I can't sleep...why not one more post

I think that I am setting an all-time record for myself of amount of posts in one week. It is 11:30 and our neighbors are partying and I just can't sleep. So I was lying in bed just thinking of the wonderful week we have had and thought I should write it down so that I remember it later.

The best part of today is that Stuart returned from Scout Camp. It was so good to see him. We had been swimming and came in for a snack and all of a sudden I heard his voice walking into the door. It was wonderful. He is extremely tired and so is not having such a hard time sleeping through the noise.

For playgroup this week we went to the beach. We had about 5 families there and what a blast it was. I always love going to the beach but it was 10 times more fun going with friends. There weren't any girls Summer's age, so she made friends with 2 vacationing girls and spent the majority of the time with them. I just love how easily she makes friends. I certainly did not have that talent at that age. The boys had a blast in the sand and a little in the water.

On Thursday evening Nephi kept getting the garlic jar out, which totally disgusts me right now. I kept telling him that he wouldn't like it, but he didn't believe me. I gave him a baby spoonful of it thinking he would taste it and realize that Mom was actually right. That didn't work. He loved it and wanted more. He loves to kiss me on the lips. I love his sweet little kisses, but they have been quite stinky with his garlic breath these last couple of days because he keeps eating more of it. Boy did that "genius idea" backfire on me. He is just so dang cute though that I can't stop kissing him even with his stinky breath.

I have to brag about Nephi...he now will sit in his carseat with his seatbelt on. I know what a thing to be so excited about. He is my first child to even try to get out of his carseat. He would always take his seatbelt off while I was driving. One day I was driving and felt a bump on my head rest. I looked back and it was Nephi partially in his carseat with the car seat tipping over. He had taken off the top part of his carseat seatbelt and leaned over and took the car's seatbelt off that holds the seatbelt in place. It was so scary and luckily we were on a very slow street. He is such a strong willed, temper tantrum little guy that it took awhile for him to be obedient. I am starting to learn how to deal with his particular temper tantrums. Each kid is definitely different. Part of it was that we would all praise him and throw a little cheering party for him for leaving his seatbelt on and he just smiled with the proudest smile he could muster. He just gets so excited with praise.

There are so many things that he just wants his way. One thing is that he used to not want to wear shoes anywhere (except for Summer's, Spencer's or my shoes). He showed up to Spencer preschool class to drop Spencer off many a days in Summer's mismatched shoes. But he refused to wear shoes that actually fit him. He would much rather be barefoot. There were many times that I would just give into him and let him run around barefoot. Even when it was at a park where it hurt him to walk without shoes, he refused to wear them. I finally decided to not let him get out of the car until he got his shoes. At first it took a few minutes of him screaming and kicking in his seat, but he soon learned really quick that I meant it and he was not getting out of the car until his shoes were on. So it is another proud moment for me that he will finally wear shoes when we go out in public. It is crazy the things we have to be proud of with a 2 year old.

A couple of months ago I stopped teaching Spencer how to read because he didn't seem interested and I didn't want to force it on him. These past few weeks he has said in every prayer asking Heavenly Father to help him and Nephi to learn and to help him to learn to read. I had gotten back on track with teaching him until this week. We were just having too much fun playing the summer away (which is easy to do in San Diego). He loves to write words so I have been trying to teach him to read more through writing words. Summer hated to write at this stage so I am doing things a little different with him and it is kind of fun to switch it up a bit.