06/27/2011

Yep, Daddy taught them how to play Angry Birds. That doesn't make Mommy very happy, especially now that they just want to play Angry Birds before bedtime instead of reading stories.

06/26/2011

It was a nice, relaxing weekend at the Briggs house. I really enjoyed all the time spent with Tysen on the floor. I am amazed that he is crawling. He's already getting into everything. I left him in the middle on the floor surrounded with lots of toys. The next time I checked on him, he was over in the corner chewing on a shoe!

We had a wonderful evening at a Clippers baseball game tonight. We went with our friends Kara, Travis, and Emme. The kids had a great time, but I don't think they watched much of the game. They just wanted all the food. Can't blame them there! Luckily we had packed some healthy snacks, but they still had some popcorn.

Gavin, Matt, Tysen, and Travis

The girls are eating strawberries.

There is a fountain area inside the baseball park and we let the kids play during the last inning. They had a blast.

We put clean dry clothes on the kids and they are saying "Goodbye" to the fans exiting the ball park while we got ready to leave.

Quick family photo before the kids got too fussy (we were all hungry)

We had a great supper at the Mongolian BBQ restaurant after the baseball game. Alexa surprised us by eating with chop sticks. By the end of the evening, she had mastered the skill and was eating edamame with chop sticks! I was impressed!

Yes, she is a very messy eater. We need to work on that!

06/25/2011 Day at the Pool

We took a wagon and stroller ride to the pool this afternoon. It was such a beautiful day to relax in the water. Daddy is so silly! Alexa was not happy that he took her floatie, though!

Tysen smiled every time that I dipped his little toes in the water. He loved watching big sister and brother play.

This is how Alexa "swims." She's so proud of herself when she jumps up out of the water. At least she's not afraid to get her head wet! That's usually one of the hardest obstacles when teaching kids how to swim.

Time to head home

06/24/2011

Can you see Tysen's two teeth on the bottom?

Alexa loves snuggling with her baby brother.

She's so sweet to him!

Alexa had her first slumber party on Friday night! It was her friend Emme's 3rd birthday. Alexa was so excited to pack her suitcase. She stuffed her sleeping bag in there, too.

She's anxiously waiting for her ride to get here. She also couldn't wait to give Emme her birthday present. We got her lots of Dora things.

Gavin got to play with the girls while we were installing Alexa's car seat into their car. Once the girls were buckled up, Gavin tried to climb in the car, too. He was pretty sad that he didn't get to go. We waved goodbye to Alexa and then the boys and I had a great evening. We went on a long nature walk and fed the ducks and geese.

(Emme's mommy promised to take lots of pictures of the girls at the slumber party. I can't wait to see them and I'll be sure to post some when I get them.)

This is Tysen's first experience with Cheerios and Puffs. He loved grabbing them and flinging them on the floor, but he didn't eat much. I stuck a few in him mouth. He got them all slobbery and then pushed them out of his mouth. We'll keep working on it!

I took this video on Friday night while Alexa was at the birthday party. Gavin loves to help with Tysen. He does a great job holding the bottle, but Tysen was fussy this evening and kept trying to suck his thumb. Gavin was getting really frustrated with him because he couldn't get the bottle in! Too cute!

06/19/2011 New Family Portraits

These are our first family portraits since we became a family of five. Pictures with 3 kids ages 3 and under are not fun. We didn't get everything we wanted, but we did get some good ones. Enjoy!

Since it was Father's Day, we had some taken of the kids with their daddy. I love the picture above because it looks like Tysen is already beating up his big brother.

06/19/2011 Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day! I treated Matthew to breakfast in bed to celebrate this special day.

Later in the day we had another one of Matthew's favorites (angel food cake with strawberries), but I got creative and put it on a stick. The kids loved this, but we had to be careful with the sharp skewers.

The kids made Daddy some presents at daycare. The orange star is from Gavin.

Alexa was very proud of the frisbee that she painted for Daddy. She was sure to explain that it is not a plate!

Gavin is playing with the ribbon that Alexa's gift was decorated with. He's so silly!

There's a little story behind the other Father's Day gifts that the kids gave Daddy. A few months ago, I bought a cute football lunch box that I intended to use for sending snacks to daycare for the kids. When Matthew saw it, he loved it and asked if he could use it for taking his lunch to work. I told him that I didn't care and so he started using the football and I used his old lunch box for the kids. Well, Matthew came home from work and told me how much everyone loved his football lunch box. I guess he got lots of compliments on it, which surprised me because it's just a child's lunch box. Since Matthew works at Sports Medicine, he mentioned that it would be great if he had a different lunch box for each sports season. Well, I got online and found some more. It feels a little strange to tell people that I bought my husband 3 lunch boxes for Father's Day, but he loved them. I'm sure that over the years we will get lots of use out of them. The kids can take turns picking out which one they want to use.

6/16/2011 Update on the boys

This has been a busy week. On Monday, both Gavin and Tysen had appointments with our ENT. Tysen's appointment was to recheck his hearing and based on the results, determine whether or not to get tubes. Gavin's appointment was in reference to the discovery our dentist made during his last cleaning that his tongue appeared restricted. Since he's been having speech difficulties, we wanted to follow-up on that to see if he needs surgery to fix that problem. After examining both boys, I was surprised that the doctor decided that he wants to do surgeries on both of them- on the same day. Tysen's hearing test was a complete failure in both ears...again. It still appears that he has fluid behind the ear drums, although it is difficult to tell on an infant if they do not have an infection because it's not bulging. Dr. G is recommending that we have the tubes inserted in both of his ears and then while he's still under anesthesia, he wants him to have an ABR (auditory brain stem response) test that will help give us more answers to the type of hearing loss that Tysen has. Hopefully once they get the tubes in and the fluid out, his eardrum will be able to function properly and he'll be able to hear for the first time in his 6 month life. If he still doesn't pass the ABR, we'll at least know how to better treat his hearing problem. Dr. G also wants to reinsert Gavin's ear tubes. Gavin had his first ear tube surgery when he was 13 months old. They typically last on average 6 months because as the child grows, they fall out. One of Gavin's had fallen out and was still sitting inside his ear canal. The other one appeared to be in place, however Dr. G said that Gavin still has fluid behind his ear drums so the tubes are not functioning properly. He noticed that Gavin's adenoids were enlarged, so he wants to surgically remove them as he believes that they are blocking his Eustachian tubes and preventing the fluid from draining. We had a difficult time getting Gavin to cooperate with us when it came time for him to stick his tongue out so that Dr. G could examine it. He wasn't able to get a great look, but he feels that it is just a mild case of ankyloglossia (tongue-tied). He doesn't think that it's severe enough to be the cause of his speech problems, but he's going to clip it a little bit during surgery to see if it helps. Then Dr. G is also ordering an ABR for Gavin, just to be certain that his hearing is normal. Dr. G wants to do the surgeries at Children's Hospital because Tysen is still so young and his risks with anesthesia are higher. I just got the phone call today and the surgeries have been scheduled for Friday, July 29th. Matt and I will both take the day off work so we can give each child one-on-one attention (Alexa will go to preschool like usual). Then both boys will have the weekend to recover before we have to take them to daycare on Monday. Dr. G assured me that by Saturday they'll be feeling normal again.

On Tuesday, both boys had back-to-back appointments again. Gavin had his speech therapy, which went well. I talked to his therapist and we decided that we are going to take a break from therapy until after his surgeries. We are only allowed a certain amount of therapy sessions from our health insurance and I don't want to use them all up if he's going to need therapy after his surgery. Then we had to go to see our pediatrician for Tysen's 6 month wellness check-up. He's doing fantastic. He now has two teeth on the bottom. He's nearly crawling already and able to sit by himself with the help of his arm (called tripod sitting). His growth has slowed down a little bit but our pediatrician assured me that is so very common with breast-fed infants. Here are Tysen's 6 month stats:

Weight: 16 lbs 6 oz (50%)

Height: 27.5 in (90%)

06/09/2011 Alexa

Alexa is obsessed with rainbows right now. She wanted to wear a rainbow outfit today. I managed to find this colorful skirt and I convinced her that it was a rainbow skirt. She is one happy little girl now! I love how easy it is to make her happy!

For supper she wanted "Rainbow Elephant Soup." I told her that didn't sound very tasty. She said, "But Mommy, you just need to try it!"

She's also been bugging me to take her to the rainbow playground and to the zoo to see the rainbow zebras. She must be telling her teachers at school because the other day she brought home some papers with drawings of "The Rainbow Playground." They were drawings made by an adult that she colored in. She's so silly. I wonder what everyone else thinks of her.