"Chicken Nug-nuts"

We sure love our sweet kids. It is so fun to see them grow and they make us laugh so much everyday. We had some roasted Parmesan chicken thighs for dinner which we cut up for Ethan and told him were chicken nuggets, remembering he loved the last time we had homemade chicken nuggets. He was excited and said, "Oh! I love chicken nug-nuts! This is just one of the few things he says wrong that we don't have the heart to correct because it is so darn cute! Others are "Carl's June-yair" (Carl's Jr. with a French sounding accent) and "marsh-marshow" (marshmallow).

Ethan put these glasses on the other day and we just had to snap a photo.
She's cute. What more is there to say.
We have been amazed at how much better Ethan has gotten at coloring over the last few months. He still needs a lot of work at staying in the lines, but he is starting to use more colors on one picture and usually he remembers what colors things are supposed to be.


While coloring the picture of Woody and Bo Peep, Ethan insisted that Brooklyn color Bo Peep. She's not too bad of an artist herself.

The other day Ethan out of the blue proclaimed, "I want to color Super Why." He then ran into the office, got on the computer, navigated to the PBS Kids website, found the picture he wanted, printed it, and colored it all by himself. We find it amusing that he can do all this and isn't even three yet, while we probably couldn't do the same task until we were probably ten or so. What are we in for with this kid?!

Ethan and Brooklyn love dancing to one of the songs from Kyle's childhood. We started singing it to Ethan ever since he was able to walk and he loved it. We couldn't remember exactly how it went, but made it our own. We recently heard the original song, but like our version better. Here is a portion of it. This was the first time Brooklyn joined us in dancing to this song. We continue to be amazed at how much better Brooklyn has been getting at walking each week.

(My new apron makes a cameo in the video above. I made it myself! I sure hope my mom is proud.)

Milestones

It seems like Brooklyn's preferred method of transportation has been walking ever since we posted the video of her walking last week. She's getting pretty good at it.

She's got her third tooth poking through and it looks like tooth number four could be here by the end of the week. All teeth so far are on the top, but the bottom gums look pretty swollen.

Her babbling has recently become full of more complex sounds and she seems to be trying to say more words like, cracker, cookie, candy, and diaper. She seemes to be better at communicating what she wants too. For example, last week Jen was cleaning the kitchen, and Brooklyn came to her walking out on her knees holding a diaper and saying "dae da" (her word for diaper). Jen checked her diaper, and sure enough she had a messy diaper. It seemed like she was asking her to change it. Ethan never cared about about his diaper being messy, ever. Clever girl.

Brooklyn's playing has really evolved as well. She is coloring as well as Ethan did at 24 months. She loves to play with Ethan's toys and drive the cars around the room making a car noise. She also likes to "fly" Ethan's Buzz Lightyear around while making the same car noise. So cute.

Today Kyle decided to copy another one of the YouTube video ideas that Ethan loves to watch. We got some of Ethan's Cars characters and did some stop action animation. Ethan LOVES to watch it. As soon as the video finishes, he begs "again!" Here is one of the movies we've done. You'll notice that these cars have been well-loved.

Tonight Ethan was playing with Brooklyn's shopping cart, and we asked him if we should get a play store with food that he and Brooklyn could use to prentend they were at buying things from the store. Ethan got really excited and starting filling up his shopping cart with random toys and assigning prices to them. "This track is $5.00. This tree is $3.00." We may have found a possible present for next Christmas. (We already have his birthday presents for him, which he sort of found yesterday. Oops!)

We just talked with Jen's parents, and our sister-in-law Christin may have just gone into labor as we speak (...or write...). Go Christin!

Two Little Monkeys

Lately, Ethan and Brooklyn have had a night-time ritual of listening to "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" while jumping on Ethan's bed. They love it so much. As soon as Brooklyn hears the song turn on, she gets excited and heads for the bed. It's so fun to see them have so much fun together.

One of Ethan's favorite things to do is get on YouTube and watch what he calls "Cars Music." He'll watch all of the different Cars related clips, including clips from the movies, home-videos, and other kids naming their collection of cars. Lately, he has been lining up all of his cars and naming them, so we thought he'd love it if we recorded him. He had such a fun time doing this.

Brooklyn is getting a lot better at walking. Sometimes she'll walk all the way across the room. She seems to prefer to walk on her knees - we'll have to get that on video too.

Last night we decided to give the kids a special treat after dinner - ice cream cones! Although Brooklyn has had ice cream in the past, this was her first ice cream cone, and she absolutely loved it. It was fun to hear her smack her lips as she tried to suck the ice cream out of the cone.


In other news, it looks like Booklyn is about to pop out at least three more teeth. Poor girl.
Brooklyn's girlyness is starting to shine through as well. The other day Jen was putting on makeup, and Brooklyn was very interested in what she was doing. Jen gave her a makeup brush, and Brooklyn started touching her cheeks with it to make herself beautiful.

Ethan is starting to really enjoy being the mom around Brooklyn. Tonight she had chocolate all over her face after eating a cookie and Ethan went and grabbed a tissue and tried to wipe her face. He often gets involved when Jen tells Brooklyn not to do something - "No, Brooklyn." It makes her cry :(
One of Ethan's favorite things to do to help out around the house is to use the mini-vacuum to clean up the Cheerios and other crumbs off of the floor around Brooklyn's high chair (Brooklyn loves to throw her food lately). It's so great to have the kids start to clean up after themselves.
Jen has been exploring some new talents lately. She's learning to crochet, and is really liking it so far. She also finished some sewing projects lately. It is so great to have the kids at ages where they let her have a few minutes to herself throughout the day to do some crafty things. We'll get some pictures posted soon.
Kyle is enjoying having a little extra spare time now that he's done with school. He's been able to pick up a novel for fun for the first time in a long time.

It's Official!

The results are in and Kyle did pass all of his classes in and will be receiving a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering (DSP and Communications emphasis) from Arizona State University. Thanks to a friend at work that graduated from the same school in the spring, we procured a set of robes and took some photos in celebration. It would have been nice to escape the cold and spend some time in Tempe, but this was fun too.

Kyle is now looking toward the future! (Yeah, we know this is corny.)

Brooklyn cooperated when we took pictures. Ethan did not. As a result, we got some good pictures of her and didn't much of him.

Grandma Taylor gave Brooklyn a shopping cart for Christmas, and we just got around to putting it together. Whenever Kyle gets his tools out, Ethan has to grab his Bob the Builder hat and tools and "help." It makes the job go a little slower, but it sure is fun.

Brooklyn even got a chance to play with the finished shopping cart before Ethan had what he called a "great idea" that she should share with him, and wouldn't let her play with it for the rest of the night.

Ethan has been practicing his coloring lately, and it has made church much more manageable. We print these Cars coloring pages off of the internet, and he colors them throughout Sacrament meeting. Here is some of his artwork from this afternoon. His coloring skills have improved a lot over the last few months. He always seems to color the cars the correct colors too.

And finally, here are a few thoughts from the mind of Ethan:

• "I've got a great idea! Maybe I should share with Brooklyn." (This sounds good in theory, but has yet to really happen.)


• "That would be so cool!"