Jibberish

Hi all! Well, we had a pretty cool weekend. It was very relaxing, we didn't do too much. Friday afternoon I picked up my little man and headed home. We got home and daddy was already there, he had to because we switched our TV service, again! We had dish but we went back to regular cable after dish jacked up their prices on us. So with this change I am saving $150.00 a month!!! I am super stoked about that!!
Anyways, so Friday we didn't do much at all. Just hung out at home with our B-man and played toys with him.
Saturday we got up and Rick had yard work he wanted to do so I took B and we went to my parents to visit. He had so much fun as usual over there. Then B and I decided we'd take home lunch for Daddy, and so we did just that. Arbys, yum! So after lunch we all took a nap. Then we headed out to pet smart to see Rhonda our friend from the Davidson County Humane Society. While there we took B around the store to see the other animals. He loved the Guinna pigs, he thought they were great! After that we picked up a salad from the Teeter and ran into Grammy and pappy there food shopping. We chatted for a bit and then off to home we went. Had dinner and watched the movie Cars together before B went to bed.
Sunday was fun! We went shopping for a friend of mine who's baby shower is this Thursday. That's always exciting!!Yay for shopping. I did manage to pick up some plain undershirts 4T for B because he out grew his 24 month ones already. I figured I was safest with the 4T's. I also stopped to get things to make a veggie pizza. Well I am making 2 of them. One for the baby shower and one for home because they are so awesomely yummy!! We came home from shopping and had lunch and took naps again. Well I stayed up and watched On Demand the show Weeds. I am trying to catch all the seasons. I think so far I am currently on season 5. After nap time we went to this corvette show. We really only went to see our friends Vern & Michelle. Vern's band "Drive South" was playing there and it was great! We got a balloon made for B in the shape of a puppy but needless to say it didn't last very long once he fell down it popped. B loved the music and it was perfect weather!

The rest of Sunday we spent playing in the backyard, having dinner and then finishing our movie we started Saturday night. B was super tired after all the outdoor activities so he crashed the moment his head hit his bed. He over all was a very good little boy.

We have lots to look forward to in the very near future. It's a 3 day weekend this week for Memorial Day. I need to get my house cleaned and laundry done in 1 or 2 evenings this week. Then Thursday is the baby shower. Friday, no plans but Saturday we are going to see Sesame Street Live: Elmo's Super Hero's at the Coliseum!! I can wait to see B's face when the show starts!! Oh and hopefully one night maybe even tonight I am going to start making different colored homemade batches of play doh for B as well. It's less messy and holds up longer than the real stuff. I may even get B to help me in the kitchen. My dad built him a tower stool that grows with him. ( I need to decide if there is anything else I'd like him to build us :-) ) I will take a picture tonight and add it so you can see how awesome it is. B loves it too. When I tell him in the kitchen to wash his hands before dinner he runs to the sink and waits patiently for me to pull it up! It's great because now he is perfect height to help out, Sunday morning he helped butter our waffles for breakfast and he was so excited!

The little moments I have realized will be the ones that will still amaze me and make me smile on a daily basis. Perks of being a mommy. On our drive to pick up Grammy and go to school this morning B managed to point out when we passed a horse, he said "Neh" and then I asked him what kitty cats do because we showed him one at Petsmart the other day and he said "Meow". It made me smile :-) Have a great week!!

Here are those stool pictures I finally got uploaded!

Thoughts??

Okay, I am needing some input. I have a few things that I will be talking about and please feel free to comment on any of them! I like every ones opinions, then I compile them into one and decide what's best for me :-).

First, Brayden seems to be going through a phase of throwing things. Now I have sat down and talked to him about this subject and with him being almost 22 months I am not sure that he fully gets what I am saying. He will throw just about anything too. I couldn't tell you how many times I have taken a hit off the bean. Some of his trains are metal and believe you me that hurts! He's has managed to hit more than just me too. I currently have tried the time outs and he will sit there for as long as I say but that has yet to help correct the issue. I If time outs aren't working then what. The one thing I haven't done and I totally didn't even think about it is taking away the things he throws. If it wasn't for his teacher making a comment one time recently when he threw his cup I don't know when that would have ever crossed my mind. It honestly may never have. LOL.

Second, B has started pushing his friends at school. This week I have found out he's doing quite a bit. I got a note letting me know about this and it broke my heart. Now I know he's not meaning to hurt anyone purposely or anything but it breaks my heart to know he'd even do that to his friends. I want to think in my mind that this is also a phase. Through my girlfriends having babies, I don't recall any of them telling me that their little ones did either of these.
Now, I move on to potty training. I am leaving work today and going to Babies R Us. I think the approach I am going with this is just to buy a little training potty. I seen there 2 weeks ago they had either a Cars or a Thomas Potty. I was thinking Thomas since he loves choo choo's.

Then, I also got him a Responsibility Chart. I was thinking I'd start that with him to help work with him on many things really. Not just the potty training. I am going to use it for that and then things like picking his toys up and eating and a few other things as well. What methods have you all tried and what's your take on what I think I am going to do? I'd starting this with him this weekend because in 2 months he moves from his Toddler room at daycare to the Two's room and in there they start training and I figured if I start now that will help him transition in school as well.

Lastly, at home we haven't really pushed too much on taking the next teaching steps. We have flash cards of vehicles, farming, misc and one other one and we did those so much he picked up really fast on what they all are. I ask him to hand me a specific one and he does. Plus now he will tell me what most are even if it's by a sound effect. He was probably doing all that around when he turned a year old. We should be working on his numbers, colors, alphabet and shapes. So I got a kit that includes all of those to go ahead and start working on that at home as well. Last week they dressed in a specific color each day and learned about the colors. I thought that was the best thing ever! Each week at school they focus on something new. It's great! Then when I am home with Brayden I can touch on what they learned about at school and he gives me looks like how the heck does she know that! It's too cute!!

Any ideas, thoughts, opinions...or just want to say hi please do! Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!!

Medium

I made mention that 6 months after my brother passed we went to see a medium. I am/was a BIG skeptic. I always thought, they can grasp at many things and really feed you anything they may think you want to hear. This lady we went to, she is a well known medium in Pittsburgh and to sum our visit up, it was AMAZING!

She was about an hour from where we lived at the time so I rode with my parents. Sitting in the back seat my mom was loaded with the directions riding shotgun (haha, many don't know this but she lacks any direction sense and even though she had them printed in front of her my dad still told her to hand those over to me so we get there on time and not get lost!!) So as we have our hour ride we talk about many things but there are 2 things that really stand out for me. I first make the comment that I will have to be told something that no one would know about other than myself and my brother or that I know is not possible for her to know, then I could possibly believe. The other thing was as we talked about the directions, we laughed and were picking on my mom and saying how she gets lost when she pulls out her driveway. Any travels we did together we as a family always picked on her. Really it's just too cute that she is so easily lost. We walk into our appointment, it was really weird, I couldn't believe we were actually doing this! Yet exciting too! The uncertainty of what we may hear or who exactly may come through was exciting too.

We say a prayer and then she begins. She records the whole session for us and really starts off with different things here and there, some pertains to my brother and some of it doesn't. I'm not going to discuss the whole session. I will tell you my key points that were profound for me. She touches base on how my brother is laughing and thought it was funny that we were picking on mom in the car on the way over. She almost repeated the whole conversation! I from that moment began to believe. A lot of the talking really focused towards my parents. She hit a lot of key points and people we knew and etc. A friend of the family, their son passed a few months before my brother in the line of duty. He was a firefighter. I grew up with him and new his family really well. My brother mentioned that he was with him. It gave me chills!! How would Carol know that?? It's not possible. I picked special music out to play at my brothers viewing and funeral. He thanked me and said I did good that the music suited him. HOW would she know that?? She also touched on his personality and she really nailed him there too!! So, for me I am a believer. I know that's not much to go on but really it's enough for me.

Have any of you done anything like this? Tell me your story, I'd love to hear!