19 months and new bathroom

Along with fits almost daily these days, Easton is also doing some new and really cute things. The other day when I was changing Easton’s diaper I decided to sing to him the wheels on the bus to distract him since changing his diaper these days are a huge challenge. He absolutely hates getting his diaper changed. Anyways, while I was singing the song Easton started to do all the hand movements to the song all by himself. In the past he has done the wheels and the horn part but never any of the other ones. I was a little surprised but definitely amazed that he could remember all of these all by himself. I keep trying to get this on video but he won’t cooperate with me. Easton also likes the song head, shoulders, knees, and toes. He tries so hard to do the movements but he goes from his head straight to his toes, missing his shoulders and knees. He does pretty well with his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose but he does need some assistance. It is cute to see him try to keep up and do all the movements. Also, recently Easton will grab a tissue and come up to me or his monkey stuffed animal and wipe one of our mouths every so softly. He loves all his stuffed animals and will hug them and carry them all around the house. I hope this along with wiping his monkey’s mouth is a sign that Easton is excited and ready to be a big brother. Easton has also taken a liking to shoes. Just yesterday he figured out how to put my shoes on and was walking all around the house in them.

The other day I decided it was time to redecorate the spare bathroom. Since Easton is really the only one who uses it these days I decided to make it a kiddy bathroom. Also because Easton seems to really love his monkey more than any of his other stuffed animals I decided naturally to do a monkey theme. Easton absolutely loves his new bathroom. He gets a big grin on his face when the door is open and runs straight to the bathroom rug where he will lay on it and cuddle with the monkey on it.

Christmas and Christmas Eve

Christmas
Easton really enjoyed opening his presents but once he had a few toys unwrapped; he became a little distracted playing with the toys that he wasn’t all that interested in opening up the rest of his gifts. Eventually he got them all opened. He really enjoys all his presents. In fact yesterday morning when he woke up he was way more excited to play with his toys than eat breakfast. I usually grab him from his crib put him down and then he will follow me to the kitchen signing and/or sometimes saying “eat”. I walked to the kitchen to get him something and after a few seconds I realized Easton was no where in sight. I walked back to his room to make sure everything was okay and he was sitting quietly on the floor playing with his new toys. Thank you to all his grandparents and aunts! Easton is definitely loved by his family.

Video of Easton with his new monkey stuffed animal. He loves his monkey. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Kelsey.

Easton loves the cookie monster stethoscope. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Uehling for the Elmo doctor set! Now he can be like his daddy.

Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve we had a few families over for dinner. I think it turned out really well. I was a little nervous to have that many people over in our small apartment but I think overall everyone had a good time. Easton really liked having friends over to play. The only exception was when Emilia continually tried giving Easton hugs. It was cute to watch but in Easton’s defense her hugs were more like choke holds than lovable hugs. I would probably cry and scream too if I thought someone was strangling me!

Easton's new pj's from Grandma and Grandpa Uehling. He got to open these on Christmas Eve.

Temple Lights and Awards Ceremony

Temple Lights
We went to the DC temple to see the Christmas lights. We also saw the live nativity and listened to a high school choir sing Christmas songs.

Mom and Easton at festival of lights.

Awards Ceremony
Easton and I went to Nathan’s school to eat lunch with Nathan and then we attended his award ceremony. Nathan received two awards from classes he took last year. He got outstanding awards for both Preventative Medicine and Clinical Reasoning.

Family picture after awards ceremony.

Third Time's The Charm

We had our Ward Christmas Party on Saturday and I told myself that I wouldn't force a picture of Easton with Santa Claus but once Santa made his appearance, Easton seemed rather interested in him. In fact he was within touching distance on Santa several times. I waited until all the kids in the ward sat on Santa's lap before I attempted to put Easton on his lap. I was a little worried still, but I figured Easton saw that Santa wasn't all that scary and wasn't hurting any of the kids. I put Easton on Santa's lap and got this cute picture.

Easton on Santa's lap.

Close up of Easton's face this time on Santa's lap. He definitely looks a lot happier this time.

Easton checking out Santa.

Easton with Renee (one of the young women from our ward). Easton loves Renee.

School Christmas Party

On Wednesday we went to Nathan's school for the Christmas Party. It was really nice to spend the evening out with Nathan and Easton since it really hasn't happened for a while now. We ate dinner and talked with a couple of friends. It was also nice to see some of our friends and get caught up since we hardly see them because all our husbands are super busy with rotations. Santa also made an appearance and again Easton was not very thrilled to see or sit on Santa's lap. He cried but at least he got a little goodie bag to compensate for the scary old man that scares him to death. We have another Christmas party tomorrow and I'm sure Santa will make an appearance there too. I'm guessing Easton won't be getting anywhere near Santa so he probably won't be getting his picture taken either. I figure two pictures with scary Santa is enough for one year why push three when I doubt his feelings towards Santa probably won't change after three days. Maybe next year.

Easton on Santa's lap. I zoomed in so you could see up close and personal how terrified Easton is of Santa. What a sad little face.

Yesterday was probably one of the best days ever! Nathan had the day off so we spent the whole day together (no tests or papers to worry about-this never happens). We spent the day shopping for Christmas gifts, groceries, a pack and play (finally!), and we even had time to watch the new Batman movie while Easton naped. It was a great day and I am definitely looking forward to Nathan's Christmas break so we can have more days like this one.

Bobbing for Raisins

Yesterday while I was baking cookies I gave Easton some raisins to snack on before dinner. I had my back to him but could tell that he had dumped them on the floor. This is not uncommon behavior for him to dump them out and either put them back into the container and eat them or just eat them off the floor (gross I know but honestly what kid doesn't do this?). Anyways, after I had finished putting all the cookie dough on the cookie sheets I turned around to find this... Bobbing for raisins anyone? I have no idea where he picked this up from. Maybe he thinks he's a dog?

Latest Update

Easton is officially 18 months old and finally made his way into nursery. I thought Nathan would be excited for this day (as most parents are) but instead it turns out that he was missing his little buddy (or maybe snacking with his little buddy : )). In any case he lost his first child to nursery but will soon gain another to play with in about six months. I’m pretty sure most everyone knows that we are expecting our second child in June (another Gemini-poor Nathan) but if not…Surprise! Easton is going to be a big brother and we are going to be parents again! We are all really excited (well I guess I can't really speak for Easton since I'm not exactly sure he completely understands what is happening). The picture below is what we emailed to family to announce our wonderful news.

Thanksgiving was great! We got to spend the feast with a bunch of friends who like us don’t have any family in the area. Thanks guys! The best part was that Nathan got to spend the whole day with us. He was supposed to work on call that day but luckily for all of us they were nice enough to let him have the day off. He had to go in Friday early morning but got off a little before noon. Thank goodness for me because I was sick (and when I say sick I mean sick) all day Friday (morning sickness) so it was nice to have him entertain Easton. Easton and I did try the whole black Friday thing but that lasted a whopping 1 ½ hours with no success. We tried to get a GPS at Kmart but it turned out that we were almost an hour late for the deals. Apparently Nathan and I looked at the ad for Thanksgiving Day (not Black Friday) which started at 7am. Black Friday started at 6am. Next, we headed to Kohl’s to grab some kitchen knifes. Nathan actually went earlier in the morning to get them but because the line was extremely long and he only had 15 min before he had to leave for work he hid a box of knifes in case there were none left when I went to get them. Of course there were no knifes left so I called Nathan to find out where he stashed the box of knifes. As my luck would have it, those knifes were gone too. Easton and I were tired (I had to wake him up) and I was sick so we called it a day, hoped into the warm cozy bed, and fell asleep.

On Sunday we decided to decorate for Christmas. Easton was very interested in everything and more than willing to help out in anyway that he could. His absolute favorite was the Christmas boxes that we put under our tree. He could play with these boxes for hours if we would let him (he has started to ruin them a little so we had to put most of them away). Unfortunately with no boxes to keep him entertained he has moved on to tree decorations. I wouldn’t mind so much if they weren’t glass and I wasn’t afraid that he would break it and cut himself. We finally had to move the tree to higher grounds. Maybe it was a little too soon to bring out the decorations. Also on Sunday we had to take Easton's stitches out. Nathan had the pleasure of taking them out while I had the pleasure of holding Easton down. It was not as easy and as smooth as I thought it would be. Easton's wound had scabbed over his stitches so we had to remove the scab before we could remove the stitches. If that wasn’t painful enough, the stitches were so close to his skin that Nathan had to basically cut pieces of Easton’s skin off with his stitches. It was not a pretty sight. I hope we don’t have to go through this again. FYI Easton had eight external stitches not seven.

Video of Easton with the boxes. Not in the video but so far he has lined up all the boxes in a somewhat straight row, he has stacked five boxes on top of each other, and he is constantly moving the boxes from out under the tree to one side of the room and then back under the tree. He is a very busy little boy. Who needs Christmas toys when you have boxes?

Cali Trip

Overall, Easton and I had a great trip to Cali. I wish I could have documented the trip while I was in Cali because I know I am going to miss a lot of stuff, but unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to download the pictures off my camera onto my sisters computer, so basically this will be a small glimpse (probably a long post) of what we were up to the last three weeks. Easton got to experience a couple of fun and not so fun firsts.

Easton’s first Jamba. We also rode a trolley around Victoria Garden’s (first trolley ride for Easton).

Easton and Aaron playing at a park.

Aaron ice skating. He is only three and is already playing ice hockey.

Easton’s first Birthday Party (besides his own). Happy 3rd Birthday Aaron! I got to help prepare the week before for Aaron’s party. My sister, Jana, goes way out when it comes to birthday parties. It was cars theme. For the kids there were balloon animals, football toss (cardboard with lightning mcqueen drawn and painted on it- this took me several hours to make and only several minutes for the kids to play with. What you don’t do for your nephew. I wish I had a picture of it because I’m pretty proud of it and how it turned out.), races (race cars made from cardboard and painted different colors. Again took several hours but fortunately my sister helped out with these.), cars piñata full of goodie bags, and goodie bags for the kids to take home with them. Jana made two lightning mcqueen cakes that turned out great. She did all this a week before she was due. How crazy is that?

Easton’s first real train ride (he has been on the metro but I don’t really count that). Jana and I were going to take the boys to see Thomas train but because my sister had baby Aiden the day before we were scheduled to do this, my mom filled in for her. Overall, we had a great time. There were several fun activities for the kids to do along with riding Thomas. There were tattoos, imagination station (several Thomas tracks with trains to play with, Thomas stamps, Thomas coloring, etc.), petting zoo, jump houses, video and story house, trolley rides, etc. The boys really seemed to enjoy themselves minus the petting zoo-some of those animals were scary. They constantly thought you had food for them so they would run up to you (some of them were taller than Easton) and basically stock you.

Me, Easton, my Mom, and Aaron on the trolley.

Me and Aaron feeding the animals. Aaron very timid.

Grandma and Aaron

Easton and Aaron waiting for Thomas Train.

Easton very excited about the train ride.

We also took the boys to see Santa. At the Bass Pro shop they were offering free pictures with Santa. Lets just say the picture tells it all of how much Easton enjoyed sitting on Santa’s lap. Ms. Claus was also there reading stories to the kids and singing Christmas songs. If you can't tell Easton is definitely crying like he did last year on Santa's lap. I guess Easton hasn't figured it out yet that Santa is the one who brings toys and goodies. To him Santa is just a scary old man.

Ms. Claus reading stories to the children.

Easton’s first and hopefully last time getting stitches. Last Sunday we went to visit Jana’s dad (Nate). While we were there Easton ran into the other room and must have tripped over the rug where he ended up hitting his head on the coffee table. Needless to say, I heard crying and screaming and ran into the other room to find blood coming from his forehead. I rushed him to the kitchen to get a towel to apply pressure. Candy (Nate’s girlfriend) took one look at it and told me he needed stitches. Nate took us to the ER and Easton ended up with four internal stitches and seven external stitches. It was really sad and hard to see Easton go through this, but luckily I had Jana’s Dad there to guide me through the whole thing. They say it is harder on the mother than the patient which is probably true, but still it is hard to be just a couple of feet away watching your son strapped down crying and screaming in what you think is pain (the doctors claimed he couldn’t feel anything-but I’m not entirely sure that was the case) and you can’t do anything but watch. That has got to be the worst feeling in the world- to not be able to hold and comfort your child when they are in pain.

Here are a couple of pictures from when we were carving our pumpkin. I know it is about a month too late but I forgot to post before I left for Cali.

Nathan carving the pumpkin.

Easton eating baked pumpkin seeds.

Final product. Scooby-Doo (dracula style).

Baby Aiden

So a lot has happened since I left Maryland for California to help my sister out with the delivery of her cute little baby boy. I will have to post later all the fun things we have done while here in Cali., but in the mean time I will post the most important thing that brought me here. On Nov. 10th my sister woke up at about 1:00 in the morning in pain and by 2:00 she was having contractions and started keeping track of them. By about 4:00 we decided her contractions were pretty consistent and called a friend to watch both Aaron and Easton while I took Jana to the hospital. This was supposed to be my mom's job (to be the coach) but because she was still in Washington awaiting her flight I was the one designated to drive and be coach. We dropped the boys off around 4:40 and drove to the hospital. We pulled into emergency and had to basically take a tour of the entire hospital to find the labor and delivery area. When we finally got there I handed the lady my sister's medical card and ID (at about this time we believe my sister's water had just broke and her contractions were probably about 1 min or less apart). It was happening so fast. We actually didn't even have time to fill out the admittance slips. The lady realized that Jana was going so fast that they called someone who came and wheeled Jana quickly to the first room, told her to get up and take her pants off, and then lay down on the table. Once she was finally on the table the mid wife (no time to call the doctor) told her to push and after 1 1/2 pushes and 4 min after I handed the lady her medical card, baby Aiden Tong-Min was born. He was 6 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long. He is so adorable. I am just glad that I got my sister to the hospital just in time for the mid wife to deliver her baby and not me. I guess the day before a lady delivered in the parking lot. Thank goodness that wasn't me and my sister.

Jana, Aaron, and Aiden

Proud big brother

Flashback Friday

It was this time 5 years ago that my friends decided that they wanted to go to this haunted house. I kind of wanted to go but at the same time I had a really bad headache and needed to catch up on some homework. I decided to be the responsible one and stay behind to catch up. My best friend and roommate, Shannah, wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You have to go, pleeeese.” I just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t let me stay behind. I mean I thought I had good reasons why I couldn’t go and besides one of our other friends were staying behind for homework reasons (no headache involved) and no one was giving him grief for it. Finally it came out that she had invited Nathan (without my knowledge) to come along and told him I would be there. I was ticked.

Side note/very long tangent: Don’t get me wrong I thought Nathan was cute and he seemed nice (I really didn’t know him. I just knew one thing about him and that was enough to turn me off…He was an RM!!!!!) As many of you know or think to be true RM stands for Returned Missionary. My brother on the other hand warned me of these so called RM’s. He told me that they want you to think that the RM stands for Returned Missionary but in reality it stands for Ready to be Married. My brother, Wade, also warned me to stay far, far, away from the RM’s. As a freshman in college and promising myself that I wouldn’t be one of those lame people that get married after their freshman year I was determined to stay away from all RM’s.

It was bad enough that I already agreed (to make Shannah happy of course) to go on a double date with Nathan (Shannah and Bryce) that would happen a few days after this haunted house thing. This whole thing seemed like a lose/lose situation. If I didn’t have a good time with Nathan, then I would have a date with him in a few days and that would be awkward. But if I had a good time with him (which wasn’t going to happen) I would have a date with him in a few days and it might be a little harder to stick to the plan. Anyways, after much persuasion I decided (or maybe forced is the better word) to go. I ended up having a great time and at some point in the haunted house Nathan and I ended up holding hands. To this day we still disagree on who held whose hand first. I’m always right though so he held my hand. I mean there is no way that I would initiate holding a scary RM’s hand….NO WAY!

Happy five years of dating Handsome! I love you (even if you were a scary RM!)

Frosted Graham Crackers

Nathan and I were talking the other day and found out that both of us used to have graham crackers with frosting when we were kids. My mom would use the left over frosting from birthday cakes to frost graham crackers where as Nathan's mom would buy the frosting from the can and frost graham crackers. We both remembered how much we enjoyed this little treat and so the other day at the store we had a coupon to get a $1.00 off the frosting in the can. We decided to pick it up along with some graham crackers to let Easton in on this wonderful treat! I finally brought out the graham crackers and frosting today and gave Easton a little taste of what he has been missing. He loved it as you can tell from the picture. I only gave him 2 little sandwiches (crackers cut in fourths with frosting in the middle with not that much frosting). From the looks of it I'm a little sceptical that he even got any frosting in his mouth. Oh well, he still seemed to enjoy the treat as much as I remember I did when I was a kid.

Flashback Friday

The first Halloween I ever remember was back when I was 3 or 4 (I think). Anyways, I remember how excited I was to go trick or treating because after all what kid doesn’t like free candy. I remember going with my siblings and my dad. We hit all the houses on my street and then started going up the street next to ours. It was the second house on that street that seemed a little scary. I wanted my dad to come with me but he told me that I could do it with my siblings and he would wait right there for me. It had a lot of steps up to the front door and my siblings had already started the ascent up to the front door. I quickly (as quick as I could) tried to catch up to them and right when they had reached the door (I was about ¾ of the way up) this black figure reached out the window and grabbed me. Of course this scared the crap out of me and I began screaming and crying hysterically and then ran down the stairs to my daddy. I wanted to go home. I was done with this whole Halloween thing. The owners of the house felt horrible for what they had done and came down the stairs to apologize. Apparently they thought that a couple of handfuls of candy would help the situation. As my siblings can attest to I loved food and would do anything for it so naturally candy could solve all problems right? For the moment it did, I mean I was in heaven. This house alone tripled (at least) the amount of candy that was already in my bag. However, to this day, anytime I walk past that house, I still shiver as I remember that awful Halloween night. It will forever be the scary house.

Halloween Party

Yesterday we went to Nathan’s school for the Halloween Party. It was really fun. There were lots of kids, lots of cute costumes, lot of food, and lots of candy. It doesn’t get any better than that! I actually took pictures of Easton at home in his costume the day before and I am glad I did because for some reason he was not happy to be in his costume at the party and all he wanted was for me to hold him. This makes it really difficult to take pictures and as it turns out I only took one picture of Easton and a friend of mine took two of me and Easton. As you can probably tell I made Easton’s costume (He’s a smore if you couldn’t figure it out). It was a hit. Everyone seemed to like it and thought it was the cutest thing ever. That made me feel better since I was a little worried that people would think it was a stupid idea (just like my brother did-thanks Wade). Anyways, there were a few categories for the costume judging contest and Easton won “Most creative costume”. He got a box of sidewalk chalk for his prize. Maybe we will go outside sometime today and play with his new chalk. Hopefully this time he will get more on the sidewalk and less in his mouth. We shall see.

Easton all dressed up in his smore costume.

Easton with his sidewalk chalk.

Videos

I can always tell when Easton really likes something because he attempts to shove as much of it in his mouth as he possibly can. He defnitely gets this from his daddy!

We had speghetti the other night and for some reason Easton kept trying to eat his like a dog. He would put his head down and try to like it off his tray. I tried to get it on video but anytime I took the camera out Easton instead would pose for the camera and say, "Cheese" (in his own way) over and over again. This is his latest. He loves posing and saying cheese for the camera.

Laundry and Prune Juice

Nathan was folding the laundry the other day and accidentally left the dryer door open. A few minutes later Easton is banging on something and screaming in delight. This is what I found. Here’s a video of Easton in the dryer. He is just talking away.

Easton had a doctor’s appointment on Friday (mainly to check his weight and height progress). He is now in the 5th percentile (finally he is above the dreaded line) for weight and 25th percentile for height. Nathan blames his height on me. He says Easton will be short because I’m more than 6 inches shorter than him. It’s not my fault he chose to marry someone who is short. While at his appointment I asked the doctor about Easton being constipated recently and he told me to give him prune juice. We bought some and Easton absolutely loved it! I was shocked. We gave him about 4-6oz early in the morning and then a few more ounces in the afternoon. We figured if he liked it so much we could just keep on giving it to him until his stool became soft. Boy were we wrong. Easton + prune juice = major blowout! It was so disgusting. It soaked through Easton’s clothes and got on Nathan’s shirt. I guess next time we will just stick to a couple of ounces and leave it at that. Prune juice definitely works (maybe a little too much)!

Fishing

Nathan had Monday off so we decided to go fishing as a family. This was the first time we had gone fishing as a family and it turned out to be a really fun day. We went to a local lake and it was absolutely beautiful. The leaves here are in the beginning stages of changing colors so the trees were all different colors. I love the fall here on the East Coast. We ended the day catching four fish but unfortunately or fortunately (depending on who you ask) they weren’t big enough to keep. We all were able to catch a least one fish on our pole so that was really exciting. We really didn’t have any luck until Nathan went into the woods and dug for some worms. Once we had worms on our hooks the fish were biting like crazy. More times than not the fish outsmarted us and got the worm instead of the hook. Oh, well we still caught four and we still had fun.

Easton caught the first fish. His pole was actually just a stick with fishing line on it! He thought the fish was so funny.

Easton caught the second fish too!

I caught the third fish! I was a little scared of the little thing because he kept flapping around when we were trying to take the picture. The poor fish that I caught actually ate the worm whole along with the hook so we weren’t able to unhook him and let him go. Nathan had to kill it (in a humane way of course) because he definitely wouldn’t have survived if we did release him. Poor fishy.

And Nathan caught the last fish!

Oh, the cute things....

Easton’s newest interests is spinning and jumping (although he really doesn’t know how to fully jump yet). Here are some videos of him spinning and jumping.

Easton also enjoys the nursery rhyme “ring around the rosie.” He especially likes the part “we all fall down” only he falls down way before that part of the song comes up.

Easton is still signing like crazy. His newest and most favorite at this time is hurt. I almost swear he tries to hurt himself on purpose just so he can use the sign. He’s a funny kid. He knows at least 30+ words.

Easton is trying to copy more and more words these days. It is really cute to see him try and say a word. He is definitely well on his way to start talking. It is only a matter of time. His favorite actual word these days is NOOOO! He doesn’t say it all mean or anything like that. He actually says it all nice and sweet in his high pitch voice. It’s very cute. Just so everyone knows, he already told me that he isn’t going to date until he is married. This is me, “Are you going to date before you are married? Easton replies, “Noooo” (as he is shaking his head back and forth). We will just have to see if he lives up to his part of the deal.

Just yesterday Easton figured out how to open the refrigerator. I think it was a fluke (at least I am hoping). He hasn’t done it since, but I’m sure it won’t be long before he really figures it out. I might be buying a baby lock sooner than I thought.

Easton loves to climb. He is climbing on the kitchen table chairs to get on the table to of course dance. He is climbing into his high chair, on the rocking chair (only he takes off the cushion first and half the time gets his foot or leg stuck), in the clam chair where he often times reads to himself (well okay just looks at the pictures), and he attempts to climb the kiddy gate. I’m a little fearful that it will only be a matter of time before he figures out how to climb out of his crib. I actually took the bumper pads out yesterday just so he wouldn’t have the extra boost. I’m hoping it will be a long time yet but I guess you never know.