28 months

Ezra is 2 years, 4 months old. His little personality just continues to develop. He says and does lots of funny, quirky things. One not so funny thing he's doing these days is this "growl voice." He does it a lot when he is not getting what he wants. For example, here is a daily dialogue in our house: "Want chocolate milk." "No Ezra, you can have regular milk right now." (Growly voice): "NO! Want chocolate milk!" And so on. Chad and I don't think it's cute or funny and there's not a whole lot we can do about it, except just not give in to him and not make a big deal out of it (because he knows it bothers us.) Today I mentioned it to his superkids teacher and she said she had not heard it. She also said that he does really well at school and that there are a few "vocal" kids in his class and he is not one of him. At school, apparently he is quiet, cooperative, and gets along well with others. I think this may be because he is one of the youngest in the class.

Ezra continues to talk more and more in complete sentences, and he is figuring out how to use "I need" and "I want," mostly not in context, so he'll say "I need a treat" or "I need to watch Little Einsteins." If he's not sure which to use, he'll say "I need want a treat." My favorite lately is when he is sitting in his high chair and something comes on TV that has music. Every once in a while he'll say "I need to dance," meaning he wants me to get him down from his high chair so he can bust a move. It is adorable, and I'm sure every father's dream to hear his son say he needs to dance. Haha!

One of the biggest milestones this month was moving Ezra to his new room and his big bed. He is in a double bed that is just a mattress on box springs right now. We bought some dinosaur sheets and a dinosaur pillow because he really likes dinosaurs right now. He knows t-rex, triceratops, and stegosaurus by name. The transition went very well and Ezra has had almost no problems going to sleep by himself in his bed. I think he thinks he's pretty cool and big. His naps have been shorter the past couple days but I think that is because his new room is brighter because it has more windows. So today we put up some blackout curtains so hopefully that will help. He wants us to lay in bed with him until he falls asleep, and tonight he said to me, "No, stay here." I am adamant not to start that habit, but I must admit it is very tempting to fall asleep every time I lay down to read him stories. I'm so tired these days.

Ezra's favorite word is "no." Normal, I know. He still wants to "do it self" when we get in the car and it's time to buckle his carseat. He says no even when the answer is obviously yes, just to say no. Speaking of, he still does not answer "yes." If his answer is yes to a question, he'll kind of just repeat the question. For example, if you were to ask Ezra if he likes dinosaurs, he would say "like dinosaurs." We're trying to get him to start saying "yes I do" instead of just repeating. He still has opinions about the clothes he wears, so I have started giving him two choices of shirts and two choices of pants every day, both equally fine with me. This has really helped with the clothing battle and makes our mornings so much easier.

I am all up to date on posting recent pictures, but I have some videos I need to upload, so watch for those in the next few days. Also, we are hoping that our home remodel is finished by the end of the week. I can't wait to post all the before and after pictures!

No more crib

Ezra is officially out of the crib! We decided to make the switch last night after we returned from Tyler. Before we left, I spent all last week converting our guest room to Ezra's room and moved all of Ivy's stuff into the nursery. We are using the same crib for her so it had to be done soon so Ivy would have a place to sleep. So now the nursery has Ivy's clothes in the closet and we have talked a lot about how it is Baby Ivy's room and we made a big deal out of Ezra's cool new room. Last night a few kinks happened that could have made it go not very well. Ezra has been sick so he coughed all night, and even before he went to bed he coughed so hard that he threw up. Then, his special blanket that he sleeps with got throw up on it so he had to go to sleep without that. Then, right as we got in his bed to read, sing songs and say a prayer, his night light went out. Anyway, we improvised, and Chad laid down with Ezra until he fell asleep. He slept all night, didn't fall out of his bed, and we had to wake him up at about 7:15 this morning to go to church. This afternoon he did great for his nap. We read a couple books and I left him to go to sleep on his own. He cried some but was really good at staying in his bed and it took him about 5 minutes to lay his head down and fall asleep. Another milestone in the books.

Road trip the second

The Montandons are kind of tired of being in the car. Over the last month, we have taken two road trips that added up to about 40 hours total in the car. Ezra has been great on the trips despite the sickness factor on the trip to and from Tyler. This is how we kept ourselves occupied during the last couple hours of our trip yesterday...

Ezra playing "peek a boo" behind his blanket

 At one point Ezra just had to get out of the car he was so tired of being strapped in. I don't blame the kid...but it was freezing yesterday and the wind was blowing really hard. So it didn't last very long. Chad was a good sport as usual and got out and ran around with Ezra while I stayed in the car and took pictures. Hey, someone has to document these memories.

Now, we are officially staying put until after Ivy is born! We had a great time seeing family but boy is it nice to know we won't be going anywhere for a while.

Thanksgiving in Tyler

We headed to Tyler on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with Chad's family. Ezra had a little cough when we left that morning and by that evening he had a low-grade fever and was coughing pretty bad. He was in good company though--at least 2 or 3 of his cousins seemed to have the same thing. I felt sorry for him because you could tell he wanted to have fun with his cousins and grandparents but just didn't feel good. Here are a few pictures I took while we were there. 

Chad, Gramme, Ezra

I feel like this is the only kind of picture I get of Ezra these days.

All the cousins--Elle, Riley, Ava, Josey, Ezra, Lucy, Norah, Levi, and June (there will be 10 cousins on this side when Ivy arrives)

June & Emily

Lucy decided to give June a makeover and June was so cute just sitting there closing her eyes while Lucy put eyeshadow on.

Lucy

Myers family

Ava

Levi

Uncle Chad is fun.

Our little family

Norah

Tonight we moved Ezra to his new room with his big bed. I was hesitant to do it after we came home, he was still coughing pretty bad, he threw up when I was brushing his teeth from coughing so hard, his special blanket that he sleeps with had vomit all over it and I had to wash it (so he didn't have it for bedtime), then his nightlight bulb went out and he didn't have that, so basically all the "comforts" that would have helped his transition were not available. We did our usual evening routine and Chad laid down with him until he went to sleep, so hopefully he will do well tonight and he won't visit our room in the middle of the night. If not, we'll try again tomorrow.

Deck the halls

This afternoon I finally decided I had enough energy to decorate the house for Christmas. We've had this 4.5 foot tree since we first got married and I thought Ezra would have fun decorating "his" tree this year. Dumb me bought white-wire Christmas lights, and Dumber me thought that once I got them on the tree and plugged it in, you wouldn't be able to tell that much. It was pretty trashy looking, so once Ezra went down for his nap I re-did the lights with some green wired ones. Also, while decorating this tiny tree, I decided that it will be our only tree this year. I love our 7 foot tree, but the idea of having to take it down when I am 3ish weeks away from giving birth was not one that appealed to me. 

Ezra had a blast decorating. I showed him how to hang each of the ornaments, carefully separating the breakable ones from the non-breakable ones that he would put on the tree. He would run over to me and say "Nother one," get another ornament, and point to a branch and say "Goes right here." Incidentally, all the ornaments went on just two branches. I re-did that after he went to sleep too.

I may or may not have instructed Ezra to "sniff the light" to get this picture.

He loves letters these days and had fun pointing out the letters on the blocks. He also enjoyed the santa hat.

Deer in the Christmas lights. He is incredibly hard to photograph these days. Why won't you just SMILE NORMAL, child?

Love this one. He really did love the lights and ornaments.

"Goes right here."

Ezra's creation at the end. When all the ornaments were gone, Ezra said sadly, "I need more or-ments."

Close-up of the two branches with multiple ornaments

Videos

Ezra singing "Jesus Loves me" Ezra singing "you are my sunshine" Ezra telling me that he made a turkey, and then telling me the sound a turkey makes (I love the part where he runs into the wall when he's running away from me)

Monthly Menu

Chicken enchilada soup
Breakfast casserole & smoothies
Lasagna
Taquitos
Chicken huts
Potato bacon torte
Crispy southwest chicken wraps
Coconut chicken
Chicken cordon bleu
Salsa chicken with rice
Cheesy enchilada casserole
Braided sandwich loaf

Recipes I'm taking to potlucks/parties etc.
Pepperjack Grits
Pumpkin cupcakes with Salted caramel buttercream

Road trip with a two year old

If you've been reading this blog for a while now or if you know me in person, you know that Ezra has never been a fan of the car. This past weekend we spent 24 hours total driving to and from Arkansas. Needless to say, I was nervous. To add to my stress, the first part of the trip included Chad just getting off a 12-hour shift at work which meant he needed to sleep for a few hours, I needed to drive, and Ezra needed to be quiet and stay entertained with no one to really entertain him. So this trip required some planning. Thanks to other people's great ideas, it was the most pleasant car trip we have ever been on. 

So if you are planning a road trip with little ones any time soon, might I suggest the following. These are the things that kept Ezra entertained. 

1. Rectangular, magnetic cake pan with sides...a couple people gave me this idea and it was genius. It kept Ezra's toys contained on his lap and also allowed him to play with the magnets I brought.

2. Magnetic numbers and letters

3. Cars and small dinosaurs (Ezra played the longest with these, and the cake pan acted as a holder for everything)

4. iphone with games -- Ezra's favorites are Tozzle and Talking Hippo. I also take quite a bit of video of him on the iphone ahead of time and leave it on there so he can watch videos of himself. 

5. Post-it notes and tape

6. Notebook with stickers and crayons (important that the stickers are the kind Ezra can take off the page by himself)

7. Noisy stuff--flarp, noisemakers for birthday parties, etc.

8. Stuff that lights up for after it gets dark. I got ezra one of these little wand/globe things that you press a button and it lights up and spins around. Also glow sticks

9. Laptop with lots of Little Einsteins episodes downloaded to itunes. I probably had 6 hours worth of Little Einsteins, plus Lion King, and we brought other DVDs too. This is probably most of what made both trips so pleasant. We just put the laptop in the console between the front seats of the car and plug the charger in to an adaptor we have that plugs into the car. Great for keeping the computer (and phones) charged.

10. Lots of special snacks. I brought stuff that Ezra doesn't get very often and would use it as rewards.

I brought the toys out one thing at a time to keep everything new and interesting. It worked! Hopefully we will have good luck on our next trip as well...since it's only about half as long.

I don't know how well you can see this picture, but Ezra is playing with that spinny light-up globe thing I was talking about. $5 at wal-mart.

Terrible picture, but this is Ezra still happy as a clam when we had about 1 hour left in our trip (so we had been driving 11). We don't do much capri sun at home, so he enjoyed having the special drink.

This is on the way home...one of the less happy moments in the trip. Ezra HATES the sun being in his eyes when we're in the car. He is also not a fan of hats or sunglasses, so solutions aren't easy to come by for Mr. Particular. Well, this is getting close to sunset, and we are heading due west, so the sun was really bright in Ezra's eyes. I taught Ezra how to hold the blanket over his head to shade out the sun. It worked pretty well, but he was also watching a movie, so he had to figure out how to block out the sun AND be able to see the computer. A good lesson in problem-solving. :)

Weekend in Searcy -- 30 years old!

This past weekend we went to Searcy to spend a few days with Emily, Joey and kids. They were very gracious and let us stay in the big girls' room. That made 10 of us in their apartment, and it was great! Another bonus was that we got to see a lot of our CBH current and former staff and campers. Another bonus was that it was my 30th birthday on Saturday. I decided a couple months ago that I wanted to take a photography/photoshop class, and Taylor Jackson of Barefeet Photography was putting one on in Searcy that day. It was great and I learned a lot. I also got a new lens for my birthday, so I have had to fight the urge to just take pictures and play around in photoshop all day, since there are suitcases to unpack and laundry to be done. :) 

Anyway, I am going to start trying to be better about editing my pictures before I post them on the blog. I have started working on getting all the entries published in a book and I'd like for the pictures to be a little better quality. It will be a lot of experimenting so bear with me. 

Ezra loved playing in the leaves on Harding campus, and this is what we like to call the bulldozer pose.

 My sweet twin nieces June and Norah. They just turned ONE on November 1!

This is just a picture from this afternoon that captures our son. He is a fan of cars these days. Anything with wheels, really. He is constantly saying "I see cars." Also, just because I want to remember, he woke up from his nap today and the first words he said when I got him were "I'm Super Ezra." He got that from his buddy Trevyn. It was pretty cute, and then he pointed at me and said "Super Mama." And that just melted my heart. 

 This is for all my friends who graduated from Harding. It really is a beautiful campus. I told Chad that if our children decide not to go to A&M, even though I would be heartbroken, I would be okay with them going to harding. As long as they spent a semester in Greece or Italy and I could go visit them.

 Josey guiding Ezra across Harding's campus. All of Joey and Emily's girls were so great with Ezra. He had a blast. He would wake up from naps and say "ready to go play."

Sweet June. Apparently this is her newest face. June liked to be held and snuggled, and since she wasn't picky, I got to hold and snuggle her a lot. We're buds.

And her elder sister, Norah. :) Norah likes beans...and I'm sure some day she will love this picture.

Chad and Lucy. Somehow I didn't get a picture of Riley the whole weekend. Sorry Riley, I'll get one at Thanksgiving.