Too much to recall!

I don't know when I ever had time to blog before. I feel like life is flying by madly and I am just barely staying on the road! Our daily routine seems to fill each day with no rest time for Mommy...and I only have two kids. I don't know how Tiff and Tracy do it!!!

Fritzy turned 3 on August 11. He had a Thomas the Train themed birthday party at our house. He thouroughly enjoyed being surrounded by Thomas and his friends.

Thomas the Train cake

The big 3-year-old!

Opening presents

The morning of his actual birthday


Still pooped the day after the party!

Nana got to come spend a few weeks with us during July and August. It was so nice to see someone from my family! It is really hard with everyone living so far away. The boys both really enjoyed their Nana being here.

Nana and Fritz

Nana teaching Olly yoga!

Fritz is growing so much. His new favorite thing is the ABC's. He reads everything. He loves to spell out everything he sees (print on t-shirts, signs on the road, labels on food, etc.)

Olly is really starting to make his way around the room! He isn't crawling yet, but he manages to scoot on his bottom, twist on his stomach and roll to get where he wants to go. He are some cute pictures of Fritz and Olly.

So Many Changes

Let us first take a minute to mourn the loss of Fritz's beautiful blond locks...The poor child was sweating profusely every time he stepped outside. It was like he had a helmet on at the playground. So we said adios to the lucious locks and hello to the faux hawk!

Let me say that with the new hair cut also came a new attitude. He loves his new hairdo and it shows in a recent wild streak that has come out of him. He is a little less cuddly and a little more naughty over the past week. He seems to be getting more daring, more hard of hearing and less compliant as he nears his third birthday!

Another new achievement for Mr. Fritzer is that he is potty training!!! He does really well at home and stays dry about 75% of the time while we are out. He did go potty at Wal-Mart for the first time last week (pee and poop), but I still have to constantly take him and ask him if he has to potty. He must be sick of hearing me talk about it.

We were rewarding him with new Thomas the Tank Engine trains for all of his various milestones with pottying, but we quickly realized at $10 per engine we would be going broke before the month was out. Luckily he is pretty content with Skittles and the occasional ice cream cone as a reward. He does come up to us all the time and asks the whereabouts of a train that he knows he doesn't have. When we say that we don't have that train he says, "Oh...he at store!" He thinks he's clever. And he is...I would love to buy him all the trains he wants. Below Fritz displays some of his most prized engines:

Sir Handel

Skarloey

Gordon

Another change...Mark is the proud new owner of a motorcycle!!! He is very thrilled about that. Here are a couple new pictures of Mark, his brother Andy and their cousin Jeff during the inaugural ride for their new motorcyle gang...

Finally, we spent a fun weekend with family at the lake house for the 4th. Lots of tubing, eating and more eating. Here are a few highlights...
Sleeping Jelly!

The Sister in Laws

Doing a little bird watching

Cooling off in the Texas heat

Arlington Trip

We ventured out on the open road with Olly for the first time. He actually did amazing. We drove to our family's lake house near Waco on Friday morning and Olly slept the whole way (4 hours). The lake house was nice, but not as much fun as it is when it is filled with our family! We walked down to the cliffs to look at the beautiful sunset and I had to face one of my ultimate fears. I have horrible visions of Fritz running off the cliff every time we are at the lake house. I held his hand so tight and would not let him leave my side. At one point Mark held him while they walked a little closer to the edge to see the water. I literaly had to turn away. I thought my heart would jump out of my chest. Needless to say we didn't stay down there long. I guess I am a worry wart! We didn't bring Olly's pac n' play because he was going to use Jenni's in Arlington. So Olly slept in a blanket lined dresser drawer that I set on the bed with me (thanks for the tip Aunty Tiffy!) It felt like baby Jesus in a manger!

Saturday morning we drove over to Arlington for Mark's brother's annual crawfish boil. Again, Olly slept the whole way (2 hours). Fritz had so much fun playing with his cousin Brice all weekend. However, he mostly didn't leave Brice's train table for 48 hours. This was no shocker if you know Fritz. It was good to be with John, Jenni and Brice. We wish we lived closer to them!

Here are some pictures from the trip!

Olly and Daddy chillin at the lake!

Brice and Fritz playing on the slip n' slide!

He has got a great pouty lip!

Here is Jelly's first date! This is Tori (9 months). He can't resist a cherry bikini! She spit up on his head during the date. She was embaressed, but he got over it quickly. The jury is still out on whether there will be a second date!

A few more handsome shots of Olly "jelly bean" Houston!

Out Sick!

There is nothing worse than having sick babies! Both my boys were struck with a tummy virus over the weekend. Fritz moped around for two days and then spent all of last night and today throwing up every 15 minutes. He is such a trooper. We set up camp with his matress, blankies, towels and throw up bowl in the living room so I could sleep next to him on the couch. After five loads of throw up laundry, little to no sleep and a gazillion Thomas the Train episodes he is slowing down on the vomiting. Hopefully we are turning a corner.

Jelly bean made it through the weekend with only a loss of appetite and a little diarrhea. Thank god for breastfeeding! I truly feel like I am protecting him. He too seems to be getting a little better.

On a lighter note...Olly rolled over last week!!! What a big boy he is. Last Tuesday we were all playing on the rug in the living room and he flipped himself over onto his stomach. Fritz was over four months when he rolled over so Olly has him beat by a few weeks. He is such a joy lately. I feel like he is either growing out of the reflux or it is well controlled by the Prevacid.

I better get back on duty. There are throw up bowls to clean, five baskets of laundry to put away and two handsome little men to cuddle!

CRAZY TODDLERS!

So Fritz has taken to sleeping anywhere except his bed. He will sleep under his train table, in the tent in his room, in the middle of his floor, on his sit 'n spin, in front of his closet, pretty much wherever. It has added a level of excitement to my day to see where he ends up when he finally falls asleep. He also has become very defient about sleeping. "Me no night night," he says with his arms folded across his chest and his big pouty lip turned out.

Fritz also has two generic responses for everything now. The first is, "No, mom...me too big boy!" Which he uses when he is trying to say the he is actually too small to do something or he just doesn't want to do something. The other is, "No, thank you...No, thank you." Although this seems very sweet and polite, it gets frustrating when you are trying to get him to eat, change his pull up, or brush his teeth.

The love of his life these days are all the Thomas the Train trains. He has Thomas, James, Percy and Ben which he carries EVERYWHERE with him. He makes little voices for them and creates these little plays in his head. It is really funny to watch!

Olly is three months old now. He now has a schedule of about four good days (good meaning better than before) then three bad days. On the bad days he barely sleeps and has to be held and nursed all day long. On the good days he sleeps like a champ during the day and plays on the floor happily. I still can't wait for him to grow out of this reflux. We are hoping he has one of the magic tummies that heals around four months.

Here are some cute pics of the boys!

Happy Olly

Olly seems much happier over the past week. Here is cute little video of some of his first giggles while in his bouncer. Please excuse the bouncing camera and baby talk by me!

Olly update

Well we decided to just leave Olly on Prevacid for his reflux. He seems to be having more good days than bad, so I don't want to risk any funky side effects from any new drugs. He is really starting to wake up to the world and smile a lot. I have kind of gotten a few laughs out of him, but I am still waiting for that first big belly laugh. Fritz's first laugh was right around 2 1/2 months. He had a great laugh from the get go. Here is a clip of one of Fritz's first laughs.