A Wubbypup??

Ty is talking lots more now (more as in more than he did a month, week, and day ago...).  I first started keeping a spreadsheet of what he says, how it's pronounced by him, and when we first started hearing it.  Really, though, that's ridiculous.  So, I decided I should probably just write down our favorite phrases/words of his right now.

-"Wubbypup:"  Lollipop; he likes to repeat this one lots when he has one/hears about one
-"Open door:"  To him, open door means open anything; we have to explain to him that not everything that needs to be opened is a door.  (i.e. lids, boxes...)
-Orange: Started out "Ah-meal" now it's "Oh-ohnj"
-"Byoo car:"  Sometimes instead of just saying the color of an object, he'll follow it with car...maybe because that's how he learned lots of his colors in the first place.
-"Teh-ble:" Terrible.  I just heard this one today for the first time while he was kicking a balloon like a soccer ball.  On the good kicks, he would chase down the balloon and say "Goo' one!", but the less-good ones were deemed terrible by him.  Where did he get that?
-"Runner!:" this means "chase me," or "I'm going to run" or something along the moving-his-legs-fast lines.
-"Ready--GO!:"  There's no "set" in there...He also says, "Ready--hike!  Hike!" over and over.
-"Miss!:" Again related to playing with a ball, if his throw is off or the ball doesn't go in the basket, he calls "miss."  This was particularly funny when we were watching a basketball game and right after the quiet bricked free-throw, Ty shouted, "MISS!"  I'm sure that made the shooter feel great...
-"Yub you:" Love you, too Ty.
-"Feekin:" Means fix it...
-"Noo-nohs:" He most often answers that he wants to eat noodles for every meal.  That and "Yogit."
-"Pockle:"  Popsicle; with the heat comes eating of popsicles, which for Ty means about 1/3 of an otter pop.  It takes him as long to eat that as it does for me to eat the other 2/3 and he's just as happy. :)
-"Kee-Kyu:"  Carry you.  After a few small spills down some stairs, Ty is very careful when descending a staircase, so more than 1/2 the time he asks to be carried down, especially down the concrete steps of our apartment.  We oblige.
-"Up-Down:" Anytime he's throwing something in the air, playing with his car elevator thing...it's just a common phrase of his.
-And let's not forget car names: "Gini"=Lamborghini, "Por-sah"=Porsche, "Gwuck"=truck, "Se-kick-a"= Celica, "Mar-teen"=Aston Martin, "Coh-vette"=Corvette, "Sebby"=Shelby Cobra

Ty also says and recognizes letters A-Z and is starting to do sounds of them (like "B says 'buh'") and counts up to 20.  He knows basic colors and a handful of shapes.  I think we need to slow his learning down a bit...time to watch Sponge Bob!  (Just kidding.)  I'm glad we get to spend a lot of time with him and watch him learn new things. 

We Love to See the Temple

We were talking about the temple a couple of weeks ago during our Family Home Evening and we asked Ty if he wanted to go to the temple someday.  He didn't answer us, but ran over and grabbed his shoes and said, "Out!  Go temple!"  Apparently, he thought we were going right then.  Well, it's not open on Mondays, so we decided to plan another time that we could take him and walk around the grounds  of the Las Vegas Temple.  Since Russell has a break from classes this week, we took our little family up there this morning and had brunch on the lawn.  We kinda lucked out with the weather: we had a nice breeze and it actually wasn't too hot!  And because I've been wanting to go for a while (like it's a big deal) we stopped at Von's grocery store and bought a couple of donuts.  Highly recommend the delish apple fritter.  Worth the pit stop for sure.

As we were driving up to the temple, Ty said, "Temple--a BIG one!" I'm not sure what size he thought it was, but he's right: it is a pretty, big building.  I'm glad he was impressed.  : )

On the way we sang "I love to See the Temple" and "I Hope They Call me on a Mission" per Ty-Ty's request.

Walking to the temple with Daddy.

 He wanted to hold Daddy's hand the whole time, not mine.  That's fine...I guess.

Ty walked up the little grassy hill and when he got to the top, since it's sloped, he was too scared to walk down the hill by himself.  After a while, he gained a little more courage and was running down the hill and falling on purpose. 

 

Pretend Ty's not yelling with cheese in his mouth.  He wasn't very happy that we made him stay still for a quick picture.  This was obviously after he was having fun on the grass.

 The really good apple fritter.  The girls and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Also, I've decided that this is the perfect donut to share with Ty since it's easy to break off little pieces.  Everybody wins!

 Tackling Daddy.  (Nice legs, Russell!)

There really is a cool view from the temple of the Vegas Valley...which you can only kinda see in this picture, so I recommend you come see for yourself. 

 The Las Vegas Temple.  We are lucky to have a temple only about 30 minutes away.

I love little family outings.  :)

Finals Week!

Similar to the midterm season for Russell in March, Ty and I again took Russell's subtle hint (and advantage of Allegiant Air's cheap flights with our limited-before-Ty's-2 flying time) and went to Northern California.  We flew in on Friday, May 4th which was also Sawyer's 2nd birthday!  Ty was happy to spend time with his cousin, but not nearly as excited as Soy was to see him!  We went to and helped with Sawyer's Buzz Lightyear/Cinco de Mayo party the next day and fun was had by all.  I have far too many pictures (mainly of the little cousins), and we had a fun time seeing Mor-Mor, Far-Far, Sawyer ["So-sore"], Carl ["Carko"], Uncle Curt ["Cut"], and Aunt Leslie ["Lessie"].

Our flight down was just how I like it: on time and fairly empty.  We had a row of 3 seats to ourselves with nobody in the 2 rows behind us.  Ty had fun using the "bucker" on his seat belt.  

When we arrived at the Stockton "Metropolitan" Airport, Mor-Mor, Far-Far, and Birthay Boy Soy picked us up.  The little boys stretched their legs for a little while running around.  Of course seeing the red bus then spurred a big round of "The Wheels on the Bus."

 Ty and Soy held hands like this for about 5 minutes on the ride back.  Cute.

 Then they were playing with blankets (okay, technically Sawyer's was a sweatshirt), putting them over their heads and laughing with/at each other.

 A favorite activity at Mor-Mor and Far-Far's: rolling the balls on the pool table.

 This picture is from Christmastime: see?  It's a tradition.  Look how much they've grown already!

Aaaand then of course Ty starts crying because he was gathering the balls and Soy actually wanted to play with them.  Typical...

 Ty and I helped (watched...) Mor-Mor make some banana chocolate chip cake and licked the beater.

 He was even willing to help out and lick the spatula that spread the peanut butter frosting.  :)

 Reading stories with Mor-Mor.

Ty on the swing in the Espinoza's backyard, enjoying the birthday party...?

 Leslie had bubbles and sidewalk chalk to play with during Soy's party.  Since it was windy, the bubbles blew themselves!

 After the pinata, Ty scored a lollipop, or as he says, "Wubbypup."  He enjoyed that thing for a good 30 minutes and told everybody about it.

 Ty was very interested in Sawyer's presents, too, and was checking out this monster truck with G-g'pa.

 Sawyer got a new car and Ty was nice enough to let him ride on the back.  ;)

Hanging out with Carl.  They actually almost could play together!

 Ty and Soy played "Horsey, Horsey" with Mor-Mor and Far-Far and had lots of fun.  (Oh, and pay no attention to Ty's un-clothed bottom half; he spilled water all over his shorts, so we took them off to let them dry.)

 When it was time to switch horses, Ty wasn't very happy about it.  (Sorry, Far-Far.)

 Helping Mor-Mor do sit-ups!  I love this picture.

We went to the park one morning, but it was so hot (which means all of the slides and swings burned yo' buns, too) that we only stayed for a bit.

 I think they had more fun sitting on the bench eating apples.

On the plane ride back, we had one of the few unoccupied seats next to us.  (Just because he's a lap child technically doesn't mean we need to openly invite others to come sit by us...)  He entertained himself fairly well again.  While I'm glad he's pretty well-behaved on airplanes, he can hold on to that skill for car trips now because once he turns 2 and we have 2 more babies, we're staying grounded.  Fun while it lasted...

Thanks for letting us come visit, fam!  Since coming back home, Ty has been a little more excited to see Russell than me.  I don't blame him. 

And WAY TO GO RUSSELL on finals!  He kicked the bootay of his classes and did very well this semester--no doubt thanks to his family ditching him during cram time. Whatever it takes, right?

Gender Anticipation

Today (in less than 2 hours) we have our "Anatomy Scan" ultrasound appointment.  We had an ultrasound at 9 weeks for about 90 seconds; just enough to see we were packin' doubles: 

 And a bonus ultrasound at about 14 1/2 weeks in SoCal when we visited my sister, Tina at work.  Tina did a great job looking all around for some gender indications, but the little wiggle worms must have been playing "mermaid" and kept their legs together the whole time!  She took a guess, but we still feel like our odds of pink and/or blue are still about 50-50.

Baby B Profile

 Baby A's good side (?) and maybe Baby B's backside!

Both!  (Top of the heads/inside the brain view)  You can see little fists poking up, too.

Russell and I are taking Ty in with us partly because we didn't want to get a babysitter and partly so he can see the babies, too.  I hope he understands a bit of what's going on because at this point, I'm WAY more excited for him to have siblings than he is.  :)

We will be happy with any combination of baby genders.  Having 3 little boys could be lots of fun and fairly simple as far as "stuff" goes...and then we would be ninja turtles for Halloween.  (Already promised and planned that one!)  2 little girls would be fun, too.  I can already see the cutesy, matchy stuff I'd plan to make.  If we could choose, though, I think we would pick one of each.  It seemed to work out well for Kai and Annelise, and as a parent, I feel like this would help avoid comparisons between the 2.  Plus, if I were having a singleton, I wouldn't have a preference.  Why not just have both, right?

On a different, but related note, I've been feeling a little motion in my ocean...uhh, abdomen.  Somebody, who shall remain nameless (until he or she is born), has been moving around on the left side so that we can see a little "bomp" every now and then starting on Sunday.  I didn't start feeling any movement while pregnant with Ty until about now, but I know I didn't see it yet!  I wonder if that's because my uterus is already stretched more than a regular 19-weeks.  Right now it's exciting, especially for Russell, but I keep thinking "I bet this is going to get real old real fast..."

I'm excited and anxious...and happy.  :)

P.S. I would NOT like to thank Children's Place for having a clearance clothes sale right now.  $2.99 or $4.99 for a bunch of stuff, plus I had a 15% off total purchase coupon.  I may or may not have bought a few things about 5 hours too early...we may have to go back and make some returns after the appointment depending on the results!  I did get some sunglasses for $3 for Ty, though, and considering that he wore his other pair ALL during church on Sunday, I'd say it's a pretty good purchase.  

Miscellaneous Day-to-Day

 Lately, we have been having little family outings on Saturdays (usually) and it's fun to go do stuff together, even if it's not particularly exciting things.  We went to Ross a few weeks ago looking for shoes and sunglasses.  Ty was being fairly well-behaved and because Russell was there, too, we let Ty walk around instead of ride in the cart.  Well, Ty found some shoes, brought them over to us saying, "Kai-Kai!  Kai-Kai!  Sparky shoe.  Kai-Kai!" and dropped them in our cart.  Apparently, these blue sparkly pumps just scream my brother Kai.  :)  We totally agree, Ty.

 This was a dinner we had a few weeks ago, but we took a picture so we would remember how dang good it was!  It's not fancy (obviously), but I don't know why we didn't think of it before.  You're looking at a bacon, avocado, tomato, and fried egg sandwich (no mayo/other condiments needed) on a toasted bagel with roasted cauliflower poppers on the side (cauliflower tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper baked @ 400 for about 50 minutes).  It tasted a whole lot less healthy than it really was!

 Ty insisted that he didn't need his diaper changed.  Really?  Because it's sagging down to your knees...   This is a common spot to find Ty in: lining up his cars in front of the TV.  In fact, there are 9 cars there right now.  :)

 As seen in the last picture, Ty doesn't always like to stay fully clothed.  There's something very funny to him about being "nakin."

 "Funny hat!  Funny shirt hat!"

 We went back to Ross (the return something we had bought on the "sparkly shoes" trip) and Ty did a very good job testing out all of the toys at his level. 

 Schroeder?

 As a reward for being good on an errand-run, we usually end up letting Ty "drive" the car for a few minutes.  The brights and blinkers get turned on, we have to remember to take it out of 4-wheel drive, and the windows and seats move all over the place, but he sure does have fun.  With the weather heating up, we'll probably have to cut these driving sessions short so we don't fry in the car.  (Oh, yeah--I got my hair cut.)

That's all--just some randoms.  :)

Red Sushi

Russell and I went out on the town a few weeks ago to a place we'd joked about 3 years ago: Red Sushi, a little fancy Japanese food place inside the Golden Nugget Hotel on Fremont Street here in Vegas.  When a Groupon came up for us to pay $25 for $50 of food, we purchased it and used it!  This definitely was not a place for Ty, so luckily we left him with a babysitter and had an evening together.  (Well, the twins came, but they were pretty quiet the whole time...)

You know you're in Fancy Land when the menu only gives whole numbers, none of this "12.99" stuff.

 It was fun to sit and watch the sushi master/roll-maker/chef guys make the food right in front of us.

This was 1/2-way through.  We had an entree of tempura shrimp and vegetables (YUM) ordered a salmon avocado roll, a scallop-topped CA roll (right) and a salmon-seared something else roll.  Unfortunatetly, the salmon wasn't as well-done as I had hoped, so Russell ate that off the top so I wouldn't be eating raw fish.  We had plenty to eat--delish.   Russell said that he has officially changed his ways and is now a fan of sushi.

 In this shirt, you really couldn't tell that I was 16 weeks pregnant!  Ya know, just avoiding judgment for being pregnant eating sushi.  Don't worry, folks, I only ate cooked stuff.

 There we go--that's a little more like it.

Lucky for us, we have other Groupons that we'll be using in the future.  Some Ty can come with us, but some are reserved for dates with my love.  :)