dinner is an adventure...

Lately, CJ hasn't wanted to eat anything new. But, as parents, we know that he needs to be able to eat a variety of foods... not just fruit, bread, and crackers. We've even tried pizza and mac'n cheese thinking, "all kids love this stuff..." But alas we were mistaken. They both caused tears at the initial sight of them on his tray. Crazy right?

Our first strategy to get him to eat new things was to make him sit in his chair until he at least tried a bite of whatever we were having for dinner. This resulted in 30-45 minute tear laden fits. But it also always resulted in two other things... CJ would eventually try it and mom and dad's nerves were worn to shreds. Sometimes he would like it. Other times he would hate it. But he always ate it.

The more we thought about it though, the more we are convinced that all good things come in time. All we can do is offer him healthy, nutritious foods. He has to choose to eat them, at least for now. So we have a new strategy. Every night, he gets what we are eating. If he eats it, great. If he doesn't, he's not going to starve. No more tears. No more bribery. No more fits. Sometimes he will try the new things and like it. Other times, like tonight, the mac'n cheese is still a no-go. :)

This night we were trying to get him to eat BBQ. He wouldn't touch it on his tray. Then I put it on bread. Magic... he ate three small sandwiches. And because we were using ketchup, he needed ketchup. And even though he had never even seen a Dorito before, when Scott started eating them, he wanted them. Why couldn't he have the same reaction to broccoli? So here is the end result of Doritos and ketchup...

One thing CJ has gotten great at is helping to set the table. When this boy decided he is hungry, he is ready to E.A.T! He will sign it, say it, and he even has a little eat-dance. Usually this starts about the time I start getting things ready for dinner. Unfortunately my ability to get dinner on the table is never as fast as his realization he wants to eat. So to distract him, I get him to help set the table. Win-win for both of us. He is occupied so I don't want to stab my eye out because I have heard "eat" 5,000 times in 2 minutes and he has forgotten he thinks he is starving. And it also makes one less thing for me to do so dinner gets done faster.

This is also the point where I think I have made huge strides as a mom and as a person in general. I am SUPER type-A. Every thing has its place, and it needs to be put there. Scott would even try to tell you I am OCD. So what if all my can labels face the same way, my spices are alphabetized, and one of the best gifts Scott ever got me was a label maker? Don't judge me! But when CJ does something like set the table, I CAN'T go behind him and re-do it. It is fine if it is all whopper-jawed. He did a great job, and he is so proud of himself. If I constantly go behind him fixing what he has done to the best of his ability, he will either stop helping because he can never get things right or he will get lazy and not try his hardest. So we are growing and learning together. :)

family fun activities...

As time for Will to be born drew closer, I started to worry about CJ. I felt guilty. He wasn't going to get as much attention. He was going to have to share me. Everything was going to be different, and he is a creature of habit. I knew I couldn't change any of those things for him, so I started to think about what I could do for him. He isn't ready for "formal" learning, but I decided I wanted to do something special with him every day, something that I could focus 100% of my attention on. So I decided to do two week blocks of time talking about a specific topic.

I gave myself a two week break right after Will was born, but for the last two weeks of January, I though it would be great to talk about family. Learning at CJ's age should be natural. If it doesn't have context, it doesn't have meaning. Since all the grandparents came to visit, and we took a Hetzel family picture with all the aunts, uncles and cousins on the 17th, it was a perfect way to start our fun days.

If you want to do some of the activities with your kiddo, please steal them. Here is what we did:

With each theme, I want to focus on a verse. Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a gift from the Lord." I know CJ can't begin to comprehend this, but it was such a great verse for me to have in the front of my mind as I adjusted to life with two little gifts. What was fun, was to tell him the story of Moses and Miriam. He loves to help with laundry and has fun getting into the laundry basket, so when I was planning this, I though it would be the prefect story. I would tell him about how Miriam took care of her little brother Moses just like he helped take care of Will. I told him about how Miriam watched over her little brother, and how one time she had to put him in a basket to make sure he stayed safe. Mostly, I wanted him to remember that Miriam helped take care of her brother because he could understand that concept.

I didn't do a great job of taking pictures of the activities we did (I've done better the past weeks though, so stay tuned every few weeks for an update on our goings-on.). The first thing was to take a family picture with all the Hetzels. We haven't gotten them back yet, but we had lots of fun with aunts, uncles, cousins, and a nannie and a papa.

The next activity we did was to encourage fine motor development. We got one proof back of the whole Hetzel family, so I printed it, put it on cardboard, punched a few holes, and then tied two strings on it. (If you do this with your kids, I used two shoestrings, but know that string over 12 inches can pose a choking hazard.) Here is CJ working on it with Nannie...

This also presented a great way to talk about family vocabulary. I was concerned that CJ's language, which was just starting to really develop well, would regress when Will was born. So I have tried to be diligent about talking with him and teaching new words.

Another activity I was able to snap pictures of was our sensory tub. If you want to make your own, you can fill it with lots of different things like beans, buttons, shredded paper or even snow (for those of you who are getting a lot of it). Then you add things to it. I added his animals from Noah's ark. I wanted him to learn the word brother, so this week, we pretended the animals were brothers. When they went back to the ark though, they were back to a girl and a boy.

I though this would hold his attention for a few days, but let me tell you, we are still playing beans, or as CJ says "BEA, BEA" at least three times a day. It was the best $15 investment we have made in a toy so far. And another warning here. If you do this with your kiddos, make sure you watch them closely if they are still putting things in their mouths since they could choke. Or if you have a weirdo like my little one, make sure they don't put things in their ears... this has become a new fixation that I'm having to watch.

But here is CJ playing with "bea, bea" for the first time.

Found something...

Matching them up...

Feeling them between his fingers...

And oh what a mess they make!!!

As he played, we added cups and spoons to scoop, pour, and poke with. This was great because these are all words I want him to know for eating! It's amazing how even when you aren't trying to teach a specific concept, when you do things authentically, the learning overlaps so easily.

Some other things we did were:

-CJ has large cubes that a 4x6 picture will slide into each face. I put pictures of our family into them and we talked about who was in each picture.

-I cut out pictures of families from magazines, and let CJ glue them on a large piece of construction paper.

-When a grandparent would leave, we would pretend (are are still pretending) to call them on CJ's play phone.

-We played "Who uses this?" I would show him an object, and he would tell me it was CJ's, mama's, daddy's or Wills. For example, a burp cloth is Wills. The motorcycle is daddy's. Shoes were CJ's, and so on... This was really fun.

I had some other things planned we didn't get to, but I felt like this was a great start! Stay tuned for our Valentine activities!

one month old...

Friday, Will was a month old. Where does the time go? It seems just like yesterday we were leaving the hospital. It goes too quickly. Life has been a little hectic the past month, but not due to Will. He is what baby experts would call an "easy baby." I read about those kinds of babies in books, but I had never seen one in person (my not so subtle way of saying CJ was NOT an easy baby).

Will is a great sleeper unlike his older brother who woke up as many as 11 times a night... no joking. He settled into a great pattern of eating, hanging out with us and then sleeping until his next feeding. It is so nice to have a little predictability to his schedule. And even when he is awake, he is just chill. If he needs his nook, he is perfectly content to let his big brother shove it in his mouth (see pictures below). If he is uncomfortable, he grunts a little. Other than that, he is happy to be held, play on his mat or sit in his bouncy chair and watch what is going on around him.

CJ still loves him. At first, CJ couldn't say Will, so he would call him "baby wee-wee." But over the last month, he can almost say Will and he has stopped referring to him as just "baby." He loves to help burp him, get his nook, get me a burp cloth out of the drawer in our room, and so far he hasn't been jealous. I hope and pray it continues.

We, of course, love him to pieces! I just want to snuggle him all the time. I am bad at sharing him because it feels so right to hold him. :) Will almost always responds to Scott's voice. Scott can say his name and he will look over at him. And a lot of time, he will just stare at Scott. It is precious. He just fits into our little family, and so far transitioning from a family of three to a family of four has been easy.

But, here is what I know you are all here for... pictures from the day he turned one month!

When I saw these Big Brother-Little Brother shirts, I just couldn't pass them up. Both our boys have WAY more clothes than they need, but I thought they were too cute.

When CJ gives Will a kiss, he has to give him two. One on the head and one on the mouth. He will say, "mou, mou," if you forget to turn Will so he can give him a smooch on the lips.

At this point in the photo shoot, CJ got a little slap happy...

and Will got sleepy, so we called it a day.

But when CJ realized Will was getting sleepy and a little fussy, he came to the rescue with the nook... such a sweet big brother.

muffins with mommy...

CJ is like his daddy in so many ways; one of the most recent ways I see a little Scott is CJ's LOVE for bread. Any kind of bread. The other night we were trying to get him to eat bar b que, and he was having none of it... even when it was dipped in ketchup. We were eating bar b que sandwiches, so I tried putting it on bread. He ate three little sandwiches with no complaints asking for mo-mo-mo after each one.

At another meal, we were trying to get him to eat blueberries. It was a total no-go with lots of tears. Mind you, he loved blueberries a few weeks ago, so we weren't trying to torture him. You know how we got him to eat a blueberry? We bribed him with a blueberry muffin. They were homemade, so they actually had lots of real blueberries in them. He ate the entire thing... including all the blueberries. Stinker!

I have been letting CJ "help" me with lots of things like emptying the dishwasher and cooking. He is a pro at putting away the silverware, his dishes and the kitchen gadgets. It's actually pretty helpful. And he has enjoyed helping me cook. Sometimes I give him a bread knife and let him cut bread or cheese while I am chopping things for dinner. But what he really enjoys is making muffins. It combines two of his loves... helping and bread!

Here are some pictures my mom took of us making muffins...

First we read the directions...

After mommy turns on the oven, it is time to dump the mix into a bowl...

Then we add some milk which he gets to dump in... (you can also tell from this picture CJ gets to put the muffin tin liners in the muffin tin. There is no way OCD me would have come up with that arrangement!)

Then we stir, stir stir...

And then it is time for CJ's favorite part - putting the muffin mix into the muffin papers...

And if some drops, it's no problem because we lick our fingers... yummy!

last catch up post...

There has been lots of fun to be had around our house the last few weeks. Since I had another c-section, I can't pick up CJ; so, I have to have someone with me. That has translated into a willing line of grandparents coming to visit. We are so thankful for the time they gave up to do this. They don't seem to think it is such a bad way to spend their vacation days though!

Here are some of the countless fun things:

CJ and Gran had SO much fun making a tent one day. They played and played in there and even had a picnic lunch.

Right after we came home with Will, we had TWO grandmas at our house... talk about spoiling! CJ had fun grilling and giving Gran and Nannie things to eat that he cooked.

CJ loves to play "night-night." One day he and Nannie played "night-night" for a loooong time. Since he is usually way to busy for snuggles these days, it was a great way for Nannie to sneak them in.

And here is a perfect example of why grandparents love to come. Can you think of something better to have sitting in your lap?

When Nannie and Papa both came, CJ got his Christmas presents from them. One of his favorites was the tool box. He and Papa had lots of fun with it. I was really impressed Papa was able teach him to use the screwdriver. I thought he wouldn't have the fine motor skills, but he is a pro at it!

Granddad also got to come for a super-quick visit. He's coming back next week, so he'll get more loving time in too.

And the final fun visit was when ALL the Hetzels came to town! For Bobbie's Christmas present all three boys committed to bringing their whole families to Columbus to take a family picture. It has been 7 years since we were all in the same place to do this, and over 10 since there was a professional picture taken of everyone. Kayley and Lexi came up early with Nannie and Papa and got in some extra loving time with Will and CJ. There are such great helpers too. I love the sweet young ladies they are turning into. (And if you can't tell them apart, the first two pictures are of Kayley and the last one is Lexi.)

Then on Sunday, the rest of Bud's family came. We all had lots of fun playing! Uncle Scott got some good loving in with Jayden...

Bud and Scott had fun playing with CJ's blocks. This of course ended in Bud throwing blocks at the tower Scott kept trying to build. Some things never change.

And then Bud and Scott decided to give Bobbie a heart attack before we could get everyone together for a picture. We have a big hill in our back yard. We had a box that Scott's new table saw came in. And we had two brothers with a crazy streak. All these things added up to CJ and Jayden getting put into the box and being pushed down the hill. All started out well...

but if you look right behind Bud in this picture, you'll notice a dead juniper bush. About a milli-second after I snapped this picture, he hit it and almost fell off a 5 foot drop. Luckily, he recovered, and Bobbie's heart eventually started beating again. :)

Jayden had already been rescued at this point, but he liked it about as much as CJ did. Poor babies... but I think it is only the beginning of the crazy things these guys are going to endure when their daddies get together to play.

Then CJ and Jayden had fun running around the yard. This picture looks like CJ is attacking Jayden, but it is the end of a hug gone bad...

CJ wanted to try again, but Jayden was off to something else...

but then came back for more. SO SWEET! They are going to have so much fun together as they grow up.

Richard and Krista came in Monday afternoon for our photo shoot, but in the chaos of getting everyone fed, getting everyone dressed and naps, I didn't take any pictures! Bad me!!! But stay tuned for pictures from the photo shoot. They should be ready in a few weeks. I can hardly wait.

While we love our little family of four, we love our big family too. We feel so blessed to have so many people who love us and love our kiddos!