Rylan - Soccer

Rylan had his first soccer game of the season today (Carter has a bye week).  Brian is coaching both teams again.  Rylan's team has 9 (of 11) players returning from the fall with 3 new players (including one of his buddies from preschool).  Both boys are also playing baseball, but we recently got all the schedules and there is a lot less overlap than we expected!

Rylan did amazing today!  He scored 4 goals!  But what I'm really proud of is that he never gave up or started crying!!!  There was even once that he took the ball almost all the way down the field, got around 2 defenders, and then had his own teammate kick the ball away from him at the goal (and miss the shot).  Rylan wanted to get upset, but he didn't!  I hope he keeps up this matured attitude!

This is Rylan scoring his first goal (Rocco, the kid in orange, was on Rylan's team when I coached him).

Rylan has decided he wants to wear one of my headbands (just like his buddy Gray who wears his mom's).

Rylan with his buddy Radnor waiting for the other team to kick off ...

There was a lot of clustering around the ball still but Rylan's team easily dominated the other team on his field (I think the other field had a much more even match up).

Rylan did a great job of dribbling to the goal today ...

So proud of his effort today!!!

Go Pack

Grayson and I are ready to cheer on our team!

RSV

Grayson has had a low grade fever (between 99.5 and 101F) for about 2 weeks now.  In addition, he's been congested.  You can mainly hear it in his breathing but he's also been coughing some to clear the mucus in his lungs.  Grayson hasn't really been much fussier than normal but he has only slept through the night once in the last couple of weeks (he was sleeping through the night a lot before that).

When I took Grayson in for his 4 month checkup, he'd had these symptoms for about 36 hours.  The pediatrician wasn't concerned so I wasn't worried.  But since they'd been lingering for awhile now, I finally took Grayson back in yesterday.

Dr. Huss determined Grayson has an ear infection.  Grayson is also wheezing and with the constant low grade fever, Dr. Huss thinks he's probably had RSV (and that has caused the ear infection).

We got a prescription for an antibiotic and hopefully that will kick all of this out of Grayson's system soon!  It is hard to give Grayson the medication but I think I'm getting him to swallow most of it.  He still had a fever of 100.3F tonight but maybe tomorrow it'll start going down!

Recent Pictures

A few recent pictures ...

With all our snow days that have been on Friday and the spring party yesterday, Carter had only had one Friday to do a spelling test so far.  He did perfect on his first one!

Last Saturday the boys' fort they built on Thursday was almost gone ...

It was so warm on Saturday that we took a long walk that afternoon to school and played on the playground for an hour.  Grayson went on a swing for the first time.

You can really see Grayson's mohawk in that last photo.  He has a thick and long strip of hair down the center of his head right now!

Carter had my phone for a few minutes and took pictures.  Carter enjoyed getting to play on the entire playground (the kindergarteners only get to go on 2 of the 3 play structures).

I tried putting Grayson in the exersaucer on Sunday.  This was his initial reaction ...

He warmed up to it though :)

He generally likes it now which is great since I still can't lay him down on his playmat right now - he still rolls over right away and gets mad.

Both boys had their first baseball practices of the season on Sunday.  The fields were still closed but each team found some grass to use off outside of the fields.

Rylan was SO EXCITED for his first baseball practice.  He's only done Lil Sluggers before so this is his first team.  He's on a team with his best buddy from last school year, Luke.  Luke switched schools so we don't see him much but Rylan still talks about him so I'm excited for them to get to see each other again.

Rylan is on the Colorado Rockies and he's been wearing his hat everywhere all week.

On Tuesday Rylan's class FINALLY had pajama (and pancakes and pizza) day.  They were supposed to have it three weeks earlier during "P week" but they were out of school three Thursdays in a row because of snow.  Rylan doesn't like to wear his pajamas to school but was super excited to wear workout clothes.

Book Character Parade

The kids at Carter's school got to dress up as book characters today.  They were supposed to dress up two weeks ago during the book fair but we got snow and school was cancelled.

So, today was finally the day.  Carter chose to dress up as Max, the dog in the book "Jack's House".  The book follows the general storyline of "This is the House that Jack Built", except the dog (Max) builds the house (not Jack) and ends up keeping it in the end.

I think Carter and I did a pretty good job of making him look like Max!

End of Basketball

Carter had his last basketball game on Saturday.  To end the season, there was a tournament.  Carter's age group (6 and under) had 10 teams so they decided to do an "A" and "B" bracket and then have both brackets be double elimination.

Carter's team did not win a game during the regular season so they were in the 4 team "B" bracket.  Unfortunately they didn't win either of their tournament games either.

Carter's team was the only team without returning players (and the shortest team in the league by far), and though they had a couple of relatively close games, they were never able to secure a win.  The kids did understand this, but they all maintained great attitudes throughout the season and seemed to always have fun.  They all improved tremendously.  Brian and I feel like it was ultimately better to have all these players on one team because they didn't get swallowed up on a team with much better players and then get no attention.

Brian did a great job coaching but he definitely didn't enjoy it as much as soccer (a sport he actually played growing up).  Practice was rough because our assistant coach could no longer help about midway through the season and we had one player that was pretty disruptive that required a lot of Brian's attention during practice.  Brian was still able to teach the kids a lot and they all came a long way since the beginning of the season.

Carter with Grayson during the last game (our assistant coach couldn't come so I helped on the bench) ...

Grayson wore his tiger onesie in support of the team :)  Our last game was rough and our team only scored 4 points, but Carter scored 2 of them!!!

To celebrate our season, I made cupcakes for after the last game.  I attempted to decorate them like basketballs ...

The boys also got participation trophies after the game.

Carter loved getting to add another trophy to his stash!

Carter ended up really liking basketball by the end of the season.  He finally found some confidence.  He improved SO MUCH and I hope he wants to continue playing in the future!

Snow Day #7

Williamson County builds 10 snow days into the school calendar.  Today we are using #7.  We'll use #8 tomorrow (school has already been cancelled).

We probably got about 1.5 inches of snow at our house overnight and this morning.  It's the most snow we've gotten this year.  It still stunk for building snowmen though!

With Grayson so fussy today, I couldn't leave him at the house with Brian when he was working so I didn't take the big boys sledding.  But we got an inch or two of rain yesterday so we'd be sledding into a pond at the bottom of the hill so it's probably good.

Brian did go out to shovel the driveway and took the boys out with him.  It was only in the 20s today and windy so I'm sure they all froze!

The boys were amazed with how deep the snow was this time :)

Brian decided to shovel the snow from the driveway into one huge pile at the end.

The boys LOVED the huge pile of snow!

Brian took the boys back out before dinner and they tried out the snow brick makers I had gotten at Target before our ice/snow storm a couple of weeks ago.  They built a really cool little fort!  That huge snow pile they made earlier made making the bricks a lot easier!

Grayson's 4 Month Checkup

Grayson turned 4 months old on the 3rd and he had his checkup at the pediatrician's office yesterday. He's been a little sick for almost three weeks. No runny nose but congestion and some coughing. His chest feels rattly but it's just the mucus he's not coughing up. He'd also been running a fever for 36 hours before his appointment (100 to 101F). The pediatrician wasn't concerned though. Grayson's lungs sounded okay and his ears were clear.

Dr. Huss was happy with Grayson's development and saw nothing at all wrong with him.  Because Grayson's fever had been under 101F, he said it was fine to go ahead with his shots.  Grayson stopped crying as soon as I picked him up but was pretty fussy the rest of the day.  I ended up giving him tylenol when his fever got about 102F yesterday evening.  He's still pretty fussy today but I was able to get a few cute pictures of him this morning.

Here are Grayson's measurements from yesterday and 2 months ago ...

Grayson's 4 month stats:

• Weight: 17 lbs, 3 oz (84th percentile) 
• Length: 25.25 inches (58th percentile) 
• Head Circumference: 43.3 cm (93rd percentile) 

Grayson's 2 month stats:

• Weight: 14 lbs, 11 oz (94th percentile) 
• Length: 23 inches (50th percentile) 
• Head Circumference: 41.2 cm (97th percentile) 

And the other boys' measurements from their 4 month appointments (Grayson is right in between them for weight) ...

Rylan's 4 month stats:

• Weight: 20 lbs, 1 oz (95th percentile) 
• Length: 25.5 inches (75th percentile) 
• Head Circumference: 45 cm (95th percentile) 

Carter's 4 month stats:

• Weight: 13 lbs, 13oz (34th percentile) 
• Length: 23.75 inches (17th percentile) 
• Head Circumference: 42.5 cm (75th percentile)

Grayson is doing all the stuff he should be - tracking objects, reaching for objects, recognizing us, laughing, holding his head up, etc.  And being stinking cute (when not crying!).

Williamson County Art Show

Carter got selected to participate in the Williamson County Art Show at the Frist Center (Nashville's art museum).  Each school in the county got to select two students from each grade level to participate and Carter was one of the two kindergarteners at Clovercroft!!!  He absolutely loves to create art and says that art is his favorite part of kindergarten so this was super exciting for him.

Carter's art will be on display for a couple of weeks.  On Saturday, all of the artists and their families received free admission to the Frist Center.  We've only been their one other time and were excited to get another opportunity to visit.  We spent most of our time there in the Martin ArtQuest area where the kids can create their own art.

The kids really enjoyed the getting to do the printing press.  They each got to draw something on a piece of foam (by just pressing into it), paint the foam, and then send it through the press.

Both boys created a design similar to Carter's artwork in the show ...

This was really fun ...

The kids got to create a movie using 16 still frame pictures.  They would move things in the scene just a little bit for each picture.  Here is a video I took of the movie they created ...

The big boys also got to paint with watercolors ...

Grayson slept the whole time we were there which made it a lot easier to give the other boys lots of attention.

On our way out we saw Christian who was one of the first graders picked from Crockett Elementary.  Christian is Campbell's brother who was in Carter's preschool class for two years and plays soccer with us.  Christian is super sweet and usually plays with Rylan during our practices and games.

We are super proud of Carter and so happy he received such a cool opportunity!

Grayson's New Tricks

Grayson can sit up in the Bumbo seat now.  But he just barely fits.  He doesn't have the thighs that Rylan had, but he's not that much smaller either.  He looks like a big boy though, doesn't he?

Ever since Grayson rolled over a few weeks ago, he will not stay on his back.  He discovered how to do something and he doesn't want to stop.  However, he HATES being on his belly more than a few seconds.  He gets so mad!  But he won't flip back over or just stop rolling to his belly!  I sense some Rylan stubbornness!!!