and so it begins. kind of.

i know that is time for talan to begin potty training. i'm ready...i'm not sure how ready he is though. hayden was pretty easy to train but i have a feeling talan will be a bit harder. i've been waiting to have a week where i know we won't have any appointments or anything so we can just stay in all week and train. but today, talan mentioned a couple of times that he had to poop on the potty. of course he didn't really have to, but i figured it was a good day to put some underwear on him and see what happened.
he had MANY accidents all day. and when he would pee in his pants he'd say he pooped in his underwear. he did eventually sit on the toilet for a REALLY long time and he ended up pooping! i figured this was a pretty big step seeing as though even when hayden was trained, he'd still wait until nap time to poop when he could poop in his pull up. a little bit later talan then peed on the toilet. at that point he told me that "water came out." and i then explained that was pee.
we had a big party and he got stickers for his sticker chart, candy and he even got to call grandma.
that is it for the day though. he then continued saying he had to go on the potty, but every time he did, he didn't do anything. and when he wouldn't say anything, he'd end up going in his underwear.
i'm hoping in a couple of weeks we'll be doing the potty training boot camp 1 week...and i'm hoping it goes fairly easily!
man i hate potty training!

multitasking

today talan spent the day at grandma's house. he played inside for awhile and then made his way outside where he made us play his version of hopscotch, ran around with trucks, played with chalk and bouncy balls. when it was finally time to go we gave him a sucker as a treat since he had listened and gotten right into the car (i'm a fan of bribery. hey...whatever works).
talan was so tired from having such a busy day and no nap that he fell asleep shortly after we started driving home. he didn't want to give the sucker up though, so he just slept while he continued sucking on it.

talan cash officially turns 3 years old!!!

since we had talan's birthday party yesterday, dave and i were trying to think of something fun to do to celebrate talan's actual 3rd birthday. i went online and started looking up inflatable play places only to find that most of them didn't really have "open play" on a friday nite. then i lucked out and found one that was having a special event where we could go and have the boys jump for 3 hours and get pizza and pop for dinner! we figured it would be the perfect way for talan to spend his 3rd birthday!
dave came home from work a bit early and we all headed over to pump it up. the boys didn't even know where we were going and they were so excited when they walked in and saw the place.
they bounced non-stop from about 5:30-8 when we had to practically drag them out of there! i think it's safe to say they had a great time.
it was weird not having talan's party on his actual birthday, but it was also a bit nice being able to just relax and enjoy the day with him instead of running around trying to clean, make cakes and decorate before people got to the house! it was nice all of that was already done!
happy 3rd birthday, talan cash! hope you had a super extended birthday celebration!!!

3 years

talan cash turned 3 years old today. which means i will be putting the bear to rest now. i may continue to take his picture with it on his birthday every year, but no more every month.
talan continues to be a funny, outgoing, energetic little boy. he learns new words and phrases every day and is doing quite well with his speech. several times, jessica has told us that over the phone he has even sounded a lot like hayden.
if he doesn't "like someone" or want to look at them or talk to them, he tells me it's because "i shy." yeah, right. he's only "shy" in circumstances where he knows he's not necessarily the center of attention!
he still loves music...playing the drums, guitar, harmonica, or singing. really, anything musical he loves. we moved the fireflight cd's into his bedroom and he'll go in there and play on his guitar along with the music. he still has really good taste in music, but it gets annoying when he is constantly telling us what songs he wants to listen to in the car. he somehow thinks he's the dj and he always gets to pick. we, of course, don't always allow it, but i am thankful he doesn't request barney or something like that. it's usually fireflight, kings of leon, pink, the meters, the white stripes, silversun pickups...stuff like that. ya know, what most kids love!
talan still is not even close to being potty trained. hayden was about 3 and 2 months by the time we officially potty trained him, but talan seems to be further behind that hayden was with it. he's never even gone on the toilet at all. he's sat there for long periods of time, but he's never gone. so soon and very soon we'll have to find a week when we know we have no plans and won't be leaving the house and we'll just put the underwear on and see how many accidents we have to clean up before he finally gets it! not looking forward to that week!
talan has become a horrible eater at dinner time. most evenings he doesn't eat at all. he still does typically like lots of fruits and veggies, so if he eats anything at dinner, that would be what he eats...which is good. he usually does eat a fairly good lunch though, but still only really picks in the morning and never really eats a "real" breakfast.
he seems to love sharing a room with hayden and having a bunk bed. the boys have been talking and playing around quite a bit more than the did in the first month or two of sharing, but they still do pretty well. talan now does wake up pretty much at 7 or before that with hayden. but he stays in the room (and i think his bed) until hayden tells him it's 7 and time to come out.
he still loves to make messes and hates cleaning up. when we tell him to clean he'll just sit there saying "i can't do it!" over and over. he also has become quite bad about leaving something somewhere and not being able to find it. he used to be so good about this...guess he's been taking notes from hayden!
talan continues to have a very short attention span, which is why the messes are so huge. he doesn't play with a toy for along before he tosses it aside and heads for the next thing. he likes watching movies and tv, but many times he doesn't even sit through all of a program before getting up and moving on to something else.
he loves being outside. basketball seems to be one of his most favorite things and he's really quite good at it. i have a feeling he'll be outside quite a bit this summer. hopefully learning how to actually peddle on his bike!
i honestly cannot believe how much talan has changed in 3 years. not just in growth but in personality. he is no longer that always happy, calm, easy-going baby. he is a full blown toddler with a huge attitude. he can still be as sweet as can be, but he's typically much more filled with "no's" and yelling and temper tantrums. he's constantly going and has little or no time for just sitting and cuddling with you. sometimes it's hard to remember what a great baby he really was because of how different he is now. he's not bad...he's just so different.
looking back, it seems like so long ago that he was that little baby. but on the other hand, it's so hard to believe that he is 3 years old already. oh how i wish i could stop time for a bit!
we love you so much t-money. you will always be our favorite talan. happy 3rd birthday!!!

there's a party in my tummy!

for the first time ever, i held a birthday party NOT on my child's actual birth date. jenn and don are leaving for vacation tomorrow morning and jessica and justin are headed back out on tour tomorrow evening, so since everyone was actually here today, we decided this would be the best day for talan's 3rd birthday.
i didn't have near the anxiety over it then i thought i would, although i tried all day to let him know that this was just his PARTY and TOMORROW is his actual birthday.
this year we decided to have a yo gabba gabba themed birthday party. i had the cake all planned out and figured it really wouldn't even be that hard, especially considering i just did a fondant birthday cake for hayden the other month. well, this turned out to be the first caketastrophe that i've had. i built them as 3 separate cakes and as it got closer to the party i took them downstairs and stacked them. it was leaning quite a bit and we tried to fix that. when i came back downstairs a bit later, i saw that it was really leaning and the 2 lower layers were totally cracking. so i ran upstairs to grab some plates and figured i'd try to save them and just have them as 3 individual cakes. while i was upstairs, dave yells up "no need to hurry, i just caught brobee's head as it fell." and then it turned into trying to make the cake look somewhat presentable before people arrived.
brobee's head was pretty much a lost cause, so we turned the 2 other cakes around so nobody could see the huge chunks of cake missing, moved the eyes to the "new front" of the cakes and tried refrosting whatever i could to make it look somewhat normal. it didn't turn out too badly considering what had just happened! i had to figure one of these years something horrible would happen to one of the cakes!
talan didn't seem to really mind though and that's what really matters...right?!
we had a full house this year....the entire kellogg side was able to make it which i don't think has ever happened for one of our birthdays. dave's parents, his brother daniel and nephew malcolm also made it. and we also had melanie, ashton and lorelei howard as well as nancy, isaac and 1 week old asher gregg come.
talan got lot's of cool gifts like puzzles, a yo gabba gabba laptop, toy story toys, batman toys, legos, movies, an amp and a microphone with a stand, and tons of other great gifts.
he, of course, LOVED his new microphone and amp...i think all he needs now is a real guitar to complete his rock band set up downstairs.
talan seemed to have a great time at his party and now we're deciding on what fun thing we should do with him for his actual birthday. i have some ideas so we'll see what we can make happen.

the cake before the fall (brobee, plex and muno):

the set up:





the cake after the fall:
brobee's remains after the fall:
hayden showing off the food in his mouth and talan making malcolm eat some chips:
ashton, hayden and rainah at the coloring table:
melanie and lorelei:

present time!:










when talan opened the batcave, hayden jumped up and yelled "i've always wanted this!:

justin helping talan set up his new microphone and amp:



he had to steal someone's iphone so he could sing along to fireflight:
the batcave was a huge hit amongst the party goers:

talan, still singing:

malcolm:
asher and nancy: