So Keegan has been coming up with a lot of interesting things:
A couple days ago I asked him how many Reeses Pieces he wanted. Keegan's response..."1, 2" he paused to think really hard..."YELLOW!"
Lyle said, "Can you say please, Keegan?" Keegan enthusiastically replied "Please Keegan!"
We now have letters going down the stairs and when I point to the M and ask Keegan what letter that is he says "Mama", when we point to the Q he says "eewwww".
Keegan and I were playing and waiting for Lyle to come home, my phone rang. When I picked up my phone to answer it, Keegan said "Mama, phone down!"
When Ruby had ripped up a piece of paper in the office Keegan ran in and started yelling at her "Bad, bad Ruby...Ruby no no no." Of course Ruby had no idea what he was talking about.
Tonight Keegan didn't want his broccoli, so he picked it out of his rice and laid it by my plate saying "KeeKee no broccoli, Ruby eat?" Guess Keegan thinks Ruby wants his broccoli.
Lastly Keegan ran through the house after Seras screaming at the top of his lungs "KITTY, KITTY, KITTY!" He finally ran up to me and looked confused and said "Mama, why kitty run away?" Geez, I wonder why the kitty ran away....
Well those are just a few of his funny talking moments, I will try to keep track of them as they present themselves.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Waiting for the Sky to Fall
Since Lyle and I have been married we have had good times and bad times. Initially we struggled financially to pay for our new house, wedding, etc. Then we went through a couple years where we lost a number of our animals to cancer, kidney failure, etc. These couple years really sucked; losing a pet is like losing a family member and it was a tough time to go through. This was followed by Lyle finishing his college degree at night. Shortly after (during) that I got really sick. I was sick for over a year, continuously losing weight and constantly nauseous, until they found out that my gallbladder was not working properly. So then I had to go through sugery for that. Then we built a new house, moved, and I got a new job. I absolutely hated my new job. I loved the people there but hated the job. Then suddenly after years of just trying to hold ourselves together, things improved...a lot.
Lyle started doing contracting, and with his new degree, he got paid really well. My old work called me and asked me to come back to my old job (which I loved). I started to feel better. The animals stayed healthy. We finished our basement, we tried to spend more time with friends, we took a great trip to the Mediterranean. Then I got pregnant. I had an excellent pregnancy and had a beautiful, healthy baby boy. Lyle and I started our own corporation; and Lyle started working though that. With Lyle making a great salary, I was able to start working part-time so that I could spend one day a week with Keegan.
To put it bluntly, the last couple years have been wonderful. Lyle has constant work, I like my work, Keegan is a smart healthy boy, the animals are healthy, I am getting to see my sister again, and our parents are healthy. It was been wonderful. Given the first few years of our marriage and all we went through (I am not saying it was horrible, people go through much much worse) I am beginning to cringe, just wondering when things will start to go wrong. I mentioned this to Lyle last night, he said not to curse us and not to worry so much.
Seriously though, can people have things go really well for a long time? I am waiting for Lyle's contract to fall through, for me to get laid off, for an animal to get deathly ill, for someone in the family to get deathly ill. For something bad to happen. I think the holiday season makes me a little paranoid, and especially Thanksgiving always makes me consider how much I have, how happy I am, and how much I have to loose. Why is it that the happier you get, the more you have to loose?
It's silly, but I can't shake the feeling that we've had it TOO good the last couple years. Of course, yesterday Lyle finds out his contract has been extended another year. On top of that his work place is moving to the campus that I work on. So now we can meet for lunch and carpool and all that jazz. Things are getting even better. How silly am I to be suspicious of all this goodness? I guess maybe I am more of a pessimist than I ever thought. I just keep my fingers crossed and hope that everything doesn't fall down at once. Our lives are so precarious and so easily destroyed, I will do my best to enjoy all the goodness and happiness while we have it.
Lyle started doing contracting, and with his new degree, he got paid really well. My old work called me and asked me to come back to my old job (which I loved). I started to feel better. The animals stayed healthy. We finished our basement, we tried to spend more time with friends, we took a great trip to the Mediterranean. Then I got pregnant. I had an excellent pregnancy and had a beautiful, healthy baby boy. Lyle and I started our own corporation; and Lyle started working though that. With Lyle making a great salary, I was able to start working part-time so that I could spend one day a week with Keegan.
To put it bluntly, the last couple years have been wonderful. Lyle has constant work, I like my work, Keegan is a smart healthy boy, the animals are healthy, I am getting to see my sister again, and our parents are healthy. It was been wonderful. Given the first few years of our marriage and all we went through (I am not saying it was horrible, people go through much much worse) I am beginning to cringe, just wondering when things will start to go wrong. I mentioned this to Lyle last night, he said not to curse us and not to worry so much.
Seriously though, can people have things go really well for a long time? I am waiting for Lyle's contract to fall through, for me to get laid off, for an animal to get deathly ill, for someone in the family to get deathly ill. For something bad to happen. I think the holiday season makes me a little paranoid, and especially Thanksgiving always makes me consider how much I have, how happy I am, and how much I have to loose. Why is it that the happier you get, the more you have to loose?
It's silly, but I can't shake the feeling that we've had it TOO good the last couple years. Of course, yesterday Lyle finds out his contract has been extended another year. On top of that his work place is moving to the campus that I work on. So now we can meet for lunch and carpool and all that jazz. Things are getting even better. How silly am I to be suspicious of all this goodness? I guess maybe I am more of a pessimist than I ever thought. I just keep my fingers crossed and hope that everything doesn't fall down at once. Our lives are so precarious and so easily destroyed, I will do my best to enjoy all the goodness and happiness while we have it.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Paperbackswap.com
So I ran across this site while looking for a new way to get rid of my paperbacks. I have been selling some on Amazon but with all of there fees I end up making like maybe $1 a book and I have to drive it to the post office. Half.com has a bit better deal because they don't charge fees, but books don't seem to move as fast there. I ran across a really cool site called paperbackswap.com. This is such a cool idea I don't know why I didn't look for something like this a long time ago.
So here's the deal. You sign up. When you post 10 books to the site you get 2 free credits. You can use any credit to order a book. When people request a book from you, you have 5 days to accept their request and promise to mail the book out. When you accept a request you print out a book wrapper that has the address on it, wrap the book up, and take it to the post office and mail it. You pay for media mail to ship it out, but you don't pay shipping for a book that you request from someone else. When the person who requested the book gets it from you, they check that they got it and then you get a book credit. Even cooler for an extra 40 cents a book you can print the postage out online and drop the book in your mailbox for pickup. The 40 cent fee goes towards site maintenance.
So now you are thinking...fine I pay $2.20 to ship out my book and get a credit. I go to use the credit and all of the books suck and I don't want any of them. Well there is so much circulation on this site I was able to find a ton of interesting books, and that's saying something considering how many books I've already read.
But, let's say you don't find any books (out of the 3 million on there) that you want to use your credit for. Well then you look up a book that you do want and put it on your wish list. When that book is posted to the system by someone you will get an e-mail giving you 48 hours to respond that you want it...or even cooler you can set up auto-accept and when the book is available it will automatically tell the person offering it to mail the book out to you. So basically you can get any book you want for $2.20.
What if a billion people want the book you want? I am like 400 something on the wishlist for a couple of the books I want. Amazingly in 2 days I've gone up 6 places. So that means I could have that book in a few months. Most of the books I am in the 30's; some of the more popular books I am in the 100's. I posted onto the forum about this wait time and got a lot of very nice responses saying that I would probably get a lot of my wishlisted books in a month or so.
This leads me to the other thing I wasn't expecting when I signed up...that's the community on this site. These are dedicated people. So far everyone I have shipped books out to (I've shipped around 35 books out) have been super nice about saying they received the book and sent me a nice thank you note. When I have posted on the forums; the people who responded were super helpful and nice. A couple of the ladies saw I was from MN and immediately invited me onto their Buddy lists so that we buddy swap. They also have a local MN chapter that meets every so often to swap in person so that no one has to pay postage.
When you sign up you not only get to use the wish list, but there's a reminder list (for books you are thinking about requesting), a TBR list (to be read list), I books I've read list, and you can convert books between these lists. Which is useful. They have a book recommendation engine, book journaling, and book reviews. If you have an allergy to smoke or cats you can put a condition in your request asking that the book not come from a house with those conditions. The sender then has to accept your conditions to send you the book. I have been super impressed with the nice people and the slickness of the site. I've been on it about a week and have 7 books that are in route to me. I should get the first of them tomorrow.
So right now I have 18 book credits accumulated and more are pouring in as people get the books I shipped out.
The biggest problem so far has been time. It takes a lot of time to wrap up and ship out that many books. I was joking with Lyle that paperbackswap.com was going to ruin our marriage as Lyle walked past rolling his eyes cause I was packing up 10 more books :-) Oh yeah that and spending $70 in postage this last week...but it will pay off in a couple months. Usually I won't be adding 50 books at a time to their system so that is kind of a one time problem. That and right now I am obsessed with how fast my wishlist requests are moving up the list; so I am constantly tracking that.
It's a pretty neat site and if you have some books to get rid of you get a better return on them than taking them to Half Price books. I still check them all to see if they will sell for anything on Amazon, but if they are only worth 10 cents then I put them up here. If you are interested in signing up let them know I told you about it...I'll get a free book credit for it and if you buddy up maybe we can post books to each other :-) All you need to do is give them my nickname (Ophelia99) or my email address: karissae@gmail.com
Once I start getting more books I'll update on how things are going. I have just been super excited about this. It's also really cool to be able to talk with so many people that are as voracious as I am about reading. Being a 4 book a week reader with this group of people is almost boring it's so normal :-)
So here's the deal. You sign up. When you post 10 books to the site you get 2 free credits. You can use any credit to order a book. When people request a book from you, you have 5 days to accept their request and promise to mail the book out. When you accept a request you print out a book wrapper that has the address on it, wrap the book up, and take it to the post office and mail it. You pay for media mail to ship it out, but you don't pay shipping for a book that you request from someone else. When the person who requested the book gets it from you, they check that they got it and then you get a book credit. Even cooler for an extra 40 cents a book you can print the postage out online and drop the book in your mailbox for pickup. The 40 cent fee goes towards site maintenance.
So now you are thinking...fine I pay $2.20 to ship out my book and get a credit. I go to use the credit and all of the books suck and I don't want any of them. Well there is so much circulation on this site I was able to find a ton of interesting books, and that's saying something considering how many books I've already read.
But, let's say you don't find any books (out of the 3 million on there) that you want to use your credit for. Well then you look up a book that you do want and put it on your wish list. When that book is posted to the system by someone you will get an e-mail giving you 48 hours to respond that you want it...or even cooler you can set up auto-accept and when the book is available it will automatically tell the person offering it to mail the book out to you. So basically you can get any book you want for $2.20.
What if a billion people want the book you want? I am like 400 something on the wishlist for a couple of the books I want. Amazingly in 2 days I've gone up 6 places. So that means I could have that book in a few months. Most of the books I am in the 30's; some of the more popular books I am in the 100's. I posted onto the forum about this wait time and got a lot of very nice responses saying that I would probably get a lot of my wishlisted books in a month or so.
This leads me to the other thing I wasn't expecting when I signed up...that's the community on this site. These are dedicated people. So far everyone I have shipped books out to (I've shipped around 35 books out) have been super nice about saying they received the book and sent me a nice thank you note. When I have posted on the forums; the people who responded were super helpful and nice. A couple of the ladies saw I was from MN and immediately invited me onto their Buddy lists so that we buddy swap. They also have a local MN chapter that meets every so often to swap in person so that no one has to pay postage.
When you sign up you not only get to use the wish list, but there's a reminder list (for books you are thinking about requesting), a TBR list (to be read list), I books I've read list, and you can convert books between these lists. Which is useful. They have a book recommendation engine, book journaling, and book reviews. If you have an allergy to smoke or cats you can put a condition in your request asking that the book not come from a house with those conditions. The sender then has to accept your conditions to send you the book. I have been super impressed with the nice people and the slickness of the site. I've been on it about a week and have 7 books that are in route to me. I should get the first of them tomorrow.
So right now I have 18 book credits accumulated and more are pouring in as people get the books I shipped out.
The biggest problem so far has been time. It takes a lot of time to wrap up and ship out that many books. I was joking with Lyle that paperbackswap.com was going to ruin our marriage as Lyle walked past rolling his eyes cause I was packing up 10 more books :-) Oh yeah that and spending $70 in postage this last week...but it will pay off in a couple months. Usually I won't be adding 50 books at a time to their system so that is kind of a one time problem. That and right now I am obsessed with how fast my wishlist requests are moving up the list; so I am constantly tracking that.
It's a pretty neat site and if you have some books to get rid of you get a better return on them than taking them to Half Price books. I still check them all to see if they will sell for anything on Amazon, but if they are only worth 10 cents then I put them up here. If you are interested in signing up let them know I told you about it...I'll get a free book credit for it and if you buddy up maybe we can post books to each other :-) All you need to do is give them my nickname (Ophelia99) or my email address: karissae@gmail.com
Once I start getting more books I'll update on how things are going. I have just been super excited about this. It's also really cool to be able to talk with so many people that are as voracious as I am about reading. Being a 4 book a week reader with this group of people is almost boring it's so normal :-)
Keeping up with the Keegan
As I mentioned Keegan has been learning a lot of new words. He has been saying a lot of sentences. I mean a lot. He learns so many new things everyday; I just can't keep up. So this is my blog entry to brag about all the new things Keegan is saying and doing.
There's a lot of:
"Mama, I climbed up."
"Mama, I did it."
"Mama, I fall down."
"Kitty, get down."
"Mama's boots?"
"Mama's shoes?"
"Mama, lights on?"
"I broke it."
"I fixed it!"
and of course the new favorite...
"I love you!" Usually accompanied by a hug.
I took out my trumpet a couple of days ago for Keegan to see and we played with it some. He pushed the keys while I blew through it. Then the next day he ran out and drug the case across the room to me and said "Mama's trumpet out?" I was so surprised he could remember that they was a trumpet in there, much less the word trumpet.
Keegan has also started saying his alphabet. He can get to about E. He also knows a lot of sounds the letters make. He knows O and that is goes "ooo" and M and that it goes "mmmm". He is starting to count too. Although he has a preference for certain numbers, 5 and 9 seem to be his favorite. So he counts 1, 2, 3, 5, 9. We're working on it...
Keegan and I used to slide down the stairs and say "boom" for each step. Well now Keegan and Lyle have started saying letters for each step, "A,B", "C,D", etc. Lyle thought yesterday that we should write the letters down and tape them by the steps that they are said at. So we did. It looks a bit odd having our steps labeled with letters (2 letters per step mind you). But Keegan loved it, he ran up and down the steps pointing out letters and saying what he thought they were...he was right maybe 50% of the time :-)
Anyway, these are just a few examples of how quickly he is learning. I already thought he was picking things up pretty fast but lately the pace has been incredibly fast. He has his colors down 100%. Although his favorite has switched to green. So when you say "What color is that?" he says "green". Then you say "I know you like green but what color is it really?" And he'll say "Purple!" He's usually right the second time through, if not the first.
He has also been helping to pick out dinner some nights. Although last night he said "yeah" to so many different things that Lyle finally asked him if he wanted to eat crackers with poop on them. When Keegan enthusiastically said "Yeah!" Lyle just shook his head and decided that Keegan just wanted to eat :-)
There's a lot of:
"Mama, I climbed up."
"Mama, I did it."
"Mama, I fall down."
"Kitty, get down."
"Mama's boots?"
"Mama's shoes?"
"Mama, lights on?"
"I broke it."
"I fixed it!"
and of course the new favorite...
"I love you!" Usually accompanied by a hug.
I took out my trumpet a couple of days ago for Keegan to see and we played with it some. He pushed the keys while I blew through it. Then the next day he ran out and drug the case across the room to me and said "Mama's trumpet out?" I was so surprised he could remember that they was a trumpet in there, much less the word trumpet.
Keegan has also started saying his alphabet. He can get to about E. He also knows a lot of sounds the letters make. He knows O and that is goes "ooo" and M and that it goes "mmmm". He is starting to count too. Although he has a preference for certain numbers, 5 and 9 seem to be his favorite. So he counts 1, 2, 3, 5, 9. We're working on it...
Keegan and I used to slide down the stairs and say "boom" for each step. Well now Keegan and Lyle have started saying letters for each step, "A,B", "C,D", etc. Lyle thought yesterday that we should write the letters down and tape them by the steps that they are said at. So we did. It looks a bit odd having our steps labeled with letters (2 letters per step mind you). But Keegan loved it, he ran up and down the steps pointing out letters and saying what he thought they were...he was right maybe 50% of the time :-)
Anyway, these are just a few examples of how quickly he is learning. I already thought he was picking things up pretty fast but lately the pace has been incredibly fast. He has his colors down 100%. Although his favorite has switched to green. So when you say "What color is that?" he says "green". Then you say "I know you like green but what color is it really?" And he'll say "Purple!" He's usually right the second time through, if not the first.
He has also been helping to pick out dinner some nights. Although last night he said "yeah" to so many different things that Lyle finally asked him if he wanted to eat crackers with poop on them. When Keegan enthusiastically said "Yeah!" Lyle just shook his head and decided that Keegan just wanted to eat :-)
Sunday, November 09, 2008
When puddles attack...
Apparently nobody explained to Keegan what happens when you try to jump in a puddle and it is cold outside. Guess we didn't realize it was quite that cold out yet. Let me set the scene here...we are crossing into the parking lot. Keegan screams "Puddle!" and darts to the puddle two feet in front of us. Lyle and I both lurch towards him yelling "NO!" It's too late though, Keegan is in mid jump and jumps straight on the puddle. Too late, Keegan learns what ice is. He lands, his feet fly straight out in front of him, and "BOOM". Luckily he landed on his butt and caught himself with his hands so he didn't hit his head. But it scared the stuffing out of him and he had such a hurt look of betrayal on his face as we picked him up it broke my heart. He started crying saying "Puddle owie fall down " He could not believe that one of his beloved puddles caused him an owie. It was a betrayal of nature itself. It was a betrayal he forgot the moment he saw the DO NOT ENTER sign and yelled "BALL!!!" because the do not enter sign has symbols on it that look somewhat like a ball.
In addition to this we also found out how much fun escalators are today. The only reason we went to Rosedale Mall was to walk around and let Keegan play in the play area there. So he dictated our path through the mall. This entailed riding the escalator up and down and up and down. Then we had to go to Abercrombie and Fitch where he shakes his booty to the music and tries to pick the nose of the giant guy in the picture there. Before this on the way through Macy's we had to touch each of the mannequins' legs to see if they were real. On the way out of Macy's some guy was looking at sweaters next to the mannequins. Imagine both the man's (and Keegan's surprise) when Keegan tried to pinch the "mannequin's" leg and the mannequin jumped a bit and said "oh". Keegan gave me a look like "Hey mom, that mannequin moved" I tried to explain to him that not everyone that stands in the aisle is a mannequin, but what can you do?
What an exciting day it was. BTW, did you know there is a large fountain in the back of Coldwater Creek? Well there is. Keegan knows it, can sense it, and did not ever want to leave it.
In addition to this we also found out how much fun escalators are today. The only reason we went to Rosedale Mall was to walk around and let Keegan play in the play area there. So he dictated our path through the mall. This entailed riding the escalator up and down and up and down. Then we had to go to Abercrombie and Fitch where he shakes his booty to the music and tries to pick the nose of the giant guy in the picture there. Before this on the way through Macy's we had to touch each of the mannequins' legs to see if they were real. On the way out of Macy's some guy was looking at sweaters next to the mannequins. Imagine both the man's (and Keegan's surprise) when Keegan tried to pinch the "mannequin's" leg and the mannequin jumped a bit and said "oh". Keegan gave me a look like "Hey mom, that mannequin moved" I tried to explain to him that not everyone that stands in the aisle is a mannequin, but what can you do?
What an exciting day it was. BTW, did you know there is a large fountain in the back of Coldwater Creek? Well there is. Keegan knows it, can sense it, and did not ever want to leave it.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Halloween has come and gone!
Keegan had a great time trick or treating. He didn't quite get saying "trick or treat" but he was very polite and said "thank you!" after receiving treats. He was super cute in his costume. He wouldn't wear his hood so we painted his hair to look like a dragon; see picture below.
He collected lots of candy and everyone thought he was really cute. At one point when he walked up the guy started to give him a handful of candy and then said "Boy, you are so darn cute you deserve some of the good stuff!" The guy ran and got Keegan a king size box of Reeses pieces; I was thinking "Oh, great like we need that!"
At one point Kee was really scared of these two older girls dressed up as monsters. He wouldn't go up to the door until they left. Then after all that excitement we had to get ready for the party the next day.
The party went well! It started at 4pm but I don't think people realized that we started it earlier this year. The first people to show up were my parents who showed up around 5pm and then Carlos came with his girls. After that point people gradually started to show up. We had lots of fun; Liam and Keegan had a heck of a good time together. Below is a video of them playing together with the laser pointer; and you thought laser pointers were just for cats!
The rest of the pictures from the Halloween Party can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/UtherPup/2008OctoberHalloweenParty#
It ended up being a good time. And despite all of the hard work it takes to get that party set up, we were glad we did it because people seemed to be having a good time.
So now it's on to other things...like Christmas!
He collected lots of candy and everyone thought he was really cute. At one point when he walked up the guy started to give him a handful of candy and then said "Boy, you are so darn cute you deserve some of the good stuff!" The guy ran and got Keegan a king size box of Reeses pieces; I was thinking "Oh, great like we need that!"
At one point Kee was really scared of these two older girls dressed up as monsters. He wouldn't go up to the door until they left. Then after all that excitement we had to get ready for the party the next day.
The party went well! It started at 4pm but I don't think people realized that we started it earlier this year. The first people to show up were my parents who showed up around 5pm and then Carlos came with his girls. After that point people gradually started to show up. We had lots of fun; Liam and Keegan had a heck of a good time together. Below is a video of them playing together with the laser pointer; and you thought laser pointers were just for cats!
The rest of the pictures from the Halloween Party can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/UtherPup/2008OctoberHalloweenParty#
It ended up being a good time. And despite all of the hard work it takes to get that party set up, we were glad we did it because people seemed to be having a good time.
So now it's on to other things...like Christmas!
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