Emmett's 3rd Birthday

A month ago today, on Sept 9th my baby turned 3 years old. I guess that means I don't have any babies anymore. Or at least, that's what my boys keep telling me, that they're not my baby.

Emmett couldn't decide what kind of birthday he wanted. Oddly, the most commonly mentioned theme was a carrot birthday. Carrot? What? Why? Who knows. He also said a squirrel birthday, which sort of made sense since he's been big on those lately, always excited to see one. In fact, when he starts falling asleep in the car and we don't want him to we'll yell, "squirrel!" a la Doug in the movie Up and that always makes his head snap up. Once he said a Patrick birthday as in Patrick Star from Spongebob, but I wasn't interested in that and that really wasn't defining for him either, so that was left in the dust. He once mentioned a Mater from the Pixar movie Cars which would have been okay, except we've already done Cars 3 times and it still didn't feel like the right fit.

Not too long after we started asking Emmett what theme he wanted he just said all sneaky-like or all cranky-like depending on the day, "I'm not telling you!"

Fine. Then I'm not making a birthday party for you.

Finally, I decided I knew exactly what he should have. A Roo birthday. Back at the end of June, I posted about how Emmett had decided he was Roo and I was Kanga from Winnie the Pooh and then the rest of the family received characters as well. Well, if anything that has just become more ingrained since then. Emmett regularly refers to me as Kanga instead of Mom and likes to be referred to himself as Roo. Dad and brothers get called their character names too but with less regularity. Mostly it's a Kanga and Roo thing.

So, he got a Roo birthday. Not that you can find Roo on any purchasable birthday gear, so I just used coloring pages of Roo I found online. Here's the little bit of decorations I did and he absolutely loved! It was really cute when he came in and saw them he immediately pointed out with great excitement, "Look! There's me catching dragonflies, and me hugging Mom!" etc.


I went the same route with his presents.


Aunt Angela made a Roo cake for him, which was pretty good since she was just working from memory instead of checking against a picture!


I love Emmett's response I caught to this gift from Papa and Grandma Hunsaker.


I also think the "would you hurry up and open it" anticipation is cute too.


Heavy present! Hmm, squishy, what is this?


And a matching blanket! Which of course should immediately be put on the head and spun in. And a matching stuffed dinosaur!


Which was SUPER exciting to have. Obviously I didn't quite catch his throwing it in the air in excitement. Then he wouldn't let go of him while getting the next gift... Which was a blue stuffed dinosaur to match the set.


Then it was time for cake and ice cream and he sang to himself.


After blowing out the candles, all the kids got a chunk of arm or tail which was rice crispy treats covered in modeling chocolate.


And once the party was over, Mom and Dad put together all the new bedding on the new (to him - it was mine as a kid) big boy bed that Dad got ready earlier in the day and Emmett hadn't seen yet. Up to now he's still been in his crib which we just hadn't bothered with since he's been getting himself in and out of it without any trouble since he was 18 months. When he walked into his room that night his reaction was priceless. He was so excited! For about five days we didn't even have any problems with him sneaking out of bed after being put there because he was so happy with his new bed. He's back to his old antics of getting out constantly now, but we're just glad he loves his new bed.


Emmett's 3 year check-up showed him to still be off the chart tall, but about 90-95% in weight so he a lot more solid than Avery's ever been in his off the chart tallness. Despite that level of weight and his being more solid, we still have a problem with pants being too fat for him, which just goes to show how tall and solid he really is!

Avery's First Day of 1st Grade

Avery's a 1st grader now! I can't believe we've now entered the (very long) section of our lives of full day school. Crazy!

Here he is in all his handsomeness on the first day (which was back on Sept. 7th)


Ah, what a nice smile


But Avery made a deal with me that if he gave me some nice faces then I had to take his picture being silly. (There's even one of him punching himself!) Also, I've never explained to him about modeling for the camera, so I think it's hilarious that he understands the sequence of holding a pose until you hear the click then change pose and hold and so on. So, as per his request, he gets all of these next pictures:








We paused a moment to grab some shots of all three boys. Stuck in the bright side-light sun, but oh well I wasn't going to get them (stinker Emmett) anywhere else and what I did get didn't last long anyway.








Alright, time to go.


*sigh* he's so big.


Once at school he was ready to dump me, but I saw tons of parents inside so I followed him anyway at a distance (and good thing too since I had to re-direct him the right way to his class). Then I just got a quick shot of him checking out his new digs because he was already trying to be too cool and refusing to acknowledge my existence. Thankfully, that's the last I've seen of that and he's happy to see me again.


Based on his experience at the private Kindergarten he went to, I was super worried about him and public 1st grade. He had a lot of trouble with distractions and inability to focus on work. Getting into the public school would mean a lot less teacher attention on him and I was worried about that compounding the lack of attention and/or him slipping through the cracks. On top of that, the tonsil surgery absolutely KILLED his speech and I was terrified of what that would mean socially etc. Thankfully, we did exercises to retrain his mouth and he made rapid improvements. He's back to where he was pre-surgery now.
As for being a "good student" I'm so pleased to find that Avery is doing amazing in school. He's one of the best kids in his class behavior-wise. One of the behavior motivating systems the teacher has is a set of 5 colored cards per child that they can lose each day. For each day they keep all their colors they get a single jellybean the following morning and 5 days in a row of keeping all their colors means a certificate to bring home. Of the 5 colors they can lose each day, Avery has only lost one so far this year when he got a little too rowdy with a friend. A handful of kids still have a perfect score, but Avery knows he's right there close to them. The mom of one of the boys in Avery's class who was at the private K with him last year even went home and told his mom how Avery is never in trouble now. I thought that was pretty funny. It's great because I feel like he's in a good positive cycle now. He obviously pays a lot of attention to the reward systems and best of all he takes pride in being one of the "good kids" which I think makes a world of difference. Hopefully he keeps it up as the work load increases over the year and he can improve in his focusing.

The Almost Run-Away

It used to be that when Emmett got mad he wanted to just run. Run away. He also thought it was perfectly fine to go on a walk whenever and wherever he wanted. He was an escape artist. Thankfully I think we've broken him of that. Now when he's mad, he does the almost run-away. He just has to remove himself from us, but he will stop. This was at Avery's first soccer game this last weekend, or rather the second since they play 2 back to back games each week. Emmett was fed up with having to sit around at the edge of the soccer field. Finished with snacks. Finished with playing on anyone's iPhone. Finished with the day. So he gave us a frustrated scream/roar and ran off. And stopped. And plopped. Oh, how thankful I am for the stop and plop these days...


But don't get caught watching him or you'll get some dirty looks and often a raspberry...

Girl's Weekend

I just had an outstanding weekend at the coast with some great girls! We had an awesome time last year, so my friend Jocelyn graciously signed us up for the weekend again at her extended family's beach house. And I was extra stoked to actually be staying the whole weekend instead of leaving early this time.

Jocelyn, Carrie and I drove out Thursday and Kari and Becca joined us Friday. We walked on the beach, went shopping at the outlets, had late night ice cream at Cold Stone for Becca's birthday, ate plenty, and talked a truly phenomenal amount. It is beyond me how a group of women can talk so much. And yet we can.

On Saturday we took some group shots.

Me, Jocelyn+Curtis, Becca+baby, Carrie and Kari. We honestly didn't plan the wardrobe, so it was funny how coordinated we ended up on the last day right in line with picture time.


After one nice picture, of course we had some fun!

Can can!


In deciding what to do between group shots, I caught some funny ones...




Hula girls


Charlie's Angels


Hm, what next?


I love this one! I bet a caption contest could yield some funny results... sorry Jocelyn ;-)


Fight scene!


Pretty girls


Um, wind blown girls? I'm not actually sure what we're doing here. Titanic maybe?


Clearly, we had way too much fun! I'm so grateful for such good friends! Thanks Jocelyn for making it all possible!
Alicia and Amy, we missed you!

Birthdays

Travis' birthday was on the 8th so on Sunday the 7th we got together as a family and celebrated his birthday and Katrina's birthday whose was on July 27th but we were gone doing our scuba training that weekend.

Last minute, DeAnna wanted a family picture, so we may be all uncoordinated, but at least we're all there and smiling. Well, most of us are smiling. And the kids aren't encrusted with cake and ice cream yet, so it'll do.


In honor of the new scuba obsession and also of Shark Week on Discovery (which had just run), Angela made this outstandingly awesome cake.


Emmett helped with the candles of course.


It was really really good cake too!


These boys crack me up. Who knows what Damon and Avery are doing, and clearly Carson is catching on to what Emmett is doing, and in all I'm wondering if it's possible to catch a nice moment of that many boys all being nice... or normal?


Emmett, you're a mess.


Time for presents! Katrina got this firepit which will be great for their deck.


And Travis got... can't you just hear the "OOooo!"


A titanium (meaning very light weight and all the other best qualities) scuba knife. Please excuse his I-may-have-cake-in-my-teeth smile.


Travis didn't get a present to open from me... because he got to order his custom dry suit for his birthday. We cannot wait for that to come in so we can get back in the water. (Travis is rightfully sick of getting cold) So, a big happy birthday Travis!

The Help

Have you read The Help by Kathryn Stockett? It's an outstanding book. One of the best I've read in the last couple years. With that in mind, some friends and I were very excited for the movie to come out, especially since the trailers looked like they were doing the book justice. So we went to a late show on opening day last Wednesday!
It was great! They really did do a good job with it! They were a little nicer with Skeeter's mother and I think some better coverage of the violence that was happening at the time in the beginning of the movie would've helped set the atmosphere of fear that Aibileen was rightly feeling in regards to Skeeter's request. That said, I'm glad they did cover Medgar Evars which helped escalate the stress.

Overall: See the movie! And still read the book!

Jocelyn, Kari, Carrie and me.