One Week Old!

Last Sunday at 12:42 p.m. sweet Alegra you entered the world. It has been a fun and sleepy first week. It was so much fun to meet you and your big brother especially likes you! We are so happy you are a part of our family, we love you!


Cruz chillin' in Alegra's bouncy seat with his dogs Hector and Bode! Bode is a new addition to the animals thanks to Shawn's work thinking of Cruz during this time! Cruz can't figure out why he can't use all of Alegra's things, so he keeps tryin'! :)

Hanging out!

It has been so nice to be able to hang out with the family this week. We have LOVED having daddy around!

Grandma Raddon has made sure our bellies have been fed. She has been running over here to bring meals, etc. Cruz is very clingy right now though and so she never stays long because Cruz usually clings to me or acts kinda naughty. Even with Shawn around he wants to be right next to me at all times. Usually Cruz always wants to be with Shawn when he is working outside, etc. but we are just going through this whole adjustment phase.
Cruz's crazy hair from yesterday!
Our friends Jeff and Monica stopped over this morning. They brought Cruz the cutest "Where the Wild Things Are" puzzle and the most adorable Christmas outfit for baby Alegra. Cruz helped open up her gift and he had to take it over and put it on baby Alegra. It was so cute. He then tried on the little shoes they gave her too!

Cruz giving Monica a hug to thank her. I am thankful for the cute little outfit too! Cruz was such a big baby he really never fit into newborn clothes so I didn't even think of buying any newborn onesies or clothes and she is drowning in her little outfits, oh well, she will grow!!

Alegra Pictures from 11/25/09 and 11/26/09

Daddy changing Alegra with Cruz and Grammy Raddon looking on, soooo tiny!
Sweet Alegra!
Daddy, Cruz, and Alegra Thanksgiving Morning!
Aunt Rebecca and Alegra
Mommy and Alegra

A big day for Cruz

Trying on the skies at home before heading up to the slopes!
Cruz getting pumped up to ski (on the way up the mountain)!

Besides Cruz meeting his little sister for the first time, Cruz also went skiing with daddy this afternoon. Shawn took Cruz up to Snowbird. They did 3 things: skied, rode the chair lift, and had a treat! Atleast that is what Cruz told me when they came home!!

Shawn and Cruz riding up the chairlift. Shawn skied with Cruz between his legs for 2 runs down. They also practiced with the edgy-wedgy on the flat stuff!
Wow, look how high up!

Home from the Hospital

In the hospital before we left!
Shawn getting Alegra ready for the big ride home!

Alegra and I came home from the hospital today. It was fun to see Cruz meet Alegra for the first time.


Cruz holding Alegra for the first time!

Alegra Raquel Frye

Alegra is here! She came today @ 12:42 pm. Weighing in at 6 lbs. 15 oz. and measuring 18.5 inches long.
She is currently sipping some milk and has been a very good girl so far. Both Mom and baby are doing great. Mom was a superstar and made the whole pregnancy including the birth look easy!

*Guest appearance/post by Shawn

Cruz pointing to Alegra this morning before we left for the Hospital.

Alegra < 1 hour old.

Cruz's very first snowman picture!

Cruz had school today and this is the art project he worked on. I love it because he placed the pieces of the snowman. I love when it is truly his work and not the teachers. My little art student!
Cruz has been making the funniest faces lately. This is one of his sulky faces he has been making, he even does the slumped shoulders when he makes the face too! Drama King!

Me trying to get my little man to smile, finally I got one of Cruz's cute smiles!

Our daddy....our hero!

Cruz showing how he can be on both sides of the cement!

Shawn worked his tail end off all weekend trying to fix a house problem. We have water pooling on our driveway because our driveway wasn't built correct in the first place. The water finds cracks into our house and will/is causing some water damage to our basement. Shawn's solution, FIX IT! He bought a cement grate to catch the collected water in our driveway and he dug up the concrete on our driveway. He has a whole trench system out to the yard, to the back yard, where there is an eventual downslope. Lets just say, major project!!! Poor guy worked in freezing, snowy temperatures both days and unfortunately how home projects go, didn't get as far as he wanted. He is our hero though!!!

The trencher Shawn rented to help dig the trenches. Unfortunately, it didn't make the job as easy as it should have because we have a bunch of power and gas lines right where he needed to dig, so he had to hand dig a lot of it so he wouldn't hit lines!

Cruz checking out the project!

Thankful

This is the month of gratitude and we sure our thankful for our little man Cruz. This is a picture he made at school...it is a turkey made with his handprint. I especially love this art project because it shows the size of my little boys hand!
Cruz saying "cheese" behind his picture!
Now with the picture by his tummy!

swimming

So happy to be at swim lessons!

Cruz has continued his swimming lessons through the fall months. We moved to the indoor pool at the end of August but he has continued to go once a week. We are coming to the end of our lessons. We are going to take a break for a couple of months and then start back up in March, but I just have to tell everyone what a great swimmer Cruz is. The first month of lessons were traumatic, for both Cruz and me. He would cry and it was horrible to watch. The instructors have a "tough love" approach and it has paid off. After about the first month, Cruz began to listen, not cry, and actually start swimming. He wears goggles and flippers, can swim under water, turn to his back, turn from his back to his front and do the front crawl, get rings or rockets under the water....and the big accomplishment, he went off the diving board last week (all by himself). I thought he was going to do it again this week but the instructor had him working on his frog legs for the back stroke most of the time. It is really impressive how far this little guy has come and he LOVES it! We are so proud of you Cruz.

Bag packed

I packed my bag for the hospital on Friday and Cruz discovered it in our room yesterday. This morning he woke up very early crying out for me and running into our room to see if I was still there. It killed me! Little man knows something is coming and we talk about baby sister a lot but I think he is a little confused about when this is all going to happen. I am so sad too because with all the new standards in the hospital due to H1N1 anyone under 14 cannot come to the hospital, that means Cruz. I am so sad about that! I had envisioned him coming to the hospital to meet baby sister and spending time with me. I will miss him so much when the time comes. Speaking of time, I am 37 weeks, so I guess we could have an addition to our family any day now. Technically she is supposed to come on November 29th, but we will see if she has another date in mind! :) I got an email from baby center yesterday that said at 37 weeks a pregnant woman is considered full term, so that put my mind at ease! With Cruz I went into labor exactly on his due date......but after polling lots of woman, it sounds like every pregnancy, labor, and birth can be different with every child!

Potty Training!

I am writing this entry entirely for my own purposes so I can remember all the fun we had with Cruz in potty training! No really, it hasn't been too bad, just different than what I expected. Shawn started Cruz in big boy underwear probably a little over a month ago. I didn't think Cruz was quite ready but Shawn was bound and determined to have Cruz potty trained that weekend. I don't know if he actually thought it would take a weekend, but he was around to assist Cruz for 2 solid days. Surprisingly Cruz did really well. I continued that following week. For Cruz though, the draw of wearing the big boy underwear was wearing off. So I quickly came up with the 2 M&M policy. Every time he went pee pee or poo poo on the potty he got 2 M&M's. That worked for a few days and then the accidents started happening again. We were at Walmart walking down the candy aisle and Cruz picked out Good and Plenty's for his new potty treat. I couldn't believe he would actually like those, but that worked for a few more days...and then the newness of that wore off and it wasn't as much of a draw to go potty on the big potty. Right before Shawn's parents came into town, I was ready to throw in the towel. Changing pants and cleaning poopy underwear was getting a little old. In fact, after Cruz would poop his pants I told him he had to put a diaper on because I wasn't going to let all of his underwear get dirty. Plus, Cruz really started fighting me when the potty watch would go off and I would want him to try to go potty. It was becoming too big of a chore to fight with Cruz every 30 minutes to an hour about the potty. Shawn's parents came into town and that was some fresh blood to help Cruz with potty. We again were back to trying to go on the big potty. We tried several more tricks like having his favorite stuffed animal, "Hector" watch him go potty or other toys. That sort of worked too. He was having less accidents and seemed more willing to go. I then remembered a friend had a potty poster where her son got to put up a sticker every time he went pee or poo on the potty. So, after Shawns parents left I got some fun stickers and made a poster. We have been doing that for about 2 weeks now and he seems pretty taken with getting to put a sticker up. I did away with the potty watch because it seemed like making him go so much was turning him off. I have noticed in the last 2 weeks his bladder control has gotten a lot better and he can tell me now when he needs to go pee pee. Also about a week ago we started seeing if Cruz wanted to stand to go pee pee instead of sit. When he would sit he would want to take his pants and underwear all the way off and it was getting to be a big deal. So we put all of our stools by the toilets and Cruz has done an excellent job with standing. Plus it has been a lot easier on me. He can even go by himself and he really likes to do that, which makes me a little nervous! Poo Poo is still a little tough, but I do think we are getting better. So what has worked the last 2 weeks has been the sticker poster, standing up, and 2 marshmellow ghosts for going potty. While we were at Shawn's work party on Friday another couple that has a 2 year old little boy said they just finished potty training and their son did great. They went straight to underwear both day and night. Someone had told them when you put a toddler in diapers at night it confuses them. So this weekend we went to underwear at night. We put Cruz's little potty chair in his room on top of a lap pad. We told him if he needs to go pee pee or poo poo in the night to just get up and go on that. So far he has done great. Both mornings we have woken up to Cruz screaming, "wipe my booty"! He made it to his potty chair in his room and went poo poo. So, cross our fingers maybe this will help Cruz to know that all poo poo and pee pee needs to go in the potty either day time or night time! That is our potty story to date. I think we are on the upward learning curve of this whole situation. Now I just hope he doesn't revert when the baby comes!! :)