Fun in the sun

Jackson went swimming yesterday in our backyard. I had my lap top outside and was checking e-mail. When I looked up he had decided it was a good idea to put his "happy day ride" into the pool (this is what he calls his new 3-wheeler. He got the name from his cousin, Boston, who has the same one and calls his this too.)

Hanging out at the Cabin

Melinda and the kids spent a few days last week in Island park at her sister and brother-in-law's cabin. Jackson went on a 4-wheeler ride with Uncle Andy. I was surprised he went because he has been scared of the noise in the past, but he loved it! Here are a few pictures of him with his cousins on the 4-wheelers (they were only just posing for pictures, the little kids didn't go riding by themselves).

Jackson with cousins, Silvia and Jeb. (also - here is a good picture of our new car in the background)

Vroom, Vroom! Here I come!

Another Pic with Jackson and Jeb.

Also, I decided I better get a video of Abigail doing her "army crawl" before she figures out there are better ways to get around than that.

New member of the family

We got a new car a couple of weeks ago, complements, in part, to the government Cask for Clunkers program. It is a 2009 Honda Odyssey in slate (you can see part of it in the last picture). It is the first new car either Aaron or I have owned. I haven't quite adjusted to the van/ soccer mom mentality yet but I am getting there. It is defiantly nice to have all the extra room and it so much easier to get the kids in and out of the car. Plus, Jackson actually has some leg room in this car.

To try out the new car, we went for a drive up to Mesa Falls the Sunday after we got it. Here are a few picture at the falls.

Jackson posing for a picture with the falls behind him.

The whole Family with the lower falls behind us - someone offered to take a picture for us.

Melinda and the kids with the upper falls behind us.

Jackson looking at the upper falls.

Abigail having a drink of juice back at the car.

Jackson's 3rd Birthday

Jackson had his 3rd birthday on August 8th. Here are the things we did to celebrate his birthday: We went to the Idaho Falls zoo 2 days before his birthday. I had been telling him we would go for a little while since he liked the San Diego one so much. My parents came along with me and the kids. Jackson surprised me by getting out of the stroller at one of the first animals we saw and then walking for pretty much the rest of our several hour stay at the zoo. Unfortunately, one of his sandals gave him a blister towards the end of the trip. He really enjoyed seeing all the animals and especially liked following the free-roaming peacock around when we sat down for lunch. I forgot to take my camera and have not yet got the pictures that my mom took with hers, so no pictures to post of this outing.

On the day of his birthday, we had a BBQ and birthday party for all of our family members that were around and could come. Jackson knew just what to do with his presents this time around and he made quite the haul. I tried my luck at making a dragon cake, since he is really into dinosaurs and dragons right now. I was worried that it might not be very good, but I surprised myself with a quite a good looking dragon both inside and out! Jackson loved it - which made all the time spent on it worth it.

The dragon cake I made for Jackson's birthday

Aaron posing by the cake

Jackson blowing out his candles

Jackson with all his presents

Here are a few Things about Jackson at age 3:

1. He loves Dinosaurs - as mentioned above. He usually has to sleep with one of his plastic replicas each night. I have been telling him all the names of the different dinos and he is actually really good at pronouncing their names. For example, he can pronounce every syllable correctly of "Acrocanthosaurus" - which happens to be his favorite one.
2. He loves to read.
3. Things he has done for the first time this summer are: ride a jet ski, ride a 4-wheeler, go camping, and start pushing the peddles on this trike.
4. A few of his favorites:

• books - The Berenstain Bears and the Bad dream, Lama Lama Mad at Mama
  
• meals - couscous, rice, peanut butter sandwiches
• movies - Wall-E, Cars
• TV show - Elmo (Sesame) Street
• songs - Popcorn popping on the Apricot Tree, Incy Wincy Spider
• fruit - pears
• veggie - beans and broccoli
• treat - fruit snacks, granola bar
• toy - plastic dinosaur - Acrocanthosaurs

Here are Jackson's stats from his 3 year check-up:

• Weight - 36.6 lbs (90th percentile)
• Height - 40 in (95th percentile)
  

(yes - he is a big boy, I frequently get asked if he is about a year older than he is. Hard to believe he started out life as a preemie!)

Jackson is such a great kid to have around these days. He usually has something to say or to do that brings a smile or laugh to his parents. We are so glad he came into our lives 3 years ago!

Bath time

Both of my children LOVE their bath time - as I think most children their ages do.  Anyway - I had Aaron snap a few pictures of them in the tub together.  It is hard for me to get any most of the time because I am typically the one bathing them.

Abigail's 1st Birthday

Abigail had her first birthday on July 15th. Hard to believe my little girl is already 1 year old and won't be a baby for that much longer. Although, she just barely started doing the "army crawl" in the week after her birthday and she is on the small side, so she still seem like a baby to me. At her 12 month doctor's visit a little over a week after her birthday her stats were:

• weight: 17 lbs, 3 oz (5th percentile)
• height: 29 in (50th percentile)
  

I was surprised that she had gained less that a pound since her 9 month visit.

Abigail's 12 - month picture

A few things about Abigail at year old:

1. Her favorite thing: mom (the person and the food source - she is proving a little more difficult to ween than her brother)
2. She loves to eat! Even though she is tiny, the girl can eat. She especial like sweets (like ice cream) and demands that she gets some whenever we are having some.
3. Favorite toy - stacking cups and stacking balls.
4. She has the cutest little girly laugh and her daddy and brother can get her laughing the hardest.
5. She a very good little sleeper and has been sleeping through the night since about 4 months.
6. More often than not, she dislikes being put into her car seat and arches her back and screams until finally giving in.
7. She has never taken a pacifier. Instead she prefers to suck on her own tongue ( hey - works for mom and dad, at least she can't loose her tongue in the middle of the night).
8. At the time of her birthday, she had cut 5 teeth and loves to have them brushed.
9. She really likes to stand and frequently will refuse to sit when I need to leave her. So if I can't get her interested in something enough that she will sit, then I have to just lay her on her back, which she doesn't like.

On the day of her Birthday, we spent part of the day at the the Idaho Falls Aquatic center's outside wadding pool with Grandma Bendixsen. Abigail had fun there and ended up taking a nap in Grammy's arms, while her big brother played a while longer.

Abigail swimming in the wadding pool at grandma's feet.

I invited our family that was around and could come to a birthday party that evening. Of course, a 1-year-old doesn't get into present opening all that much, but she did enjoy her birthday cake very much. I made 2 identical "present" cakes, one for guests and a smaller version for Abigail to dig into herself. She ended up being very dainty with her cake. She just picked at the frosting with her index finger, until her uncle Nick and myself helped her brake into the cake part. Then she continued to mostly pick at small cake pieces with her thumb and index fingers. In the end, she did end up being pretty messy but it took her a while to get there and she didn't smear it all over in her hair like some 1-year-olds do.

The 2 "present " cakes.

Abigail trying to grab the candle.

Abigail at the end of eating her cake (she didn't eat all the red fruit-by-the-foot ribbons, some cousins gladly helped)

I took this picture a few days after her birthday when I had her birthday present from mom and dad assembled. She looked very pleased with herself to be sitting on her new horsey.

pictures with daddy

OK - so I have been slacking and have a lot of catching up to do on my blog. Here is the first of hopefully several posts. These pictures are from early to mid July.

Here is a picture of Abigail grinning on daddy's shoulders

We were hanging out with Aaron's brother, Nick, and his wife, Whitney, in her parent's back yard. Jackson got brave enough to take a ride on the jet ski with uncle Nick. He really liked it and talked about it for quite a while afterwords.

Jackson LOVES to read. In fact, he will go up to Aaron in the evenings after dinner and tell him, "daddy put your phone away and read to me." He won't stop until Aaron does read to him. He has even taken to bring books out to home and visiting teachers to have them read to him.

This night, Abigail was getting a kick out of putting a ball in and out of daddy's mouth. She has such a cute little girly laugh. It is so different from what Jackson's was at her age.

Sleeping Beauty

I went to take a shower a couple days ago about 9:30-10 am (unfortunately, this is the time of day or later that I usually get to taking my care of myself).  I left Jackson watching a PBS show and Abigail was playing with some toys on the floor.  When I got out,  I thought it sounded kind of quite, all I could hear was the TV.  When I went to check on kids, this is what I found.

Here is another cute picture of my little sleeping beauty just waking up that was taken about a month ago.

4th of July

We spent the 4th in Blackfoot at my parent's and sister's homes.  It was a nice relaxing day for us.  Jackson was excited for the fireworks because he had seen a few being set off around our neighborhood the previous evening.  We had a BBQ at my parents and then the kids went swimming with their cousins at my sister's house before there was a brief rain shower.  Then we helped churn homemade ice cream and enjoyed eating it.  We had thought about going back to Idaho Falls for the big fireworks show, but ended up staying  around my parent's for a home fireworks show. 

Jackson and cousin, Jeb

Abigail with cousin, Tayloranne

My sister put some warm water in the baby pool for Abigail and pretty soon all the kids were hanging out in that one because it was starting to cool off and get ready to storm.  As you can see it was sitting room only!

I had a kind of scary episode with Abigail during the swimming.  She is very much a mommy's girl right now and tends to get even more clingy to my when we are around more people. Anyway, I gave her to my  mom while I helped get Jackson dried off.  She started crying as I expected, and then holding her breath.  She had done this a little before, but always started breathing again before too long.  This time she really started turning blue.  She was blue around the eyes and blue from her nose to her chin.  I took her back from my mom and I think she passed out briefly because she went a little limp although she never really went completely unconscious.  She just laid in my arms for a while and then seemed to me fine.  Kind of a scary thing for a mom though.  Hope she doesn't make a habit of doing this. 

Here is a picture of Abigail I took at the beginning of that day in her 4th of July outfit.  

Summer Fun

So summer has been a long time in coming to Southeast Idaho.  After raining much of June we are glad for some warm summer temps so we can enjoy being outside.  Jackson loves going to the park these days and I love that he has become independent enough to climb up most things on his own and go down the slides.  It makes things a lot easier since I am usually carrying Abigail on my front or back.  Here are a few pictures:

Both the kids love swimming!  This is no surprise for Jackson as he is almost 3, but I wasn't sure how Abigail would take to the water being not quite 1 year old.  Well, the verdict is in and she LOVES it!  We went to a small wadding pool and spray park at the Idaho Falls aquatic center a while ago (unfortunately - I forgot the camera) and Abigail just splashed and splashed.  She didn't even mind getting sprayed in the face.  She like to touch the water streams spaying out and getting sprayed all over in the face.  Too bad I didn't get a picture of this, but here's one of the kids in a small pool at grammy's house.  Abigail's splashing in this one too.

Couldn't resist adding this picture in.  I thought it was just too precious of my little cutie in lounging in the grass.

Potty training

For the past month Jackson has been wearing big boy underwear and we have been attempting potty training.  I had tried a time or 2 prior to this but he just wasn't ready (mom has been more than ready for a while, of course, having 2 in diapers is no fun!).  We have tried many different tactics and I am proud to say that he stays dry most days.  He isn't to the post of telling me when he has to pee but if I take him regularly he will stay dry.  The #2's are a whole different story!  He refuses to poop in the potty.  I have tried a penny jar, candy for pooping, taking away favorite toys and cold showers (one I'm not very proud of, but I was a desperate mom who was willing to try almost anything to get her kid to poop in the potty!)  We are now down to trying 1 m&m for pee and 2 m&m's for poop.  At this point I am just trying to get him to go to the bathroom to poop, even if he doesn't do it on the potty.  Ahhh well, this time shall pass too right.  In the mean time . . . any suggestions I haven't tried?

My IRONMAN

We spent the past weekend in Boise, Id for the half triathlon Ironman race.  Aaron and 2 of his brothers, Nick and Bob, were in it.  For those of you who don't know, a half triathlon consists of a 1.2 mile swim in a lake (first), then a 56 mile bike ride (second), and last a 13.1 mile run.  Unfortunately, it rained for much of the race but at least it wasn't too hot or cold even with the rain.  All three brothers finished - which was quite an accomplishment in itself.  GO Balsmeier Boys!  I was really proud of Aaron.  I was only able to go to the finish because of the yucky weather and the 2 kids, we spent most of the rest of the trip in a hotel room.  Aaron was pretty beat afterwords, as you can imagine, but by the next morning he was already thinking of doing it again next year.  Go figure!  What is it about men and liking to get the crap kicked out of them.  Anyway here are a couple of pictures.

Here is a cute picture I got of the kiddos in the tub together at the hotel.

Abigail was 11 months old on Monday (6/15/09).  I usually take a picture of her every month to compare how much she is changing so here is her 11 month pic.

vacation

We recently went on a vacation to San Diego. Originally, I was suppose to be going to a PA convention but I ended up not going because Abigail is such a momma's girl right now that I don't think she would have done very well without me.  Also, she won't take a bottle anymore. So we decided to go just for fun since it had been a few years since we have been on a real vacation. We were able to stay with Aaron's sister-in-law and kids.

Here is a picture of Abigail with her 2 cousins, Nick and Gracie.  They really liked playing with her while we were there.

We went to the zoo and the wild animal park which had a new dinosaur mountain exhibit.  Jackson is really into dinosaurs so we thought he would really like this but he was actually a little scare of seeing really big dinosaurs that moved and made noise.  He really like seeing all the animals at the zoo and kept asking if he could ride the real ones like he was able to ride the statues.

Someone was nice enough to take a family picture ( Abigail was sleeping in the stroller).

Jackson and Aaron with T-rex!

We also went to Sea World.  Jackson liked the sharks and Shamu.  When we first showed him Shamu he kept calling it "Shampoo."  We told him the whale's name was Sham-oo and so then he said "Shampoomoo."  By the end of the show he was saying "Shamoo."

We went to the beach on Memorial Day.  Abigail liked feeling the sand.  She actually didn't mind the ocean ( I put her legs in) either until she got tired.

Jackson loved the beach!  Here are a few pics.

We had a lot of fun and it was a nice break from reality - which is actually the whole point of a vacation anyway.