Milestones

Kaia is getting stronger and bigger every day.  She can hold her head up really well now and a couple weeks ago she flipped for the first time. It seems like she'll be sitting on her own in no time.  She's starting to grab onto her toys and sometimes she successfully gets them into her mouth.  She coos, squeals and recently began working her vocal chords with a loud noise that sounds like the cross between a scream and a grunt.  McKenzie does not like it when Kaia makes this new noise. She tells Kaia, "no make that noise Kaia.  No make that noise. Scary."  

5 Happy Things

Singing McKenzie sings.  She's not good at it (she gets that from me), but she sure does enjoy it.

A Smiling Baby Kaia is the smiliest baby I've ever met.  With the exception of the photographer at JCPenney, she smiles for everyone.

The Letter Y Doesn't everything sound more fun when you add a y to the end of it?  McKenzie thinks so.  She has transformed many words in her vocabulary to be  "y" words.  She wants to play in the other "roomy," stand on her special "stooly," and change her baby's "daipy."  It's pretty silly.

Play-Doh It's impossible not to love Play-Doh.  McKenzie spends hours every week molding multiple colors of play doh into various foods and creatures (although everything she makes looks pretty much the same). Her two-year-old, uncoordinated hands have difficultly making exactly what she wants.  This, combined with her Type A personality and drive for perfection, makes creative projects somewhat frustrating.  While she likes playing with Play Doh, she much prefers telling Mommy or Daddy what to mold for her.  Dustin is always asked to make more "ballies" while I'm the designated cake maker.

This pic is from April when warm pjs were still a necessity. 

Fists/Thumbs/Fingers Kaia progressed quickly from sucking on her entire fist to suckling on her itty bitty thumb.  We thought she was a happy thumb-sucker but in the past couple days she has taken to sucking her middle and ring fingers.  She still doesn't want a paci and won't take a bottle, but her hands are oh so tasty.

This is serious business.

Holy Crap

Dustin and I talk about poop.  A lot.  It's one of the wonders of parenthood.  Just a few years ago I couldn't imagine bowel movements being a topic of conversation at the dinner table.  Now, with a newborn and a potty-training toddler, poop is just always on my mind.  Crazy, I know.

McKenzie has been diaper-free (except for bedtime) for a couple weeks now and she's had just three accidents, all nap related.  Unfortunately, our once "regular" little one is now a once-every-few days little one.  There is a lot of build up (pardon the pun) to the moment when she finally goes on the potty.  On that third day, when she REALLY has to go, we spend the entire day convincing her it's time.  She knows it's time, of course, but for some reason she insists on doing everything she can think of other than going poop on the potty.  She will ask to eat something, then take one bite and run back to the potty only to declare, "no wanna go potty now."  Then she'll ask to do puzzles.  One piece in and she's running to the potty again, sitting down, and again declaring, "me no want to."  We do this for hours.  Hours!  She gets very moody and starts to act out.  Throwing things, squeezing people (her alternative to hitting), and melting down at the mention of the word "no."  Finally, usually just before bed on that third day, she will go.  We'll celebrate.  Dancing, ice cream, the works.  She goes back to being sweet, loving McKenzie. The next morning the cycle begins again. 

Sigh.  

I know that soon enough she'll be going to the bathroom and it won't be a production, just a pit stop.  Right now, however, I will continue to celebrate every excretion like it's a gold medal winning performance.  I'm also going to stock up on prunes.  Lots and lots of prunes.

Video Quality

I was getting frustrated with the poor video quality of my previous uploads.  The video looks so much better when I embed it from YouTube, but then you have to see all the advertisements after it plays.  Is there a way around this?  Does anyone know Blogger and how I can get my videos to upload with the best quality, minus the annoying ads from YouTube?

P.S. I'm trying to personalize the blog template/background a little more...pardon the appearance (which may change a lot in the coming weeks as I figure this out). Any ideas for an updated blog name?

Kaia's Milin'

Kaia Busts a Move (My Moves are Busted)

We enjoyed a perfect family vacation at Newfound Lake in NH last week. One night we all went out to see some live music in town.  The band was set up at the back of a pavilion and there were lots of kids dancing in front of the band.  Kenzie and Lily wanted to dance but were too scared.  Instead, we played on the adjacent playground for a bit.  When we tired of the playground LeighAnn and I convinced the girls to go dance.  All the other kids had left and we had the dance floor to ourselves.  Shortly after we began dancing Dustin appeared with Kaia and waved me over to him.  I ran over, assuming that Kaia must need something, and he informed me that just before we got up there to dance the band had made announcement that they didn't want anyone to dance there for fear that someone might trip over the wires to the band's equipment.  I guess all those people sitting up front weren't smiling at us because of our awesome dance moves.  Oops!

We decided we'd better hide in the back of the crowd for the rest of the night, but that didn't stop us from getting our groove on.  Even Kaia got down.

A Garden is Born

For years Dustin and I have talked about how nice it would be to have our own vegetable garden, but I've never been willing to put in the time to make it happen.  Truth be told, I have a black thumb.  I can kill a spider plant.  Seriously.  So, I knew that if I was going to try to start a garden I would have to learn all about soil, and seeds and watering and harvesting.  Frankly, I don't feel like putting in the effort.

Dustin, on the other hand, has decided to make it happen.  He has spent the past two months planting seeds, preparing a garden plot, making a trellis and reading all about proper plant care.  I told him he should start small, since this is our first ever attempt at this.  He agreed, then quickly got carried away.  For a couple weeks every time he went out to the store he came home with a new seed packet and some more potting soil.  Once our kitchen table was filled with little seedlings he agreed to stop planting new plants and to focus on the ones he had already started.  

He's planted cucumbers, summer squash, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, lettuce, basil and parsley. As always, Dustin doesn't do anything halfheartedly .  The garden is beautiful and each plant is perfectly aligned with the next.

Of course, he didn't do all this work alone.  He had a couple little helpers.