guy? He ended up using them as road blocks too. When he looked again he found out we had a sticky trap left from last year. He also started shoving a fishing pole down in the hole trying to figure out where it went. I'll I could think of was Mouse Hunt. It was really kinda funny, but those little things make you nuts! Anyways now I am just rambling but at the end of the night we had 12 traps set and I think we scared the stupid thing cause we didn't hear or see him anymore and no traps went off.

On Thursday we got all the traps off the floor so that Parker wouldn't get them and then my friend Teri gave us a mouse thing you plug in and the sound it supposed to scare them. I could hear the high pitched sound and it drove me nuts so I unplugged it. Yikes. Maybe in the garage??

I was feeling better about the situation, but still wondering where the vole had gone. Then sure enough after the kids went to bed Brian was in the kitchen and heard it under the stove. Sick. In my kitchen?? Luckily I had already made sure all the food was secure! Anyways he said, "I'm going to make him a peanutbutter licorice sandwich!" I was a little confused but I guess after trapping so many mice Brian figured out they can lick all the peanut butter off without setting off the trap. If you put the licorice on the trap and the peanut butter on top of that, they gave to set it off to get it. So Brian set up all the traps in the kitchen and bated a couple. Within 2-3 minutes of setting them we heard, "SNAP!" Dead. We finally got the stupid thing! Sure enough it was the "sandwich" under the sink that got it and the peanutbutter was licked clean but I guess it wanted an extra sweet treat! It was so disgusting too and I didn't want to see it, but I remembered I had said I would post a pic, so I got a couple. Just for whoever really takes the time to read all of this. Does anyone? Oh well, atleast it gets it out of my system to share it!

For now we are going to leave a few traps set, but hopefully there aren't anymore. I hate them. I don't want to live here if we have to deal with this every fall. Sick. Now I just have alot of cleaning to do!

6 months already...

9/16/09

Good Morning Baby!

That's what Parker and I like to say to you when you wake up, no matter what time of day it is. You still like to sleep alot, and from birth-5 months you were incredible at it! Some night you would do a 10 hour stretch! Awesome. But mostly you would average 6-8 hours and then continue sleeping waking up every 3 or so to eat. This past month you haven't done so well. We'll blame that on the Thrush. Now that we have that cleared up, you are getting better at the night sleeping again. Mostly doing 5 hour stretches.

You have been such a big, strong healthy boy since we got you out of the hospital. For a premie, you have done awesome. You're only real problem has been the thrush, and you did pretty well. Once we figured it out and turned your mouth purple, it only took a couple days and you bounced right back! Such a good little boy.

I measured you on your 6 month mark and you weighed 21.2 lbs! I typed in your measurements and it showed you in the 95th percentile, which translates that you are bigger than 95% of kids your age! Crazy. You aren't really a fatty, even though we call you that. I hope we don't give you a complex, we just think its fun to have a BIG kid! You are just stalky and cute. I have you dressed in Parker's clothes that he wore when he was a year old. Most of the knees are worn on the pants because he was crawling and learning to walk. Good thing you will be in a bigger size when you crawl because otherwise there would probably be holes. On a side note, Parker has hit a little growth spurt trying to stay ahead. He is now around 26 pounds, and he is getting pretty tall. Hopefully you won't catch up too soon, it might make him mad! You already fit into his diapers (size 4) but I am still trying to squeeze you into 3's cause there are so many left. It will sure make the diaper bag easier though.

You still have all your long "white" hair. I haven't cut it cause it just is so funny on you. You're definitly a blondie. Fair skin and big blue eyes. You look tired and out of it all the time, but I think it is mostly because your eyelashes are white also. You are just dopey and we love you for it!

You are developing just like all the other babies, rolling around after toys (that's when you get a chance to be on the floor without have your brother on top of you) learning to sit up, and now eating baby foods! I felt really bad when I finally realized that alot of your grumpiness at night had something to do with you being extra hungry! Parker never ate alot of solids, but you are a big guy and you need your food! So far you love everything: Green beans were first cause we had them leftover for big bro (I think you only liked them cause it was the first real flavor), Applesauce is a winner, Bananas, Carrots, sweet potatoes, and your favorite is definitely Peaches!

There will be plenty more to try, I promise. It is just funny to watch you get all excited and worked up when someone is eating. You really do think you are big.

I have been better at bathing you more regularly lately. Sorry I am so neglectful when it comes to your baths. But before you were eating solids...you really didn't get that dirty. I was doing it at least once a week before, and now it is more like 2-3, I'm sure your Grammy will be happy when she reads this, cause she says you stink. That's the only complaint I've had. Plus it was a Dr. order because of you sensitive skin to bathe you will special soap and it wasn't necessary everyday. Now that you are sitting up, I might get brave and put you in the big bath, and maybe even let you play in there with Parker. Just maybe though. He can be kinda rough!

Oh my goodness how you love your brother. I haven't ever seen anything like it. You smile every time he comes around. Even if he is being mean, you still think he is hilarious. Daddy says you have the biggest smile he's ever seen on a baby. Your whole body convulses when you smile...and it is even more when it's because of Parker. I can tell you guys are going to be really close. If we can just keep you two from fighting, I bet you'll be great buddies. I'm sure you guys are already plotting how to get into trouble and make me worry! Boys are boys I guess.

You were blessed on the 24th of July by your dad at the Henderson's house. It was so fun because both sets of your grandparents and dad's grandma got to be there. We thought you were going to have to be blessed when no one was here, but it worked out perfect on a very special day! You were too big for Parker's blessing outfit so I had Grammy bring you a new one. You were too big for that one too! You were busting out the back and so we couldn't button it up all the way! It was so funny. I was a special day I will never forget!

Every time I see the little scar on your chest it makes me so sad inside. Those first few days of your life were probably the worst in both of our lives! I can't believe how tough you are! You have been through alot in life, and even though it was a rough start, I know you are a special boy and the Lord sent you here to us for a reason. I have already learned so much from you. Having one baby I thought I knew it all and that you would be just like him. I couldn't have been more wrong. You are your own little person, and you have so much to give. You are such a joy to be around. So content, and seriously so special. I know I sound kinda cheesy, but I am your mother so I am allowed to say it. So from now on, when I see the little scar I will try and be grateful. Grateful that you made it, and that you have brought so much love and happiness to our family.

When I found out I was pregnant with you I was so happy, but I was also really worried. I loved Parker so much, more than I could ever explain. I was so worried that I wouldn't know how to love another child. Not with my whole heart, since I was already giving it all your brother. Everyone said that is would just happen. And I do love you Eli. I love you just as much as I love your brother. I'm not really sure how, I just do.

I'm looking forward to the next 6 months. Keep growing big and strong. I love you dopey boy!

Love,

Mommy