Changes

We're making some changes at the Dreher house in efforts to transition Sutton to being a big boy. Kinda tough on this mama.

Change #1 is the big boy bed. We decided to just take one side off of his crib and lower his mattress all the way down because I absolutely love his crib that Adam's dad made him. The first night went okay, he rolled out once but wanted to go right back in with no rocking. So in my half-asleep haze, I made a soft landing in case it happened again.

He woke up another time and I'm not sure why, but when I went in, he was just sitting up in his bed and he wanted me to help him find his pacifier. He went right back to sleep after we did. When he woke up for the day, he was standing by his door waiting for me.

I put a rolled up quilt under his sheet as a sort of ledge to keep him in there and it's worked like a charm. Night #2 went great except he woke up earlier than usual.

I found this gem on my computer from a few weeks ago and it made me smile.

Change #2 is trying to get him to stop referring to himself as "Baby." He went back to daycare last week after being home all summer and had a bit of a problem with the word "baby" being used for anyone but him. And sorry kiddo, but when there's a 10 month old in the room, you're definitely not the baby.

I thought it would be an uphill battle, but after about 2 days of correcting him every time he says "Baby do it," or  "Baby's turn!" he's begun catching himself and correcting himself. I'm hearing a lot of "Sutton eat!" and "Sutton throw ball?" today. He's still working on being able to pronounce the "S" sound, so it's more like "Nunnon." Pretty cute.

We took Sutton to a new park yesterday and he had fun playing in the "fire car" and exploring all around. I love that he loves being outside. His mama does too!

Come Thou Fount

Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above.
I'll praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

...

Oh for grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Pinterest Fail

Kinda. I wasn't going to post this because it didn't turn out like I wanted, but then Ginger gave me the idea of posting it as a Pinterest Fail. Ha! And there's a cute Sutton video at the end as a reward if you make it all the way through. :) 

Let me first say that I have Pinterest guilt. I don't really want to do all these projects but I feel like I must since I've seen all these ideas and since they're usually pretty cheap. I need to get over it.

(All photos were taken on my phone so must of them are blurry. Sorry.)

The first step was to rip up scrapbook paper. Sutton helped me with this part.

Then I Mod-Podged the paper to a big canvas.

So far so good. I should've just left it like this. :) It did end up setting this way for about a month while I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted the lyrics to You Are My Sunshine and an airplane, but I wasn't sure how.

I ended up drawing the outline of an airplane to fit the size of my canvas, then I cut it out.

I bought scrapbooking vinyl letters for the lyrics. The thought was that it talks about "skies" which has to do with airplanes (kinda) and it has the word "grey" which is Sutton's middle name. I thought I was a genius.

After everything was stuck/rubber cemented down, I painted over the whole thing. Two coats, then I let it dry. I peeled everything off and....let down. I should've covered up more so more of the scrapbook paper showed through and I should've made everything bigger and I'm not a fan of the placement of the wording. Plus, the paint bled through under the airplane and cloud outlines in some spots. So I let it set in our living room for a few days while deciding if I should trash it or not. Sutton got excited whenever he saw it and would yell "AIRMANE!!!" so I decided as long as he liked it, I'd hang it in his room.

And for reference in his room:

We're trying to decorate his room a bit since he's a big boy now and it's not a nursery anymore. Not that I ever decorated it when it was a nursery... :) I have some ideas but we'll see how it goes.

And here's a video of our cute boy.

Things Sutton Says...

Mommy: "Sutton, are you my favorite?"
Sutton: "No! I'm Baby!"

I'd just hung a photo on his bedroom wall and he starts clawing at the wall saying something unintelligible. Finally I realize it's not unintelligible, he's saying "Sube!" which is Spanish for climb. Oh my goodness, we've got a smartie pants.

Conversation with Sutton

Hey bud, can I take your picture on this chair?

Baby hold cee-ma (Baby hold camera)!

Nope, sorry. How many airplanes do you have? Do you have two?

Two airmanes!

Wyyyyyy airmane! (Fly airplane!)

Ooooooo voom voom!

Back airmane! (Black airplane!)

Ee bwoke. Koo-wa-wa? (It broke. Screwdriver?)

Baby fix ee! (Baby fixed it!)

Hey sweetie, can you look at Mommy?

{Mommy melts.}

Airmane bwoke geen. (Airplane broke again.)

Mommy melts geen.

Ah nuh. (All done.)

Silly Boy

We have the most hilarious kid. I look at him about 20 times a day and think how lucky I am that he's mine. I thought I'd share a couple recent photos of Sutton being Sutton.

The other night I asked him what he wanted for a bedtime snack. Banana? No. Cheese? No. Cracker? No. Strawberries? No. Bread? OK!!! So I gave him a slice of bread. He bit a hole in it and stuck his tongue through. I died laughing, grabbed my phone, turned him toward better light, and asked him to do it again for a photo. He did. Which makes it even funnier.

This morning we had to go to the Wichita Art Museum to scout locations for my wedding Saturday. We got there a little before they opened, so we sat out front and chilled. Sutton was very busy playing in the mulch. I asked for a photo, and he sat down and whipped out this smile.

Visiting the Clarks

This weekend, the three of us loaded up and drove to Kansas City to visit Baby Rowan (and her parents). I was having Rowan withdrawals, knowing that she'd probably changed a bunch since her birth. My next planned trip to KC isn't til October, so we decided with this being the last weekend before Adam goes back to school and before I start shooting weddings, it needed to happen.

We left Friday morning and were able to drive without stopping all the way there. Once we got there, it was lunch time, so we stopped to get the kiddo some food before going to the Clark house. Enter bad parenting: we hadn't changed Sutton's diaper the whole trip and he'd drank a bunch of apple juice...then he pooped. Explosion. All over the clothes and up his back. This hadn't happened to us since he was a baby! We put him in the back of our car and stripped him down. I cleaned him off with wipes while Adam dealt with the car seat. Poor little lamb.

We finally arrived at the Clarks. Sutton was in his hyper-delirious phase that happens before naps and bed. So after meeting Baby Rowan and being super cute with her, I tested out Rowan's rocking chair and rocked him to sleep. While he was napping Adam and I took full advantage of their TV and watched the Olympics with Rachael and caught up for awhile.

Adam meets Rowan for the first time.

Going to sleep on her mama.

Rowan took the majority of her afternoon nap on my chest, and I had a sweet little ear imprint on me after she woke up. She loves cuddling with her Aunt Gina. See her little fist tucked under her head? :)

Matt came home and Rachael and I went out to get pizza to bring back for dinner. We commented on how weird it was to be alone together without husbands and babies and how that doesn't happen very often. Weird that it's weird since that's how our friendship started out, on the 4th floor of West Hall at K-State where we met and bonded discussing our boyfriends who lived so far away. :)

After pizza, we took a walk down to the pond in their subdivision. Rowan was happy to stretch out in the wagon once we finally stopped walking.

We played on the swings with Sutton (who was being a weirdo and making funny faces at Matt while saying "Go Rachael!" any time she would stop swinging), then took a walk around the pond to look for fish and throw rocks.

When we got back, Matt made us copycat Vista chocolate chip milkshakes. Yum. Sutton ate about half of mine.

After Sutton's bed time, we watched more Olympics and just hung out til we were all too tired to stay awake. Sutton woke me up bright and early the next morning at 6:25am (very unlike him), but luckily he cuddled in our bed for another hour before we had to be upright. After a breakfast of homemade waffles (thanks Matt!), we headed on another walk to the neighborhood pool. Rowan got dressed in her cute little swimsuit for the first time. Stylin'.

It was overcast for most of the day, and the water seemed chilly. I didn't end up getting in, but all three boys did. Sutton had so much fun jumping off the side into Daddy's arms and then climbing out on the ladder. He'd go dry off his face with his towel in between every jump.

Adam and Sutton climbed to the top of the slide but Sutton's a little young to go down it. Maybe next year. So they came back down.

After lunch and naps (during which the adults watched more Olympics), we packed up and headed home. Before we left, we tried to get a cute photo of the babies together since they're going to get married some day. :) Sutton was in his cranky post-nap mood, so he wasn't really into it.

 

The best we could get. With the strained fake smile.

And then we got a photo of Rachael and I with our kids. Crazy how far we've come, and I'm sure our little posse will only grow bigger in the next few years!

Sutton really loves Rachael and Matt, and they're so great with him. We heard a lot of "Where Rachael go? Where'd Matt go? Baby Wowan sleepy."

Love you, friends! Thanks for hosting us this weekend, can't wait to see your cute family again soon.