Update on the Boys!

Since July marks the boys half-birthdays, I thought I'd do a little update on them and all things about them!

Chase at 4.5 years old

• We've been working on memorizing the Articles of Faith this year. We usually run through all the ones we know in the car. So far he has 1-8 memorized and is doing awesome learning them.
• Has been a little fish this summer. I've made a more concerted effort this summer to really teach him to swim and he's excelling in the water. He can float on his back for 45 seconds, knows how to do backstroke, elementary backstroke (or monkey-airplane-soldier as we call it) and can do a pretty awesome freestyle. His goal was to jump off the board without a life jacket and he can do it! Ben also taught him to dive off the board (which ends up being a belly flop about 2 out of 3 tries, but about every 3rd try he gets a perfect dive!)
• Wants to be my helper no matter what I'm doing, cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. Any job that is actually helpful to me though is usually not attractive to him. He finally really good at setting the table and picking up toys.
• We have these little orange cones (3 of them) and he will set them up across the threshold of his doorway to "keep Hudson out." Yeah, like that works. 
• Continues to make me laugh every single day with his funny sayings and adult phrases with four year old pronunciation (he still can't really say his r's or l's)
• He has made new friends so easily in our new ward! We went to our new ward's playgroup for the first time last week and he immediately started playing with two little boys he'd never met before (they are just older than him, so in a different primary class) and in 15 minutes they were fast friends.
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Hudson at 2.5 years:

• After refusing to potty train and insisting "I like diapers!" we finally nudged him enough to do it! I started by still having him nap in diapers, but on the second day when I woke him up from his nap I couldn't find his underwear to put back on him. When I asked him where it was he said "In my sho-worts" and as I looked at him confused, proceeded to show me that he had in fact removed his own diaper and put back on underwear before going to sleep. So now he naps in underwear too, and overall has done awesome with potty training! 
• Totally shocked me one day as I was getting Chase going on saying his articles of Faith and Hudson recited the whole 6th Article of Faith for me! He's been listening and learning too!
• Is slowly getting more comfortable in the water. He started out the summer terrified and has warmed up to it now and will play on his own (with a life jacket on) as opposed to clinging to me the whole time. We've taken his life jacket off a few times and had him swim back and forth between us and he loves it! He puts his whole face in the water and blows bubbles and kicks his little feet. After coming up for one breath he's ready to go right back under!
• Is so destructive and can make messes so quickly! He still tears up books on occasion and ruined the centerpiece on our kitchen table. And he feels absolutely no remorse for his actions, even when he has to go to time out. 
• Loves Daniel Tiger so much. If Chase really insists on them watching something else, he's semi-okay with Jake and the Neverland Pirates.
• Is really into bandaids. And needs them frequently. Almost daily. And I've decided that they just aren't that expensive so I give in. 
• He's finally realized that he can just climb out of his crib when he doesn't want to be there. So we took the front off the crib and turned it into a big boy bed.  He was devastated that we "broke his crib" -see picture above- but now he loves it. (The crib to bed transition was ROUGH with Chase, part of why we've waited so long to do it with Huds) Going to sleep takes a little longer these days, but so far he's done great at staying in his bed at night. 
• He's on this Jake and the Neverland Pirates kick and has been saying "Ahoy Mommy!" "Ahoy Chaser!" or sometimes just the nonspecific "Ahoy Mateys!"