Go...Go...Go...

We have lived in Portland for three months now, but somehow Merrick seems to have grown several years older since we got here. Not only does he say that he is four, he acts like it.

The first step down the path to being a big boy was learning to pedal his bike. When we moved here he would just put his feet on the ground and push himself along. Now he not only pedals, but will tear down a hill at lightening speed and pedal his little heart out the whole way down.





The next step was learning to ride his cousins' scooters. Again, when we got here all he could do was stand on the scooter while someone pushed him around. Now he expertly rides the scooter, pushing himself along and maneuvering around obstacles.



I really don't know how he became this big kid, but it seems to have happened in the blink of an eye. I think our next door neighbor said it best yesterday when we ran into her at the park. She said "Wow! That kid has no fear. You better get him a helmet". With all the changes in the last few months I would say that a helmet is in order.

Adventures in Potty Training Part II

If I was turned into a cartoon character at this very moment I would look a lot like the character Cathy, pulling out my hair and with a caption that read "ACK!!!". The source of my complete and total meltdown can be summed up in two words...potty training.

For weeks I have for the most part been actively ignoring the signals Merrick was giving that he might be ready to potty train. He was very interested in his cousins' big boy underwear, he frequently used the potty, and would sometimes even take himself to the potty, take off his clothes and hop up. For my part, I ignored these signs because with 3-4 kids running around most days I just did not have time for potty training. That excuse no longer held water however beginning this past weekend when Ben and Becca went out of town and the boys Granny came to town to watch them. I had from Saturday until Wednesday (tomorrow) to focus on getting Merrick potty trained.

We bought Merrick "Thomas the Train" and "Cars" underwear and lots of treats for positive reinforcement. Merrick took to the underwear right away and is always excited to wear them. Unfortunately, however, I was under the mistaken idea that since he was showing so many sign of being ready that this would be a somewhat painless process. I was dead wrong. We practically spend our day in the bathroom and somehow Merrick has still had a handful of pee accidents, but the worst part by far is that he cannot seem to make it to the toilet in time to poop. We have had one successful trip and every other time I have ended up scrubbing poop out of his underwear.

At this point I am at a loss. I really want to give up and I am running out of one-on-one time to focus on this. When I talk to him about the process I can tell that he understands what he is supposed to do and that gives me hope. It is just actually getting it done that is the problem. I would say that there is a coins toss chance that we actually accomplish this, but I know that if I give up now I won't have the courage to try again until he is 18. I guess all I can say is heaven help us all.

The Dark Side

I had planned on blogging after Merrick went to bed tonight and I had already planned what I was going to blog about, but tonight he was just so silly that I just can't resist blogging about it.

When Jeremy and I get overly tired we tend to get silly and things that should not be funny become hilarious. We refer to this as "crossing over to the dark side". The last few night I guess we have kept Merrick up a little to late because he has shown us that he too can cross over to the dark side, running around like a crazy man and jumping off of everything he can climb.

Tonight the silliness began at bath time and when the bath ended he was not ready to get out. I really needed to go get something from downstairs but could not convince him to get out of the tub. He sat in the bathtub as every last drop of water ran out. Once it was empty I finally convinced him to vacate the tub and put his towel on.

I ran down stairs as quickly as I could and returned to find out that he was not quite as ready to get out of the tub as I thought.

Eventually his lips turned blue and he agreed to get out of the tub, but that did not end the silliness. While I gathered his lotion, pj's and diaper he took that opportunity climb naked into his toy box (I took a picture of that as well, but unfortunately caught his manhood in the picture and could not figure out how to crop it).

His craziness definitely slowed the process down, but in the end he made it to bed. It is interesting when you see your characteristics passed down to your children, even something so small and insignificant as getting silly/crazy/slap-happy when overtired.

The Everyday

I think that I have mentioned it before, but since we moved here I have been watching my two, four-year-old nephews (Quincy and Colvin) during the week and I also watch another little girl Merrick's age on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have three kiddos and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have four children four and under.

Some days are really fun and other are really challenging, but the bottom line is that most days I am exhausted by the end of the day. One of the ways I have come up with to find joy in a long day is by focusing on the happy, funny moments and trying to capture those. I thought as we head into another week, I would share some of my favorite pictures from our time together so far and in case you were wondering the first one is a picture of Quincy sitting on the pot, with the door open, holding a balloon and a giant book.

Life's a Beach

This past week the weather was really warm for Portland (it was in the low 90's which still feels amazing to us). Early in the week I started thinking that if the weather was this warm we needed to take advantage and head to the beach. Jeremy worked really hard all week and got ahead in his homework so that he could take Saturday off.

Saturday morning Jeremy, Merrick, my parent's and I loaded up the car and headed out to Seaside. The weather out at the coast was perfect (about 75 degrees). We started the day by exploring Seaside a little. It turns out that they were having a classic car show and downtown was just packed with really neat old cars.


We wandered around until lunch time and had lunch at a great little seafood place. After lunch we finally made our way down to the water. We set up some chairs and just started to get comfortable when Merrick made a beeline for the water. I thought he would be nervous adventuring out on his own, but boy was I wrong. This is him headed out to the water and then walking all the way back to Nana and Papa by himself.



After our initial trip out to the water we all decided that the water was too cold and confined our play to the sand. Merrick liked scooping the sand and dumping it on people and Jeremy enjoyed digging his traditional hole.









I assume that this will be our only trip to the coast this year, but I don't see how it could have been any more perfect. The weather, food, and company were all perfect. It was truly a great day!

Half of Four

I am really not sure how it happened, but somehow my baby turned two today. Over the last few days people have been asking him how old he is. Occasionally he says "two", but more often he says "four". I think he is in a hurry to grow up and be four like his cousins. As a solution to our problem today Papa told him to say that he was half of four so I guess he is not two, but half of four.

We celebrated his half of fourth birthday by having a Caillou birthday party. Merrick is WAY into Caillou and we thought it would be the perfect theme for his party. We started the day by giving him a Caillou shirt and trucker cap to wear at the party.



When everyone arrived we kicked off the party by letting the kids finger paint with pudding. I think that the pudding made it to the mouth over the paper at a ratio of about 3:1. The kids also thought it was really fun to mix the colors so by the end everything was a nice shade of army green.





Once everyone was thoroughly cover we moved on to our second activity, playdough. Most of the kids kept with the party theme and tried to make Caillou, but Lauren decided to test her artistic skills a little more.





We then decided to take a break from the activities to have a little lunch. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon and sweet potato fries. The food was really yummy and we all ate too much so we decided to open presents before dessert.

There was no surprise here, but Merrick was totally spoiled by family and friends both near and far. He enjoyed opening the presents and his cousins enjoyed helping him.








After presents we were all still too full so we had our last activity, rocket balloons, which were really fun but did not really translate in the pictures.



We finished the party with Caillou cupcakes that I made and homemade blackberry lemon ice cream.





I think Merrick really enjoyed dessert.





I wish I could stop Merrick from growing up, but that does not seem to work. I guess the next best thing to do is thoroughly enjoy the moments we have and that is just what we did today.

Merrick, Mommy and Daddy love you more than anything and are so grateful you joined our family!