Update from the road!

Off we go to MI. It’s another full two day trip of driving. I can’t wait to see my family. It just stinks not being able to see everyone for months at a time. I used to take for granted getting hugs from my family, and now I don’t take simple things like that for granted.

I haven’t written in awhile and now I have a good 12 hours available to write because I’ll just be sitting in the car. I’ll catch you up on a few things going on around our household.

Joey has been extremely lovey lately. He has two stuffed animals he can’t live without. One is brownie the dog. Brownie is a little brown dog, small enough to fit in Joey’s hand. He got him from church in AWANA with his ‘play’ money they save up from class. I’m not sure why he likes brownie so much but I think it has to do with the fact that he’s so small, like a baby puppy. The tag actually said ‘Brownie’ on it so that is how he got his name.

Blue Jay was a bird that Joey got when he was a baby. When we were at UofM hospital when he was 6 weeks old getting his kidney removed and the other fixed there were a lot of groups that went around and donated toys, stuffed animals or books to the children in the children’s hospital. One of the group were the runners from UofM. They brought beanie babies. We picked out a bird for Joey – a blue jay beanie baby. This bird was almost given away once since Joey never really had shown any attachment to it, but I held onto it because we did get it when he was in the hospital. About 3 months ago Joey became quite attached to ‘Blue Jay’ and brownie.

Blue Jay and Brownie have been known to take joy rides in Joey’s superman slippers as he pushes them around the floor. He places each IN the slipper and they get to be pushed around. I wish I was so lucky! They have a special place by his side every evening when he sleeps and he can not sleep without them or he gets near hysterical. It sounds like an odd pair – a puppy dog (Brownie) and a Blue jay that is 3x the size of Brownie but they are inseparable. It’s quite endearing.

Since then Joey has grown very attached to all of his stuffed animals. Joe doesn’t really get the whole ‘stuffed animal’ thing, but I understand. I was extremely attached to my stuffed animals growing up and still am. I have a few stuffed animals from childhood that I have given to Joey. One is my pound puppy – we named him pokey because he’s ‘slow’ because of his long ears. My mom helped me name him. I have my popple (it was a stuffed animal that turned into a ball) and Joey likes him. I also have BooBoo Teddy Bear. It was a bear that had his arm in a sling and a little tear coming from his eye. I always liked BooBoo because he was sad.

One day I tried to throw out his little chickie he got from somewhere. This poor ‘chickie’ is just a pom pom with a beak and legs, except the beak is not where it’s supposed to be and this ‘chickie’ looks like he’s having some ‘issues’. Joey does garbage duty and on the way to throw out the garbage noticed ‘chickie’ was in there and became near hysterical in crying. I told him to keep chickie so chickie has stayed on his desk, looking mangled but still ‘alive’.

When we asked him what stuffed animals he wanted to take to MI he said, ‘I want to take them all.’ He has a good 30 stuffed animals and that wasn’t feasible so we told him, you can take 5. He chose Brownie, Blue Jay (duh!), Peeps (like the peeps marshmallow from Easter), Nibbler (a rabbit he got from good will), TyTy cat (an orange cat beanie baby that looks like our cat TyTy).

Though he seems to have ‘girl’ tendencies, ie the stuffed animals, we love it. He is so loving and caring. I love love love this stage and I secretly wish he would stay like this forever. He’ll walk up to me during the day and say, ‘Mom, guess what?’

I’ll respond, ‘What?’

He’ll respond, ‘Mom, I LOVE you!’

He has a love for anything baby and ‘thinks it’s soooo cute.’ He sees a baby dog in a magazine, or in a movie and instantly talks about how ‘cute’ it is and says ‘awwwwwww’. He even has Justin saying ‘awwwwwwwwww’ when he sees something cute.

He loves to draw butterflies. I think it’s because it’s the only thing he knows how to draw that he learned at school. He says, ‘Mom, you are as beautiful as a butterfly.’ He draws very nice butterflies by the way. Sometimes he’ll make a V at the end of the butterfly body and then it looks like a bee.

Joey gives hugs and kisses all the time. I couldn’t have a more wonderful son. It’s awesome and I’m really enjoying this time together.

This week we sold Joey’s Take-a-long Thomas trains (it’s the metal ones that stick together with magnets) and made $200 for the entire lot. We asked Joey if he wanted a video game for his wii and he said, ‘Well actually, I really want a DS.’

A Nintendo DS is a video game system. His friend (neighbor) Christopher has a Ninetendo DS and they can play together wirelessly. Joey got the Mario game with his $200 and the DS (120) and then he paid for Sonic ($10) himself. He plays it all the time. He loves getting to new levels in his Mario game. Most days if you are wondering what Joey is doing, he’s normally playing his DS.

We’ve been working on his workbooks for school. We went out and bought as many PreK and Kindergarten books we could and he will sit with me and do his ‘work’. He gets a few skittles or m&m’s for each worksheet he completes and does a good job. He’s actually doing things now like it shows a photo of a box and it just has a _o_ and he has to figure out the B for the beginning letter and the X for the end. He’s a whiz at the beginning letter. You ask him anything and he can tell you what it starts with. The ending letter was tricky for him and for the longest time he would get upset trying to figure it out. This past week he worked on a sheet where he did the first and end letter and got them all himself without getting upset! I’m so proud of him!

Justin has been doing extraordinary with his letter sounds. We can ask him, ‘What sounds does an M make?’ and he’ll respond, ‘MMM’. He knows N, T, R, S, B, F, J, G. He loves the Letter Factory video and will watch it a lot and learn more letter sounds. I’m sure he’s learning some of these at school too.

He’s starting to get over the whole ‘whining’ stage. We keep telling him over and over when he starts to whine, ‘Sorry, we don’t understand whine’ and make him restate what he’s saying without whining. Other times I’ll restate what he’s whining about without whining, ‘Mom, I would like a glass of juice, please’. Then he’ll resay it to me the ‘nice’ way. This has helped a lot.

We moved Justin to a big boy bed a few months ago. Lately we’ve had some instances where he will get up over and over. We’ve tried a few different approaches on this. I’ve tried to stay away from the negative approaches. What we’ve done lately is to give him three pennies and each time he woke up we’d take one. This worked for about 2 weeks. The latest approach is to give him a sticker and a few m&ms in the morning and extra praise if he stays in bed the evening before. That has been helping lately. Also we’ve told the boys if they stay in bed they get TWO books before bed each evening. They pick out books and bring them downstairs and we sit on the couch and snuggle up and read them together. Both Joey and Justin LOVE this so they try to be extra good. We never used to let them watch tv after showers but we got away from this lately and stopped reading books. I guess we’ve just been so busy. When Justin started waking up all the time we decided this past week to turn off tv again after showers and do books and we think this has helped a LOT because it calms the kids down and give them snuggle time, which we believe gets them ready for bed. So far it’s worked – thankfully. We were at the end of our rope!

For the trip we bought Joey a Vsmile handheld game system off ebay that came with a carrying case and 2 games. When we got the Vsmile system in the mail it wasn’t in the best shape. I had to press reset on the back to get it to turn on. I was afraid it wouldn’t work well but didn’t really want to return it because 1. I’d have to pay shipping and 2. it was still a good deal for the case and 2 games so the system that wasn’t in great condition wasn’t a big deal. I went on ebay and bought the advanced VSmile system for Joey. It’s the newest one they have. So now Joey has a system and Justin has his own system that he can beat on and I don’t really care because it’s already not in that great of shape. Justin was so excited to have his ‘own’ game system! He always sees Joey playing his leapster and he always wants it. Now he has his own and he’s excited about it! I can’t guarantee that he can play it because he’s not even 3 but the realization that he has his ‘own’ system makes him happy!

Justin is very sharp. He understands and gets things quickly. Joe and I have been really surprised at how fast he is getting everything and we think it’s because Joey is a very patient older brother and has been teaching him so much. Joey doesn’t think Justin is younger and doesn’t have the capability to learn the things he knows so he just goes ahead and tries to teach him anyway. It’s so sweet. Joey calls Justin ‘his best friend.’ I hope they always have this bond together. I am so glad I have the kids less than 3 years apart. They are able to share the same interests and toys and are close because of it. They both sleep in the same room at night, switching off who gets the top bunk in Joey’s room and every night they switch the stuffed animals so they have ‘their’ stuffed animals in the bed they are sleeping. It’s so sweet.

We’ve been going to the pool a lot lately. The swim lessons were great for the kids. Joey is swimming really well under water and has to learn how to come up and get a breath. He’s been practicing a lot of Desiree’s house. He’s even able to tread water now.

Justin is not afraid of the water and will jump off either Joe or I and go under water and kick his feet and move his arms and swim between Joe and I. I can’t say he’s ‘swimming’ but he goes right under water without hesitation. Most kids are afraid to get their head wet but not Justin. He loves to swim in the pool.

I’ve been getting more stuff off freecycle lately! I got a
1. Electic Wok. I’ve been wanting one of these!!
2. A ton of clothes – some shoes that fit me, some shoes that will fit Joey and they are all nike and a bunch of clothes for Joey in his size and the size 8/10 which will be his next size up.
3. a bunch of clothes that were in bad shape and I had to throw out.
4. Another bunch of clothes – some I was able to salvage some clothes for Joey that were the next size up but we threw out a lot.
5. A pair of jeans, dress shirt and Perry Elis suit slacks for Joe! That was a find.
6. sheets for the queen bed and a twin comforter.

I think there may be more. I’ll have to look it up.

Well we are through Arkansas now. I’ll write more in a bit.


It’s 5:18 now and we just passed through Missouri and into Illinois – finally. I think when we started this trip I put in the shortest, not the fastest way to our first stop because we ended up going in backroads Arkansas for awhile. It was actually really pretty. We saw a bunch of swamps, and rice fields! I didn’t know they had rice fields in the USA, much less Arkansas. That was pretty cool to see.

The kids have been really good on the way so far. I can tell that by now they are getting ready to just be there already and I don’t blame them. We’ve been in the car since 6:45 this morning. That’s a long time. Luckily they have a dvd player and other things to keep them occupied. We never had all that cool stuff when we were kids!

Oh I also wanted to say I have written in the past about Joey’s potty training and how it was so frustrating because even at age 5 he still was pooping his pants. We tried everything under the sun and couldn’t figure out what to do to help him. Bribes, negative consequences, etc. He would go when we told him to go but not on his own.

Lately Joey just looks and me and tell me, I gotta go. We think the turning point was that one day he told me that his tummy hurt. I told him to go poop and pee in the bathroom. He, of course, didn’t want to go but I made him anyhow. He went, came out and I asked him if he was still in pain. He told me he wasn’t. I told him, ‘See, sometimes when we have to pee or poop and we hold it in, it hurts our tummies.’ It was like that golden lightbulb went on over his head. The next day his said his stomach hurt and ran to the bathroom on his own. In the past few weeks we’ve have no accidents. Just the past few days I stopped asking him to go poop and he’s been telling me he has to go on his own. I’m so happy. I was worried something was medically wrong and he was just late training – that’s all. His doctor said once he potty trained the pooping training would come a few months later and she was right. Whew we are sooooo relieved. That was such a sore spot with us!