Kyle Brandt is 19 months Old!

Ok in like 4 days but since I have been so behind on blogging I wanted to get this done especially so that I won't forget these things.

Ow-more like oooowwww or oooowwwweee has become Kyle's new favorite word.  He says it all the time when he is mad or frustrated and when he is hurt.  He also says it when he is hanging on my leg and wants to be picked up.  He says it when we put him in car seat.

I am so not loving the fit throwing and body arching that he doing when he is not getting his way.

He tells me he is done when he is ready to get out of his bed or if he is screaming at me and I say to him-I will pick you up when you are done screaming.  Are you done screaming?  Then he makes the sign for done.  He also does it when he is ready to get out of the tub.

"Hiee" is one of our new favorites that he says.   In the morning if I am in the bed with him and he wakes up he says  "mom!"  I say "what Kyle?" and he says "hi!".  He is also saying OK and using it sometimes in the right places.   If I say "we'll go in a minute OK?"  He says "OK".  He still loves to call his dad on the phone in the mornings when Don is here and he says Hiee dad.

He also says byee, tee too-thank you, mooey mooey-missionary, booey-berry, ny ny-night night, baa-bath, and we are getting a few 2 word sentences out of him.  He almost has his name down.  We know he can say the K sound and the i sound so now he just has to put them together.

He has some lovely allergies with his nose almost constantly running.  He just got off another dose of antibiotics though so I know he is not sick.  There is cotton blowing all over in the springtime breeze so that may be part of it.  My allergies are acting up as well so it is probably genetic.

I really thought he had chicken pox the other night.  He started getting red spots in the early afternoon and every time I looked there seemed to be more and more!  I even circled them in pen so I could tell which ones were old and which ones were new!  I googled chicken pox and of course that was not very helpful!  Later in the evening I  called in a Facetime consultation with Dr. Chris!  He thought that it was probably something he got into or something he ate.  This child loves loves loves to be outside and the day before we were doing yardwork and he was out there the whole time.  The whole valley is blooming with everything weed and tree possible. I guess it really was just some sort of allergic reaction because after some Benadryl and a night's rest, the spots were mostly gone.  I was really afraid that if it was chicken pox that he would have been contagious right during Nursery on Sunday and if that were the case, he would have exposed the whole nursery to chicken pox!  Dodged a bullet there!

So I have been sleeping in his room now for almost 3 months trying to get the child to sleep in his crib.  He was doing relatively well up until the week he got sick and then we went to Provo.  He wasn't crying anymore when I put him down and he would go to sleep in his crib but seriously every single night he would sleep for an hour and then wake up.  He would usually fuss for a minute but then go back to sleep just to wake up an hour later again.  After 3-4 of those lovely episodes I would just drag him into the bed with me so that I could sleep.  When he got sick with fever I didn't want to put him in his bed to cry at all and then he got an ear infection and neither of us slept at all that night before he went to the doctor.  He was better later in the week but then we went to Provo and so he slept in the bed with me up there.  When we got home I had the thought that maybe he just needed to sleep in the big bed and that he would sleep there much better.  That was a tender mercy/inspirational thought. I was seriously praying praying praying that he would sleep in his own bed because it was really starting to frustrate me to get kicked in the head and climbed over all night long.  Plus my bed is so much more comfortable and quite frankly my husband was getting lonely in that big bed all by himself.  So after that epiphany I am still laying down with him until he goes to sleep but then I pack pillow barricades around the bed and it is pushed up against the wall so he can't fall off.  Then I sneak out and got to my own room!  The first night he slept there until 2 without waking up and the next night it was 3 and he even made it to 5 once!  I have the monitor on in our room so I can hear him and when he does wake up and really does cry I go to him and just stay the rest of the night there.  It has been a much better solution and we may be taking the crib down here very soon!  I wonder if because he is so roley poley all night long if he was hitting into the crib sides and not liking that so he would wake up. We still have our rituals of the turning on the turtle star lamp, starting his music and turning on the stand up fan in the closet to drown out the noise from the rest of the house.  He will not let me forget the music or the turtle and if I do he points at them to remind me. Connor of course has been distressed that I would leave him in there alone but I think we all sleep much better now.  Now if only I could get over my anxiety about leaving him there by himself which is why we had the problem in the first place!

Tonight the missionaries came over for dinner and a lesson.  After the lesson we knelt down for prayer and I was holding Kyle.  He started to fuss and squirm to get down and as soon as I let him he got on his knees like everyone else.

He knows when the garage door opens it is usually daddy and he calls out "daddy". When the upstairs door opens he knows it is Cody and he call out "Coey". When the front door opens it is usually grandpa and he calls out "papa".

He LOVES strawberries!  He ate 5 whole ones tonight and kept asking for more.

He doesn't like those applesauces that come in the pouches.

He really is such a good good baby.  I have had to drag him to Vegas once a week for the last month to take Cody to the doctor and we are trying to double up appointments so that we don't have to go in more than once a week.  If we have a movie for him and a binki he really does so good even being stuck in the car for hours on end.

Speaking of binki-oh boy!  This is a problem.  I don't know how we are going to get it away from him.  He actually has gotten worse about in the last month along with the separation anxiety so maybe those two things go hand in hand and once we are over that stage we can get rid of the binki too.

Strawberries are yummy!

Mom and Kyle waiting for dad to come home from a long week of travel.

We may another Beethoven on our hands.  He likes to sit with Cody when he plays and he climbs up on the bench by himself and starts to play.

Playing in the shaving cream at Grandma Penny's while we were dying eggs for  Easter.

This is his "cheese".  When I have the camera or phone out and point it at him he knows to say 'cheese'.

This is soot from the firepit.  He looked like he had a black eye but nope, it was just dirt.  Oh and  I love the snot too!

Connor Won A Kindle!

The sophomore class had proficiency testing one day in March.  Caleb didn't have to go to school that day but Connor got the better deal!  After all the testing was over the kids that worked hard were given a ticket to put in a drawing for a Kindle.  Connor won!  He was soooo excited!  He doesn't use it to read hardly at all except the scriptures.  He mostly plays games on it but he is so proud of it!

Fun With Duct Tape

The boys decided to wrap Cayden with duct tape one afternoon.  It was mildly amusing.

Nursery No No

Today Kyle went to nursery for the 3rd time.  He was sick last week with an ear infection so he stayed home.  This week a was a tiny bit better as far as him not screaming the whole time.  He did start to cry as soon as he saw the nursery door that was open.  He cried for a while and would not let me put him down but then he started to get interested in some of the toys.  I did try to sneak away once but he saw me and ran over to me so I could pick him back up.  I stayed with him the whole time during the first hour and then once he got settled when they were eating snacks, I snuck out so I could go do my stuff for Primary.  I went back to check on him around 11:40 and he was crying really hard by the door.  I just went ahead and went in because it was almost over and I was done with what I needed to do anyway.  The nursery leaders told me that he actually was really good during snacks and even during the lesson.  After the lesson they started singing songs and he was fine during that until they sang about the 3 little ducks and said the word "mama" in the song.  Oh boy! He did not like that one bit and started looking around for me and crying crying crying!  That was only about 5 minutes before I came in so he wasn't crying for too long.  I went back in and picked him and and he stayed on my lap the rest of the time.  The nursery leaders decided that they probably weren't going to sing any songs that had the word "mama" in it for a while until Kyle was totally settled with being in there!  Lesson learned!

Cayden

Cayden got to go on a field trip today to the Old Mormon Fort in Las Vegas.  I have been a bad mother in that I have not been able to go with him on a field trip this year because Don has been out of town working and so there is no one to watch Kyle.  I am certainly not going to drag that baby to Vegas any more than I have to and to go on a field trip would be misery for everyone.  Cayden is becoming more and more independent that last little while.  He knows what to do in the mornings and doesn't want me to tell him what to do.  The problem is that he doesn't really understand the concept of time and how quickly it flies in the morning when you are trying to get ready for school.  The morning is not time for a leisurely breakfast!  He always has to make his bed before he goes to school too-not that I am telling him to do it but he really wants to.  He wants me to leave Kyle with him when I go to the store or something like that.  Even though he is getting more independent and mature I still don't want to go that far.  I hardly dare leaving the baby with my 14 year old-mostly because of my own personal issues.

 Cayden left me this note and his candy bar that he got from school on March 14.

 Cayden and Kyle were chilling outside in the new chairs.

Cayden and his friend Dallin.  They go to early morning tutoring every Monday and Wednesday.  This is at their tutor's house and she has a bubble machine where she lets the bubbles blow out the window.

This kid is seriously funny.  We were talking the other morning waiting for his ride to pick him up and he was telling me about the time that he was coming into my room in the night and he was holding his toots in so that he wouldn't scare me.  Haha!

Then another day he asked me why we didn't have the cleaning ladies come any more.  I told him it was just too much money.  He said "oh, I was afraid that I drove them away."  I said "why would you drive them away?" and he told me he thought it was because he wouldn't let them touch his Legos on his dresser.

Kyle's New Talent

Look at what he can do now!  Coloring on the walls!  Thank goodness it was with washable crayon!  I have bought him color wonder books and markers, dry erase crayons for the white board and big crayons and a color book but he really prefers to color on the walls instead.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today my dad would have been 64 years old.  Ok that is so weird!  He has been gone now for 19 years!  That is even more weird.  I have been thinking a lot about him today. I wanted to do something for FHE to teach my kids some things about him.  I want them to know about him so that when they see him again they will know him just as I know that he knows them!  So I gathered some things from around the house that represented things about him and his life.  Then I put them in a bucket and let the boys each pick out an item one by one and then I told them what the item represented.  I showed them about 8 things and told them the stories behind them.  They really were quite well behaved for FHE because they love hearing stories about our family.  So I wanted to write down some things that I remembered about my dad so that not only I could remember but that my kids could too.  I wrote down 17 things about him in 2011 on that anniversary of his death.  I don't know if I can come up with 64 things but maybe with the 17 I already have I can get a few.

1.  He was a photographer and developed his own photos in a darkroom that we had in our house in Lindon.
2.  He planted a garden every year.  We got to weed it-not my favorite.  He would roto-till and then we would all plant the seeds.  We didn't have a sprinkler system so he watered it by hand and I think we irrigated too.
3.  He gave my mom jewelry probably every Christmas.  She had a ring of almost every stone like sapphire, ruby, emerald, opal and others.  I got to wear the sapphire ring to prom because that was the color of my dress.
4.  He had a piggy bank in his closet that he kept his saving/Christmas money in.
5.  He took us to Disneyland and Knot's Berry Farm.
6.  He liked having new cars.  We spent many an afternoon in car dealerships.
7.  He loved diet coke and would stack the 6 pack bottles like bricks in our garage waiting for the day that they would turn them in for recycling.
8. He had a green house out back that he built.
9. He would let us comb his hair and put barretts in it while he sat in front of us while watching TV.
10.  He built a sauna in the basement and solarium off the back porch in the Lindon house.
11.  He wore sports jackets with those sued patches on the elbows.
12.  When we would go on trips he would hook up a small TV to a VCR in the back of the big van so that we could watch movies.
13.  He would take us camping at Payson Lakes.  We would play in the lake in those yellow float tubes.
14.  We had a tent trailer at one time and then we upgraded to a regular RV.  It had bunk beds in the back.
15.  He would travel sometimes for work.  I know that he and my mom went to San Antonio and he went to Winnipeg.  They also went to Hawaii, The Virgin Islands and somewhere in Mexico.
16.  He was very generous.  Laurel and I both got these particle board kitchen sets for Christmas one year.  We each got one because we were spoiled like that.  A few years later he took one of them and fixed it up to give to his brother's kids for Christmas.
17.  He gave Grandma Gessel amethyst earrings one year for Christmas.
18.  We would go up to Logan every year on the day after Christmas to see his family.  We never stayed the night there though.
19.  He took a picture of me and Laurel out in a field of flowers in dresses that my mom had made us.
20.  The weekend before he died he gave me $200 because I had wrecked my car the week before.  I hung on to those 2 hundred dollar bills for a long time.
21.  He let me teach his Sunday school or Primary class once or twice when I was 16.  I couldn't have been much older than the kids I was "teaching".
22.  We had one of those hugely ginormous satellite dishes in our house in Lindon.  We probably could have contacted NASA with that.
23.  My dad was really smart with math and science stuff and could help me with my homework.
24.  He loved for us to play the piano and made us get up in the dark morning hours so that we would practice before school.  He made Laurel and me both get up at the same time and go into the cold, closed off piano room .  Whoever wasn't practicing got to lay by the heater and sleep.  We had to do it for a whole half hour!
25.  We had a dog named Fred that we got for Christmas.  He peed on my mom's blue carpet in the fancy living room.  I hated that dog.  He bit me and he was mean.
26.  My dad installed this tall streetlight light in the backyard.  It lit up the whole yard and made it really hard to sneak off and go toilet papering.
27.  He woudl eat this huge bowl of frozen yogurt at night before bed/
28.  He would eat that puffed corn square cereal that I can't remember the name of and pour honey all over it.
29.  We had lots of grapes/grape juice in our fruit room and he would make us Shirley Temples out of it.
30.  He always always always had a mustache.
31.  He had a collection of beer steins from Budweiser or something that he had been given over the years while working for 7-11.
32.  One year he got me a job at 7-11 up the road from our house in Orem, on 8th south and my job was to blow up helium balloons for about 4 hours every Saturday during football season.  7-11 was a sponsor of something for the BYU football games.
33.  He would give out slurpee coupons for things at church and at my mom's school for prizes.
34.  We ate a lot of slurpees and a treat was to go to 7-11.
35.  He took our family to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City every summer for as long as I could remember.
36.  He pulled me and Chris out of the swimming pool after he jumped into the deep end right when we got to the hotel.  I jumped in after Chris to save him and then my dad saved both of us.
37.  He saved Suzanna's life when she choked on a quarter.
38.  He saved Laurel's life when she stuck her fingers into the mixer as she was making cookies-ok so I don't think she would have died but he did help her.
39.  He seriously wanted us to put water in the mac and cheese when we made it because the milk in it made Chris cough.  I did not like water in the mac and cheese.
40.  In the winter he would run on the treadmill in the big house in ORem.
41.  We had a piece of property that they were going to build a house on in Orem close to where they actually did buy a house later.  The property was in an asparagus patch.  I think we would pick it and take it home and eat it.
42.  My mom says that he didn't like spaghetti and that's why we didn't eat it very often.
43.He took us to church every Sunday and took us to Stake Conference in the old building in AF that had no AC and hard hard benches.
44.  He went swimming with us but he didn't like to get his hair wet.
45.  We would go on family bike rides around the "big block" and the "little block" in Lindon.
46.  He taught me how to ride my bike and roller skate.
47. He wanted us all to get married in the temple, go to college and go on missions and he would ask us 5 questions every night as he was tucking us into bed.  Theses are the questions and the answers that we gave back to him.  1.  Who loves you? (mom and dad)  2. Where are you going to get married? (the temple)  3.  Are you going to college?  (yes)  4. Are you going on a mission? (yes)    5.  Can you always come home?  (yes)
48.  He came and got me once from a party that I was really uncomfortable at because of the games that they were playing.
49.  He rescued me off the Veenker's playhouse when I climbed up there and then was too scared to get down by myself.
50.  He had a testimony.  His favorite Primary song was "Shine On" and when we would have FHE and sing songs around the piano he would always choose that one.
Wow!  I can't believe that I remembered that many things.  With those 50 and the other 17 from before, I
did get over 64 for his birthday!  Happy Birthday dad!  I miss you and love you and know that I will see you again.

****Edit  I remembered a few more things and so I am going to add to this list whenever I remember something else so that I don't fotget.
1.  He would take us out on "dates".  I can't remember if it was once a month or what but mom and dad took turns each taking one of us to do something with them.  Dad would always let me choose-I think-and I always wanted to go to the mall and go to the Cloud Nine store and the little store in the middle outside Cloud Nine that had something to do with Hello Kitty.  They were both knick knacky kinds of places with novelty type items.  I'm pretty sure that was not his favorite thing to do but he did it because I wanted to.
2.  He helped me make a model of the solar system for one of my classes.  I think we did it out of styrofoam balls but maybe it was a cake-I can't remember for sure.
3. He went to a daddy/daughter date with me for Merry Miss.  It was a sports theme and he wore a coke baseball jersey and a ball cap.  I wore a yellow oversized sweatshirt because I was a "cheerleader".  They took pictures of each of the dads and daughters.  He had a big wad of gum in his mouth and blew a bubble right when they took the picture.  I have that picture somewhere.
4.  Mom decorated a table for a church party and decorated it for dad's 40th birthday.  He was embarrassed and was s terd about it.