Memorial Day Weekend and Moustaches

We had a great memorial day weekend. We visited my parents and celebrated my niece's birthday (which is coming up June 2) and my birthday (June 4). My mom and I went to Chick-Fil-A EVERY day...except Sunday of course! We went to parks, bookstores, Kohl's, lots of fun places.

My parents had a little pool set up on their covered back deck which Kaelyn had a blast in. Mostly she would stick her hand in it and let it run down her arm when she brought it back out and shot it into the air. We put some floating toys in there, though, and a couple of times she crawled into the water to get to them. This led to taking all of her clothes and even her diaper off when she played in the pool because why not, they were all getting soaked anyways! I had her swimsuit with us but we didn't bother with that.

Sean got to golf three times so he's a happy camper! And we met his brother at a dirt race track and they ran their remote control cars around for a bit too. We also got to go see his brother and wife's new house which looks really nice.

Sounds like we did a lot over the weekend, huh! Not as much as my dad. He showed up one morning with NO moustache! You don't know how weird that is. He grew his moustache when he was in COLLEGE! He shaved it ONE other time a few years back on a dare from my mom. But none of us got to see it in person, just my mom. So I guess we harrassed him enough that he decided to do it again. It's SO white under where the hair was! It looks really weird. I just kept looking and looking. The eyebrows made me sure he was still my dad! :) You can see the picture of him when Kaelyn was little and the post-shaving picture!

Kaelyn was doing some pretty cute things over the weekend. She was addicted to my parents baby swing. Today she was in that swing for two hours straight! Every time she wanted to go outside I'd take her out. We'd start on the front porch blowing bubbles but pretty soon she'd be tootling around to the back of the house. She'd stand by the swing and just look up at it like, okay I'm ready, put me in! She spent many a hours in that swing this weekend!

My parents mowed the first night we were there. Kaelyn always enjoys that. I was sitting in a wooden swing on the side of the house and she'd swing me back and forth a bit. Then walk a few steps away and spin in circles for awhile before falling to the ground. She'd move her head around in crazy ways like she was dizzy. I call that her crazy head thing. She does it at other times as well. Sometimes I just have to say "crazy head girl" and she'll start whipping it around. It's way cute.

Sean taught Kaelyn to "give me five" last week and she loves doing that. She also likes touching one of her fingers to someone else's fingers. My dad was calling this "give me one." I call it ET phone home! :)

Kaelyn made out well in shoes this weekend too. I got her a pair of tennis shoes and sandals and then my sister brought over a bunch of shoes from my niece from when she was little.

I got great presents for my birthday! A clock for the playroom, some shorts and shirts, a pedometer (because I'm always wondering how far we walk at the zoo!) some baking sheets because I always ruin ours fast, a flower rug for the front porch so we can put away the snowman one, and, my dad says my gift was also his shaving his moustache off! The most shocking of all!

My mom will be here for a couple of days this week and then my parents will be cruising in Alaska for two weeks. So Kaelyn and I will be on our own for TWO whole weeks. Hope she doesn't get tired of me! :)

Happy Memorial day weekend to everyone! I hope you had a great time with your family and friends.

Awesome baby

Kaelyn has been being a pretty awesome baby lately. Maybe she's not really a baby anymore. She's over one and has been walking for MONTHS now. She's a big girl! Just ask her! :)

Sean just taught her a pretty cute thing the other day. He'll say give me five! And she'll raise her hair and wait for him to slap it. Then she just grins like a fool. He's always teaching her cute things! And she loves it!

On her own, she has started randomly spinning in circles. She'll go around once or even several times. Then stumble around trying to get her balance back from being dizzy.

She also likes to imitate something we do after we take a big drink. You know when you're really thirsty you take a drink and say AHHHH. Well, so does Kaelyn! She'll take a drink, grin, and say Ah! Sometimes she does it WITHOUT a drink for no particular reason. The other day she was in her swing and I was singing "if you're happy and you know it" and she was saying ah ah ah, all quiet and whispery.

Sleeping is going pretty well lately (knock on wood). She's pretty much been sleeping through the night. Though she does wake up around 4 or 5am everyday and either yell for a second or roll around. In fact, I normally get up around 5 because she's SO full of motion I can't get back to sleep after the initial yell. Oh well, gives me time to run and write and email or whatever! And her naps are going much better as well. We read her books and rock for a minute and she doesn't usually complain TOO much when I put her in her bed. Lately it's more common for her to make lots of spitty mouth noises at naptime instead of cry. Hey, as long as she's happy! It must be her way of putting herself to sleep. Whatever works!

Next, with Kaelyn, I want to work on getting her to eat REAL people food. Solid, normal things, not just baby food. She seems to be like me, on the extreme side of picky. She's very particular and won't even TASTE most things. If I ever succeed in getting something into her mouth, it immediately comes right back out before she even gets a chance to taste it. I'm contemplating being mean and not giving her baby food anymore. Hoping if she's truly hungry and has no back up, she'll start eating the normal stuff. I hope the idea doesn't take her long. I don't ever want to feel like meals are a struggle. We'll see how it goes!

If I can get that established pretty well I also want to get her out of the duck tub at bathtime. I've tried her in the regular bath tub on several occasions now only to met with HUGE screams. We're talking, she gets SO mad and upset she shakes! But the duck tub is getting smaller...or is Kaelyn getting bigger? And she'll need to transition soon! Plus it's a pain to drag around with us everywhere.

Also, we will eventually need to stop the nighttime nursing routine. No hurry, really, but I would like to be done in the next few months. I don't want her to be old enough to ask for it or to remember it. Though I guess technically she's been asking for it for her whole life, huh! :) That will be a tough thing to change, I'm sure, but eventually we'll have to!

All in all, right now Kaelyn is just being an awesome baby. She's been a ton of fun and a really good girl lately. I hope she keeps it up! Things much be lining up well for her right now. All it takes is a tooth coming in or something to throw it off and the "goodness" could be gone pretty fast! I'm sure she'll have her crabby days but I'll hold on to these good days as long as I can!

Zoo-various

Kaelyn is now 13 months old! Wow, she made it over a year and is thriving. Her hair is getting SO long! I almost need to do something with it soon but she doesn't like me to mess with it too much.

As you may have noticed, we love the zoo. As of yesterday we've been there 17 times this season. We started going regularly late in March. We've gotten GREAT use out of our membership! We go alone a lot but lately we've gone with lots of others too.

We regularly go with my friend Andrea and her son Logan who just turned 2. Those trips are fun because I get to see the zoo through an older kids' eyes too. Logan and Kaelyn seem to enjoy the bear area lately. They can run up and down the ramp and Kaelyn can do the stairs. I don't think either of them care about the bears as much as those things!

Last week Sean's mom came up and we took her to the zoo. We saw all the regular things and had lunch with the zebras. But Kaelyn discovered all the little rocks under the shelter on that visit. She had GREAT fun piling them from the ground onto the picnic table bench seats. I'm sure maintenance came through later and was like, why are all the rocks on the benches and not on the ground anymore?! At least she wasn't throwing them!

Yesterday my mom and sister and her kids came up for a zoo trip. My nephew, who is 4, started saying he wanted to go home BEFORE lunchtime. He was extra tired. My niece was hot for much of the day. But it was a fun trip. I think Kaelyn walked almost as much as they did! She was a real trooper. She never complained all day long, she was the BEST! The budgie birds were out and all three kids spent a long time in there playing. Kaelyn mostly wanted to put her shoes in the waterfall. They were still kind of muddy from camping but after that they were just soggy!

We sure love the zoo. I hope it doesn't get too overly busy and/or hot this summer so we can continue to enjoy it. It's something to do, it's outside, it's great exercise, Kaelyn and I both love to explore the area. We'll see who else we can visit the zoo with. Otherwise we're happy going alone or with the people we've already been with!

First Camping Trip

We took Kaelyn camping for the first time this weekend. We got a camper when she was really little, back in August. But we had yet to really use it. Sean and I used to enjoy camping quite a bit before Kaelyn arrived. We had a travel trailer we took on a couple of trips and used quite a bit around here camping on weekends. It burned up in a fire and since then we had been camperless. We have a trip to Colorado planned for July and we want to camp during that trip. We decided we'd better try the camper out and hope for the best! I think we were both concerned that we'd get no sleep. That was a valid concern with this kid!

We wanted to go to a nearby state park because
there's lots to do and it's not far away. Kaelyn and I went there during her afternoon nap on Friday to get a spot reserved and Sean came down after work. Kaelyn and I played around in the administration building for awhile. She had a good time running around. Then we went to the playground where we found some swings and that kept her happy as well. After Sean got there he got the camper set up and we grilled our supper. Kaelyn had a GREAT time exploring. She was just walking here and there and everywhere. Most of the time she'd hold on to my finger since we were in a new place, but she never slowed down! She was just trundling all over
the place!


When we finally went into the camper for the night she enjoyed doing laps in there. Back and forth, back and forth. I was starting to wonder if she'd ever get tired. But when the time came, I nursed her and threw her in the bed we made for her. She went "wah!" once and that was that. She fell asleep, butt in the air. She did scream a little on and off from 4:30-5:15. Sean had to pat her a little bit. But then she slept till 7am. Success! We all managed to sleep pretty decently! Sean and I were both pretty amazed. It went much better than we thought.

Unfortunately, Kaelyn did not enjoy her morning bath.

I figured that would be the case since we didn't have the duck bath tub. She just freaks out in a normal tub. She'll need to get used to it soon because she's outgrowing the blow up duck tub! But after that incident she was happy again. We played at the playground for awhile then went for a long walk so she could nap. She actually fell asleep half an hour earlier than I thought! All that exploring and "roughing it" wore her out, I guess! Sean and I were able to explore the campgrounds a little while Kaelyn snozed. It's a really nice place.

After that we grilled some lunch and explored a bit more.
I'm still amazed by how much Kaelyn walked around while we were there! We drove up to the lodge and another little building and by that time we needed to get packed up for the 2pm check out time. Sean took the camper to dump water etc and Kaelyn and I returned to the playground to swing until naptime. We drove home startging at 2:30 and she took her nap. We spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking at home. Sean and I agreed, camping was hard work for us! Even just one night! We had to take SO much and do SO much planning. But it was worth it. We had a lot of fun. And now the trip to Colorado doesn't make me quite as nervous! At least we know Kaelyn will sleep overnight so there's hope that the trip will go well! We now just have to hope that she does okay on such a long drive. I'm definitely dreading that part and hoping for a pleasant surprise.

We're thinking of going camping again in a few weeks for my birthday weekend. We'll probably see what the weather's going to do or if anything else comes up in the meantime. But I'm glad it went well and we actually had fun. It had potential to be a disaster! I'm glad Kaelyn seemed to really enjoy something Sean and I have always liked. She seems to be fitting in okay! :)

Children's Museum

Yesterday was way rainy. Rain rain rain. That's what the WHOLE day was about. Kaelyn and I were alone all week. My grandpa was staying with my parents for the week AND they were going to go to my cousin's graduation ceremony so my mom didn't come for her normal weekly visit. So Kaelyn and I knew we just HAD to find something to do. So we decided to visit the children's museum. We'd been once before when Kaelyn was REALLY little and I thought now that she was bigger she might enjoy it more.

I was worried that it would be a little busy, being a rainy day and all. I was right. It was rather busy. Everyone else had the same idea. A rainy day, let's get out of the house and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING! So the busyness of the place wasn't pleasant. Lots of kids older than Kaelyn running around, not really paying attention to there being a baby nearby running around. But for the most part it wasn't too bad.

First, Kaelyn enjoyed running the stairs in the playhouse. I thought for awhile that we might be stuck there the whole time. Of course, we come to the museum for something different to do, and she just wants to go up and down the stairs!! Then she discovered the little foam pit at the bottom of the stairs and she liked to step on that repeatedly. After that got mobbed by other kids I moved her to the wiggle room. That's the "under 2" room where you have to take your shoes off and crawl around and play. There were lots of little toys to play with. Kaelyn liked these little plastic pieces with holes in the bottom that you can put together and take apart.

Once she got bored of that we went to the big room with lots of colored balls that you put in various tubes and they blow around. Mostly Kaelyn just wanted to grab a ball and toss it, but I had fun putting them in the tubes! Bigger kids were pretty rowdy in that room. Kaelyn was twisting a wheel at one point and another kid just grabbed it and started twisting it RIGHT in front of her. Good thing she's too little to care, but I was like HEY! :)

Then we found a car/train thing that you could crawl through and push buttons. It seemed like we'd done a lot and it had only been an hour! We went to the family room and had our lunch. Kaelyn was starved. She ate every bite of everything I took. I wished I had taken more just in case! Then we went back to the playing. We pretty much rotated around the same things we had done already. We went to the grocery store section, she LOVED that. Lots of little plastic fruits that she could toss. Some even had holes! And bags of rice that felt funny and sounded funny when you threw them on the ground from their shelves!

And the water area, we looked at that for a little bit. There were LOTS of rubber ducks! One of which Kaelyn brought home, oops! I'm so used to seeing her carry around a rubber duck I didn't even think that the one she had was from the museum and not from home. Until we got home and I found hers on the floor of the car! What do you do. We'll have to take it back next time we go!

I overheard another mom saying the museum was MUCH less busy in the fall and winter so we'll have to go back then. That'll be much more fun. Kaelyn wasn't as animated around all of the kids and I was more nervous about letting her go very far, I stuck pretty close to her!

We were there for two house including lunch and I feel like we played with a lot! We might want to get a membership sometime because I don't really know if it's worth $7 to get in for the amount of time we play. But if it's really less busy this winter, we'll want somewhere to go and something to do to get out, so it might be a good thing to do then.

Today? Back to the zoo! :) It'll be nice again so we're headed back to our standby! And this weekend we're going to test out camping and see how that goes. I hope Kaelyn sleeps well with Sean and I sleeping RIGHT there! We'll have to get it figured out because we're going to Colorado Springs for a whole week in July!

Day at the Spa

Kaelyn had a tired day today. She would let out little sudden cries, just one single squawk, from 3:30am on. I finally got up at 6 and of course she went silent. She started in at 6:20 again so I got her up. She seemed REALLY unready to get up but she certainly wasn't getting restful sleep and neither was I! Poor thing. What do you do!

But the good part of the day was I spent some of it at a spa!!! First time for everything right? Sean gave me a gift certificate for our anniversary and I told him the other part of the present had to be time to USE it and that time came today! After church Sean and Kaelyn had quality time and I headed to the spa!

The package Sean gave me included three things. First was the massage. Half an hour. I could lay there all day. They must have known I didn't know what I was doing. They had to give me instructions a couple of times. Sorry, I'm new at this pampering thing! The massage was nice but the lady could have rubbed harder, really. She said once, if she was rubbing too hard to say. I should have said, no, rub harder!! But still, it was nice!

Next was the mini facial. They did a facial massage and slathered a bunch of goop on and washed it off and slathered more on. Those are technical terms. My face IS really soft now but I don't really have any skin problems so I don't know that it's something I would do again.

After that, what I REALLY needed...a pedicure. Hope this picture doesn't scare you! I should have done before and after pictures. That'd REALLY be scary! I felt sorry for the girl doing the pedicure. My feet are really not very classy or well kept. But I guess that's the point of a pedicure. I said I wanted the most obnoxious color they had. It's not like I do this everyday...or EVER. So red it was! :)

It was a great day. It was nice to get away and do something on my own. Something I didn't HAVE to do or NEED to do but just wanted to do. I think it's good for Kaelyn too. She was thrilled to see me when she got up from her second nap but she'd obviously had a great time with Sean and kept approaching him to chase her etc all evening long. And I think sometimes she gets tired of ALL me ALL the time! It's good to have a little time apart. Especially this week since my mom won't be coming over like she usually does so we'll have PLENTY of time together!

I told Sean, GREAT gift! Now I know what to ask for next time he needs an idea! It's not something I'd want to do ALL the time because it's just not my thing but it was a really fun thing to do for a special occasion. Wonderful gift idea, Sean, you done good!

Baby Two

Kaelyn turned one a couple of weeks ago and since then I've noticed an increase in people asking us about baby #2. Do we want another? If so, when?! Chill out, that's what I say! ;)

Actually I'm quite undecided on the whole issue. The part of me that thinks Kaelyn should have a sibling has two parts of its own. One part that says it'd be best if they were close in age because then I could get the whole nursing thing out of the way and get back to having some semblance of a life. Rather than wait until Kaelyn is more independent and then get tied down again to a helpless baby. The other part of me says yeah, but if Kaelyn were in school then you'd only have to deal with ONE kid at a time during SOME parts of the day. Then a third part of me comes in and says, ah, one kid is plenty! :)

And that part of me is a large part. Kaelyn is my little buddy. I don't want to split my time with anyone else or take any time away from her. And she STILL isn't the best sleeper in the world, as in she's only slept through the night like 5 times in her life. Those memories and moments that AREN'T even memories yet (as in they're still occurring!) make me think one is enough...I don't want to go through all that again!

My pregnancy was healthy and normal but whoa, that was just no fun. Heartburn, feeling like a beached whale, following my stomach around everywhere, having strangers want to touch my non-existant abs, all things I could have done without. Plus I still haven't 100% recovered from it physically and wonder if I ever will fully be the way I was. Do I really want to do all that again?

So I guess it's up in the air for now. If I had to decide today, I would say Kaelyn is plenty. To some people that ask I say she's such a joy, I could never do any better so why bother trying!? But I reserve the right to change my mind. Maybe even tomorrow. Friends say you start to feel the urge for another kid after the first one settles in and starts sleeping really well. We shall see! IF Kaelyn ever DOES start sleeping well!!!

I am starting to have a little more of a life with her now. Not much, but I've started reading a little during her naps when she has a decent night of sleep and I don't feel like I have to nap as well, things like that. I think back to when she was little and how ALL I ever did was hold her, nurse her, change her, repeat. I still feel that way many many days but at least I occasionally get the option to have my own time. Occasionally! So it's hard to think about going back to having NOTHING of my own, day OR night!! Though a second child could be different, of course. That's what they say. But I would want to plan on a new one being the same or worse just to prepare myself!

So we'll see how things pan out in the years to come. If Kaelyn is it for us, so be it and she's a good one to have if she's the only one! If she's not...may the next one sleep through the night WAY sooner. Like months and MONTHS sooner! :)