Fireman Sam and Mother's Day

Uncle Sam has been visiting us this weekend. My kids always love to see Uncle Sam, but I think he and Noah really bonded this weekend. Noah's favorite show right now is "Fireman Sam." It's on Netflix, and he loooooves it. John might have mentioned to Sam about the show, because when they picked up Sam from the airport Thursday, Sam sang the theme song for Noah! From then on, Noah called Sam "Fireman Sam" all weekend. Never just Sam. It was always, "Come on Fireman Sam." "Let's go Fireman Sam." "Where's Fireman Sam?" And Uncle Sam brought Noah some fireman tools, making him the coolest Uncle Fireman Sam ever.

So, Uncle Sam was here for Mother's Day. We are pretty sure he has been with us for another Mother's Day as well. We went to the Fort Worth Zoo for the day. It was a beautiful, hot day, and clearly we were not the only ones who thought it would be a good idea. It was pretty crowded. We have never taken Noah or Emmy to the Ft. Worth Zoo, which seems crazy as much time as we used to spend there when we lived here before. Now we live about an hour from the zoo, so it is just a trek we haven't set out on since moving back. It was fun to see Hope back there and think about her being Noah's age when we were there last. There was a hippo that scared her so bad when she was 2, and she still remembers what happened. I am happy to report she is over her fear of hippos now and went right over and watched them with her daddy.

Noah. Noah, Noah, Noah. He is a runner. I would like to give him the freedom of walking beside us, but he runs away every time. I can't get through to him that it's not ok to run away. We kept putting him back in his stroller when he ran away, but he never got it, because when he would get down again, he was gone. And repeat.

Here's Noah looking up to Fireman Sam

Uncle Fireman Sam with the bigs.

 My big girl.

 Oh, Noah.

 Emmy's first Carousel ride!

 Ummm. A skunk in front of Red's doghouse? Fitting for Noah Red.

 Some alligator humor.

 My baby girl. With 2 teeth!!!

 The Men.

 Trying to get a decent pic with my 3 babies on Mother's Day. Unsuccessful.

I brought the girls home while the boys took Sam to the airport. Hope made me dinner. Wheaties! Sweet girl. She offered to make me ham and cheese roll ups, cereal, or a nutella sandwich. It was a tough choice! :)

Emmy, are you Daddy's Baby?

If you are around our family much, you might have seen us ask our kiddos in a playful way who's baby are they? Are you Mommy's Baby? Yes! or, you might have heard Noah say "I sorry to tell ya, I Mommy's Baby!" And you might even remember when Hope would say, "I regret to inform you, I'm Mommy's Baby!" Obviously we feed them these lines so much, they are ingrained! Well, Emmy has already given her answer on the matter, and I think we should just leave it at that!

Please also notice that she can completely do the spIits and check out that army crawl!

My Noah Red is THREE!

3 years ago, my life was changed when I met this baby boy. This boy has my heart. I know I have said it before, I love all my kids equally, but differently. I can't describe my relationship with Noah. I guess it's true what they say about Mommys and their boys.

 Noah, at 3 years old, you want so badly to be independent. You want to do what Hope does, you want to put your shoes on by yourself, you want to get in the car by yourself, and you want to get out on your own terms, you want "My do it." But, Noah, at the same time, you are so very dependent! You need your mommy, you want to be held and snuggled, you don't want daddy to go to work, you want "Mommy do it." It is a tough road to walk right now. And sometimes I feel like I am walking on eggshells around you!

 You love fiercely, my boy. Once someone makes it into your circle, you make them feel so special. I am so happy to be in the circle. You love your daddy, a lot too, and it's been fun to see your relationship grow with him lately. I know the two of you will soon be inseparable, so I'm happy to still be in the circle. You hug like no other. You mean it when you hug. It might be my favorite thing.

 Your sisters love you. I think you love them :) You do, you just don't want them to touch anything. Not your toys, not their toys, not your food, not their food, not each other, and certainly not your mommy. Ahhh, brings back memories of my siblings. "He's touching me!" is what Papa Paul says I used to say all the time. You, however say, "She's doing that." Which could be multiple offenses.

 You love to run! You are your happiest when you are on the loose! If you understood minded when I asked you to come back, I would let you run free a lot more. Right now, though, you run away! And I mean run! Uncle Wes says you look like a cartoon character when you run. Your upper body is still, but your legs are moving so fast they are a blurrrr!

 You love music! You have several guitars, drums, etc, and I am convinced you wouldn't mind if we got rid of every other toy you own besides those and your beloved Wiggles toys. And maybe a train or two.

 You are silly! You crack us up. You make up songs, you make up knock knock jokes (ok, knock knock joke), make funny faces, and you have the best laugh I have ever heard. It makes my heart smile.

 You are sneaky! You go wherever you aren't supposed to. We have had to Noah proof the house. You have escaped through the front door, opening both locks. You climb in the refrigerator to reach whatever your heart desires at any given moment. You ruin makeup. You write on walls. You take trash out of the trash can. You jump on the bed. You play in the potty. You climb on tables. You take off your clothes. You use your baby sister as a drum. It definitely works in your favor that you are so cute.

You are mine. I wouldn't trade you for the world. Thank you God for Noah Red.

Emmy Update

Finally! We do have an answer for what has been bothering our Emmy for so long.
And thankfully, it's a managable thing.
Emmy has Celiac Disease . I'm still learning what this means for the baby girl, but in short, it means Emmy's diet will have to be gluten free. This will be a new way of thinking for our family as we plan meals etc, but we are so very thankful that it is something so fixable. Emmy has had quite a few tests in her short life, and some for some scary scary things. So, Celiac? We can do it. She will see a specialist in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully then we will have some more answers. What I am learning is that Celiac is much more common than ever thought before. And if truth be told, I think I have it too. I will be tested soon, but either way, our family is going gluten free. If any of you have any experience with this, especially for an infant, I would love to hear! We are bread and pasta lovers, so this will be a big change to the Dyer diets :)

The Weekend Wrap Up

First, you must look at my sweet baby girl. I love her. In case you didn't know.

 Backing up a bit. John went to Australia for work for 10 days. So this week, we have been catching up with daddy. He took Friday off, and we went and surprised Hope by picking her up from school. We went to the Dallas World Aquarium. Hope remembers lots of odd things from when we lived in the Dallas area when she was little. I just knew she would remember some of the aquarium. But, she didn't! Not a thing. However, she did love every minute. She just took it all in. She could have stayed all day.

 This is Noah telling me about the huge anaconda snake he just saw!

 Again with the trees. I like trees, what can I say.

 And we can go ahead and add this to the "Things that freak me out" file.

 Noah's very favorite part had to be the shark tank tunnel. So cool. It was John's favorite too.

 This? Very cool.

 And on Saturday, we took off the training wheels! I won't say it was totally successful, but, she is getting the hang of it. When she isn't trying to run into parked cars and mailboxes. And, I got Noah this balance bike for a steal on consignment. Don't worry, he has a helmet. Just posing for the picture.

 Tonight, John was putting the big kids to bed while I was doing some stuff for Hope's class. Emmy was (army) crawling around and playing in the living room. John came downstairs and found this...

 OUT!

 This cannot be comfortable!

 And, I looked through some old blog posts and found this picture of Hope on our first visit to the aquarium, before we even knew we would be moving to Midlothian a couple months later. I think she's about 17 months old here. And who would have ever guessed we would be back 5 years later with our 3 kids living in McKinney? Craziness.

John had just graduated from graduate school and wanted to come to a conference here in hopes of making some connections for a job. We stayed with our sweet friends, the Jessees, who lived in McKinney at the time. I loved their town then, and I love it even more now that we are here! Sadly, the Jessees left a few years ago. But, they definitely influenced our decision to choose McKinney when we were looking where to live in DFW!

That's about it! Have a great week!

At the park with some cuties!

Sometimes I really should just say no

Like when the school carnival falls on a night when John is not able to go. I love love love my Noah Red. That being said, he is not fun to take places. He screamed his adorable head off waiting to ride the train. When it was finally our turn, he had the snubs. So he would snub snub, and then let out a little "choo choo" before the snubs took over again.

Can you even believe he will be three in a couple of weeks? Me neither.

Emmy Love at 8 Months

Emmy, at 8 months old, you are just precious. I cannot get enough of you. You are smiley, social, nosey, sweet as sugar, and so much fun. In the past couple of weeks, you have learned some new tricks! Here are the highlights so far!

• You mastered sitting up while on Spring Break. You had been getting better, but during Spring Break, you were finally solid!
• You babble. A lot. You started with lots and lots of BABABABABABABAs, but now you have added DADADADADADADA, which Daddy likes a lot. I will say to you, "Say Mommy!" and you reply, "DADADADADADA!" You think you are pretty funny ;) Daddy loves it.
• Ummm, out of NOWHERE, you decided it was time to move. You aren't crawling. You are wiggling like a snake. And it works for you. Your favorite spot to wiggle to is the TV stand. Where you pull out all the movies from the bottom shelf. I see those disappearing very soon.
• You like food. You are kind of getting picky about which baby foods you will actually swallow, but, you will eat just about anything you can put in your hand. And, you like to snatch food from your brother. He does not like this, as you can imagine.
• Speaking of snatching from Brother, we have rearranged car seats, which put him right next to you in the car. You get your little hands on everything he has. He gets so so upset. To comfort him, I try to explain that you just want to play with him, but you and I both know you are doing it for the reaction it gets from him.
• Those size 2 diapers are getting small! My next amazon order, I am moving you to 3s.
• You weigh 16.2 pounds! Putting you only 10 pounds behind brother, and about 21 pounds from sister.
• You had your very first ear infection. If it weren't for your fever and goopy eyes, I wouldn't have known you were sick. You stayed smiley the whole time. In the doctor's office, the nurse and dr got the biggest laugh out of "how very sick" you were as you were with all your giggling and flirting with everyone who would look at you! Had you not been running a temp of 102, they might have thought I was crazy for bringing you in to the after hours clinic.
• You have a new favorite toy. I lost your beloved wire ball sometime over spring break. I am still very sad about that. But, thanks to your buddy, Palmer, I knew you would love a Sophie giraffe. You really do love her. She is a perfect teething toy for your age. You bite her all day long (Sophie, not Palmer.)
• Knock on wood, but the time change has served you well. You were waking up at 5 every morning, and now you wake up at 6 ish. So, you still haven't figured out that we are a sleep late kind of family (Your siblings will sleep til 9 or so if we don't wake them!) but, I will take 6 over 5 any day. And the fact that you sleep solidly through the night earns you many bonus points.
• I love you. A lot.

Video of Noah riding Thomas

A short little video of Noah riding Thomas. My favorite part is towards the end when he yells out "Island of Sodor!" He really thought that was where Thomas was taking us. I'll never tell.

Our Day Out With Thomas!

John and I searched a few months ago to look at the Day Out With Thomas tour schedule and found he was going to be about 40 minutes away from us. We were in! I was worried because Noah had been sick for a solid week by the time it rolled around, but he did great. He was truly in awe. We had such a great day together.