SMILE!

This is the face we get when we ask for a smile. Ha ha. We laugh every time.

Potty Training Update

He is doing pretty good. Occasionally he tells us he needs to go (he is especially good at doing this when we are at restaurants after he gets tired of us telling him he can't leave the booth we are in or his seat). He always tells us if he needs to go if we ask. He hasn't had any accidents outside of our home except on the way to Gatlinburg, at the waterfall, and on the way home. Today we have started not letting him have his lion as a motivator in the bathroom so hopefully he forgets about taking him in there pretty quickly. So far it is going just fine. He also tells us he needs to go potty any time he wants some ice cream. Ha ha. We stopped giving him ice cream after every trip to the potty after the first week. Now he gets ice cream every time he poops in the potty. This has only happened one time and only b/c I knew what he was doing. It is too bad we can't tell what he is doing more often so that we could get him to the potty in time and possibly have more success with this part of potty training. Oh well. This too shall pass. I am still proud of Brigham doing as well as he is for not even being 2 1/2 yet! He is also staying dry during nap time and through the night so once we are finished with the diapers we currently have, there will be no more diapers for him at night time and I will have reached my goal of not having 2 kids in diapers!

Down at the Car Wash

Last week Mark washed our cars and it was Brigham's first time experiencing this. Well he LOVED it! I loved watching him.

Gatlinburg

We spent the weekend in Gatlinburg at a beautiful cabin with our Auntie Becky and Uncle Paul. We stayed at the cabin most of the time and ate at some great restaurants for dinner. On Sunday Mark, Brigham, and I went hiking. It was cold and I did the 2 1/2 mile hike in my Rainbows. Ha ha. My hands and teeth were cold the whole time but other than that it was great! We hiked to Laurel Falls and it was just beautiful! About half way to the fall we met a park ranger that told us we could not have Reagan on the trail with us. Mark ran her back to the car and then ran back up the trail to meet us as we slowly walked up the mountain. Brigham rode in his stroller pretty much all the way to the top and it was so much harder pushing that stroller for the short amount of time I did it while we waited for Mark to catch up. Mark and Brigham climbed down some rocks to go play by the stream. Brigham loved that part! Mark ended up carrying him almost all the way back down the mountain where Brigham slept in his arms the while time. It was a fun hike and Mark plans on hiking everyday that we are in Gatlinburg from now on.

Goals For 2012

1. Learn to Crochet

2. Take at least 1 cake decorating course

3. Become better at sewing

4. Read at least 3 books

5. Read the scriptures daily as a family

6. Build up our food storage

7. Hang out with our friends more

8. Go to the temple 4 times

9. Lose my baby weight by the summer

10. Stick with breastfeeding this time

Potty Training: Day 7

Brigham had 2 accidents this morning but he did great at church. He told us he needed to go 3 times during the first hour an he went every time. We ended up coming home after that but after the potty problems this morning, we have had a great day!
We won't be staying home all week and we will get back to our normal activities. I know accidents when we are out and about are inevitable but we have been able to avoid them so far. I also hope that Brigham finally begins to poop in the potty. That still has not happened. I hope it does soon!

Potty Training: Day 6

We haven't had a dry diaper after nap time or in the morning since I think Wednesday. Maybe that was just a fluke. We have already had an accident this morning that Brigham was nice enough to tell me about after the fact. We will probably just stay home for most of the day. Tomorrow will be our true test. We have a 30 minute drive to church, 3 hours at church, then straight to family dinner since it will be at Melanie and Brandon's and then a 30 minute drive home. I think I will bring a few changes of clothes and undies. I may have Mark take Brigham to the restroom every 30 minutes just to be safe.

Potty Training: Day 5

Today was a great day! No real accidents and Brigham told us twice while we were out to dinner that he needed to potty.
The not so good was when our travel potty seat that sits on top of toilets to make them kid size failed me and all Brigham's pee got on his clothes and mine. Luckily he had a change of clothes. Unfortunately I did not. I was also paranoid the rest of the night that we would need his change of clothes for an actual accident. Thank goodness we did not.
He still hasn't earned his train for pooping in the potty. He hasn't pooped since Wednesday. I thought today was definitely going to be the day but no it was not. What will Saturday hold in store for us?

Potty Training: Day 4

Today Brigham woke up with a dry diaper! Let's see what else today brings....

Potty Training: Day 3

It was a good day. I didn't load Brigham up on Capri Suns and he went 2-3 hours between potty breaks. We ventured out to Target and a quick stop at Marshall's. As soon as we parked the car he said he needed to poop. I was excited for him to tell me this but also a little scared we would not make it to the restroom. I carried him and we ran to the elevator and then to the restroom in Marshall's (which is all the way at the back of the store). This was all for nothing. He did not pee or poop. Ha ha.
When we were at Target I got Brigham one of the Thomas the Tank trains that makes noise and lights up. It is small but it will be his reward for pooping in the potty. Hopefully this works. Krystin said that a Thomas obsession would happen and boy was she right. Trains are his favorite thing and he only wants to wear his Thomas underwear. Whatever works is fine with me!

Potty Training: Day 2

Today we had a follow up doctor's appointment for Brigham's ear infections. After figuring things out yesterday I knew we could make this an accident free trip if he went to the potty right before we left home an as soon as we checked in and then once again before we left. We did go all those times and also an additional time while we were waiting for the doctor to come check his ears he said he needed to go potty. I don't know if he really went because I couldn't tell but that was the first time he has said he needed to go. Hopefully we will have another great day!

Brigham is up to being able to wait an hour between trips to the potty (at least that is what he was doing since 5:45). He had 1 accident today and we still need to work on pooping in the potty but all is well here! I had to bribe/reward him with I've cream this morning but we were able to steer away from rewards as the day went on. When he doesn't want to take a potty break, I bribe him with letting him have his lion while he pees. Ha ha. He will do almost anything to hold his lion!

Potty Training: Day 1

So far potty training has been successful! It is 7pm and we have had no accidents since 11am. Brigham is also able to pee on command now which is great! We have had 6 accidents and 10 successes! It has been a great day so far. I am dreading the rest of this process a lot less than I was this morning. It just may not be that bad after all but we will see how it goes.
By the end of the day we had 15 successes and only 6 accidents. He is going every 30-40 minutes as long as I ask him if he needs to go. What a relief. I didn't have to clean as much pee up as I thought I was going to have to. Pooping is another story but I think that will come with time. Brigham got a scoop of vanilla ice cream probably 10 out of the 15 times he went to the potty. Ha ha. I wasn't planning on using food as a reward but it worked as a good bribe to get our day going in the right direction.

Graduation Day

On December 17th Mark graduated from UNCC with his Bachelor's Degree in Software Information Systems. I was able to score front row seats right behind the stage and Mark was on the front row of his section so our seats could not have been any better. His mom and Albert came for the weekend to celebrate with us. It was great to be able to visit with them. Ark graduated in top 5% of his college as Magna Cum Laude. He has only gotten 3 b's while at UNCC and he was in an incredibly hard program. On his graduation had he deconstructed it and created a pick ax with yellow LED lights. It was pretty impressive but a lot of hard work. Several people commented that they loved the message his hat sent. We were puzzled for a second about that but then we realized people thought it was a cross. Ha ha
That night we had a graduation celebration with friends at the Burger Company. I wish I would have gotten a picture with everyone that came. Afterwards we came back to our house for dessert. It was a crock-pot peanut butter cake with molten chocolate. It was disgusting. It was a great celebration day and we are all so proud of Mark for doing so well!
The countdown is on for graduation celebration #2 this coming December when he graduates with his Master's Degree!
It is such a good feeling to know that both parents of our children are college graduates!

2011: My Year In Review

What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Bought a Prius, took Brigham to play in the ocean, stuck with yoga, hid a pregnancy from everyone for 17 weeks and 1 day

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made any resolutions last year. If I did, I completely forgot about them.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Krystin and a few friends did.

Did anyone close to you die?
My grandma


What countries did you visit?
No countries but the United States were visited

What would you like to have in 2012 that you didn’t have in 2011?
A more organized home and a year supply of food storage

What dates from 2011 will be etched upon your memory, and why?
Ocotber 24th- The day we revealed our biggest secret ever- Aubree Rose

What was your biggest achievement of this year?
I don't think I achieved much

What was your biggest failure?
Not having goals for our myself and our family

Did you suffer illness or injury?
nope

What was the best thing you bought?
Our new iPhones

Whose behavior merited celebration?
All those secret santas that paid off people's layaway orders at KMart

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The politicians/government in Washington

Where did most of your money go?
I guess our Prius. It was nice to get a newer car but hard to let go of the money to get it! We are definitely savers and not spenders.

What did you get really excited about?
Finding out we had a baby on the way!

What song will always remind you of 2011?

Forget You by Cee Lo. Brigham loves this song. It was the first song he would sing the words to on the radio.

Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier I guess. Definitely not sadder!
b) Fatter! (by about 20 pounds)
c) richer :)

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Vacationing


What do you wish you’d done less of?
tv watching

How did you spend Christmas?
Breakfast at Brandon and Melanie's with Nate, Scarlett, Daniel, and Katelyn (and all the kids of course), my dad's for lunch, and Krystin's (with my mom, Aunt, Uncle, and Clarisa) for dinner.

Did you fall in love in 2011?
You could say so

What was your favorite TV program?
We have several favorite programs that we discovered this year.

Revenge, Justified, Walking Dead, Mad Men, Modern Family

What was the best book you read?
Chaos Walking Series

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Mindy Gledhill

What did you want and get?
A new car!

What did you want and not get?
A new house. This actually won't happen for a few more years :) Other than that, I want for nothing.

What was your favorite film of 2011?
I don't even know.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Worked! Mark made me a delicious birthday lunch before I had to go to work and got me my new favorite necklace that he actually picked out completely on his own. I was so impressed!

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Being more committed to working out and getting those Kelly Ripa arms that I will never have


How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2011?
skinny jeans with my Frye boots, t-shirts and yoga pants. I am now more concerned with comfort over being dressed "cute" ha

What kept you sane?
yoga!

What political issue stirred you the most?
Raising our debt ceiling over and over!

Who did you miss?
I miss having my bff in the same city.


Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Nothing makes me happier than hanging out with my little family

40 Weeks is a Long Time to Wait

In my last post I wrote about when my battery died and Brigham was sick and a sweet lady named Georgia allowed us to stay in her home while roadside assistance came to jump my battery, well that morning Mark and I also found out that baby #2 was on the way! We were so excited to get the news we were hoping for. I told my sister and my friend Melanie but no one else. We were waiting for Melanie and Scarlett to get back from visiting Annie and Art in Texas so we could tell the family all at once so we had to keep our secret for 2 weeks. By the time they got back, we decided that we would just keep the whole pregnancy a secret until we found out the sex of the baby and just spring the news on everyone all at once. With Brigham I was 17 weeks and 1 day when we got the ultrasound. That would put us at October 24th for this baby. I was determined to get the ultrasound by then. I ended up not even getting to the doctor until I was 15 (almost 16) weeks. I was still hopeful to get back in for the ultrasound 10 days later. They ended up scheduling me for some date in November. Once I got home I called back and just told them I needed to reschedule for the week of October 24th. Lucky for me they had an opening for the 24th! By this point Mark and I were going crazy keeping this secret. It had become hard to hide my growing belly and people were becoming very suspicious about a baby being on the way. Lots of people were either asking me if I was pregnant or they were asking my friends if I was. I had become extremely anti-social and just stayed home. October 24th could not come soon enough.

Mark, Brigham, and I went to the ultrasound together where we found out that we have an Aubree Rose on the way! Lucky for us it was a girl. We have had a girl name picked out since before I was even pregnant this time. Boy names are much harder for us to agree on.

Mark left right after the ultrasound and headed to school. Brigham and I went home where we prepared for that evenings FHE with Nate, Scarlett, Carolina, Daniel, Katelyn, Brandon, and the kids. Mark spent all afternoon after class preparing our FHE video for the night. The video was our lesson for the night! Mark found a video about honesty and then added a song and some text at the end that let everyone in on our very big secret. It was such a fun way to tell everyone that not only did we have a baby on the way but that we knew it was a girl and we had a name for her. It was nice not to have to live in hiding anymore but it was also a little bittersweet. It was fun having a big fat secret of our own! It also felt like time just stopped once we told everyone. Mark and I never really even talked about the pregnancy because we didn't want to slip up when other people are around so time went fairly quickly leading up to October 24th. It has only been 10 weeks since then and it feels like it has been so much longer! We are super excited about our little Aubree and we can not wait to meet her and hold her in our arms.

This pregnancy has been different than with Brigham. My hormones are going crazy and I feel angry a lot of the time. I blame the hormones! We also were a little concerned about our Aubree Rose having cystic fibrosis. With Brigham I didn't get any genetic testing done but this time around I did. The testing showed that I was a carrier for cf and if it turned out that Mark was also a carrier then our children have a 25% chance of having cf. I ended up getting an amniocentesis to test Aubree's DNA in the amniotic fluid. That was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I hope I never have to get it done again. I was in pain from the needle for over a week! I could not believe it took that long to recover. Now, it only took that long because on the 3rd day I felt back to normal and I did way too much that day and it took another week from then to fully recover. It took nearly a month but the results came back as Aubree being a only a carrier for cf. What great news! Mark is planning on getting tested to see if he is a carrier before we have our next baby. If he is then we will be all done having babies.

As for now, March can't get here fast enough! My original due date was April 1st but it has been moved to March 29th. We are hoping for a March 23rd baby! I just keep thinking that I just need to make it to March and the month will go by quickly. We will see though. It will probably drag by slower than the last 10 weeks have!

Starting the New Year with a Post All About Last Year

For labor day weekend we spent 2 nights at the beach with some friends. This was Brigham's first real beach trip and he absolutely loved it! I can't wait to go back this coming summer. We pulled into the condo and walked straight down to the beach.

I took this picture to show how cute I thought Brigham looked in his underwear but this is also a very common position for him when the television is on. He likes to be right in front of it. I limit his tv watching to about 2 hours a day. I would like to get it to less than that but there are some days where it is even more than that. Currently his favorite show is Curious George. He asks for it all the time. He also loves Jack's Big Music Show, Blue's Clues, and Sesame Street. He will really watch just about anything that is on but these are the shows he actually asks for.


Here is a picture from Grandma and Grandpa Mooney's Mission Farewell party. It was a great party and we were all sad to see them go. Luckily they get to leave the mission for 10 days during the 18 months they are there so at least we will get to see them every so often. They can also have visitors and we plan on making our way up to Pittsburgh to visit them at some point.

In September Brigham turned 2! I can't believe he is already 2. We had 2 birthday parties to celebrate! We really only had 2 parties so that most of the family would be able to attend. We had most of Mark's family over on a Tuesday night and then my family over the following Saturday. Brigham had a chocolate oreo cream cake for both parties and at both parties the candle was a little too scary for him. At the time, he was scared of a lot of things that he had never even been bothered by before. Luckily it was a very short lived phase and he he is back to his mostly fearless self now. He even tries to blow out every candle he sees, even on tv.

Party #1

This is from the days in between his 2 parties where I gave him some paint for the first time. He really loves drawing and painting. The worst part is that he makes a huge mess and is only entertained for 5-10 minutes. The mess would be more worth it if the fun lasted a little longer for him.

Party #2

This is the first time I gave him some Play-Doh to play with. He loved it (for about 5 minutes).

This is from a fall festival we went to. Needless to say his favorite part was the cotton candy. Sugar is his favorite food but he is getting better about eating other things. He really loves pasta and pizza more than anything (except sugar of course).
We had 2 Halloweens and Brigham had 2 costumes. The first Halloween was the church's trunk or treat where he and Mark were dressed as Amish guys. I didn't get a picture of them because I wanted to take one once we were indoors since it was dark out and the pictures from last year were awful since they were all taken in the dark. Well, I forgot about taking any pictures once we were indoors and Mark shaved off his Amish beard almost as soon as we got home. He had been growing that thing out for a couple months and was only keeping it until after the trunk or treat since it is what inspired his costume and played a major part in it! They were super cute together but not many people guessed what they were dressed as.

This picture os from Halloween #2 which was on Halloween. We dressed him as a homeless man and his costume was a big hit! I put some black eye shadow on his face for a beard and everything else was clothing he already had! The sign was originally intended to hang around his neck but he didn't like it there so we taped it to his candy bucket and it worked just as well. He was a champion trick or treater and we are still eating the candy he got that night! He asks for some several times a day, every single day. I am unsuccessfully trying to break this candy addiction.
At the beginning of November I took Brigham to the doctor for a cough that he had for 2 weeks. Turns out he had developed asthma caused by an allergy to dust mites. We had to do breathing treatments for a month and a half, get allergen blocking pillow covers for his bed, and also an air purifier for his room. December 12th he was released from breathing treatments and all has been well! He did really well with the daily treatments.