November 21, 2014

First Dental Visit

At the beginning of November, Barrett had his first visit to Pops' office.  He was pretty excited to go see Pops and Lala at work.  He did really well sitting in the chair and letting Pops check his teeth, but when Jacki tried to polish them, it was a different story!  She did manage to polish all his top teeth before he really broke down, but the idea of the suction freaked him out I guess.  There was no way he was going to let her finish, he was just too scared.  Oh well, we'll try again next time!


He still got to pick a prize and get a few mints.

November 15, 2014

Johnson's Dinner Club

So this was our month to host dinner club (a monthly get together with friends).  I had the brilliant idea to go down to Salt Lake and go ice skating at the Gallivan Center.  I had never been there but always wanted to so it was perfect.
Everyone who came.  Me, Neil, Brittany, Markham, Jessica, Blake, baby Jonas, Melissa, and Scott.
I made hot chocolate that we drank while the ice was being cleaned.

Afterwards we walked a block down to Siegfried's for yummy German food.

I was pretty proud of my planning this month.  That's something I'm usually not very good at!

November 13, 2014

Croup

Bear started getting sick last Thursday; he just had cold symptoms and was getting kind of fussy.  I wasn't worried about it at all since he's had several colds and they've never been that big of a deal.  On Sunday night, he woke up 3 or 4 times crying for me because he was so stuffy he couldn't breathe very well.  Monday morning, he woke up a little hoarse, but wasn't even coughing too much yet.  I put him down for his nap on Monday and that's when he started getting the croupy cough.  He had a very short nap because he was just coughing so much.  It got worse and worse from there.  Monday night he was really struggling to breathe and I had to hold him all night so he could get a little sleep (plus I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to stop breathing!).  I should've taken him to the ER that night but I figured we could wait til our dr appointment the next day.  I still feel so guilty for not taking him.
When we went to the doctor on Tuesday, she immediately saw how hard he had to work to breathe and told us he had Croup.  She gave him a breathing treatment and steroids.  Even after the treatment, he wasn't improving as much as he should have so she wanted us to go straight to the hospital with him to be monitored and most likely given more treatments. 
We went to McKay Dee and were really pleased with the sweet nurses and doctors there.  
As soon as we walked into his room, he said, "Dad, I hate this room."  But really it was quite adorable.  The ceiling tiles had cute paintings on them, the nurses brought books and toys in, and he got to watch about a million movies while he laid in bed!

Pops and Lala came to visit Bear and bring us a few things we needed to stay over. 

He wanted bacon and eggs for dinner.

This is his oxygen monitor on his toe.  He thought it was so cool that it made everything glow red.

Bear and I slept in his bed together while Neil slept on the pull out chair.  All 3 of us basically stayed in the exact same spots the whole time we were there.  Barrett wanted bacon and eggs again for breakfast the next day.

He had a lot of grumpy faces.  Understandable.

We took him on a little wagon ride up and down our hallway to get out of our room.

He was pretty happy to get two popsicles while we were there- even if he doesn't look like it!

The nurse wheeled him out to the curb when it was finally time to go on Wednesday afternoon.

Ethan, Alex, Lindsay, and Liv made Bear some very nice cards.
So we are home now.  Bear has been breathing much better but still has a bad cough and a very stuffy nose.  He's still pretty tired and fussy, but we're definitely heading in the right direction!

November 10, 2014

Barrett Neil

Lately he's been sleeping with his blankey wrapped around his head and neck- freaks me out!  And he's been wanting to take his blanket everywhere with him.  I'll let him take it downstairs, but I do not want to start taking it out of the house!

A few times when I've told him not to do or say something, he'll be so annoyed and tell me, "It's a joke!"

He can sound out some sight words such as stop, on, off.
He can point to a word that I ask to him find (sight words again, such as can, pat, etc)
He memorizes books and will either "read" (really just recite) the books with me as I read them, or he'll do it on his own and tell me not to read.
A few weeks ago when we went to the zoo, my mom said to me, "we are planning on going to the Z-O-O (spelling it) tomorrow if you want to come."  A few seconds later Bear said, "I want to go to the zoo with you Lala!"  My mom looked at me and said, "Didn't I spell that!?"

If he sleeps late in the morning (til 8), he sometimes won't go down for a nap, so we'll have to go out for a drive to get him to fall asleep (anything for the nap!).  He'll squeeze his eyes closed and tell me he's going to sleep until he actually does. (I was at a stop light when I took this picture)


Some of his latest phrases: Idiot (he learned this from Toy Story 3 and he says it quite hilariously).  He said to Neil when he and I were arguing about a parking spot, "You're just being a jerk", he often says catty instead of kitty.  Says ew gross to pretty much everything.  When I tell him to do something/not do something, he responds with okay, fine (in a very exasperated tone).  One day I was getting him out of the car and out of nowhere he says, "I'm just a boy who loves the church!"  When he's trying to tell me something, he'll keep asking me, "do you hear me Mom!?"

He wants to wear a hat everyday just so I won't comb his hair.

When he knows that I'm mad that he keeps getting out of bed to "go potty", he'll just look at me smiling and laughing until finally I laugh too.  Like this...

He is always singing.  Twice last week he woke up in the middle of the night and just stayed in his bed singing.  One night it was I am a Child of God.  The other night it was Everything is Awesome, from The Lego Movie.  He sang for just a few minutes and then went back to sleep.

Loves to scare people.  He's constantly roaring or yelling Boo!

He's really into the Pinkalicious books and this card game we have too.  We'll play it once and he'll say, "let's play it again, it's the most beautiful game ever!"  He always wants to pray for Pinkalicious and Peter (her brother) that they will listen to their mom and dad.

He learned the phrase "miss me miss me, now you gotta kiss me!" from my mom, and now he loves playing a pillow throwing game of the same name.

He's getting a really fun imagination.  He pretends there's a monster or Emperor Zurg coming and he fights them.  He's also been playing that he has a kitty (or catty, as he calls it) for a really long time, it was so cute!  The catty's name is Cinderella Baby- he named it himself and has never seen Cinderella, so I don't know where he got it.

When someone comes home, he'll say, So, how was work (or the store, or whatever)?

He still does most everything very systematically.

This isn't from Bear, but I thought it was so funny.  My niece, Whitney (aka Tinkerbell) said, "McCall, you're gonna love heaven!"  Me: Why?  Tink: Because it's always clean!  I think she's right, I would love that!

November 8, 2014

Deer Hunt

A few weeks ago, Neil went with some of the men in his family to the deer hunt up in Idaho (or maybe Wyoming?)


Blake and Neil

Pat and Neil

Old Papa and Grandma Kaye went up too.

They did lots of manly things I guess.  They threw tomahawks, shot arrows, rode 4 wheelers and motorcycles, and I'm sure shooting guns was involved as well, although I didn't see any pictures of that.

William riding a horse.

I'm not sure that anyone shot a deer, so maybe I should've just called this post, "Camping."

November 6, 2014

Raking

Barrett was a super good helper to Pops the other day with all the leaves outside. 
It was getting windy when they went out, so they couldn't accomplish too much, but they got a good start anyways.  

 Bear was the perfect trash compacter.

November 4, 2014

Halloween Weekend

Halloween was really fun this year.  Neil took Bear to get a free cupcake from Sweet Tooth Fairy that morning.  They had to wait in line for about 30 minutes just to get that crappy cupcake, but Bear was in heaven.  

Bear had a short nap that day, which actually worked out okay.  Because he was up early enough, we got to go visit the Great Grandmas with his cousins.
The kids got out this little John Deer tractor at CC's house.  We used to love playing on that when we were kids too!



Next we went to see GiGi.  She was so happy we came that she was crying.

After dinner, we put Bear in a different costume just for fun.  It was a little big, but hey, maybe he'll wear it again next year!

We went to trick or treat at Grandma and Papa's.

He didn't want to do anymore trick or treating after their house, he just wanted to stay and play and asked Neil and I to leave.  Eventually we convinced him to come with us.

We got back to my parents house at the perfect time.  His little buddy Roger was just leaving and he was Woody!  I died at the coincidence.  These 2 boys crack me up, they can play really well together but they often are found slap fighting too.  In fact, one of them pushed the other right before we took this picture and a lady walking by said, "They must be the Buzz and Woody from the first movie!"  I thought that was a clever and hilarious thing to say.

Us with our pumpkins.  Bear was getting really defensive of our house I guess with all the people coming up.  He bursted into tears right after this picture.

We trick or treated to 4 houses in our neighborhood and then headed home.  He found he really liked helping Pops and Lala pass out the candy.

Saturday night, we went to Kacey and Dave Lorenzen's party and this is the best picture I took all night!  That's Barrett, Bear (the dog), and Mya.  Bear was so happy to get to play with a baby and a dog!

Kacey took a couple pictures too that turned out really cute.
 Kacey and her little strawberry, Mya.

November 2, 2014

3-peat

Every year of Bear's life so far, he has gotten these cute skeleton jammies from Gymboree.  It's been fun to lay him down and take a picture each year to compare how big he's gotten.


Pumpkin Carving/Painting

This year we bought some paints for Bear so he could paint his pumpkin.  He loved painting and even added more colors the next day after it had dried. 



Neil and I carved ours and picked designs we thought Bear would like.

I did Buzz Lightyear and Neil did Elsa.
Even though we carved these only 2 days before Halloween, Elsa's face was pretty caved in by Halloween night :(