Tidbits

Things about Amari at 4 1/2

We had a couple of different speech and hearing test done over the past year.  His hearing seems totally fine.  We are working on getting him into the local school speech therapy to help him in some of the delays he has been having developing some of his sounds.  I have also been working with him at home and he is getting better; especially as big brother is inclusive with him and engages in imaginative play.  I am so proud of Amari who just has a "go with the flow" attitude.  He doesn't let much get him down.  He loves and owns who he is and I LOVE and envy that about him. He is such an incredibly smart little boy.

Amari is still so obsessed with trucks and cars.  He rarely goes anywhere without a car in his hand.  He talks constantly about "monster truck this" and "monster truck that".  It was so funny because he seemed to hate the Monster truck show we took him to, it was too loud, but he has been obsessed with them since the show.  He is adamant about having a "monster truck birthday party" with a "gi-nourmous" birthday cakes (I love that he says this word all of the time). 

He loves watching You Tube videos on others kids playing with Monster trucks, cars, etc. 

He loves his sweets! He has snuck into the candy jar so many times and has eaten handfuls of candy, and has devoured packs of gum!

He has taken quite a liking for soccer.  When we are at Brothers practices he loves kicking the ball around with me. 

He is becoming so sassy.  He is expressing his independacy—he has to shut his own car door, he closes the bathroom door when going potty (he will also tell you time and again if you ask him and he doesn't have to go, "I don't have to go!" The other night Mike told him to go potty and he yelled "fine! I'll do it!" We Both busted up laughing). 

One of my FAVORITE things about him is he loves coming into my bed in the morning (usually I am the one to sleep in) and snuggling with me for a while.

He fights over who says the prayer! He loves praying that "he can go to a monster truck show" and he prays over his monster trucks, and he also prays for "no hitting" :).  We finally decided it would work out much better if we designated morning prayers to Amari and evening prayers to Beckahm. 

He is still such a comedian in our family.  It doesn't take much to get him going.  He loves being silly and goofy.  And he is just the best at mimicking people.  His laugh lights up the entire room. It is so contagious. 

Lately he has been on this kick saying "you're mean!" Usually he says "Beckahms mean!" It drives me crazy as I try to keep it positive in our house.

He LOVES riding his bike.  He loves pretending he is "Jaxen Storm" from the movie Cars.  

We are going to put him in BMX in the fall to see if he likes it. 

He loves playing with fidget spinners. 

He is such a social butterfly.  He can play on his own and be just fine but when he gets the chance he will run over to a group of kids (especially older boys) and pretend like he is part of the crew.


Amari loves this little jingle he heard on one of his shows: Johnny Johnny? Yes papa; eating sugar? No papa, telling lies? No papa; open your mouth, hahaha. Beckahm will ask Amari the questions and he'll give the answers; it's so cute to watch.

Amari at 4

(Some of this is repetitive because I just found it on my phone)



We just celebrated Amari's 4th birthday.  He wanted to celebrate his birthday with his closest friends, Josiah, Braelyn and Khilyn at Chuck E Cheese (he LOVES Chuck E).

He is all about hot wheels and Transformers.  He has watched this hot wheels show a thousand times.  And he has just about every transformer there is.  He is still so obsessed with cars, he will play with them all day.

Right now he is in the imagination stage, so he will play make believe with his transformers.  He is pretty good at occupying himself but he is still really busy so its hard to keep his attention for a really long time.

He is starting to get to that stage of making more friends and loves being around friends.  He tries keeping up with Becks and the older neighborhood kids.

He loves riding his bike

He is the biggest comedian; he loves laughing and he loves being silly.

He LOVES running around naked; every chance he gets he will take off his clothes and run around the house completely naked.  Once I was napping and he was walking outside completely naked.  An old lady came into my house yelling "excuse me"'.  I was half asleep, came out of my room and there she was laughing and holding onto his hand, telling me he was out in the middle of the road naked (I about died).

He is a climber, he is always climbing on the kitchen counters, turning on the water and playing in the  water.

He has just started to love playing chase.  He will say "try n get me"

I love when he says "whoosh (while wiping his forehead), that was a close one"

He takes forever to fall asleep, he fights it like nobody's business.

He is still doing in exercises for his brain development that Jared gave us, he hates doing them.  He had his audiology testing done for a scar that Jared saw on his right ear drum.  He passed the test just fine.

He loves swinging on the swings at the park.

He is still a daddy's boy.

Lately he has been waking up multiple times at night, comes into our room and tries to sleep with us (we have an extra bed by our bed that he crawls into).  I think it's just become a habit like it was with Beckham for a year.

He loves playing in our car

He is still such a foodie, hungry all the time

His speech has gotten better; but he definitely has a language all of his own.

He tried Karate with Beckahm and I was impressed at how well he did for not knowing anything.  He started feeling a bit overwhelmed and the instructor allowed him to leave.  I was so proud of him for trying.  He is so awesome at trying new things.  He's such a brave kid.

Amari was drifting off to sleep the night before his birthday and he was looking up at his ceiling with this longing gaze and glimmer in his eyes. His lips were smiling....I had a feeling come over me that he was seeing something. When he was really little he would do the same thing before bed every night, his eyes would dance, looking at the ceiling as if someone was talking to him or he was seeing something. 

I could'nt help but wonder and hope that he was remembering life before he came into this world 4 years ago--Remembering the important choice he made to come here and 

Amari loves music. He loves singing and he loves dancing. He is so good at mimicking others 

Right now he's obsessed with hot wheels and transformers. He will spend hours playing make believe with his hot wheels and transformers. 

He loves watching the hot wheels movies. 

He has been so grown up and so sweet to his friends brea and Khi. He has been so nice sharing his toys and playing with them.

He has been waking up multiple times a night and coming into our room to sleep and then waking up again to come climb in bed with me. 

Amari takes such a long time to put to bed. You'll see his eyes get droopy and he is so tired but he will shuffle his feet, raise his eye brows to try and get his eyes to stay open longer....lay there and Cheese it at me, it's so comedic to watch. 

Amari has been so in love with his bumblebee costume, he has to sleep in it and wear it all day long. Today after church he said "let go home, take shirt off, put bumblebee on." 

He's a sunbeam now and he doesn't really enjoy going to his classes :) 

Today the primary kids sand "I love to see the Temple" in sacrament, Amari ran right up there with beck--no reservations—and sister Morris held him and he belted out the song—singing his little heart out :) and waving to me the entire time. Everyone was laughing, it was adorable. 

Amari has been such a helper, he is getting better at cleaning up, he will help take the trash out, and today after church he loves helping me make all of these raw treats for the week (he's such a good taste tester). 

The boys have their moments, that's for sure, but there been getting along better. They love to wrestle each other.

Things about Amari 3 years

Amari ari loves to sing bedtime songs with me when I put him to sleep. It's precious to hear him sing I am a Child of God and some of the other children's hymns. 

He officially learned how to ride his bike and swim!! I think he learned most by watching Becks and wanting to keep up with his brother. I'm so proud of him!! He was so proud of himself when he got in the pool and started swimming. He kept shouting, "yeah!!! Nemo!!!" He didn't want to get out, he just swam after Becks the entire time." 

He loves to come in and wake me up in the morning and snuggle with me, I love it!!! 

He always goes to bed with a smile on his face and a little laugh 

He is so good at mimicking. Practically every story you read him, every thing Becks says, he will copy. 

He loves puppets. He gets the biggest kick when I use his "rexy" the Dino he got at the library to read him a story. Say prayers with him, etc.

He loves sticking out his hand and having you shake it and then he says "hi, my name is Amari, I have blue eyes!"  

Anything he sees that has to do with animals he will say "wild kratts . . . I want to hold in my hand."  He wants to hold every animal in his hand :) 

The other day he stuck out his hands and said "woah woah woah woah woah!" with a serious look on his face :). 

He LOVES singing. Right now he loves it when Beck's sings the Bumble Bee song ("I'm bringing home my baby bumble bee"). 

He has really started to stand up to his brother and he will fight back when Beck's gets in his business. 

He has become a little territorial.  When he sees other children entering into his space or about to use his toys he gets in their face and says "no! no! no!"  

Amari has been super whiny and difficult lately. There have been moments I've wanted to cry. But seeing him have a smile on his face all of the time and while putting him to bed tonight and seeing him have perma grin, a feeling came over me that he was meant to come into my life to bring me happiness and remind me not to take life so seriously. I just sat there and started smiling back at him and his whole demeanor changed like "what is she doing", he started copying all of my facial expressions and broke out into giggles. He loves laughing and making others laugh. 

He has had this no clothes obsession lately, you'll just find him stripping down and running naked throughout the house. He just wants to be free. 

He has been improving on his communication lately, every day (twice a day) we do the exercises we learned from jared. It is helping him develop more of his right brain. When we got him checked by jared we also found out that he has a scar in his right ear so we have to take him to see an audiologist. 

Amari loves it when I do "snug as a bug in a rug with each of his blankets" 

Amari has been obsessed with transformers lately. He will continually say "go to store, get sideswipe, bumblebee". And then he still talks about Eli's birthday party "heatwave, not ours. Eli's birthday..."  Haha every day all day. He cracks me up. 

Amari loves loves transformers, he says "I'm bumblebee you're chase, or I'm Boulder, your heatwave" 

He's getting better at making friends and going to the gym and to nursery, he'll wave an say Bye mom". 

Him and Becks have been playing a lot better together. I found that when I backed off a bit from giving them attention they turned to each other. 

Amari is learning his words better, he now gets excited that he can say "moo--vie", which he says all the time 😂. 

He loves pointing out letters and numbers and trying to say them. He also loves singing the ABC song and pronounces the M, S, and W so well. He also loves singing along with his favorite show tunes like Super Why and paw patrol and he tries mimicking what they are saying. It's so adorable to watch. 

He is so sneaky when it comes to candy, he will try to sneak candy at all costs. The other day I found him in Becks room with the door locked, hiding behind his dresser eating a sucker. When I walked in he had such a guilty look on his face I just laughed. 

When we came back from Cancun he became a little bit more of a mamas boy. He wanted to keep hugging me and following me around where I went. 

Amari has such a funny relationship with jack--he's always pestering him and messing with him laughing like crazy when jack tries to attack him. 

Things About Me: 23 Months

Amari is such a little cuddle bug, he love coming up to me or dad and laying down on us and giving us loves at random times throughout the day. He also loves doing this on certain stuffed animals and books he loves, for example, whenever he gets to read his sound book with Whales that Grandma E sent, he leans into the page and kisses the whale.


Just in the past week he has started to get better at communicating and showing signs of really understanding what you are saying.  He uses his sign language for "more" and "all done" really well, and he has started to say more words: yellow, hippo, whale, purple, oil, and some more.

He learned how to hold his nose and say "ewe" when he has a stinky diaper :)

He LOVES the TV show Maters Car Toons; I think he has watched it about 60 times.  He also loves Postman Pat, and Animal Mechanics. He has actually become quite addicted to watching shows (he points to the DVD player in the car every time we get in and shakes his head no and says "no" because he knows that I won't let them watch a show unless we are going a long distance but he still tries asking me :)

He still has the hardest time listening; he has his own agenda and he pretty much sticks to it (it is especially frustrating when it comes to trying to get out the door).

For the past month he has seemed really lethargic; even after waking up from naps or bed time he just wants to lay down on the floor with this blanket.

He loves water; he will try and play in any body of water he can (lately he has loved playing with his trucks in the bathroom sink after I have filled it up with water for him).

When he is trying to decide something or doesn't know what to do he will tap his lips and say "hmmm?" It is so adorable; absolutely one of my favorite things.

He is so content playing on his own for the most part; he doesn't seem to require a ton of attention and he doesn't seem to be a conformist whatsoever—he sticks to doing what he wants to do and doesn't seem to care what others are doing. He is however a super busy boy and likes to move from one thing to the next.  He also gets restless easy so if we are not out the door by 8:30 or so he starts whining.

He loves wrestling and playing chase (I run around the house with the boys and night and chase them, saying "I am going to pinch your bum" and they squeal with delight :).

He is a machine when it comes to eating; it seems I can't go more than 2 hours, some times even an hour and a half without him wanting food.  He would much rather eat food than be immersed in play of any sort.

He still enjoys watching sports.

He still loves male figures; we were at the library for story time and the room was filled with dads, and only one dad and he went straight up to the dad and stood in front of him smiling, wanting attention.

He loves Whales; if I get a book about sea animals he will turn to the Whale page and look at it for 20 minutes.

Whenever we are playing outside he will randomly leave whatever we are doing and go touch and look at cars parked in our parking lot; he is obsessed with vehicles.

He is a little ladies man; the other day we were at the gym and one of my friends and her friends came to talk to us and they started flirting with Amari and he just stood there smiling at them, raising his brows, and being attentive to what they were saying—he'd go give them high five and pound it when they asked...it was so cute.

He seems to be doing totally fine without his brother in nursery; in fact he has been better in general at adapting to nursery each Sunday.

Him and Becks have their moments but they pretty much keep to themselves.  He can't stand it when Beckahm gets up in his business and is bossy or takes things from him.  He holds his own most often by pushing him back or just leaving the situation.  Some times I am amazed at how patient and unbothered he can be with his older brother.  My heart still longs for the day that they will be best buddies.

He LOVES to be thrown on the bed in a blanket by me and Mike.  In fact this is both the boys favorite thing and we do it every Sunday.

He loves looking at planes or helicopters in the sky.

Right now he loves pushing buttons and opening doors.