Guess who is wearing undies???

GAVIN!!!

Do you like the "I'm on a mission" statement on his Little Einsteins underwear? I think that about sums it up!

Yesterday, my BIG BOY told me, "NO MORE DIAPERS!" So I ran with it and put undies on him for the rest of the evening and stayed dry.

Today, I counted as DAY 1 of "maybe" potty training. Honestly, I'm just going to use this week or so to gauge if he's really ready to do this, so I won't call it official yet. I think that since Gavin is advanced with his verbal communication, and he has two examples of how to do the potty thing, we may be able to have success at an early age with this one.

My theory on potty training is this:
- Let the child run around in nothing but underwear all day long.
- Give the child an overabundance of watered down juice (or whatever liquid the child will suck down) to get the "juices" flowin' freely.
- Let the child learn that feeling wet/poopy undies are icky.
- Let the child become aware of that urgency to go and be able to control it long enough to get to the potty. This means let the child have accidents, not setting a timer and taking the child to the potty every 20 minutes.
- If the child has made progress within a week, you're on your way! If not, try again at a later time.
- I honestly believe that if a child is ready, s/he will potty train quickly. If not, it'll take months and months and months to achieve.
- And most importantly, not only must the child be ready to potty train, the parent must be ready for the undertaking of this momentous task.

(BTW, Brooklyn and Blake were 3.5 years old when they potty trained in roughly one week.)

SO, day 1 went GREAT!!! I rolled up my rug, got out my trusty Bissell SpotLifter, and let Gav run in his undies all day (oh, and so did the twins! LOL!). We had a grand total of one poop accident and two pee accidents, one after which I had just said to Matt, "Gavin will need to go potty soon...." On the other hand, Gavin pee-peed in the toilet FOUR times!!!! Yes, I took him each time, but we're just at the beginning of this process. He is actually starting to recognize that his body is doing something instead of being completely clueless! Gavin gets one jelly bean for each successful pee and a Cars die-cast car as incentive to poop.

Overall, I'd consider this day a success! :) Tomorrow should be interesting, though. B&B have tumbling class in the morning and t-ball practice in the late afternoon, which means we'll be out of the house a lot. I think I'll just keep his undies on under his diaper so he can still feel the yuckiness if he goes.

Wish us luck! I'll keep updating on our "maybe" potty training progress.

Happy Easter!

We had two days of Easter festivities, starting with the day we got home from the cabin (Saturday) at the Palmers. The kids did a little Easter egg hunt in the front yard and traded in their eggs for a bag full of goodies from Grandma & Grandpa. We had grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner and then just relaxed and chatted with the fam.
On Easter morning, the kids woke up egg-cited ;) to see what the Easter Bunny had left them!! It's a tradition in our house that the Bunny leaves a trail of plastic eggs leading to the kids' baskets. Everyone loved their treats!

The loot

Gavin has a little pre-breakfast snack!

I tried to get a couple pictures of the kids in their Easter attire before church, but that didn't really work so well, especially since we were running late already! So I decided to take advantage of the beautiful church lawn and snap some shots after church. The result was MUCH better! Oh, and it was a *cool* 94 degrees as we were driving home from church and my boys were sweltering in their long sleeve shirts and sweater vests!We had Easter dinner with my family at my sister's house. Of course, I had too much to eat, but oooooohhhhhh, who doesn't love great food?! Yummy!! The kids participated in another little egg hunt to finish off the evening.

I promised Matt I post a picture with me in it, so here you are! Not the most flattering angle, but it'll have to do!

Of course Easter wouldn't be complete without a tribute to our Savior, Jesus Christ, and the price he paid for us so that we ALL can be resurrected and return to live with our Father in Heaven again someday. No greater gift!!

A trip to the cabin

Wednesday, the kids and I headed up north to the LeBaron cabin in Strawberry. I was definitely looking forward to the change of pace and scenery! Different people were there during the four days: G&G LeBaron, Mom Palmer, Jen and her kids, Derek & Kristin and their kids, and then Derek had to go back down to the valley on Friday, taking Matt's mom back and bringing Matt back with him! :)

I love that the kids can run uninhibited and explore the outdoors to their hearts' delight while we're there. Brooklyn and Emily were joined at the hip practically the entire time! I'm so glad those girlies are so close in age (~6 weeks apart)! It's probably obvious what my boys spent a large majority of time doing, living up to Daddy's former "dirt magnet" nickname! Just look at those faces!! Blake's dirt unibrow cracks me up and this picture doesn't even do justice to how dirty Gavin was!!!!











Here is the evidence of how Gavin got so dirty, the little rascal! He was throwing dirt up in the air with a shovel and it was landing on him!!While the boys were getting filthy, Aunt Kristin gave the girls little manicures and pedicures since she doesn't have any girls of her own (YET!). Brooklyn absolutely loves being pampered!!
There was a bit of snow/ice on the ground in the shady areas near the cabin and I really don't think my kids have ever seen snow before! We had a couple of slippity-sliding accidents but everyone survived. Gavin was intrigued by this cold, wet stuff!A few more random pictures I snapped-

Brooklyn snuggling with Great Grandpa LeBaron, I think they might have been watching a March Madness basketball game. Grandpa is so great with the kids! Playing games with them, drawing pictures and even finishing a leftover sucker! ;)
Brooklyn, Josh and Emi playing in the dirt track in front of the cabinMore with fun Aunt Kristin, taking Andrew and Brooklyn for a quad ride. Brooklyn definitely has the "need for speed" on these things, always telling her driver, "Go faster!!"Palmer cousins, L to R (oldest to youngest) - Josh, Emily, Brooklyn, Blake, Andrew, Gavin & Spencer (not pictured, baby Adam - 2 months old)We all had a great time up at the cabin and can't wait to do it again soon! I finally hit my exhaustion wall last night and feel like I need another 24 hours straight of sleep to recharge my batteries!

Suns Fan? Yes, I am!!

Matt and I had a date night on Friday!!! We went to the Phoenix Suns vs. Utah Jazz basketball game thanks to our sweet hook-up! ;) I was sooooooooo tired that day, but I'm always excited to be able to go out with my honey sans kiddos!

I brought MY camera, excited to try out the zoom lens and I'll have to say, it did a pretty good job! Matt brought the little camera, too. I have plenty of pictures to share, as usual.

Traditional picture-of-yourself!

Our seats were in the second row of the upper level, so this is where all the shots were taken from, just to give you perspective.Matt's contraption he made with our little camera and the binocularsOne of the pictures he took with his contraption.
It's a bit blurry, but super zoomed in!!And my pictures......

Shaq slams it! Dancers
Go-rilla!!!Double teamingStoudemire at the line for twoAnd again...Raja BellSteve Nash with a jumperA little booty smackin' ;)DiawNash takes the charge

Even though the Suns lost, we still had fun cheering on our team! I told Matt maybe when we're rich we can get season tickets. :) Good thing we both like watching sports!

Gavin's 2 year pictures, finally!!

For whatever reason, he wasn't very smiley today! Here are some of my faves:

And this my most recent favorite pic of Gavin I took at the park a couple weeks back. :)

PLAY BALL!!!

Brooklyn and Blake had their first t-ball game yesterday! They've had 5 practices in the last two weeks and at the very first one, I was sure that my two were the only ones that weren't already practically pros!!! But I'm really proud at how far both of them have come and how hard they've worked so far!

Watching the kids is just so funny! Some run to the pitcher, some take three of four tries before they actually HIT the ball off the tee, some sit on the ground or pick grass in the outfield! Good thing no one is keeping score! Haha!

B&B's coach is just fabulous with all these little kids that are still learning! Brooklyn is just one of two girls on the team and she is definitely the princess!! The coaches dote over her; she lets them put her helmet on and take it off, always asks which direction to throw the ball before she throws it and gets plenty of high fives.

Of course, I was the crazy first-time baseball mom taking one thousand pictures yesterday, but I didn't care!!!! This is definitely a huge milestone for them and ME! I can't believe I have kids old enough to play baseball!

Apparently, Brooklyn used up all her pretty smiles for team pictures!! She wasn't mad, I promise. ;) I'm lucky I even got Blake to look in my direction, so this is as good as it gets!
Gavin has had an especially hard time understanding why HE can't be out there playing baseball with Brooklyn and Blake. He's always saying, "I wanna go out there!" while B&B are practicing. We've just made sure to bring along his soft glove and little baseball so we can have our own little "practice" on the side. Here is Gav, cheering on his big bro & sis at the game yesterday!

My Sports Stars!!!

So you can see for yourself, here are videos of each of them up to bat!