The beginning of the Terrible Two's...

So it's been a busy month...as they all seem to be. I'm trucking right along though. Last weekend I was a bridesmaid in one of my good friend's wedding, therefore the past two weekends involved wedding festivities. 

First the Bachelorette Party in Bricktown...which had two bachelorettes!

Then this past weekend was the wedding and all that's involved with that. 

The bridesmaids.

Nic and the bride.

Needless to say I haven't gotten to spend as much time as I would have liked with my little man. So hopefully I can make up for it despite attending a wedding this weekend as well, BUT as a guest instead of a bridesmaid.  Then the State Fair began today, so we're planning on taking Bryce Sunday afternoon so that he can indulge in all the deep fried goodness that we can find!

Oh Bryce...what can I say?!? He's become quite ornery! We tend to have the same conversations over and over: 

Where's Nic?

Where's Fara?

Where's Nay (Granny)?

Where's Mamo?

Where's Papa?

Where's cow?

Where's horse?

If he doesn't like my answer he will say "No!" and start to whine. 

Then many times he will ask me: "Why?"

Sometimes I give him varying responses, but sometimes I say "Because I said so." He will then repeat "Said so!"

After being such a great shopper, he has became a terrible shopper. He tries to grab anything he can get his hands on from the stroller, then yells to get out of it. If I do by chance let him out, he immediately takes off.  I regret to say that I have invested in one of those backpack leashes. When we were checking out at Target with it a few weeks back, a lady behind me said that when she had her girls she would look at people using those things with their children and she told herself she would never use it...then she had a boy! LOL! 

In addition to a terrible shopper, he has forgotten how much he loves his veggies. He loves to eat the meat off of his plate, and I mean EVERY LAST BITE, however most meals he will completely ignore his veggies. So we'll keep trying because I know one day he will remember he likes them! Thankfully he absolutely loves fruit, right now his favorite is grapes.

We've been coloring a little bit. After getting the idea from another blog, I bought him a blank sketch pad to color, no need in trying to get him to stay within the lines just yet. Though I didn't expect him to be able to stay within the lines, I did expect him to be able to stay on the large piece of paper!

All I can say is thank goodness for washable crayons. He did come across some markers and needless to say those quickly disappears in the trash can!


And to wrap it up. There is photographer that frequents the fire station, and he's been after Nic to take some pictures of our family. Despite the fact that I have already scheduled a photographer for family pictures and Bryce's 2 year old pictures at the end of October, we went ahead and agreed to take some with this guy on Sunday evening since it was pretty cheap. Unfortunately we had too much going on all weekend and Bryce did not get a good nap Sunday, so he was terrible!! My child that smiles 95% of the time would not smile, muchless let go of me.  

Therefore I say this is a picture of the start of the terrible two's!

Hopefully the pictures we take in a month or so turn out better!

And that's a wrap!

So the long Labor Day weekend has come and gone...the unofficial end of summer. The weekend brought some new and exciting things though.

First, Friday morning my niece Alejandra Sophia was born. My sister asked that I be in the delivery room to catch her first moments on video, she didn't think her husband would be able to do it. I was happy to oblige, especially since my deliver with Bryce ended with a c-section I didn't expect that I would ever get to experience a normal birth. I never got to push and I didn't get to hold Bryce immediately either, I barely even caught a glimpse of him as they whisked him off so fast to suck the meconium out of his lungs. I feel those are some magical moments that I missed out on.

As expected she had a short labor with 4 sets of pushes and out came Alejandra Sophia...sunny side up! 

As she was pushing I was breathing along with her, taking deep breaths, then holding my breath when she was actually pushing! Needless to say I caught those special first moments on video and some pictures too...then where I was holding my breath caught up with me and I had to sit down before I passed out!! I'm really bad about that during those big moments, including at our wedding!

Melissa and Ozzie got to have a little bit of time with the new little princess before they took her to the nursery to test her platelets and eventually she was taken to the NICU due to low platelet levels as we had expected. It would be nearly two days before they were allowed to hold her again. 

As a teenager Melissa was diagnosed with ITP, which is a blood disorder where she has low platelets. They suspected that something made her platelets appear to be foreign objects therefore her spleen was removing them. As a young adult Melissa decided she had had enough and wanted to have her spleen removed, so they did. There were some issues at first but her body has adapted and now maintains a normal level of platelets.

When Melissa's son was born, no one even thought about him being born with low platelet levels until my Mom noticed he had some petechiae. Google that! Since the platelets he had came from her, his spleen was removing them. He spent a week in the NICU before his levels were high enough for him to be released. 

Knowing what to expect with the second baby made a world of difference. Not only was Alejandra released from the NICU after only three days, but Melissa was not the emotional mess she was with Kell. I don't know if by knowing ahead of time and beginning treatment quicker contributed to her quick release or if girls are just a little bit tougher. ; )

Nic brought Bryce up to the hospital after the baby was born. He really enjoyed looking at her in the nursery. Every time we would walk past the nursery he wanted to look at the babies. Since she went into the NICU a short time later, he actually didn't get to see her again until Monday. 

The proud cousin and big brother!  

 We went by to visit them on Monday evening after they had gotten home and were settling in. I was surprised when Bryce wanted to hold the baby. In fact he tried to pull her out of my arms! We did get a picture of Bryce holding her...and trying to pinch her nose but since it wasn't on my camera I don't currently have a copy of it to share. 

We did manage to sneak off to the lake Saturday morning...of course after a visit to the hospital. The weather was warm on Saturday with hardly any breeze. About ten boats tied up in the middle of the lake and we had a great time. Bryce did manage to drop a pair of his sunglasses (my favorite) over the side of the boat, which quickly sunk to the bottom! Oh well at least I have a couple of pictures of them! 

Sunday morning we woke up and it was no longer summer...it felt like a crisp fall morning! Wow! What a difference a few hours can make. It was too windy and cool to go out on the water so we went out to lunch, then hung out on the beach...at least the sand felt warm. 

 So for the past week we have been enjoying cool nights with the temperatures in the 50s and daytime highs in the 70s and 80s. I do prefer it to be a little warmer, but I'm glad to have a break from the extreme heat where we can enjoy our time outside more.

The truth...

I.AM.A.TERRIBLE.BLOGGER!!!!!

Unfortunately blogging has taken a back seat so that I can be an excellent mother, wife, friend, employee, and student! BUT I'm going to continue to try to keep up, even if it's just once a month. I thought I would get a chance to catch up during my extremely short two week break from school but that flew by faster than Bryce can eat a candy bar!

So... since my last post I spent my first full weekend away from Bryce...we obviously both survived. Nic and I had a three day weekend away staying with some fabulous friends in a cabin near Broken Bow Lake. The lake was gorgeous and incredibly clear compared to the lakes we are accustomed to. Also several of us spent one of the days kayaking down the Mountain Fork River. The water was a cool 50 degrees since it comes off the bottom of the lake, but it felt great! It was a ton of fun and I can't wait to do it again! 

The Texas Two-Step Cabin

Relaxing on the water.

 

I missed my baby boy something terrible and I now know I'm not quite ready for Nic and I to take a 4 night getaway to Mexico. So if I somehow manage to squeeze a trip in, you can count on us buying that third plane ticket.

It's been a LONG HOT SUMMER, which happens to be the title of one of the new songs by Keith Urban on my playlist these days. Okay, but it really has been REALLY hot, actually it has been brutally hot, even for an Oklahoma summer. We have broken many record highs with highs making it well above 110 degrees! I was out and about the other day and my car was parked for 30 minutes, when I got back in it my thermometer said it was 138 degrees, of course that wasn't the actual air temperature, but still I didn't think it would read that high. Of course I took a picture...you'll have to ignore the dust. Not too long ago, it seems, my thermometer said -17 degrees. 

Regardless of the excessive heat we have spent a lot of time outside, usually playing in the water somewhere.  Bryce has even became a pro at wearing his life jacket and floating in the deep water! Unfortunately I haven't caught any great pictures of this accomplishment yet, so I'll just share a couple from the backyard. 

Back on the topic of Keith Urban I actually just saw him a couple weeks back in concert for the 4th time. He was awesome (as always) and I believe I may have recruited a new fan...my sister! We had awesome seats and sang along with every song. 

It's Amanda, Keith and me!

Over the past month Bryce's vocabulary has vastly expanded and so far no bad words...unless you count boobies as one! He's forming some short sentences (that we can actually understand) like "Where's Fara?" (which Fara is the dog) and "Dude, Go!". At 21 months he's already a back seat driver!

His answer to every question is "No" so we have to watch his body language and sometimes the direction he's nodding his head to know if he really means no or yes. Also over the weekend he has quit calling Daddy "Daddy" and instead calls him by his name, Nic. Since I still refer to Nic as Daddy I'm sure in no time he will revert to calling him Daddy again.  He's also learned to overuse "Please" and "Pretty Please". He even will tilt his head a little to add a little charm to it.

He's showing a few signs of possibly being ready for potty training. He will tell us when he does something, but I have yet to get him to sit on his potty and do it. I'm not going to rush it or stress about it, I'm going to try to just let it happen...as long as it happens by the end of next summer. See I'm setting some realistic goals!

I'll end with one last fun picture. Bryce decided he wanted to ride in the basket of his stroller, then when I got the camera out to take a picture he wanted the camera. Thank goodness I have two cameras!

Ditto

My oh my... is it really TWO weeks after the 4th of July?? I've only been working on this post for the past week...so yea it's been a little hectic. 

This summer is flying by and I'm pretty sure I can mostly blame my school work on that...and probably a little boy for the rest! Most of my evenings and Sunday afternoons/evenings are spent at the computer doing homework, quizzes or exams. Sometimes I have to sit outside with the laptop in hand while Bryce plays. I've even reactivated my Verizon wireless card so that I can work on school work at the lake...IF I have any spare time.  I know I'm about to drive Nic crazy. At least when I'm finished (in just a couple of weeks) I will be 6 hours closer to getting my Bachelor's degree with only 18 hours remaining! Depending on the availability of the courses I need in the Spring and Summer of next year, I could be finished by next Summer...BUT no later than next Fall!! I'm so close I can taste it! I'm strongly considering pursuing my Master's, but we'll see since the thought of having no school work to do sounds pretty wonderful at this point!

So let's rewind a little...

On my last post I said I was going to share some pictures from Memorial day...so here goes.

We had a lot of rain right around Easter, then right before Memorial Day. Of course it couldn't be a nice soft rain, it had to be excessive which caused Ft. Gibson to be up around 18 ft on Memorial Day Weekend. If we wanted to get to the boat dock, we had to take a paddle boat there.

Since the lake was so high it pretty much eliminated the boating activities, especially when you have a child who does not like to spend more time than he has to in his life jacket. We prefer to go to an area that we call an island, where it is extremely shallow and has a gravel bottom, since the lake was so high our little island was like Atlantis buried at the bottom of the ocean. 

Since the lake was out of the question I bought Bryce a little swimming pool to use at our camp. Bryce definitely made the best of it!

Bryce and a friend sharing their chair and chicken fries.

Of course we cannot forget that most of the camp ground was a disaster due to the tornado that went right through the middle of it.

Cousin Kell came up one day and continued working on his photography skills. 

Taking a nap wherever is comfortable. 

An almost family photo. 

 

Since then we've spent many weekends at the lake as we usually do in the summer. Bryce has adjusted to where he sleeps all night there just as if he was at home. He's really attached to his silky bear so we have one at the house and one at the lake. We also have a blanket made of the same material that he loves, but I haven't been able to find another one like it. Since this boy loves the outdoors, he's pretty content spending the weekends at the lake. He's even gotten somewhat of a tan, which makes his blond hair look even lighter. He's often called a towhead.

Despite all the rain in May, we've have very little rain since. The grass is as brown as if it were dormant. After the lake being so high on Memorial Day Weekend, it was nearly 2 feet below normal for the Fourth of July weekend. At least our island was definitely above water.

Bryce enjoyed the fireworks too!

Not only are we facing drought conditions to where many counties and towns are implementing mandatory water rationing, it has been extremely hot. So far this year we've had 15 days above 100 degrees, compared to the 14 we had last year and we're not even into the "Dog Day of Summer" yet!

Bryce continues to be brave, with the exception of deep water. Most of the summer he has preferred sitting in the water, but the past couple of weekends he has let me carry him into deeper water where I spin around with him. He even will take a few splashes to the face and give some back. We probably should have kept him in swim lessons over the winter, but we were just too busy. Now the next goal is to get him in the deeper water with a life jacket or a puddle jumper on so my nerves can relax a little.

His vocabulary is quickly expanding and he's starting to say names. The funniest is that he knows Daddy's name, so sometimes he says "Da", then sometimes he says "Nic". Currently his favorite words are "This" and "That". They seem to be used interchangeably when he's wanting something or wanting you to see something.

Here's just a few random photos. 

Helping out in the garden. 

Sampling the cookie dough.

His obsession with glasses. 

Finding new uses for his toys. 

Painting Mommy's toe nails..

and his!

He's so much fun!!!!!!

I have lots of catching up to do and lots of pictures to share...

First we'll begin with picture of Mommy au naturel and Bryce. Besides getting to spend the whole day with Bryce on the weekends, one of my favorite things is not wearing makeup all weekend.

 Since Friday was Bryce's 18 month check-up, I guess it would be appropriate to go ahead and share those stats along some new things Bryce has been doing lately. 

18 Month Check-up

Weight: 24 lb 10 oz (32 percentile)

Length: 31 inches (13 percentile)

Head: 49.5 cm (89 percentile)

Yep, aside from his head he's a small guy! I was surprised by the weight since our few remaining size 3 diapers were getting small on him. I guess because he's grown a little longer, that is what's making the size 3's seem much smaller. I do know that he feels a lot heavier than 25 lbs. He's not one of those children that likes to hang on to you, so when he's being carried it's  like carrying dead weight. I definitely know my arms should be a lot trimmer than they are!

 We've been learning where and what our body parts are. The ones he's gotten down are belly button, mouth, and ears. Sometimes you can get him to show you feet and nose. Then very rarely will he get eyes correct. His favorite is the belly button though, it's also one of his favorite words.

He's slowly picking up a few new words here and there. In the past few days he's started trying to repeat words and sounds that we are making, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before his vocabulary broadens. Pretty much anything that is round and/or can be thrown is a ball. You can tell when he's about to throw something because he will say "ball" first. So far he has broken one plate, but other than that nothing else breakable has been thrown. We try really hard to see that breakable items do not make it in his hands, because when he gets a hold of something you hardly cannot get it out of his hands because of his strong grip.

 He's still a good eater...that is when he's not too distracted to eat. Right now he is loving Pop Tarts, another one of his favorite words, but he still will eat just about anything BESIDES mashed potatoes!! I know every kid but mine loves mashed potatoes. Bryce would rather have carrots or peas, which I suppose is a good thing.

This boy loves food but that also includes junk food, especially chocolate...I guess I should have expected that since the first time that I definitely KNEW it was him moving in my belly. It was right after I had eaten a chocolate pie of some sorts. I knew that baby was doing back flips in my belly! I think it's pretty easy to assume that he has a double dose of that since Nic and I both have a HUGE sweet tooth. He knows exactly where these snacks are stored so I have to continuously move them.

Which leads me to how great of a memory he has! Earlier we were going to Wal-Mart, and I let him walk to the car and climb in all by himself. As soon as he got in the car he started saying "ball". I told him there wasn't a ball in the car. He proved me wrong by reaching deep under the driver's seat and pulled out a ball! Also yesterday we went to his Mamo's, where despite not being there in a month, he knew exactly where his high chair was.  I've always had a pretty good memory which helps me tremendously in my school work and at work, so maybe he will stay that way as I have great ambitions for what he's going to be when he grows up! ; )

Hopefully he will not choose to be like Evel Knievel though. He's not afraid of anything yet that I have found. Daily he exhibits his dare devil side! I'm surprised we haven't had stitches or a broken bone yet. His favorite activity right now is trust falls. He climbs on something then falls expecting you to catch him. Then today we had his pool out full of water. I had my chair next to it so I could sit with my feet in it and he climbs on the chair and 'jumps' in his pool over and over.

 Before he was walking, he was climbing! These days he climbs in his high-chair, climbs into Mommy & Daddy's bed, thankfully does NOT climb out of his crib...yet, and climbs the shelves! How do you like my new decoration??

We've also gone through a couple of phases. There were a couple weeks straight in which Bryce did not want to take a bath. He would scream and cry the entire time I was bathing him. I tried everything I could think of: putting him in the bath with me, putting him in our big tub, having him take a shower...nothing worked. It was strange because he continued to like his pool and liked the lake. Then about a week ago he just decided that he was over it, and now gladly goes into the bathtub when I ask him if he's ready for bath. 

He also we went through a few days where he would fight me to put a diaper on! He even thought he could run from me on his four wheeler!

I thought he might be ready to potty train, so I bought a potty. Of course after I did that he hasn't fussed at me again when putting his diaper on.

He also tries to be a little helper. He attempts to assist with the laundry. He helps wash my hair when I'm in the bath, then hands me my towel when I get out. He also has taken over the responsibility of feeding the dog. Unfortunately much of the dog food ends up on the floor instead of the bowl.

Well I think that will be all for today. I'll try to post about our Memorial day later this week. Back to the grind tomorrow!

It's been a whirlwind...

The month of May has flown by. Unfortunately for Oklahoma and nearby Joplin, May brought a tornado season like nothing we've had in quite some time. I'll admit I'm one of those people that don't think my home will ever get hit by a tornado, but the storm that came through last Tuesday evening had me running for shelter. I don't know if the massive tornado that destroyed 30% of Joplin, MO was an eye opener or if I just get more worried because of my priority to protect my child.

As predicted Tuesday afternoon the 'perfect storm' was brewing with conditions ideal for a major tornado breakout. This time it truly hit close to home. The community I lived in up until my teenage years was hit. My grandmother and her sisters still live in the area and thankfully did not have any damage to their homes. The tornado did pass by closely to their home but destroyed several homes of families I grew up knowing. Oddly enough, I have a recurring dream from time to time of this area and in every dream it involves tornadoes. This may because it's the place where I have ever actually seen a tornado...who knows. 

The storms continued east as they always do. A wall cloud with visible circulation was expected to come right over my home so I loaded Bryce and Fara (the dog) and drove to the fire station where Nic was working. Not only was Nic there, but they also have a safe room there. The tornado did not touch down until about 10 miles east of my home, so we were in the clear. After the storm passed, I loaded Bryce back up and went back home and went to bed knowing we were safe and sound.

The next day I found out that a tornado touched down in the RV park where our RV was!! Thankfully no one was there camping but three RV's were destroyed and a few others had damage. Ours was moved about a foot and it twisted one of our scissor jacks. It may have a little bit of hail damage but other than that it is fine for us to continue to use it. I know I have seen tornado damage before, but I still get amazed at the damage that can be caused by a tornado. 

I'm sharing some photos below. Incredibly, some one across the lake caught a picture of the tornado as it went over our RV park.

As you enter the park. 

Fifth wheel flipped on it's side.

I took this photo to show the distance that this fifth wheel was slid from it's original position. 

Travel trailer completely obliterated.

Unfortunately from this tornado breakout, RVs and homes weren't the only losses. Families lost their loved ones, lives that can never be replaced. Our sympathies are with them all.