Christmas and New Year

We had a fun trip when we went down to Utah for Christmas. It was fun to be able to see everyone and spend a little longer down there than we usually do. Ben was really upset when his cousins left and kept saying, "I wish all the cars were broken so no one could leave!" I think he's hoping people will come up to visit soon.

We started with a fun party with the Heinhold side of the family. You get all of us together and there are lots of kids running around. They seemed to have a good time playing together though. Well, except for Ben who had decided to be a little cranky.

The next night we had a singing party with the Toronto side. There were 100 people or so, a good number of whom were rather good singers, so it sounded really good in there. Since we were staying with the Torontos, I was able to put Daniel in bed instead of having to walk around with a cranky baby, so that was nice.

The boys had a really good time at McD's playing with their cousins on the slides there after they had a sleepover on Christmas night. They wore themselves out playing. In the van on the way back to the house, Ben said, "I'm tired. We played too hard."

We didn't always get to spend as much time with everyone as we wanted, but it was a nice trip down.

Alex had his 4th birthday on the 30th. We had cake for him and he opened a present, then got to go shopping on the 31st with his dad to pick out some more stuff. He says he likes being 4 and now he's almost 5.

For the New Year, we got to deal with sick kids. It's still carrying over, but at least we're home to deal with it and aren't still passing it on to everyone, unless you are a believer in the computer virus.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Last visit with Dr. Lee

Daniel and Chris both had doctor appointments today. Unfortunately because of the change in insurance in January, it will be our last appointment with their doctor. We've really liked Dr. Lee and the office there. Hopefully when we decide on a new doctor, we'll like them as well.

Anyway, Chris's appointment was basically just a weight check. He now weighs 25 pounds, 10 ounces and is up to about 15% for weight. Apparently the vitamins are helping him, so yay! The doctor also checked his testicles again (mostly because he had decided to strip down completely naked in the examination room). She thinks he just has extra fluid around the one, but gave me the name of a pediatric surgeon to take him there to get checked out since it could turn into a hernia. So basically we'd take him to the surgeon to see how long we let it go before we do something about it.

Daniel had his six month check-up today. He now weighs 15 pounds, 6 ounces and is 25 inches tall, which puts him at about 15% for both. And if you've been paying attention, that's down from the 30% he was 2 months ago. Dr. Lee suggested that we start Daniel on the vitamins now too, just to see if we can prevent the same thing happening to him as happened to Chris. Of course, Chris went down rather drastically between 4 months and 6 months, only gaining one ounce rather than a little over a pound. So Daniel is already doing better than Chris did. She also suggested we take Daniel in to his new doctor for a 9 month check-up just to kind of keep an eye on that to make sure he's not dropping down. He also got his 2 shots and another oral immunization today. He did cry with the shots, but not as hard as he did the last time and stopped crying a lot sooner.

Both kids look happy and healthy. Chris and Alex were both a little crazy though. And not just running around the office like they usually do. Chris kept saying he needed a shot like Daniel and Alex wanted the doctor to check out his "pee pee" like she was doing with Chris and Daniel. Neither of them got what they wanted though. :)

Christmas Cheer

With all the things to be happy about with Christmas, I had a new one today. Well, it's not new as in never before thought of or anything like that, just a new one (and yet not new...read on and you may get that) for us.

Chris keeps wanting to be like his big brothers. They go play at Kyle's and he wants to go play at Kyle's. They start saying silly things, he wants to say silly things. They wear underpants, he wants to wear underpants. In fact, he keeps wanting the latter so much that he keeps saying that he wants to pee or poop in the potty just so that he'll get to wear them. I don't think he really gets the concept of how to use the bathroom quite yet, however. This afternoon as I was changing a poopy diaper, Chris decided he wanted to try to use the bathroom and stood there for a while and didn't do anything. I had to get them lunch and get Daniel down for his nap, so I didn't let him stand for too much longer and put another diaper on him and told him that after we got Ben from the bus, he could try again. He did manage to poop again about the time we were to go get Ben, so when we got back, I took him up and cleaned him off and told him he could go naked for a bit so he could use the potty. I put him on the floor, then I went into my bathroom for a bit, and when I came out, I found out from Chris and Alex, that Chris had run into their bathroom when I put him on the floor, stood on the stool by the toilet, lifted the lid, and actually peed in the potty! He was very, very excited about it and had us call his dad to tell him what he had done so he could get the appropriate praise from his dad, then he ran back upstairs to try again.

So my new thing to be happy about this season is having a kid who is starting to really show an interest in being potty trained (as much as I hate the whole potty training process with a passion), so that hopefully soon we'll be back down to only one kid in diapers.

Look alikes

So it's no secret that our children all look fairly similar. They definitely look related. Sometimes it surprises me how much they do look alike though, especially when they were younger. Take today, for example. I was cleaning out a drawer and found some old pictures with Chris when he was a baby and thought, "Wow, he really looks like Daniel." I showed the pictures to Alex and he said, "That's, me and Ben and Daniel." So it wasn't just me thinking they look similar.

Anyway, here are a couple of the old pictures of Chris. Tell me if you think he looks a bit like Daniel. (Of course, you don't see Daniel all the time, probably, so you may not notice as much.)

Family and stuff

So I thought it was interesting yesterday when I was talking to a woman in my ward and she has a son who had almost exactly the same thing Chris does. He started losing weight and not gaining, took really long naps, etc. He ended up having exactly the same food allergies and was also anemic. She said he grew out of his allergies by the time he was 3, but it took them about 8 months of tests and things to figure out what was wrong. She said for her, it was really hard when he got labeled with a "failure to thrive." Luckily, Chris never got that one. I just thought it was interesting that so many things were alike with them. Her son is doing really well now, so that's a good thing.

Daniel is 5 months now, which seems crazy to me. He's still not rolling over yet, but he will roll to his side and then roll back to the other side. And he really, really likes food. Except for rice cereal or vegetables. I did get him to eat carrots by mixing it with applesauce though. The poor kid was sick last night, but he's better today and I took pictures of him so I can get one printed out and put it up on the wall.


This is Daniel in his saucer


All 4 boys


Daniel's 5 months pictures

Leet

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Parent/Teacher Conferences

Last night we went to Ben's first Parent/Teacher Conference. The grading they do for the Kindergarten kids (I'm not sure how they do it for the older grades) is with a Y for Yes, an A for Almost, or an N for Not Quite. Ben mostly got Y's, with a few A's and even an occasional N (for things like bouncing and catching a ball). We did think it was kind of funny that on the alphabet testing they did, he missed the T. We thought he would miss the b and d, since he mixes those two up a lot, but he got all the lowercase ones right. His teacher told us that the beans are working really well, that sometimes all she has to do to get Ben to stop doing something is to say the word "bean". She said the other kids in the class are really supportive of Ben and always try to help him keep his beans too. They get excited for him when he gets to get a sticker. She said that she knows when she asks a question in class, that if she asks Ben, he always knows the right answer. She said that sometimes she'll ask a question and ask a few kids who will get it wrong, so she'll ask Ben so that they'll be able to hear the right answer. She also said she worries sometimes that she's not giving him enough to do and he'll get bored, since he seems to know it all pretty well. So she did send us home with a few books for him to read. We told her how he knows that an e at the end of a word makes the vowel sound like its name and she said she had just been teaching her second grade class that morning about that rule. She also showed us the iri testing scores they did at the beginning of the year (she had sent us home the score before) and told us what they'll be testing them on again. She said that Ben got the highest score for the Kindergarten kids in the whole school on that testing. So Ben's pretty smart and has been doing pretty well. He just needs to work a little more on some motor skills (pretty normal though), and maybe work more on jumping in and working with a group; he tends to be a bit stand-offish when they do their group games.

Boys in suits

Is there some reason that many boys and men don't like to dress up and wear suits? I can understand why they wouldn't like to wear ties or even the top button on their shirt buttoned, but they really do look nice in them.

Yesterday Ben threw a fit getting ready for church because he didn't want to wear the new pants I had gotten him to go with the suit jacket and vest that Cindy had given us. He wanted to wear his old church pants with the blue sweater he had been wearing lately. We made him try it on anyway and kept telling him how good he looked in it, but he still didn't want to wear it. We did manage to get him to keep it on though.

Although in a kind of opposite way, Chris will usually ask me as I'm getting him dressed in the mornings if it's Sunday yet so he can wear his church clothes. I'm waiting for him to decide he doesn't like them, too.

Ben in his suit


And here's Alex in his church clothes

And Chris in his

Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Ben and Alex both had parties in school for Halloween and both said they were fun and they were really excited for tonight when they got to go get candy. Our ward was having a trunk or treat with 2 other wards and serving hot dogs and hot chocolate. We invited Brett, Alma, Kyle and Sabrina and we all went over and ate hot dogs (they ran out of those, by the way) and went trunk or treating. They all had a really good time, even though it got a bit cold. And there weren't nearly as many people there as I thought there'd be, but we still ended up getting a lot of candy.

Following are pictures:

These two were of Chris in his tiger costume. He didn't want to show his face.



These are of Daniel in his tiger costume. Cute tiger, huh?



All 4 boys


Pirate Alex


Pirate Ben


Posing Pirate Alex


All 4 boys again

4 month check-up

Daniel had his 4 month check-up today. He is now 24 inches long and weighs 14 pounds, 2 ounces. That puts him at about 45% for both. That's an inch taller and 1.2 pounds heavier than at his last appointment. If you paid attention to his last check-up, they said he was 80% for weight then. However, they did the marking for 2 months, when he was almost 3 months, so he was really pretty close to the percentage he is now. He's growing well and looks good. The doctor thinks we could probably start him on some solids now (he stopped sleeping through the night regularly like he was and he's almost doubled his birth weight). He got 3 shots and an oral vaccine again. He didn't seem too thrilled to be at the doctor though and cried every time we laid him down. Maybe he remembered the last visit with the shots. Poor kid already has a good memory.

Pumpkin Patch

Today for Alex's preschool, we went to a pumpkin patch. It's a nice, warm day today, but it was still a bit chilly this morning. I told the boys that it would be, but they still wanted to wear shorts. Yes, they complained about being cold at first, but when we got on the hay ride, they didn't notice anymore. We went on the hayride around the farm, then we went up and let them pick out their pumpkins. They had to be able to carry the pumpkins they chose, so they weren't able to pick out the really big ones, but they liked the ones they chose. Alex of course, picked a green one. He's silly sometimes. We all had fun there and they got to have an apple juice box and a bag of popcorn at the end. Unfortunately, Chris decided to choke a little on some popcorn in the van on the way home, so he threw up, but he's been happy since then. Well, except for when Alex takes things away from him.

The pumpkin patch was kind of out by Bryce's work, so we picked him up on the way home so he could have the van, since he wanted to go pick up some plans from a few places. So it was nice actually having someone else help with cleaning up after Chris' mess.

Following are some pictures from the trip as well as some pictures from the zoo when we went there for preschool a few weeks ago.

The boys on the hay ride

Walking through the pumpkin patch

Ben and Alex looking for pumpkins

Ben holding his pumpkin

Chris holding his pumpkin

Alex: I don't know which one to get!

Alex riding an elephant at the zoo

The boys and the zebra

And just for fun...

Alex and Daniel

Daniel actually smiling in a picture!

Daniel in his swing

HOA's and other stuff

Bryce went to our HOA meeting last night. When I asked him how it was, he said that it was basically "a bitch fest." There were a lot of people interrupting to say, "What about this?" And "what about that?" Things that they'd get to on the list if they would have patience and just wait. And then it was discussed to possibly contact a lawyer to see if we could put pressure on the city to do something about our swells (the dip in the parking strip instead of storm drains...yeah, nice mosquito breeding grounds and potentially hazardous to small children). 10 minutes and another topic later, someone says, "How about if we see if we can start some Class Action Suit against the city about the swells?" Bryce said it took an hour to get to the point of the meeting, which was to get people to sign up to be on committees, such as the welcoming committee, legal committee, etc. So he signed up and then left rather than waiting around to see if they'd start re-hashing everything that people were complaining about earlier. I think I'm glad I sent him instead of going myself.

Daniel turned 4 months old this week. It's crazy how fast the time is going. He's a lot like Alex and starts to giggle when I put him on the changing table. Can't have anything to do with the fact that he gets tickled a lot when he's on there and is starting to anticipate it.

We're thinking that there's something in Strawberry Quik that affects Chris. He threw up in the van on Wednesday after drinking strawberry milk the day before and that morning. And it seems as though when he's thrown up at different times in the past, strawberry milk is usually involved. So the poor kid doesn't get to have strawberry milk anymore. But he can still have the chocolate milk (maybe not the Nesquik on that one, either though).

Alex is energetic as ever. He's really enjoying his preschool and is always excited to go. He seems to think it's pretty cool that he gets to have his own class. I think he's starting to miss his brother Ben, since he starts to get a bit wound up when Ben comes home from school.

Speaking of Ben, he's now gone two weeks in a row without losing any of his beans. Way to go Ben! He seems to enjoy going to school, but I do think that the bus ride is still his favorite part.

General Conference and stuff

Well, General Conference was this past weekend. I really enjoyed it. It's just really cool to be able to listen to the prophets speak. I think of all the people in the world who don't know that we have prophets on the earth today and I'm sad for them. One of the talks fit a bit with this coming Sunday's Gospel Doctrine Lesson. It's on Acts 21-28, where Paul goes to Jerusalem and is arrested at the temple and ultimately ends up testifying to King Agrippa. King Agrippa tells him, "Almost thou persuadest me to become a christian." (I may be off on the wording a wee bit.) Sometimes people don't accept the gospel because they think it would be too hard, giving up some friends and some habits, even though they can see the good of the message. Are there times when we are "almost" persuaded to do what's right? Like the talk in Conference, are we sometimes choosing the good over the better or the best? Sometimes that's easy to do. It's not always easy to choose the best over the good. So that's just one thing that I got out of Conference. If you so desire, feel free to add comments to this post and tell me what you got out of it.

And for those who may be wondering, Ben has been doing really well at school lately. Most days he either keeps all his beans or only loses one. He did have one day last week where he lost them all, but the day before and the day after (he only had school 3 days last week) he kept them all. So it looks like our efforts at giving him more attention and giving him something to work towards at school are working. He wants to be good, so the beans at school are a good reminder for him.

Alex is really enjoying his preschool. He runs to the houses when we get there and doesn't care if I'm keeping up with him. He doesn't seem to mind when he gets to go home though, but he talks about his preschool a lot. This week will be the first time it's at our house, so we'll see how he likes it then.

Chris is doing better in nursery than he used to. He doesn't need Bryce to be in there with him anymore and doesn't seem like he's quite so shy when he's there. I think he'll be excited when his cousin gets to join him in there in the next few months.

Daniel is still growing up a storm. He's reaching for objects and seems to like to roll over onto his side these days. Before we know it, he'll be rolling all over the place. We do have to be careful when we put him down on the floor, however. His brothers don't always pay attention to where they're walking and end up tripping on him. For some reason Daniel doesn't like it when that happens.

I was going to post a video on this of me practicing the song we're singing with our ward choir. I was practicing and wanted to hear how I sounded, since I'm doing the solo parts in the song. But since the video would go into processing and then disappear, I think you're saved and don't have to hear or see it. Lucky you. I guess if you're a glutton for punishment and if you really would like to, you can always ask me and I can see if I can email it to you. I'm not sure why you'd want to though. A couple parts really didn't sound very good, but that wasn't always my fault. Sometimes it was the microphone on my webcam. And no, I'm not just being modest. I cringed a couple of times. But only a couple of times isn't too bad, right?

A New TV

The TV in our family room was having problems. After we had the bulb in it changed, the screen went all warped and soon there was a big, bright, yellow circle in the midle of the screen. We waited until the beginning of this month and then finally called Best Buy to fix it (we had the extended warranty and were very glad we got it after we had to have the light engine replaced last year, which was a $1400 part). They contacted the repair place and Wes from the repair place called us and said that he'd send it back in to Best Buy to have them do the buy back thing, since he was pretty sure it was probably the light engine again and he said they don't fix that anymore. So we waited to hear back from Best Buy and finally on Thursday we got a call that said to take our TV in to the store and they'll exchange it. They gave us a confirmation and told us to take in our receipt and stuff too. So when Bryce came home from work that night, he took the tv and went to Best Buy. He came back with a 50" dlp TV and an adapter for our computer to make it go from DVI to HDMI, since the new TV didn't have the DVI port (It had a VGA port, but our VGA output on our computer hadn't been working). He said that at first they tried to get him to take a 46" TV and he asked how it works, if they just trade for comparable models (although our old TV had more ports and they actually didn't have anything there with a DVI port) or what. So they figured out that the TV we had would cost $1200 now, so they were looking at TV's in that range (the 46" one cost $900). Anyway, Bryce set up the 50" TV and we couldn't get the computer to work right with it, so the next day, Bryce took it back and just got a gift card for the cost, since he thought maybe I'd want to help him pick something out. They actually gave him the full amount that we originally paid for our TV with taxes and everything, so just over $1900.
I told Bryce I didn't care what he got, so he could just go back, which he did after we got the boys in bed that night. He kept calling me to see if we wanted 2 46" TV's, a 50" and a 46", or a 65". I told him it was up to him. He decided to get the 65". But they only had the floor model left at the Nampa store and there wasn't enough time to get out to the Boise store before it closed, so they held one for him at the Boise store. Since I had an Enrichment Activity when he was supposed to be out there, he took Ben, Alex, and Chris with him and I had Daniel with me. I got home from the EA at about 12. At 1, Bryce got home and asked if I could keep the boys with me, he was going to go to the Nampa store. He had argued with the people at the Boise store because they wanted to charge him $1999 for the TV when he was going to get it for $1699 at the Nampa store. So he went to the Nampa store and got it for the $1699 price, which had been kind of a mistake in the first place because the manager hadn't switched the tag to say $1999, but since he had told Bryce they would give it to him for that price, they were keeping it there. And since he was taking the floor model, they gave him another 10% off. And Bryce managed to talk them into not charging him sales tax because of the hassle. And the manager who the night before had told Bryce he'd give it to him for that price wasn't there, so they had to call him to make sure Bryce was telling them the truth. So after buying the TV and another extended warranty with it (we figured that it was probably a good idea with a TV this expensive and it really came in handy last time), he ended up with about $28 left on the gift card. So he got a 65" TV that is typically worth $2000 or so for a really good price, feeling like he spent a lot of money, although he hadn't actually spent anything) And if he had taken the one they were originally trying to give him, we'd have ended up with a TV worth $900. I'm pretty glad I sent Bryce to go do the TV stuff. I probably would have just taken the $900 one. And now we have a HUGE TV in our family room that works with the computer (it also didn't have the DVI port, but the HDMI port was supposed to work better with computers). It took a bit to get the computer to work with it and in the end, the VGA output actually started working, and the DVI still wasn't working with the new TV, so we're using the VGA port. Which is actually kind of funny. To sum up, it was a lot of hassle, but we ended up getting a pretty good deal out of it. We went from 44" to 65" and didn't have to pay anything.

Temple trip

We went to the temple for Family Home Evening last night and the boys loved it. They had a good time exploring the grounds and talking about some of the things that happen in the temple. We also had our family scripture study at the temple, and they seemed to like that. They all kept saying that they wanted to stay there and wanted to go back soon. We've told them that maybe the next time we're down visiting family, we'll take them to see the Salt Lake Temple and maybe the Bountiful Temple so they can see the place where we got married. They're excited to be able to see more. It's so fun to see them excited about things like that.

Here are some pictures I took of them at the temple:

3 months old now

I just thought I'd post a few pictures I took of Daniel on his 3 month birthday. He's funny and won't smile for the camera even though he's pretty smiley in between the shots.
The marble and beans system we've been doing with Ben and Ben's teacher seems to be working so far. On Thursday he didn't get to keep any of his beans, so he didn't get to put a marble in the jar at home, but he was very happy coming off the bus on Friday because he had been able to keep 3 of his beans, which meant he got to put a marble (3, actually) in the jar at home. I'm sure his teacher appreciated that he was being better in class. (For those of you who haven't heard about this part, Ben's teacher called on Wednesday to discuss concerns she was having with him. Basically he's been defiant and will do the exact opposite of what she tells him to do, he blows in the other kids' faces to the point where they don't like to stand by him, he yelled at another teacher that she wasn't the boss of him, things like that.)







I thought I'd add this cute one of Chris, too.