My Little Baby

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while. Kenna is growing so fast and getting so big. Every day I am amazed by what she understands and does. I've been keeping a list of some of the cute things she says and does. She is so much fun for us to have around and some days I actually feel like we're hanging out. We'll sit on the kitchen floor and eat 'appoo' (apples) together, or build with her blocks or play 'yai yo' (eieio = Old McDonald Little people). She is a blessing in our lives and I love her.

--Kenna loves to play hide-and-go-seek (although her hiding spots are pretty obvious). She hides behind a door or shower curtain or blanket and if we don't get what she is doing right away she will prompt us that we are supposed to call/look for her by say "Neeeeennnnnna" over and over until we pick up that that is what we're supposed to be doing. We call for her and then she pops out laughing and laughing like we really had no idea where she was.

--She LOVES Jenna. She will wait be the window when she knows Jenna is coming and she calls for her, "Neeeeennnnna" (both she and Jenna are called Nenna). One day we told her we'd see Jenna at church. Jenna was a little late, so Kenna spent the first 10 minutes of church calling "Neeeeennnna" at the top of her little lungs while Nate and I died laughing.

--Kenna loves to 'lulloo' (color). She looks like a little grown up when she's coloring.

--One night at dinner Nate was making himself a glass of chocolate milk. He got the Hershey's syrup out and Kenna, who was sitting in her chair, held out her sippy cup and goes "goonk! goonk!" (drink, drink). I guess she knows what the good stuff is.

--Every piece of jewelry is "a neck" (short for necklace). She knows where my jewelry box is and that is also a 'neck." Everyday she checks my ears and neck for a 'neck.' She then point it out and says "neck, neck" over and over again.

--At the children's museum there is this parrot puppet that Kenna LOVES. She calls it a "raaaaaawt". One day she was tired and hungry when we left and I had to rip the parrot from her clutches. She spent the entire car ride home and a good 20 minutes at home sobbing saying, "rawt, rawt." She'd finally get herself calmed down and them burst into tears again and say "rawt." I felt so bad but it was still kind of cute.

--Another time at the children's museum the power went out. We were told that when it did turn back on the fire alarms would go off. I tried to warn Kenna. I told her that there would be a loud noise and that she shouldn't be scared, but just to cover her ears. I didn't think she got any of it but a couple minutes later I saw her practicing covering her ears and looking at the ceiling. When I asked her what to do if she heard a loud noise she immediately covered up her ears. I guess i have to be careful what I say because she understands it all.

--Last night we were eating dinner with Jarom and Lix. The girls were playing in the kitchen and I see Kenna trying to dump out this bag of doll toys. She was having a really hard time and kept shaking and shaking it. Finally she got what she wanted (her purple play fork), brought it over and said "up." She then tried to eat Nate's dinner with her doll's fork. Kenna loves forks and feeding herself.

--Kenna has a new booster seat so she can sit up at the table with us. She LOVES it. When we first got it she would ask us to get her up just so she could sit in her 'teet' (seat) and when we tried to take her out she said "a noooo, a noooo."

--Kenna likes to climb on things. She has since before she could walk, but now she is taking it to a whole new level. She likes to stand up on wobbly objects (like her car) and she will slowly raise her hands above her head. She is so proud of herself when she can balance like that.

--We taught Kenna what Santa says. Now everything related to the holidays (lights, trees, reindeer) are all 'ho ho ho.' When we ask her to say Merry Christmas, she says, "ho, ho, ho."

This is her labeling the Santa "ho ho ho."

Random pictures -

Setting up the Christmas tree

Opening her fan mail

Playing with the craft fair ribbon scraps

Gobble Gobble

Wow! What a week of Thanksgiving festivities! For those who read the previous blog post about the indecent on the way up to Delaware, you should know it got worse before it got better. Kenna didn't actually end up throwing up again in Delaware, but plenty was coming out the other end. Between that and her acting uncharacteristically lethargic (normally the girl will not sit still), we decided to leave Delaware early and come home and take her to the doctor. The drive home was great. We stopped at a McDonalds with a play place and Kenna was in heaven. She was the only kiddo there and although she wouldn't go in the play place, she had a great time running around it.

We got home, got Kenna to bed and decided to lay in bed and watch a movie. At almost the exact same time Nate and I turned to each other and went "uh oh." That's right. Kenna got both of us sick at the exact same time. To make it worse, Nate was on call for the entire week of Thanksgiving. He spent the night sleeping downstairs on the bathroom floor and fortunatley no one called in the middle of the night. I spent the night upstairs laying in bed trying as hard as I could not to move. Kenna was up bright and early the next morning. We dragged ourselves to the living room, and turned on the TV. That is pretty much how we spent the entire day. We watched the same 5 DVR'd episodes of Dora the Explorer over and over and over. I had to go to the store and get crackers, ginger ale and gatorade and I think knowing that at least one of us had to be a parent that day forced me to recover quickly. By the end of the day I managed to go sit outside so Kenna could play. She was such a good baby while we were sick.

Luckily our week improved. The weather was nice so we spent some time outside teaching Kenna to run through the leaves.







We also took her to Toys R Us since she was so good for a day and a half and got her a baby doll stroller that she pushes around the house with her everywhere.

Thanksgiving was quiet and kind of boring but the food was good. I cooked a turkey and everything. Kenna didn't want to try anything new and ended up eating a roll on a fork and black beans and cheese. While we were eating dinner we asked Kenna what she was thankful for and she folded her arms to say a prayer. I guess we say that word a lot when we pray. It was pretty cute.




We got Kenna all bundled up to go see our neighbor's lights. She thinks they are the coolest thing ever. She kept pointing and saying "wow, wow." She was able to find a family of 'loddle loddles' (waddle waddles = penguins) and 'a mout' (mickey mouse).


We spent the rest of the weekend decorating the house and enjoying the lovely weather (haha to all you utards who have a foot of snow). And the best part of all was that Jenna finally came home on Saturday night. On Sunday morning we told Kenna that we were going to see Jenna today so she spent all day walking around the house calling "Neeeeeeeeennnnnnnnaaaaaaa" and trying to open the front door to find her. We missed Jarom and Lix while they were gone. I guess we didn't realize how used we are to hanging out with them and Jenna and Kenna can never live apart from each other now. They came over for dinner and the girls played ring around the rosy together. They can both say 'assis fa down' (ashes ashes we all fall down).

Football

I had to move the hairbows off the couch so I could sit down today and try to watch football. I don't really do a lot of man things, so I figured football on Thanksgiving was a way to get a piece of my manhood back. Then I began hunting for the remote. I asked Kenna where it was and she ran to the stroller and took it from the babies hand. She handed it to me and then wanted me to play pretend "bites" with her. No football was watched. So long manhood. I guess all we have are memories.

In other news, Thanksgiving was great here in Richmond. Here are 2 reasons that I like McKenzie more than a friend.

We are Officially Parents

Our blog is usually about happy things that I never want to forget. This entry is pretty much the opposite - it is about something so terrible that it has to be shared. Our life is not all glamor, just most of the time :-)

I think Kenna finally welcomed Mckenzie and me into the "official" parents club. We decided to go up to Delaware this weekend to visit the cousins and Kenna made it quite the trip. All was going well, we went up 95 and were about an hour out of Richmond when she fell asleep. Kenzie decided that was a good idea and zonked out as well. All was going well and about 30 minutes later I hear an "uh-oh" from the backseat. I look back just in time to see my kiddo ralph all over herself, the carseat, the back of the car, and pretty much everything. Kenzie was Johnny on the spot and reached back to try to use a bib to contain it all. You might as well use a sponge to wipe up the Mississippi. Then I am weaving through traffic as Kenzie attempts to contain the mess and we stop in front of some random burger place. As soon as the car halts there are bags, babies, parents, carseats, blankets, pillows, and 2,494 dirty wipes coming out of the car (on a sidenote, I think I am going to send pampers wipes a thank you card. They were all we had to clean up the mess and they did quite a good job) I am sure anyone driving by just laughed and laughed. It was nasty. We did our best to clean everything and got Kenna some 7up to drink as she watched us clean up her mess. It took about a half an hour to finish damage control. While in the midst of the cleanup, I decided I needed to snap a picture so I never forget this awful moment.


When Kenna approaches me at age 16 when we are doing some yardwork or cleaning gutters and tells me it is too gross for her to help with, I will pull up this entry, show her these pictures, and put her back to work. Mark my words.


After all the hubub, we spoke with several parenting professionals who informed us that this happens when you have children. Each one of them count re-count the terrible day when their child performed the deed. My sister told me that I was an "offical" parent finally because I had survived this ordeal.

I have no clue how parents can have more than one kiddo. But then I see things like this and think to myself "Self....Maybe, just maybe, they are worth it.

The Hollands from Germany

That's right. Germans invaded our little Richmond life this past weekend and we welcomed them with open arms. I had a roommate named Brad Holland while I was in college and have managed to stay in touch with him and his wife since graduation. He has been all over the world, even completing a tour in Iraq while his wife and newborn baby girl lived amongst the Germans without him in Kurgensvilleinstien or something like that. Brad and Erica Holland are some of our favorite people in the world and thanks to Skype we have managed to stay much closer to each other.

Erica and Brad were visiting their families on the west coast and on their trip back to Germany they stopped in Baltimore, rented a car, and drove the three hours down to visit their Richmond friends. If this is not impressive enough, they did so with their 2 and 1/2 year old girl AND their 9 month old twin girls. The back seat was just a little bit full. If that doesn't impress you, they landed at 1 AM on Friday night and still drove down here to visit - arriving at 4 AM Saturday morning. They are a bit crazy if you ask me.

I am told that Saturday morning was full of pancakes and babies, but that is only hearsay. I don't know what was really going on because I woke Brad up after 3 hours of sleep to go with Jarom and I to play paintball with the young scouts from our ward. I had been anticipating this event for some time and looked forward to shooting many of the scouts that I have worked with for a year with a paintball gun. I was really excited when Brad said that he was coming to visit over paintball weekend because I thought I would take advantage of his army training and put him on my team during the games. I mean really, what are the odds that your army friend comes on the one weekend when his army skills of slaying ninjas and zombies can actually contribute to civilian life. He did not disappoint and slayed several thousand scouts during our adventure.

The weekend was spent hanging out at the park, eating good food, playing games, attempting to watch the 4 babies at church, attempting to watch the 4 babies at home, and lastly, with Kenzie and I watching Brad and Erica care for their three children and being amazed. Seriously. I was tired just watching them. I have no clue how they do it. If we ever have twins I think I will have to sell one or something because you go from playing man to man to a zone. The babies are the cutest things in the world though and Erica and Brad are lucky to have them. We had a fantastic time hanging with them and catching up.

As an added bonus, Erica took family pictures for us. She really has quite a gift and can make magic happen with her pictures. We have been eying her talents for some time and Kenzie was especially excited that she was willing to take some pictures of our family. She is still working on stuff and will get us the full photo shoot later, but here are a few. Her blog link is on listed on the right if you want to preview some of her other pictures. She does great work - as you can tell from these. Funny side note - while we were taking pictures, Kenna saw this HUGE St. Bernard. The owners let her stop and pet him which was pretty funny. She kept trying to lay her head on him. She kept saying "woof" to the dog. A few minutes later a little poodle came walking by and Kenna goes "meow."



It was such a fun weekend for us and for Kenna. Kenna had a blast with all the kiddos around and we did too. Thanks Brad and Erica and crew for coming down to visit!

amateur photo hour...The girls would not hold still to have their picture taken for anything!

Halloween

Bzzzzzz. That's what Kenna was this year for Halloween. She learned that when you "bzzzzz" you are supposed to tickle with your finger. Pretty cute.

Kenna has learned what a pig says. This is the face she makes when you ask her.

Halloween was a lot of fun. The boys were working so us girls got to hang out. Lix and Jenna came over after naps to try to get some pictures. I could not get Kenna to hold still for anything, and Jenna was only a little better. Both girls have recently learned to jump (which basically involves bending their knees, swinging their arms above their head, and launching themselves onto their tip toes before crashing back down) and spent all of picture time showing off this new skill. Most pictures are a blur of jumping, but boy are they cute. After pictures failed, we got our pumpkins and went trick-or-treating.

Our neighbors at the first stop had put black mice cut-outs on their stairs and pumpkins on thier porch. The girls thought this was great and were more interested in touching them than getting any loot. However, once Kenna figured out what it was that people were giving away, she was more than happy to reach her hand into the bowl and get all she could. I don't know how she figured out what candy was because we've never given her any, but she knew to put it in her mouth, wrapper and all. She eventually made it through the wrapper to the candy and had a grand time. Jenna, who is much more feminine and organized realized that she would look like a pig if she shoved all her candy into her mouth in front of the neighbors, so she carefully placed it in her pumpkin.

Spitting out the wrapper...

One of the other house we stopped at had a pug. The girls were so excited about that. Anne, our neighbor, let her pug out on the porch to play with the girls, which they thought was really cool. Kenna kept snorting because that was the sound the dog was making. Pretty cute. Anne also had these glass ghost lights lining her driveway and Kenna kept running over to them, pointing and saying "oooooo." Then she'd run back to the pug and try to touch his nose.

Another neighbor (he is a Kindergarten teacher) he put the bowl of candy down and let the girls just dig in. dBy that time they both knew it was good stuff and grabbed about ten pieces each before we pulled them away. He was very nice and it turns out he and his wife were at JMU at the same time as Nate and I. All in all, it took about and hour to get to seven houses, but we had a great time.



We headed home and got a quick bite of dinner before going to the hospital to see Nate. The girls were a big hit with all the staff and even got some more candy. Kenna was exhausted when she got home and her pumpkin bucket was full of mostly chewed candy, still in the wrappers. She had a great Halloween.

as normal as we get

Life has been going on over here in Richmond. I was going to say that life was normal, but our life is not normal so I will just say that life is as normal as life gets. The past 2 weeks have been pretty action packed with lots of things. At my job, our biggest hospital launched our electronic medical record on Halloween. Whenever we "go-live" I spend about 2 weeks working strange hours and being on call most the rest of them. This go-live was way better than the last one and most things went off without a hitch. I was working the 2-midnight shift and I really liked getting to spend the mornings with Kenzie and Kenna. However, I would get home about 1AM and Kenna would wake up at 730. Kenzie was awesome though and a couple mornings she let me sleep in a little bit so that I wasn't dead tired in the morning. So work is going very well. I still like my job and am learning a ton. My team is great to work with and we do really good work. I will be busier than normal for the next couple of weeks providing support before Thanksgiving, but after that things should slow down. We are planning on spending two full weeks out in Utah over Christmas with Kenzie's family and mine and we are really looking forward to that. It really works out well that my parents got called to the SLC mission. It makes vacations much easier for us baby travellers.

Kenzie has been busy working two days a week as a speech therapist in a school downtown. Her caseload is a lot higher than it was last year so she is super busy the two days a week she goes in to school. She does a great job managing it and seems to like working. She especially likes the hours and the babysitting. Alixa does a great job watching Kenna while we are at work and it is fun to watch Jenna and Kenna get older. The other day I was watching them growl at one another and chase each other under the kitchen table. It made me really glad that she has her cousin to play with.

We have had some random days off where we get to do fun stuff together and have taken full advantage of a petting zoo downtown. Kenna loves going there and it is lots of fun to see her imitate all the animals. I gotta be honest, I have a really fun time there too.

Kenzie and Alixa also started their craft fair this weekend. They have been working their fingers and hot glue guns to the bone making all sort of baby things (I will not even try to explain or understand all the baby stuff...) and they have had a blast starting a little business together. Here are a few gems from the booth they set up...