4 years old || 22 Months || 25 weeks

Damon is 4 years old now! Some things that he is into these days are dinosaurs (we watch Land Before Time at least once a day lately), any truck, and loves going to preschool. We had a dinosaur themed birthday party and the kids got to crack open dinosaur eggs. The party kind of died earlier than we planned this time. Previously when we have had parties at this park, the lights automatically turned on when it started getting dark. Well, that wasn't the case this time. Now we apparently have to schedule the lights to be on after dark. So we ended earlier and were forced to have everyone pull out the flashlights on their phones so that we could see the cake. A couple of us went back to our house to open gifts, but it was late enough by the time we gave up and went home that it wasn't a big deal. Aside from that, it was a good turn out and Damon had fun. Damon is an organizer. He also does not like getting dirty. Anything that is messy, he usually is not a fan and will fight it as much as possible. He loves to help his dad do anything and everything. He constantly asks when dad will be home whenever he is working. Damon's patience has shortened recently. Everything "takes a long time." For example, any car ride- before we even leave our neighborhood he says "Mom, it's taking a long time!" He loves to be creative and color or paint. He does very well in preschool and loves going. It was the easiest transition for him. He was not sad at all to leave mom during the day. Damon has gotten pretty good at swimming. Although swimming season is over, I haven't updated on that for awhile. He took swim lessons this past summer from someone in our ward and did really well. He was a little slow at learning at first until we got him goggles and then it was like a night and day difference and he figured it out so quick. He also was taking piano lessons over the summer, but is not currently since his teacher went away to college. We haven't gotten him enrolled in anything else since preschool just to make it easier for him to transition into school, but hopefully we will add some fun stuff in here pretty quick. We have been talking about T-Ball and then also finding another piano teacher. When he was taking piano, he was just learning basics like rhythm and things like that since he is so young. We will see if he likes it enough to find another teacher and keep up with it.

Jade is 22 months now. Almost 2! She gets mistaken for a 3 year old all the time because she is so tall. She prettymuch knows her ABC's and #1-10 now. Some food that she is currently obsessed with is gogurt, applesauce, plain slices of bread (but only takes like 2 bites out of it and then leaves it to go stale), and chips/salsa. She is our less picky child but she has started forming opinions about random things lately and will turn things down sometimes. She also loves oranges, strawberries, and prettymuch any fruit. She loves putting on her own shoes and gets frustrated when she can't get it right on her own. She now thinks she's big enough to go down the stairs by herself and won't accept any help. She's like that about random things now. She thinks she's big and can do everything on her own. She loves to try buckle things and is very particular about that being done. She's starting this (hopefully) phase where she throws scream fits when she doesn't get what she wants which is real fun. We are currently trying to take away naps, but not fully. She does nap sometimes, but I don't push it unless she's sick or someone she's been exposed to has been sick. We aren't really potty training anymore. She will tell us occasionally when she needs to go potty and about 50% of the time she is right. Other times she has already done it in her diaper. So we keep her in pull-ups for ease of helping her go potty when she does say it. We don't want to push her to potty train too early like we did with Damon and have it be so stressful and long.

I am currently 25 weeks pregnant with baby boy! I'm feeling pretty good. I have had some occasional contractions already and plenty of random heartburn/acid reflux. I can't seem to pinpoint what's causing that. Adam has felt movement once so far. Damon has said he has felt it, but nothing huge. And Jade has not felt him yet. I have not had my (regular) glucose test yet, but I will have that next week. Otherwise we don't have much to report on the pregnancy! Baby moves lots and we seem to be healthy so far!