It's oh so quiet

We're experiencing quiet time today... not a nap, just quiet time. Miles is refusing to sleep so I told him he had to stay quiet in his room until I tell him he can come out. At school they have to nap/lay quietly for 2 hours, so that's what I'm doing too. We'll see how it goes. I still hear him pitter-pattering around in there, I had been hoping he'd eventually go to sleep. He just came out for a bathroom break, but is back in. 45 minutes to go.

Speaking of bathroom breaks, the "potty fairy" came to visit us this weekend. We didn't need the fairy's help in learning how to potty, but in getting rid of the darn Diego potty. Wayne & I were getting tired of cleaning it out! So the P.F. came and whisked away the potty, leaving in exchange a coupon for ice cream. So the tooth fairy may not be too happy with the P.F., but mommy sure likes the result.

Audrey's napping too, so it appears that I've wasted a golden opportunity with both sleeping, but I can never really nap when they do. She's got a few new tricks, I've been trying to keep track of so I can list them.

.: LOVES pulling my hair. Will grab a fistful on both sides of my head and pull me in for a raspberry. If my hair is in a ponytail, she reaches for the fine (tender) nape of the neck and give s a good tug. OUCH!
.: Can do some tricks with her pacifier - she can pop it back into her mouth when she's holding it. If only she could find it on her own in the middle of the night.
.: Still working on the sitting and rolling over.
.: Has eaten Sweet potatoes, green beans, peas, butternut squash. I made the sweet potatoes, it was really easy! I bake them in foil for about an hour, scrape them out into the blender and add a little water, puree, spoon into ice cube trays and freeze. Then pop them out into a bag to store. When it's time to eat, a few seconds in the microwave is all it took. My next food will be applesauce because our neighbor brought us a huge bag of apples (and tomatoes & peppers) from her garden.

Speaking of neighbors, I'd almost forgotten the weekend fun for me! We had social plans for BOTH nights, even including a babysitter. How unheard of. Friday we hosted the neighborhood yard party and had a great turnout. Several girls were demonstrating their babysitting skills and kept up with the toddlers, playing ring around the rosy and tag. We had no less than 50 people in the yard and everyone seemed excited to continue the events well into fall. And on Saturday we had a sitter so we could celebrate Josh's birthday. We didn't last very long, partially because our sitter had a swim meet at 7 the next morning, but we had a great time getting out for once in a blue moon. Happy birthday Josh!

Happy 6th!?!?!?!

Hard to believe but our sweet nephew is now (officially today) a 6 year old kid. He requires two hands to show his age! We celebrated this weekend out at his PaPa's "farm". There's a creek running behind the house, so the kids spent most of the afternoon splashing around, examining crawdads, snails and even a turtle that couldn't escape fast enough. As part of the party, the kids made sailboats and floated them for a while too.

Miles had fun with his boat until he fell backwards and got soaked. No, the tumble didn't upset him. Instead, he realized that he had an audience and proceeded to do pratfalls for a laugh for the next 20 minutes. What a comedian.





He didn't spend much time here, but he got a huge thrill from "driving" the John Deere tractor and riding the Gator. But he didn't last long, it was HOT.

More pictures from the weekend, click HERE.







And while she couldn't be out splashing in the creek, Audrey held audience up on the porch, getting lots of squeezes from YaYa & B. She's 20 weeks old now and really starting to show off her stuff. She is a definite attention hound (is that a 2nd child trait?) We were in a store last week and she cooed at anyone standing nearby. But the person whose attention she wants the most is Miles. Still just loves giggling at him. And he happily obliges.

Smoothie King

I need to learn that I can't take "natural light" photos in our dining room. They just always have a weird yellowy color, guess it's the paint! But it looks so good in real life!!

Anyway, here's Miles enjoying his dinner smoothie last night. Sitting in my lap, which is a BIG thing lately, especially when I've fed Audrey. She's down on the floor in the bouncy seat during this dinner. And yes, all he had for dinner was a smoothie. The kid is super picky these days, none of the old favorites are working. But I was super tricky... this is one of those "deceptive" drinks. Lots of berries, a banana and... wait for it..... a ton of fresh spinach! Oh yes, spinach, just chopped up in there with the yummy goodness. I read a blog about it this week and had to try it. You absolutely could not taste it. Even Wayne reluctantly tried it and liked it. I'm so bad about buying fresh spinach and then not using it all, this will be a great way to get it in. We buy the huge bags of frozen berries at Sams, add a little plain yogurt and some water and it's good to go. So while not the most well-balanced meal, I don't feel as bad about him drinking his dinner. Wayne wondered if we could grind a little ham up in there. Ewwwwww.


I had to get some pictures of Audrey practicing her sitting. It seems that all the photos of her lately are of her eating... we've done the sweet potatoes and now have added peas and pears. LOVES them. She doesn't get the silly face that Miles did, but has this very intense "give it to me NOW" look in her eyes. She'll grab my hand and pull the spoon towards her, usually smearing food in her ear in the process. And the last 3 nights she's eaten an entire jar of whatever we were serving.

Back to the sitting, she's very floppy still, but managed to stay up in the Boppy for a little while this morning. I remember with Miles I hadn't even considered trying to help him sit until I went to pick him up at daycare and there he was sitting up in the Boppy. Wow! I had no clue! Audrey enjoys it, for sure. Yesterday our playgroup was here and she didn't want to lay down, just sit up and watch all the action.

Speaking of action, she'll get a lot this weekend when we celebrate cousin Evan's 6th (!) birthday. Should be lots of crazy fun.

And oh yes, more exciting baby news.... Kennedy joined us this week!! Look at all her beautiful hair!!!

Taste of 'Taters

She's on to the next flavor... sweet potatoes! She's much better with them than the cereal, maybe I just wasn't getting the consistency she wanted. We've gone through a couple of jars already and I think we'll try peas next. I've been tempted by many articles to try making my own baby food, so I may try with sweet potatoes this week. We'll see if I get far beyond that! I'm going to make a lot and freeze some in ice cube trays so that I don't have to be whipping out the food processor all the time. Although it is a fun appliance to use!!

She's doing better overall on the sleep, we've had many nights of just one waking, around 2:30 or 3. But she'll throw us a curve ball after a couple of those and get up several times. We'll try the pacifier first, but if that doesn't do it I will feed her, watching the clock to make sure it's a super short feeding. We don't want to do the cry-it-out trainingat night because we don't want to wake Miles. But I've been "sleep training" at naptime and that has paid off. She's had several days of two 2-hour naps and only cried 30 minutes each time for the first day or so.

Miles needs some sleep training too - How to Stay Asleep Training. He's back to the pre-dawn waking and just will not lay peacefully with us in bed. He wants to watch cartoons which would let us sleep, but I don't want him logging a hour of tube before we've even started the day!! Maybe we'll try sending him back to his room to play quietly. And see if he gets the concept of "quietly."

But enough complaining, it's only sleep, right? There are much more fun things we've done this week, like dressing up for free food! Miles had lots of fun making this cow costume to wear Friday for free Chick-fil-a. But when the time came to parade around as a cow he got a little stage fright. But he made it long enough to get his nuggets, fruit AND an ice cream cone. Lucky kid. And Audrey just watches him thinking "someday.... someday...." Cutie pies!!

Speaking of cutie pies, congratulations to Paula, Rick & Millie who welcomed baby Reed last Thursday. Let us know when you're up for some raucous company!!

A weekend of firsts

Audrey hit the big four month mark this week, so we had the requisite pediatrician visit and weigh-in. She's now 13 lbs 1.5 oz and 24 1/4" long. She's in the 50%ile for both height & weight, dropping off a growth spurt from the last visit. Since she's been waking a couple times during the night still, Dr. B. suggested that we might have a trained night feeder and that I need to try to not feed her every time she wakes at night. I'd been doing it because it seemed to be the easy way to get her back to sleep, but I've known that the time to stop is now. So we're working on scaling back the middle of the night interactions. It's hard to keep track, though, when waking in the delirium of 12am, 2am, 4am, when the last feeding was. Maybe I should start a journal again?

He also said we could start feeding her in the hopes that a little more solid food in the belly might help her stay down longer. So we tried very liquidy rice cereal the last couple of nights. I wouldn't say she loved it, but I think some of her fussiness while trying was that she wasn't getting it fast enough. The spoon was a little awkward too. But she did get most of it down, not all down the front, so I do think she's ready for this. We'll work on the cereals for a couple of weeks, then add in veggies. Miles loved sweet potatoes when he first tasted them, hopefully she'll be just as happy to move beyond the bland rice. Oh, and Miles had to have a taste of her rice cereal and did not like it at all! Or, as he says, "I don't love THAT." [Click on the photo strip to enlarge and see her expressions!]

Miles's big weekend included his very first movie - WALL*E! Wayne stayed home with Audrey and I took Miles to the 10:10am showing. We stopped by Walgreens on the way and got some Chex Mix to snack on then headed to the theater. There were a bunch of other kids there, I could tell he was getting excited. Our first stop was the bathroom - the movie was a reward for potty training, had to make sure the business was done! Unfortunately I didn't think about the auto-flushing toilets until I already sat him up there... quite a surprise for the little guy, and not too fun. Of course it went off about 3 more times before we left the stall, so he was plenty traumatized already when we encountered the tornadic hand dryers of death. I'm sure these things dry your hands like a dream, but since it sounded like a jet taking off and prompted shrieks of terror from Miles, I'll never know. Whew, strike 1.

We ran from the bathroom and went on to the theater, Now he was leery of anything we encountered, so I tried to explain and make light: ooh, look how big the screen is! look at all the kids! He didn't like the pathway-illumination lights, and was a little uncertain about the flip-down seat at first. He just wanted to see WALL*E, even though a couple of previews looked cute. Finally..... the pre-movie cartoon..... and FINALLY..... the movie started. By this point he was so distracted by making the seat open and shut on himself that he wouldn't sit still and watch. He noticed the people near us eating popcorn and said, "Mommy, I want my snack!" So out came the Chex Mix. One he realized there were M&Ms in the mix, that was all he wanted and kept asking for those. So between trying to get him to sit down and finding M&Ms, I missed some of the cute introduction of WALL*E. Thankfully Miles knew who EVE was, and she showed up pretty soon, that started to settle him down. After I told him the snacks were gone, he sat still, then crawled over to sit in my lap. He alternated between leaning forward, seated on my knees and snuggled back under my chin, really sweet. SPOILER ALERT: He even started to cry a little when WALL*E was hurt and non-responsive.

All in all a very fun morning and Miles is excited at the idea of another movie someday. I don't know of any coming out soon, but maybe we'll try a home movie experience next.

twitterpated

Just a quick update with 2 cool techie things I learned today...

.: I signed up for Twitter. Basically it's a mini-blog. Short notes (tweets) about what I'm doing. But instead of me, I'll be capturing the gems that Miles comes up with. I'm trying to figure out how to put it on this blog, but for now find it here: http://twitter.com/nkerwin. BTW, I got the idea from a daddytypes post about ben_yes doing it. UPDATE: It's on the blog - right sidebar.

.: On Google Maps you can add GasBuddy which highlights gas stations and the prices where you're searching. Or just go to gasbuddy.com.

Sorry no exciting kid updates today, although you might get a giggle out of twitter.

HE DID IT!!

In what I hope to be the final post discussing poo for at least a couple of years (months? weeks? days?), I can now share that Miles has finally done the deed. Twice. What a guy! Wayne and I are planning to take him to see Wall*E this weekend to celebrate. See, besides the tools, treats and Diego toothbrush, we've also been showing him the Wall*E trailer as incentive and he LOVES it. Just the trailer. We'll see how a full movie does, but I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it.

In other HUGE news today, we welcome with great joy baby Lizzie. We're so glad she's finally here. She, Audrey and Kennedy will make great pledge sisters (sorry, new member sisters) here in about 18 years!!