Old McDonald

Kenna has a new favorite song. It goes "yai yai yai yo." For those who don't speak Kenna fluently that is "eieio." She loves Old McDonald. In fact, she has a little people farmer who she likes to carry around with her and she calls him "yai yai yo." I think she is the cutest thing ever, but I am biased. I have been trying to teach her how to play with little people, so I've taught her how they can eat and dance on the roof of the barn. Now that is what she does while saying, "yai yai yai yo." It is hilarious.

She also loves her cars and LOVES LOVES her little people train (thanks meemaw). She drives those around all day and says "bbbbrrrmmm." She has even taken to saying that when there are no cars and she is just walking around the house. Again, very cute.





Kenna has developed and obsession with "puh buh" (pooh bear). Sadly, the disney channel no longer play any form of winnie the pooh. We have a movie that we let her watch sometimes and now she has also discovered "gugger" (tigger). She has some gugger slippers that rattle when she walks. She thinks they are great fun and stomps around the house in them.

If anyone remembers, a while back I said that we had a tipsy chair problem. Well, that has been solved thanks to grandma and target which saw fit to create a leather wing backed baby chair. We have had to lean it against the wall because she likes to stand in it and try to rock it backwards.


Nate taught Kenna that the sink is for playing rather than washing. She now loves to stand in it, turn on the water (which she can do by herself) and stick her feet in it or just get a drink. She's so cute and happy while she's doing it that I can't even pretend to care.

The Ladder-Hug

We spent the last 2-3 months repainting the house. You see, when someone decided to build our house they thought, "I know, lets put hardboard siding on all the houses because this is Richmond and it will look more authentically southern. That way people will have to paint their houses every few years instead of just installing vinyl siding and letting that last 30 years..."

It was a HUGE chore but I am really glad that we did it. Nobody had painted the house in the past ten years so it really needed a new coat. We were a little nervous when we applied the first color splotch to a small section in the back because it looked a little purple. But after we got a bunch put on the purple went away and we were left with gray. The final product turned out great. We had our little giant type ladder that would only go 21 feet so I had to borrow our neighbors ladder to get it all done. Luckily our neighbor is actually the owner of a business call Ladder Builders so he had quite a selection for me to choose from. I had a 28', 32', or 38 foot ladder at my disposal. I cannot imagine being 3 and 1/2 stories in the air. I was terrified on the 28 footer.
While painting I invented the ladder-hug - as pictured below. All the fellas and husbands should try it with their lady friends. Word on the street is that they dig it. Ladies.......

I did have an embarrassing fall one of the days I was painting. Sadly, it happened in the front yard but luckily, nobody saw me fall. I came all the way down our ladder and on the last step I put my foot sideways and rolled my ankle. I came flying down and the paint can (1 full gallon of white) came tumbling down with me. I sat on the ground laughing/almost crying because the paint had flown everywhere and now my ankle hurt. Kenzie didn't see the incident but she was able to help me with the cleanup. All in all, not such a bad injury for how much I was actually on the ladder. There is now a bid dead spot on the front lawn where the gallon of paint spilled. I don't even care a little bit :-)

In fact, while Kenzie was taking this picture, the neighbor whose ladder it was made fun of me and told me to stop hugging the house. The other neighbor told me he would come out periodically during the morning and see if he needed to call 911. I was able to survive the ordeal without dying. And of course at the end of the project we told ourselves, "No more house projects!" That might last a month or two.

So here is a before and after shot so you can see the difference.

Before

After

Life is pretty normal other than that. Kenzie is back to the swing of things at work. In fact, on the first day back she told me how excited she was to be working again. Then, on her fourth work day she woke up with the alarm at 6:55 and told me she was ready to stay home and be done work again. Sounds about right.

We are getting some visitors this week as one of my aunts and cousins come to visit, then we get to see Rob as he comes out for his dental school interview, then we fly to Texas to see Cyle and Tyler and watch TCU destroy BYU in football, then we go to Delaware for Kristi's visit with her latest boy candy, then we come back to Richmond in time for me to go through our big go-live for work and Kenzie makes her debut with a craft show during the first weekend of November. The next 30-40 days will be action packed, but the kiddo makes us take time outs for trips to the park and walks to enjoy the day.

And she hearts slides. Jenna does too.

Welcome back to school

On Tuesday morning I woke up to a surprise. Knowing that it was my first day back to work, Kenna decided to wake up sick. She had a fever and was pretty fussy, but she went back to sleep so I decided just to go to work and play it by ear. Alixa said she slept for all but a couple hours while I was gone. When I got home she was still fevered so I gave her more motrin and a bath to try to help her cool off. The only was she would get in the bath was if I let her take her silky and her "nite nite" (binky) with her. This is why I bought a second silky when I found out she had become so attached to the first.


Anyway, the bath did a good job of cooling her off, but her temperature shot right back up when I got her out. Nate got home from work and had to go help someone move. I took her temperature when he left and it was up to 103 and off we went to the KidMed (this little mini pediatric urgent care that is right by our house). By that time Kenna was completely burning up and had cried herself out and was laying on my lap, completely lethargic. Nate showed up and she was so sick she barely noticed. The nurse took us back and by then her temperature was up to 104 so the immediately pumped her full of tylenol and started trying to figure out what was causing the temperature.

They swabbed her throat. It wasn't strep. They decided they needed urine and blood samples and since she was fevered they wanted to do an IV anyway. The urine needed to be sterile, so they had to use a catheter. Not fun on a one-year-old. Nate and I had to pin her down while the nurse got to work. Of course that got her all worked up just in time for the IV. The nurse (who's day job is in a peds unit at the hospital here) swaddled up all but her one arm and called for another nurse to help. It took Nate, me and the other nurse to hold her down enough to get the IV in. Poor Kenna was screaming and screaming and being worked up on top of the fever was producing a lot of sweat so that when the nurse finally got the IV in she couldn't get the tape to stick to Kenna's arm. They finally got the arm all wrapped up and we covered it up with a towel so she would leave it alone. It was amazing because it was like the arm completely ceased to exist.

from the IV

After everyone left and she calmed down, she started to feel a little better. I guess the tylenol was kicking in. We were singing and playing, trying to keep her happy. We sang the "Open, Shut them" song and when it came time to "give a little clap, clap, clap" Kenna was still only using one arm. She swung her right arm as hard as she could and was surprised when there was nothing there to meet it and it swung clear across her body. Nate and I got a pretty good laugh at that. After that we let her clap on our hands and she thought it was great.

By this point it was late and Nate went to go get her something to eat. Kenna had had enough and was crying anytime someone walked into the room. There was nothing in the blood or urine, so the decided to do a chest x-ray since they couldn't hear anything with the stethoscope because she was screaming at them. That was more torture and screaming and pinning down, but they finally got them done and found out she had pneumonia. They told us we could either do an IV drip which would take 30 minutes or she could have a shot. It was 1030 and we opted for the shot. The nurse was nice enough to mix the antibiotic with litocaine and that ended Kenna's torture for the night.

The poor baby was completely exhausted by the time we got home. Her fever broke soon after she went to sleep and after that she slept through the night clear until 1130 the next morning!

She is feeling much better now (although she hates taking her medicine) and I am very grateful that she is okay. I guess it could have gone a lot worse and I'm glad it didn't.

Funny side note - this morning she was walking around with her pacifier. I guess she decided she was done with it, so she opened up this little cabinet, set it in there, kissed it goodbye, closed the door and walked away. It was hilarious!

Proof that she is doing better -

Delaware

Last weekend we went up to Delaware for Kevin's wedding. It was weird to be there without Bruce and Nancy, but we had a great time and Kenna was in heaven with all of her cousins and new toys. She especially loved "goock" (Luke) and Adri's toy broom which she used to help Annie clean the kitchen floor all weekend long. Nate was busy most of the weekend, but Annie kept Kenna and I entertained. We played with lots of new toys. Kenna discovered a love of trains and helped Luke rip the track apart and drive trains on the pieces. We also got to go to Longwood Gardens where Kenna played in the water. She cried when I made her leave. I guess Kenna wasn't feeling well that weekend or something because I ended up leaving early from most of the wedding festivities due to a break down. I told Nate that I was going to stay at home next time and all the cousins could come to me :-) We had a good time and Kenna LOVED following Annie's kids around for a whole weekend.

The Winter line.

We have been pretty busy the past week. A couple of notable things happened. The first is that Kenzie is already gearing up for the winter clothing line. She has been consulting with other moms to try to find out how much a kid will grow during the next winter and has been buying some coats and sweaters so the baby doesn't freeze. Of course no baby can really be prepared to survive the arctic conditions of the south without the necessities, so Kenzie only got the bare essentials for the baby. Here is a video of our baby attempting to walk in the bare essentials.



In addition to the winter clothing line, our baby has learned a nifty trick. I guess she got tired of us blowing on her stomach and decided it was time for payback.