My Little Lifesavers

Brennen
He’s in a fun stage right now. He’s a little over 2 1/2 (technically he’s just about 32 months but I don’t keep track of his months anymore!) He was kind of a difficult baby but now he obeys us (most of the time…) and is really fun to be around! And he’s potty trained so at the moment there’s not a lot of stress. :) Here are some fun things he does now.

• He always turns around in bed. I’ll tuck him in all nice but when I check on him before I go to bed he’s always turned around with his head where his feet should be, on top of his covers, with his pillow on top of him.
• He climbs up to the very top of my treadmill.
• He climbs into Deans crib to play every morning.
• He “reads” books by himself. He’s not actually reading but he remembers what each page says and recites them from memory all on his own. I love it. :)
• He loves building with his legos and other blocks.
• He LOVES vegetables and fruits. Both of my boys will eat practically anything so that’s way nice!
• He was NOT a cuddly baby but now he loves to cuddle. He climbs in bed with me every morning and will often climb into my lap and give me big hugs and say “I love you, Mom.” SO sweet!

This kid started talking very early. At age one he was saying: dad, uh oh, juice, and thank you. I remember the day we got our Christmas tree in 2011 Matt and I were trying to figure out all the words he had in his vocabulary and we lost count. He was not quite 18 months then. And his voice has always been so clear and clean and he’s very easy for anyone to understand. Always has been. 
Anyway, I’m going to try to list some of the funnier things he’s said in the past year or so. There’s no way I can remember them all. Some may be border line inappropriate… but really funny! And I swear I’m not making this stuff up. How could I? :)

• We were in the car and it was dark so he said, “The sun is sleeping. Have to be quiet.”
• He was giving me a hug and suddenly grabbed my chest and said, “These are eggs!”
• He pooped his pants (at the very beginnings of potty training) and so I put him on the toilet while I was washing out his undies and he put his hands over his face and said “I just cannot handle this.”
• Right after Dean was born he narrated everything. “Baby Dean sleeping. Baby Dean hungry. Baby Dean crying.” and etc.
• When he could barely talk he’d go around crying, “Juice! Juice!” Now he says, “MOM! I need some more juice-UH!!!!”
• He sings several entire songs on pitch! He always sings to Dean whenever he’s upset.
• Whenever he sees anyone wearing a cowboys shirt (or just anything brown) he says, “I love your nice cowboy shirt!”
• Whenever someone cries he says, “It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s okay!” over and over very quickly. This started about the time Dean was born.
• He understands words like: behind, under, on top. And uses them appropriately.
• He was pretending to teach a piano lesson and I heard him yell, “Key signature! The KEY signature!!!!” (I’m pretty sure I don’t sound quite that angry with my students when they miss an F#…)
• He sings along to songs on the radio and the other day he randomly started singing “I got da moves like JAGGA!” oops…
• And just today I heard him singing, “Here’s my numba, ca-call me bayBA!” (I don’t really like either of those songs, they just happen to be on the radio in the car I guess…)
• Last night he looked at Brad and said, “Brad! Where ya been, bud?”
• My mom taught him a game where she says “Give me that face!” and when he does she’ll kiss him and then he wipes it off. It’s really cute. :) So now he’ll go around saying “Gimme dat face!” and wipes off my kisses then says, “Grandma teaches me to be funny. HA HA!”

He says WAY more smart and funny things but of course I can’t think of them when I want to! I’ll probably insert more “Brennen-isms” in future posts.

Dean
He turned 10 months about a week ago. I’ll just list a couple things since not much has changed about him since my last post. :)

• He can stand alone for several seconds and when he wants to get down he just slowly lowers himself.
• He still wakes up at least 3 times a night.
• We give him a lot of table food (the kids has 8 teeth) and he loves everything he’s tried.
• He still loves unplugging everything.
• He can reach the piano and plays it while I’m trying to (it’s electric so he also likes to unplug it…)
• He climbs onto everything! He can get onto the couch by himself. Oh boy… :)
• He crawls around SO quickly and bats things out of his way as he goes.
• He laughs and “talks” ALL the time! Actually, his talking is more like happily screeching words.
• He’s starting to retaliate to Brennen. If he gets pushed he’ll push back. He also tries to bite Brennen if he tries to do anything to him. :)
• He’s started to throw fits. He’ll get up on his knees and bounce around a couple times and then fall backward and burry his face into the floor and cry. It’s actually really cute. :)

I appreciate and love these boys even more when I go to work and then come back. :) I realize how much they mean to me and that I would do anything for them! They bring so much joy into my life. I don’t even know how I lived without them before!

The Number 9

I never wrote about Dean at 9 months. I took him to the doctor last week, here are the stats:

Length: 28 inches (about 40%)
Weight: 19 lbs 8 oz (about 30%)
Head: 46.2 cm (about 75%)

His percentiles changed pretty drastically in the last three months! But he is health and happy. Here are a few things about him that I don’t want to forget:

• He still doesn’t sleep through the night. He’s done it probably 4 times total his whole life.
• He likes naps, though, and takes two a day for at least an hour each.
• He is really trying to walk! It’s crazy to me. He cruises around furniture and tries letting go sometimes.
• He LOVES chasing Brennen around. Brennen has realized this and will taunt him with toys and run around the house making Dean chase after them. But they both have lots of fun doing it.
• He is our little gremlin! I don’t remember the movie but Matt does and says that the little creatures like to eat electronics. Well, we CANNOT keep Dean away from plugs and cords! We have to unplug everything during the day (even our alarm clock) and wrap the cords around things so he can’t get them. He unplugs things and then plugs them back in. If there is a wayward cord laying around he chews on it. I put outlet covers in but he quickly figured out how to remove them! It’s kinda funny but also dangerous…
• He can reach the piano now and loves to play while I’m trying to practice.
• He dances to music sometimes. So cute. :)
• He loves to bounce.
• He babbles a lot now and mimics Brennen’s sounds. He especially likes to growl.
• He is still so quick to smile and giggle and is a really good natured baby!

9 is the last number before 10 but in Matt’s case 29 is the last number before 30! He turned 29 yesterday! It’s crazy to me that he’s that “old” because he was 22 when we got married. I think he had a good day. The boys and I let him sleep in until after 9 and then we made him breakfast. He worked all day but after work I made him his requested dinner (chicken enchiladas) and then his family came over and joined us for cake, ice cream, and presents.

Brennen made him a birthday card and in it I wrote the answers to 9 questions about his dad. I asked the questions and these were his honest to goodness answers! I didn’t prompt him at all.

1. My dad’s name is: Matt.
2. He is 23 years old.
3. He is as big as his birthday.
4. He has black hair and white eyes.
5. His favorite food is a cake and his favorite color is brown.
6. He likes to go to school.
7. For fun he likes to pick the cakies out.
8. My favorite thing to do with Dad is build a tower.
9. I love my dad because he dances.

We like to hold up the number of fingers of the person’s age so here are 29 fingers for Matthew!

The Best Time of the Year

Happy New Year! Matt is off skiing with his family (I hate downhill skiing so I happily stayed home with the boys) so I thought I’d give this blog an update!

December is always an event-filled month for us so let me give a brief recap.

• On the 1st we went up to get our Christmas tree with Matt’s family and my brother Kasey. It was a really fun day!

• Matt graduated from UW with a degree in Spanish! (He didn’t walk, though). Now he’s going to take the classes he needs to get certified to teach biology and Spanish and he’ll be done next May.
• We traveled to Lyman for Christmas. It was really fun to see all of my family and the boys had a lot of fun. Dean wasn’t as fascinated with the wrapping paper as I thought he would be but he liked his presents and so did Brennen! We played games, read stories, ate good food, went sledding, and just enjoyed each other!

• We got back to Laramie just in time to celebrate Matt’s mom’s birthday. We went out to dinner with the whole family and had cake back at their house.

• Kyle and Kylee came to Laramie and spent a lot of time here so it was fun to see them and for all three cousins to “play.” We also got to spend some time with Matt’s grandma.

• Matt and I celebrated out 6th anniversary! It was on a Sunday so on Saturday we left the kids at Grandma’s for awhile and ate dinner and watched a movie. It has been an amazing six years and I love him so much!

I love the Christmas season and the opportunity we have to celebrate the birth of our Savior. It was really fun this year to tell Brennen about Santa but I enjoyed our talks about the birth of Jesus a lot more and he seems to be understanding all that the Savior means to us.

We’re looking forward to a new year here in the Clark family! 2012 was full of ups and downs and we can’t wait to see how 2013 turns out (hopefully we’ll get some more of those “ups!”) :)

Knock it off!

Confession time: 
I am a complainer.
I tend to look at the glass as half empty.
I feel sorry for myself.
I get caught up in all the things that I don’t have instead of the things that I do have.
I am impatient with myself and my family.
I sometimes blame Matt when things go wrong just so I can have someone to blame it on.
I eat too much.
I have low self-esteem (especially about my physical appearance).
I spend too much time doing things that are unimportant.
I’m lazy.

So sometimes I just have to tell myself to “knock it off!”

When I feel my anger building, when I get annoyed, when my head is filled with negative thoughts, when I browse the kitchen for the 3rd time in 10 minutes…..

KNOCK IT OFF!

And honestly, as hard as it is to recognize flaws and try to fix them, I feel SO much better when that little voice in my head tells me to stop it. I actually use the words “knock it off” and it works! (when I remember…)
(on a side note, Matt thinks I’m a bit crazy that I hear voices in my head…)

I could write a separate post about each of these character weaknesses but instead I’ll briefly focus on just two for this post and about things I’ve done or things I’m trying to do to improve.

1. Self esteem.
This one has haunted me for my whole life! When I was in middle school, a few friends and I had “self-esteem weeks.” If I remember right, we owed the others something whenever we said something negative about ourselves. So for every “I’m fat” we had to give the others a candy bar or something. It was fun but it didn’t really work. :)
Now that I’m an old married woman, I find that I feel better about myself if I get dressed and at least put on a little makeup every day. Some days it’s hard to even find time for a shower but it really helps if you dress like you’re going out every day even if you’re not. Also, if I wear sweat pants then I’m not as worried about sucking in that fat roll and I tend to eat more. If you dress in tighter clothes (you know, the ones that actually fit) then you won’t eat as much. Try it! I swear it works.
I recently gave a talk on inner beauty for a relief society activity. It was a difficult topic but it was good for me to give it! It’s good to be reminded that what is on the outside doesn’t matter nearly as much as what is on the inside.

2. Things I don’t have.
As you all know, it was Thanksgiving yesterday. :) We had a really nice day with Matt’s family here in Laramie. We had a great dinner (of course) and played Monopoly (we won’t get into how competitive I am…. I may or may not have left the game angry…)
Everyone always lists what they’re thankful for in November to build up to Thanksgiving. Brennen and I (let’s face it, Dean is just too little) have a thankful tree on our wall (made of poster board) and every day we make a new leaf (from construction paper) and I ask him what he’s thankful for. I don’t have to prompt him hardly at all. Sometimes if he keeps repeating things I’ll say “WHO are you thankful for?” and he’ll come up with another person. We’re going to continue until the end of the month but hopefully we’ll be able to count our blessings every day of every month and focus on things that we DO have! So, here are the things that Brennen is thankful for so for. (in no particular order)

My Grandmas
Blaze (Kasey’s dog)
Songs
Toys
Tape
Link (Matt’s parent’s dog)
Dean
Dad
Aunts and uncles
Lane (Matt’s brother)
Jessica (Lane’s wife)
The cups
The church
The cow
Mom (he didn’t list me until like the 15th! I was getting worried…)
The road
Books
The leaves
Snow
Scissors
The markers
Nerds (you know, the candy)
Family

Here is our tree. I am NOT an artist. And when I actually attempt to be crafty I don’t really try very hard. (and Brennen did most of the coloring on the tree). So… don’t judge, ok! :)

November??

Time has sure been flying by! Dean is now 7 months old! I won’t give a huge list of all the great things about him, I’ll just add the most recent things. :)

He’s now eating 2 solid meals a day.
He still wakes up at least once a night!
He still won’t drink a bottle or out of a sippy cup.
He can officially crawl for real. All over the place on all fours. :)
He can pull up to stand! He does it on the walls, too. He struggles with the couch because he’s just not quite tall enough.
He makes lots of noises but still doesn’t “talk.”
He loves playing with Brennen even though it’s not always fun for him… Brennen drags Dean all over the floor and will often pile blankets on him to either put him to bed or “put him in the nest.” (not sure where that came from…) Brennen also tries to pick Dean up and has succeeded a few times. That usually results in an upset Dean. They LOVE playing on my treadmill (don’t worry, I leave it unplugged when I’m not on it!) But Dean usually plays along pretty well and they spend hours laughing together.

We had fun on Halloween this year! We didn’t do a whole lot because Matt had to work and the kids are still pretty little but they did dress up and my good friend Elle went with me to take them trick or treating at the children’s clinic. Then I took them to Kasey’s and to Grandma’s.

I didn’t get any great pictures of them by themselves and their costumes are a little hard to see. Brennen was a knight and Dean was a dragon. How appropriate. :)

Playing together

Dean at just under 7 months playing with a globe

Happy Halloween!
The Dragon 

The Knight

Our Family!