Keegan is a monkey & a lion

Last Friday, while I was out at the plant, Lyle dropped Keegan off at daycare. Lyle went to put Keegan's bottles in the fridge only to turn around and find that Keegan had crawled over to one of the highchairs, pulled himself up on it, and had proceeded to grab the tray and start swinging from the highchair tray. Lyle was amazed. Keegan's teacher turned around and sighed saying "Yep, he does that all the time." I guess I didn't realized swinging from things was a skill that babies learned before proficient walking.

Speaking of walking...Keegan can stand up by himself and take a couple of steps before falling down. Oh yeah and he tried to climb the bookcase again. He's just very....active....either that or he's part monkey. People keep telling it's great that his is so active, curious, and persistent. I agree but coming home at night is like having a second job; a fun job but a job nonetheless.

I get developmental news letters from Healthy Start for each month of Keegan's age. Reading through the last one there were a couple study results and interesting recommendations. First thing that I hadn't though of; they were recommending to not tell your baby "no" for everything but to explain to them why they shouldn't do that thing. You're supposed to save no for really important live-threatening things. Unfortunately I am trained to say "no" because that's what the dog and cats understand. So we have been trying this out. For instance when Keegan tries to tip the pets' water bowel over I say "That will make you wet and cold, you don't want to do that" instead of "no". Then I relocate him to a different part of the house. So far it hasn't been very effective; he really likes the water bowl. He likes to splash in it and lift it up and tip it over himself.

The other thing we have been having an issue with is that Keegan would rather play with anything other than his toys. The newsletter suggested hiding toys places to interest babies in them. So I started doing this with some of his toys. I don't hide them really well, but I'll stick one in a drawer in the kitchen and one sticking out between the couch cushions and maybe one between some books. This has worked like a charm. Keegan gets *so* excited to find the toys and then he will sit and play with the toy for a few minutes. Only thing I don't like about it is that there are toys all over the house. That and I bet we will open a drawer 5 years down the road and find a baby toy in there :-)

As I mentioned in the last post Keegan gained some new skills while I was at the plant. In addition to those, my mom has been teaching him to give high 5's. Keegan is very proficient at waving, he can kind of clap, and now he has added high 5's to his repertoire of gestures. This weekend he said his first word, and it was "dada". Actually it was more like "dadadadadadada". Whenever he says it now I tell Lyle "Oh, I think Keegan wants daddy" I don't actually think that Keegan associates dada with daddy but it's fun to think he does.

Just a couple more things to write about. Last night we took the cats (Loki and Jubei) to the vet for their yearly physical. Of course Keegan came along. Keegan loved being at the vet. I tried to hold with some standard of cleanliness and make him stay in his stroller but then finally gave up. Keegan and Jubei had a great time crawling around the exam room (Jubei walked though). Loki did his normal routine of sitting on the exam table and shaking in terror while trying to hide his head under my arm. Dr. Bear, our vet, and the vet tech had a lot of fun with Jubei, like normal. They also enjoyed meeting Keegan and watching Keegan and Jubei "play" together. Keegan was crazy happy the whole time we were there. Dr. Bear made a comment about how active Keegan was and how crazy our house must be with the 3 cats, Ruby, and Keegan. It's crazy but it's a good crazy...most of the time.

So today is Keegan's first Halloween. We got him all dressed in his lion costume this morning. I was going to go in as a pirate but was up really late last night ordering baby snow boots online (long story there) so when I woke up this morning getting all my pirate gear on looked like too much work. Instead I put on a black skirt, Halloween shirt, and my orange and black striped knee high socks. I think I look suitably Halloweeny. I stopped by Cub on my way into work to grab some Halloween cupcakes for my coworkers. Can you believe there is a line at Cub Foods at 6am for Halloween cupcakes? Ridiculous.

Anyway, at work there is a witch, an evil jester, and a Halloweeny me. I talked to Lyle and the little lion got to daycare just fine. Keegan seems perfectly thrilled to be crawling around in his Lion pants (they took the lion jacket and hood off until the Halloween parade). Tonight Keegan will be Tigger; unfortunately the Tigger costume isn't the easiest to change diapers in so he didn't wear it to daycare. I know, I know the kid's got two costumes for Halloween. What can I do, baby costumes are *so* awesome I just couldn't resist.

Tonight we are going to change costumes. Go over and hit Lyle's parents, maybe come back to our house and hit the neighbors, and then we will go and eat dinner at my parents house. It will be a busy night. I really shouldn't have stayed up so late last night but, what can I say, sometimes I get distracted online.

I should probably do some amount of work today. So off I go to work, work, work. Hope everyone had/has a Happy Halloween. I think Halloween is in a tie with Xmas for my favorite holiday. I am so excited to have a kid so we can celebrate with enthusiasm and not get too many weird looks.