Family Trip to the Zoo

Since Anthony had the day off yesterday, we weren't sure what we wanted to do for Labor Day. Sunday on the way home from church, James started excitedly shouting, "We going to the zoo!!". Anthony and I looked at each other and I said that it was actually a good idea for something to do the next day. Our passes expire at the end of the month and I wanted to go at least one more time before the baby comes. We planned to get there as soon as they opened so that we could attempt to beat the heat. It was still hotter than anything!

James didn't seem to mind the heat, he was so excited that Anthony's parents and our niece and nephew were able to meet us there! James had a great time following Dallas around and they were so sweet with him, holding his hand on the stairs and showing him things. Dallas would even lift James up so that he could see over the hand rails:

Our first stop was to the giraffes. They are my favorite!! There were two baby giraffes running and chasing each other around the enclosure. I don't think I have ever seen a giraffe run before, and it was really cool looking. While we were waiting to feed the giraffes, one of the volunteers told us that mother giraffes carry their babies for 14 months!! The mother giraffe at the zoo has had 5 babies so far. I have a serious amount of respect for giraffes now :)

 

Here are James and Anthony feeding the giraffe:

The zoo was having a cold-blooded weekend that featured the reptiles so they had extra activities planned. We got to watch them feed the alligators frozen discs of food. It was crazy to watch them crunch right through the blocks of ice with their jaws!!

 

Watching the alligators:

We also got to see the baby Jaguar, although he doesn't really look like a baby anymore. Maybe more like an adolescent.

 James wasn't too interested in the jaguar, he mostly just wanted bites of Anthony's dippin dots. I think it is so funny that he cries and refuses to eat regular ice cream, but he liked the dots ice cream. I think it is because it is not as messy. He is so particular! On the one hand it can be frustrating, but on the other hand I totally get it because I am the same way :)

The heat was really getting to me, so we made our way to the kids area. While we waited for everyone to look at the aquarium and touch tank, my mom and I took a break in the shade.

Finally we got into the air conditioned kids discovery area. Sweet relief! James and his cousins loved playing in the large sand area, digging for fossils. We had a sand throwing problem at one point that required a time out, but other than that James loved it :)

 Nevada decided to bury herself in the sand :)

It was such a great way to spend our holiday, we decided that we definitely have to plan family days at the zoo more often. James loved having Anthony come with us, since usually it is just me and him. When James got up in the morning, he didn't even think to look for Anthony. He played with me and my mom for awhile before he came into the living room. When he saw Anthony he got excited and ran up to him and said, "You're here!!" It was so sweet! It made me really glad that we decided to spend the day together instead of Anthony going fishing (which he considered doing). Now that Anthony gets off of work at noon on Saturdays, hopefully we will be able to schedule more family activities like that :)





Family Home Evening

This post is mainly just for me and for journaling purposes. We have a hard time doing family home evening in our house. James hates sitting still, and I never know what lessons or activities to do that will be spiritual but fun for him. Anthony also works until 10:30pm on Mondays so we try to have FHE on Sundays. However, after church and the craziness of primary we are usually so tired Sunday nights that we don't have the motivation for it. I started a binder with laminated magnets of scripture stories, so we usually just pull out one of those and go through the story really quickly for our lesson.

Last Sunday I realized that we probably hadn't had FHE in at least two months. So I sat us down to do it right before bath time. I didn't realize it, but my mom was videoing it! I wanted to be able to look back at it to remember, so here it is :)

For song we have a primary song app on the Ipad that sings the songs with pictures and words. We always let James choose the song and he usually picks the one with birds on it, or the star song :)

Pinterest Fail

I am a pinterest junkie. I look at that website all the time on my phone, especially at night time when I should be sleeping. There is something so relaxing about looking at the stuff other people find useful or beautiful or interesting. When I was planning activities for us to do with James in the Keys, I got most of my ideas off of pinterest. I had a few leftover that we didn't do on vacation so I decided to try them out at home.

One of the activities was to take shaving cream and mix it with food coloring to make paint that your child can use in the bathtub. It looked like so much fun and seemed easy to clean afterwards, just turn on the faucet and wash it away. That is not how it turned out. To be fair, James was really cranky before I got all the stuff together to do it, so I probably should have put it off for another day. I thought it would be so fun that he would snap out of his bad mood. Nope.

Here he is getting started:

 I put him in our bathtub because it is bigger and I thought he would have more room to paint. What I didn't consider is that in his bathroom the walls around the bathtub are all tile, almost to the ceiling while in our bathtub, the painted walls start a few inches past the bathtub. Almost immediately after getting food coloring dyed shaving cream all over his hands, James smeared large hand prints all over the walls! I had no idea how I was going to get the stain out of the wall and I spent the rest of the time telling James over and over to paint only in the bathtub and not the walls.

He had fun for a little while while I googled how to get food coloring stains off of walls:

Then he discovered that if he got the brush a little wet, he could fling droplets all over the bathroom.

 Once he noticed that his hands were stained blue, he started to get upset. He kept asking me to "wash it off". This kid doesn't not like having his hands dirty!!

It was getting late, so I told James that it was time to wash it off and take a bath. He was not interested. I tried just turning on the faucet and giving him a bath right there, but he got so upset that I was washing his masterpiece away that he started screaming so hard he almost couldn't breathe. Since he was covered in food coloring, I didn't want to just pick him up and get my clothes all stained, knowing that he would be kicking and flailing the entire time. I tried to grab him and just wash him off quickly in the water so I could get him out of the tub, but he saw what I was doing and ran to the other side of the tub and immediately smeared his hands all over the walls in defiance. At this point I was so frustrated that I finally got a hold of him and rinsed him off as quickly as I could and took him to his room to get dressed for bed. He was crying so hard that he couldn't catch his breath and all I could think about was the clean-up job that was in front of me once I got him into bed. After a few minutes he settled down and I talked to him about how we can't do fun things if he is going to get so upset when it is time for them to be over. I don't think he comprehended any of it, but at least I tried.

After he went to sleep I tried 3 different chemicals to get the stain off of the walls and the last one finally worked! Thank goodness! Once the tub was cleaned out and the food colored bathroom rugs were put in the washer I practically fell into bed for the night. Sometimes it is good to remember that those pictures on pinterest of blissfully happy and content kids playing obediently with what is in front of them are pictures of one second! Just one! Right before and after could have been total chaos. And probably was :)

Pregnancy Journal: 36 Weeks

 Only 4 more weeks to go!! I feel like I am getting bigger by the day :) In fact, my belly has grown so much so quickly, that I have started bumping into things with it all the time because my brain hasn't caught up yet! In a few days I will be as pregnant as I have ever been (since James was born a few days after 36 weeks), and if I make it to my due date it will be the first time I've experienced the last month of pregnancy...in Florida..in September. It is hot!!

Friday night I woke up at 4am with some pretty strong and consistent contractions. I was so nervous that it was real labor! I wasn't sure if I should wake Anthony up or if I should just wait them out. I tried just lying there and relaxing, but they were so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep. Finally after about an hour I got up to take a warm bath. As soon as I got in, everything relaxed and the contractions went away. Phew!! I was so relieved. I am definitely not ready for labor yet :)

We still can't decide on a name. I have a feeling that we are going to be in the hospital after he is born, debating names and having the same discussions over and over again. I am hoping that once he is here, one of the names we like will all of a sudden jump out at us and make the decision easier. For now, we have a list of names that we like, but none of them seem right for some reason.

I am doing pretty well on my list of things I need to get done before the baby is born. It feels like we have been really busy lately so I've been trying to get things done so that we can relax a little bit before our life gets turned upside down. I can tell that soon I won't have a choice but to slow down because I am so tired all the time!!

Wednesday we have a midwife appointment and an ultrasound scheduled to verify that the baby is head down (we know that he is, but they routinely check at 36 weeks anyway). So there are more pictures to come!

Baby Shower and Boys Fishing Trip

Saturday was my baby shower! It was combined with a friend of mine from church whose due date is only 2 days after mine and it was perfect. She is having a little boy too, so it was fun to celebrate our new little guys. I had so much fun talking and visiting, that I didn't take any pictures! Luckily my mom got this one of the presents area. We were so grateful to get so many diapers, wipes, and other essentials for baby brother!

We played a few small games, but mostly we just talked and ate :) Since we didn't need any clothes, it was fun to watch the other mom open the cute outfits people had given her and Oooo and ahhh over the adorableness.

Anthony's parents and his niece and nephew came up from Merritt Island for the big day. While all the girls went to the shower, all the boys took the boat out to go fishing. The boys had a blast! They stayed out pretty late and made us a little nervous when they still hadn't come back by 8pm. Anthony said everyone was having such a good time, he had to force himself to be the bad guy and tell them it was time to go. They all wanted to keep fishing!

James/Anthony caught a few fish. Man I love this cute face!

This fish was actually pretty big! James and Dallas were excited to show it to me after they brought it home:

After they got home, James and the cousins were playing tag in the front yard while Anthony and his Dad cleaned and put the boat away. It was so late at night, but it was fun to see James play with Dallas and Nevada! I needed to get sharing time ready for the next day, so I brought the laptop into the office to print some pages...only to find that our printer had died! It wouldn't power on or anything, which was the exact same thing that happened to our computer a few months ago. Both were plugged into the same power strip so now we are thinking that the outlet is bad. Anyway, I needed to print some things, and Anthony had a talk in Sacrament and was teaching Elder's quorum the next day, so he definitely needed to print some stuff! We couldn't decide if we should just go to Walmart and buy a cheap printer, or if we should try to get our things printed somewhere else. Anthony's mom got a picture of me trying to research printers online. Decisions, decisions! 

The thing I loved about our printer was that I found great, cheap, ink for it. I looked back at our amazon purchases and found that the last time we bought ink was almost a year ago: 3 full sets of black and color for $8 shipped! The printer was an old one from Anthony's office that they were getting rid of, so not only is it more expensive than we would ever pay but they don't even make it anymore. Now I am torn between all the printer options out there: wireless, color or not color, inkjet or laser, etc.. So far I am trying to find similar deals on the cheap ink and just look for printers to match them. I just can't go back to paying $30+ dollars each time I need more ink! Anyone else had to go through this recently? Any suggestions?

Angell & Phelps Chocolate Factory

So there is a chocolate factory. Only 30 minutes from our house. And they offer free tours. How could you resist that??!! I've been dying to go, but I always remember it when we have other things planned. Friday turned out to be the perfect day to try it out. They offer tours at the top of every hour and you don't have to call ahead, you just show up. I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there, but it turned out to be a very large store that uses the back area for the chocolate/candy area. Definitely not as industrial as I imagined. There is a long hallway at the back of the store front that has windows so you can see all the workers making the treats. It was so interesting! The windows were too high for James to see, so we had to carry him the entire time:

This is what we saw at the first window. A bunch of chocolate flip flop lollipops set out to cool! James laughed when he saw these, he thought they were the coolest thing ever. The tour guide told us all about the machinery they used, some of them were antiques from when the store opened in 1925!

Here is one of the workers making dark chocolate covered popcorn. We noticed that all of the workers wore long sleeves, long pants, and thick shoes. The tour guide said they keep the candy making room at a cool 65 degrees!

At the second window, they showed us their conveyor belt system for coating their candies/treats in chocolate. At the moment they were making chocolate covered potato chips! One worker had the job of picking up every single individual potato chip after it got a coating of chocolate and rubbing it all around to make sure chocolate got into every groove (he looked really bored):

More molded chocolates:

The potato chips coming out at the end of the line:

After the tour you got to pick two candies from the sample tray. Yum! I got a chocolate covered potato chip, which was good but you couldn't really tell that it was a potato chip. It just tasted crunchy. James chose a nut/chocolate candy and one of the foil wrapped chocolates.

Digging in to the chocolate!

This the face he made when we asked him to smile:

We laughed at the first face and got him to laugh too :)

They also sold chocolate covered bacon and white chocolate eggs. It was so strange we had to buy it:

It was really neat to hear the history of the store and to see how passionate and friendly the staff was about their chocolates. Now I know where to go when I need some really good candy!

Babymoon for James

This year's trip to the Keys was definitely a last hurrah for James! He got so much one on one time with me, one on one time with Anthony, and time with just the three of us. I was worried about how James would behave away from home since he usually is a big fuss pot when we do anything different from his routine, but he was an angel! (Aside from his 2 year old 'tude that he has developed). He acted like he was made for vacation! I think he really soaked in all the attention we were able to give him. Even though it wasn't the most exciting of vacations for me since I spent most of my time watching James at the rental place while Anthony snorkeled/lobstered, I felt really good about the experience we were able to give James.

The drive down to the keys took a lot longer than we expected because of some bad traffic. It was a lot of time spent in the car! We had a few new toys that we spread out throughout the day and he loved them, especially these pineapple sunglasses! He talks about pineapples all the time now :)

On the drive James got to have his pacifier, which is a big deal since he usually only gets it while sleeping. He also got to watch movies on the kindle, which he only gets to do in the car. It was a great distraction! He barely watched anything on the way down, maybe only 30 minutes or so. The way home was another story! He watched Cars over and over and over for almost the entire 8 1/2 hour drive.

Our vacation rental had a back porch with a lot of rocks and a little hole in the porch for (I think) water drainage. James loved picking up the rocks and throwing them in the "tunnel"

I knew that we would be spending a lot of time at home while Anthony was out fishing and lobstering so I came prepared with new games and activities for James to do. One afternoon it was all about balloons! We had  balloon rockets that you blow up and then let go so it can fly across the room, balloons that we used as volleyballs, and balloon swords. I love that I got to learn how to make things out of balloons, it is a handy trick to have up your sleeve!

Another night we did poppers on the back porch. It was a hit!

Anthony did some kind of fishing or lobstering almost every day for at least a few hours, but he planned one all day lobstering excursion where he would leave early in the morning and not get back until bedtime. Since he had to take our car, we were stuck in the house all day by default. I pulled out as many of my planned activities as I could! Some of them didn't work out as I had imagined, but we gave it a shot. First I tried out cloud dough (moldable flour made from flour and baby oil).

 It smelled great and James seemed to like it, but I soon realized it is an outside activity when James started flinging it around with the spoons I put in there for digging. So we moved outside and he flung all of it out of the pan and all around the porch. Then he demanded more, and when I told him we didn't have any more he had quite a meltdown.

I decided it would be a good idea at this point to get out our inflatable pool and hose that I brought for the back porch. That way I could get him in the pool and wash off the flour as well as hose off the porch. Every time I would pull out my phone to get a picture, James would exclaim, "No pictures!!" and get mad, so I didn't get any pictures of him playing in the pool. He did enjoy himself though! He said he was swimming and looking for "lomsters" like Daddy does. He also took a break from the pool to put his golf balls into the hole in the middle of the patio table. He was very determined to get them in there!

We also spent a lot of time with him during the week playing with foam airplanes, looking for bugs, cooking, and looking for him around the house. He loves to tell you that he is hiding, point to where he is going to, and then wait for you to find him. He also loves to be chased! He will start running away from you and say "Run away!!", all the while looking behind him to make sure you are following him. Anthony chased him around the house one afternoon and I don't think James has ever been happier.



Some other things I want to remember about James on this vacation:

• His imaginative play has really started to take off! He had a toy fishing pole and would run over to the hallway and cast it, as if that was the water, and then he would run back to us in the living room to "show" us his catch. He would tell us if it was a "big lombster" or a "tiny lombster" on his hook and we would make a big fuss over it. Another time he took the phone receiver off the desk (we disconnected the phone from the wall first thing when we got there), put it on the arm of a chair, and sat there telling us that he was "putting gas in the car". I could kind of see how he would think the phone looked like the handle you use to pump gas. It is amazing the connections that he makes!
• While we were at the aquarium, James found a dime and instantly became attached to it. An hour or so later while we were walking back to the car, Anthony asked James what he was going to buy with his dime. He immediately said, "sharks". Anthony asked him again a few minutes later to see what he would say and this time his response was, "turtles" :)
• We finally succeeded in getting James to call my mom Grandma! He has been calling her Papa for forever (which is also what he calls Anthony's dad) and nothing we did or said ever convinced him that her name was something else. He started using Grandma on the trip and eventually even started correcting himself when he would call her Papa. I haven't heard him call my mom Papa at all since the first few days of our trip.
• For a kid that really likes TV and usually begs me to watch Mater or Sesame Street, it was surprising when he decided that he would rather play with us and have our attention than watch TV. If the TV was on, he would run over and turn it off and if we turned it back on he would get really mad and yell "TV off!". Now that we are home, it has carried over and he will tell me "Ipad off!" or "phone off!" if I am looking at them when he wants me to be playing with him.

I'm so glad that James had such a good time on this vacation. It really makes me feel like we bonded that much more before his world and ours gets turned upside down with a new sibling!