8 months old and already thinks he can drive

Keith is now eight months old and doing really well.  He is still 21 lbs though and I'm not sure if I should worry.  He is now 28 1/2 inches long, as far as I could tell.  He does have a doctors appointment next month, so I guess we'll find out if his lack of growth is something to be concerned about.  He now has five teeth, with more on the way from the looks of it.  There are three on the bottom and two on the top and strangely all on the right side with the exception of one of his bottom teeth.

He's been rolling over a little more and flopping onto his belly from a sitting position more.  He even tries to push back onto his knees, but only manages to push himself backwards.  He does, however, scoot around when he's on his back and can make his way around the room that way.

He's still gibbering.  He has started the screaming thing though.  That's annoying.  I think he picked it up from Kaitlyn.  He'll just scream for no reason sometimes.  Drives me nuts, especially since he doesn't understand that he shouldn't do it.  I really have no way of explaining it to him either.

He also still laughs at his sister.  It always makes me wonder what he's thinking when he does it, because she'll just be doing something completely normal, not funny to anyone else who may be in the room, but to him it is hilarious.  I guess it's a sibling thing.  Sis and I used to laugh at each other over the littlest things, even something as small as looking at one another and not even in a silly way.  Oh, to be a kid again.  He even laughs if she laughs.  He doesn't even know why, all he knows is she's laughing so something must be funny.

We did have to get him a new seat, because he has outgrown the old one.  Actually we bought Kaitlyn a new seat and Keith is now using hers.  Her old seat could be turned around to face backwards, since Keith isn't a year old yet and shouldn't be facing forward yet.  Kaitlyn now has a seat that just uses the vehicle seatbelt to keep her in it.  She really likes having a new seat. 

Kaitlyn and I went and checked out a preschool the other day.  It was fun, she got to paint and listen to stories.  We went on a great day, because it was one of the girls' birthday and they had cupcakes at snack time.  With milk.  The teacher did comment on how tall Kaitlyn was for not even being three yet.  She was close to being as tall as most of the kids in the class.  She was maybe an inch or two shorter.  I think Kaitlyn would have been a little more involved if I hadn't been there, but I wanted to see what she may be doing.  I was a little surprised that they weren't doing more things in preperation for kindergarten, like shapes, colors, numbers, letters, etc.  Granted Kaitlyn has all of those down.  I am going to start on letter recognition with her.  We are going to sit-in on at least one other preschool maybe a couple.  There aren't very many just preschools in the area.  Most of them are tied in with a daycare and so they want to have the kids all day, five days a week.  Not really what I was looking for.  We'll see how things go.

Kaitlyn was also happy to have me finish her paper dolls that I cut out using the cricut a couple of months ago and was waiting on laminate to finish.  Found some self-sticking laminate and finally finished the dolls.  I wanted to laminate them so they would be a little more sturdy.  I'm glad I did, because Keith has even grabbed them a couple of times and no beheadings or distruction. 

I have some other projects in mind, like a game based on Candy Land, but using the alphabet or maybe numbers, to teach Kaitlyn letter recognition; doing something with a calendar to learn when she goes to school or the doctor, learning days of the week and months.  I'm not sure how I'm going to do these things, but if anyone has suggestions, they would be much appreciated. 

I also have so much to do in the yard/garden that I don't know where to begin.  We also haven't been having warm enough weather or calm enough weather to want to go out and dig in the dirt.  I can't wait till it's consistently warm.  The good news is all of the trees seem to be coming back after being newly planted last year, the chives are growing rapidly as are the tulips, and some of the roses have leaves on them already, the one rose that took half the summer before it finally started to grow again is coming back first this year.  It just goes to show that Mother Nature will always keep you guessing.

Happy Easter!!!

I should say hope everyone had a safe and happy Easter! We had a very busy Easter weekend. On Saturday we started with Skippyjon Jones story time at Hastings. Kaitlyn and I went, Daddy and Keith stayed home. Daddy's not really into running around and doing stuff like this, so Keith stayed home too since he's really too little to enjoy it yet. At story time we listened to two Skippy stories and Kaitlyn got to color a mask. We also had snacks and juice.

After that was done we stopped at Payless to get Kaitlyn some white dress shoes to go with her Easter dress. We didn't have any white ones, because they don't sell white dress shoes during the winter months. Whatever. I was afraid we were going to miss the Rec Center Egg Hunt, because we come out of the store and there was a little fender bender right behind where I was parked. Fortunately, when I asked them if they could move they were nice enough to get out of the way.

We made it in time to the Egg Hunt to stand in line with Grama and Hannah for a little bit.  The Egg Hunt was supposed to be outside at the soccer fields, but we received about 4 inches of snow a couple days before, so it was inside at the old rec center.  Lots of people packed into the gym like sardines waiting and staring at candy and plastic eggs strewn all over the floor.  Then the mayhem began.  Lots of small children running around trying to pick up all the candy and eggs they came across.  The parents were also following behind telling the kids to pick up what they see.  Kaitlyn wasn't too sure as to what was going on, but Hannah went after it.  They both seemed to get about the same amount of candy though.  And after maybe a minute, the locust like scavenge ended about as quickly as it began.  It is absolute insanity.  I figure it gets Kaitlyn out of the house and doing something, so in the end it must be worth it. 

Well, after the egg hunt and after getting out of the parking lot Kaitlyn and I went to lunch with Grama, Hannah, Chelsey, and Carissa.  We ate at the Main Bagel, or I should say everyone but Kaitlyn ate.  She wasn't really eating the bagel pizza that she and Hannah were sharing.  She loved the Italian cream soda and chips. 

Went home for about two hours, give-or-take, then we had to get ready to go to Jackson's, Kaitlyn's second cousin, baptism.  It was a nice ceremony with lots of friends and family.  Jackson was really excited to be baptised.  We got to visit with some of the Jackson side that we don't get to see very often. 

Then we came home and "relaxed".  I say "relaxed" because everyone but me got to relax.  I made Jell-o salad and carrot cake so it would be ready for Easter lunch.  Kaitlyn also dyed Easter eggs.  She had fun drawing on them so that a pretty design would stay on them after dying.  Jordan helped, I think he does it so there isn't a huge mess everywhere. 

Sunday morning, Easter morning, Kaitlyn got up and looked at her Easter basket and Keith's as well.  She really liked what Keith got and still has a hard time not playing with it.  Then she found all the eggs that the Easter bunny hid.  Jordan made breakfast, thankfully.

I got up and made a new carrot cake because the first one was texturally wrong.  I thought I would make things easier on myself and use a spice cake mix and add carrots.  Yeah, that didn't work.  Not sure why.  I even decreased some of the liquid to off set the moisture in the carrots.  Oh, well.  The new cake was made from scratch and turned out just fine.  I was decorating it to look like a bunny up until we had to leave so unfortunately I didn't get a picture.  I forgot to grab the camera and basket before we went over to Grama and Papa's.  Oops! 

We made it over to Grama and Papa's with time to spare.  We ate a lot of food, good food mind you, but a lot.  The kids had their egg hunt and the Easter bunny brought them some things there as well.  After the egg hunt we celebrated Papa and Quintin's birthday's.  Papa's was on Easter and Quintin's is today.  Happy Birthday "Q"!! 

Finally we got home and relaxed.  It was a crazy and hectic weekend. 

Snow fun in Spring

Well, while Miss Hayley is getting to look at daffodils we here in the frozen tundra have received several inches of snow. Fortunately, right now the sun is shining and even though it's barely above freezing at 36 degrees, it's not too bad. I had the job of shoveling the driveway and there was a drift of about 1 foot across the driveway, to add to the grueling job it was also a pretty heavy wet snow. It's good exercise though, right? I guess I shouldn't complain since it's the only exercise I'm getting until the replacement parts come in for the Total Gym.

Anyway, Kaitlyn came out and "helped" shovel snow. I even put her snow pants on her. At first she didn't know what it meant to have snow pants on. I looked over and she was playing like she didn't have them on: being careful not to get snow on her pants or sit/fall into the snow. So I told her that the pants she had on meant she could sit in the snow. Well, that changed everthing. The next thing I know she's rolling in the snow. She really liked the snow pants.