Brinley's 9 Months!

Boy is this girl growing fast. She's full of spunk, attitude, and adorableness. She drives me crazy with her unpredictable sleeping and eating times. She already loves her brothers like crazy. She knows how to crawl, clap, say Ma Ma and Da Da, and maybe Jo Jo, too. She smiles at Earl's picture on the wall like she remembers him, even though she was just 3 months old when he deployed. She has no teeth yet, but seems to be teething non-stop. She despises the car seat even more than her brothers did, if that's possible.

She's not crazy about being strapped in a high chair, either, for that matter. She eats a little of the solids I feed her, but not much.  Her eyes are still  that beautiful gray newborn color. Her hair seems to be Joey's dark shade of brown. She was in the 93rd percentile for weight a couple months ago, but since she's more mobile, she's dropped down to the 60-something percentile, which the doctor said is completely normal. Her massive cheeks are starting to thin out. She wears size 18 month clothes and size 3 diapers.

She wants to pull up so bad. We work on it a little, but not too much. I'm kinda hoping she waits for her Daddy to come home for that. She's definitely a Mama's girl right now, and doesn't appreciate anyone else trying to hold her or take her from me. She has slept through the night maybe 3 times since August, where as before that, she was an awesome all-night sleeper. She puts anything and everything in her mouth, but seems to prefer the strings that break off the shag rug from the living room. Oh, and chalk. And paper.

She definitely knows her name, and recognizes her brother's name. All I have to do is say that one of them is coming, and she looks to the door for them to walk in the room.

I've been off dairy for her sake, for many months now. So I'm starting to ease back into that and see if it gives her the horrible upset stomach issues it did when she was tinier. If that goes good, I'll even try to get a little caffeine in my body.

She gives kisses, blows raspberries (in the air and on skin), copies squeals and sounds you make to her, imitates you sticking out your tongue at her, and has her very own monster growl.

She's our precious, clever, amazing little girl. And her daddy can't wait to get home and hold all 20 lbs. of her chunkiness.

She had a very rough start, but she's healthy and full of life now. Happy 9 months, sweet Brinley.

How to Make a Ninjago Green Ninja Costume

Joey, my 6-year-old, wanted to be the Green Ninja for Halloween, but they haven't started selling those costumes yet. So I had to make my very first Halloween costume for him. I searched all over the Internet and couldn't find any really good how-to for us. There were a few that made it very "lego-y" where it was boxed and yellow, like the legos, but Joey wanted to skip the lego details and just concentrate on the Green Ninja (Lloyd)'s costume and outerwear. So here's how I did it:

We were fortunate to have an old TaeKwonDo uniform to use. I couldn't find any online that were green, so we took Joey's old white one and bought some green fabric dye I got at Walmart (I think the brand was Tulip and it comes in the little packets of powder) and dyed it a couple times to get a good shade.

I hung it on a step ladder in the garage to dry. Then my husband brought home some fabric paint tubes for the details.

I needed the diamonds with the crosses in the middle, so I made a diamond stencil for myself to keep them uniform and evenly spaced.

There's a folder inside the jacket to keep the paint from bleeding through and sticking the front and back of the fabric together.

Then I just pained on the the diamonds with the metallic silver fabric paint and the little paint brush supplied.

 Then, after the silver dried,  I used the black paint to paint on the crosses in the center of the diamonds. (The wet spot is my attempt to clean up a spilled paint drop.)

 The back was harder because I have no natural drawing ability. I searched for the design that is on the Green Ninja's back, the golden snake, but couldn't find one online to print out and use as a stencil. So I had to use Word Paint (I think) to create a circle within a circle, and then free-draw the snake head in the program, along with the snake tail wraps.

Then I printed it out the size I wanted, and used a seam-ripper to trace around the design leaving a "stencil" for me to trace. I used a black permanent marker to draw it on the fabric.

 Then I just used the gold paint from the pack to fill in the snake.

 It wasn't centered well. But luckily, my son didn't notice.

Then I needed to put more diamonds with black crosses on the back.

Then I put the diamonds with black crosses on the pants. I started a little low because the jacket comes down low on my son's uniform, so I didn't see the point in painting on some that wouldn't never show.

 Next came the hood. I found an easy online how-to on making a ninja mask from a t-shirt at How2DoStuff.blogspot.com, so we bought a white t-shirt (my son normally wears size 6, and we tried a few different sizes on in the store and thought the size 14/16 fit him best as a hood) and dyed it the same color as the uniform.
Then I put it on like the ninja-mask instructions said (inside out and upside down, with his face looking out the neck hole) and tied the sleeves behind his head, folded the "tag" under and inside, and pulled it up over his nose. And pulled the top down to his brows and folded the seam under. Then I did a quick freehand draw while it was on his head, about how and where the design should go. (I should have made a stencil or printed it offline if it was available, I am horrible at freehand!)

 We let it dry. (I did this part on the night before Halloween, I think.)
We had purchased the black double sword and holder from the Spirit Halloween store, along with the ninja gloves. My husband and son made the golden weapon from a wooden dowel painted gold and plastic sword ends screwed onto the ends.

 I used one of my sweater belts to wrap around him and a piece of foil wrapped around the knot to mimic the Green Ninja's buckle.

 My very picky son was extremely happy with the results!

I hope this helps someone else from searching online for hours trying to find help or something similar to purchase (in stock).

Family Status Update

It has been many  months since I've updated the blog. It's just so easy to post pictures and brief things on Facebook, since most of my family and friends are on there. But I thought I'd do a quick update on what we are doing these days.

Josiah: His most recent obsession is Legos, and more specifically, Lego Ninjago. He is going to be his favorite, the green ninja, for Halloween, but they don't sell those costumes in stores yet, so we are having to make it. I'll post pics of that when I'm done. He loves 1st grade and Cub Scouts. He is still doing, and enjoying TaeKwonDo. He just recently earned his yellow belt in the juniors class. He's still the most fabulous big brother to Tanner. It's really amazing. He's working very hard on eating more and eating more healthy. He's very eager to weigh 40 lbs. so he can take the back off his booster seat in the car. (He's at 39.6 lbs now.) Recently, he's really gotten into golf with Earl. He has his own little set of clubs and goes to the golf courses with Earl.

Tanner: Tanner is Tanner, wild and crazy as ever. But still so sweet, too. We're working on getting him off the pacifier, but boy is it hard. He's attached to that thing more than Joey was attached to Green Daddy. He weighs about 27 lbs. now, I think, and has become as picky an eater as his big brother (and mom). He loves playing Legos too (the bigger kind for toddlers) and Joey plays with him often. He's still in the crib, but we are thinking of letting him and Joey share a room soon, so we'll transition him to a big boy bed then. He's not potty trained yet either, but I don't know when I'll get to that. Hopefully before the new baby arrives. I don't want to deal with 2 kids in diapers.

Baby #3: We should find out Nov. 23rd if it's a boy or girl. I'm leaning towards thinking it's a girl, but I also though Joey was going to be a girl, so I don't trust my intuition. I'm happy no matter what, so long as he or she is healthy. I'm 16 weeks along now. So far, Baby #3 loves Ramen Noodles and plain Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches from Andy's. Baby #3 seems to hate my favorite food: spaghetti. She or he still makes me nauseous some days, but I am much better than the first 3 months of this pregnancy where I stayed tired and nauseous all day and night, every day and night. Here at Lejeune's Naval Hospital, they schedule c-sections at 39 weeks. Since my due date is April 10, this baby should be arriving around April 3 or so (it's not scheduled yet), unless I go into labor before that.

Smart boys, Frogs, and Occupations

I'm so bad at keeping this thing updated. It's so easy to just quickly upload pictures to Facebook and forget about this blog. But I do plan on having this printed in book form eventually, so I am going to try to do better about posting with more than just pictures.

The boys are, as usual, growing like weeds. Josiah amazes us everyday with how smart he is. His current obsession is Lego Ninjago toys, that they have their own spinning battles and weapons and playing cards. He gets on their website and learns all the names of all the characters, picks favorites, makes me and Earl pick which one we want to be. He makes us "character cards" just like the Ninjago characters have, complete with our estimated "speed," "defense" and "attack-tion" (yes, he calls it attack-tion, instead of whatever it is supposed to be...offense, maybe?) ratings.

He learned to tie his shoes back in January. He loves learning sign language in school, and memorizing Bible verses for Sunday School.

We went to hiking this past weekend. That's one of Joey's favorite past times.

Joey told Tanner we were going "that way." And the rest of the hike, Tanner repeated, "dat way, dat way" and tried to show us where to go.

I can't believe they held hands! Tanner never lets Joey hold his hand. So sweet.

Di Di, remember that Diego backpack you got Joey when he was, like, 2? He used it for years, and it got packed away, and now it's found new life with Tanner.

Tanner loves frogs. He searches every book for a glimse of a frog. He loves them! I think we'll do a frog cake for his birthday next month, if he still loves them this much then. I thought it would end up being an Elmo or Curious George cake, but I think frogs have won out. He still loves watching Elmo and "ah-ah" but frogs seem to impress him the most. He loves babies, "bay-bay." I love how he calls his belly "bebby" instead of "beddy" like you would expect. He tells me "rocky bay-bay" to get me to rock him like a baby, but where he has his head dangling backwards looking upside down at everything. The way he learns words so fast is very impressive. He says bye to everything! I mean, everything! If he's getting out of the bath, he says bye to all this toys, individually, and to the bath, and to the water. If he's leaving the house, he says bye to whatever he was playing with or the dogs or whatever gets his attention as he's leaving. This morning, as he was chewing up the chocolate pieces from my Special K Chocolately Delight cereal, he even said bye to the chocolate as he ate it.

Joey likes to show us how fast he can run by doing circles around the main rooms of the house. So Tanner follows him, shouting "Fast, fast!" Both boys love playing outside, so we're excited about it getting spring weather now.

Another funny thing Tanner does is count: "doo, tee, doo, tee" (two, three, two, three) and holds up all five fingers and says "doo. doo frogs," or "doo. doo ah-ah's," no matter how many there actually are. The answer is always two to him.

Joey builds obstacles for the backyard.

Tanner plays in whatever wet or messy he can find.

Joey wanted me to take his picture as he posed like the Statue of Liberty.

Joey has still got his future planned out. He has a current list of occupations he wants to have (all at the same time).

When he and his daddy build a plane, (the plane is needed to hold all the stuff that they will use in these jobs), his jobs will be:

a ninja (then he had me mark this off because of the last item on the list)

archaeologist (he's changed it from paleontologist because he wants to discover all kinds of old things, not just dinosaurs)

garbage man

astronaut

work at a harbor

hiker

firefighter

world motorcycle racer

Medic in an ambulance

motorcycle tire fixer

dump truck driver

pilot of a plane that lands in the water

train engineer

forest fire fighter

ninja trainer

He wants his daddy to help him when he first starts these jobs, after college, since he probably won't know how to do them very good yet. He has also started thinking of jobs that I can do with them. I think I've been assigned 2 "stations" that I will be working at for them: the space station and the harbor station. And he's just told me now I'm going to work at the archaeologist station too, when he or his daddy is there to ride the "speedy jet boat" to the things I see for them. (?)

He also has big plans to build a jungle buggy with his daddy. They want it about the size of PawPaw's 4-wheeler, but he wants to customize it with parts he's going to find at junk yards and in the ground using his metal detector (Christmas present from Aunt Angie).

Both boys love the vacuum cleaner. This day it was used as a vehicle.

They love using glow sticks in the bath water for a glow in the dark bath.

Joey recycled his valentine's box to hold part of his rock collection.