Almost time...

It's almost time to go on vacation. I am really looking forward to it...kind of.

Okay let's back up for a second. Keegan turned 2 yrs old on Feb. 6th. We had the grandparents over for a little party. We decided not to do a bigger one because; well I have enough on my plate getting ready for our vacation and we really, really don't need anymore toys around the house. Also, Keegan really doesn't care right now and I bet in a couple years he really will care.

So back to the vacation. Anyone notice how stressful it is to get ready for a vacation? First there's the work stuff; I need to make sure everything is wrapped up at work and all my results are updated.

Then there's the planning part. Do we have tickets for everything? What do we want to see while we are there? The mail needs to be stopped. Need to make sure the dog is packed up and ready to stay at my parents' house. Then there is the packing....

Packing is the worst for me. With a toddler we need to pack a lot of stuff. We need a carseat, a stroller, a booster seat (since we are renting a townhouse), and a place for him to sleep. This is in addition to clothing, beach stuff, toiletries, toys, snacks, etc. We need to pack it all so that we can get it from point A to point B. God forbid we forget anything. I mean it's not like we are going to the moon, we can buy stuff there but it is just overwhelming. I mean what if we forget Blue Blankie? Blue Blankie is essential to Keegan's happiness. What if we forget the pacifiers or medication or who knows what else?

Lyle tries to help with packing. In fact he is in charge of electronics (camera, DVD player, PSP, phone chargers etc). So he takes care of that. Unfortunately I take over the rest of it. Inevitably I am awake all night the night before we leave going over what is packed over and over and over in my head. And...inevitably we will get to San Diego and be unpacking and Lyle will say "Where is the ___, did you pack it?" and the answer will be no. I forgot flip-flops or a belt or socks or something else.

Then there is getting through security at the airport. Anyone who has taken a toddler through security is with me on this one. I have to take off my shoes, Keegan's shoes, my jacket, Keegan's jacket, put the infant tylenol into a ziploc baggy, make sure Keegan doesn't run off. While I do this Lyle lugs the carseat onto the xray machine and unpacks the laptop, the camera, and the PSP. We get to the front of the line. The carseat won't fit in this x-ray machine. We need to go to the other one over there. We pick up everything and waddle over to the next x-ray machine. I wonder how my body can carry everything it is carrying; I wonder what I am leaving behind....

Then we get on the airplane. Lyle runs on to install the carseat, while I try to run out Keegan's energy while keeping an ear out for the last call to board the plane. Then there is trying to explain to Keegan what we are doing, trying to distract him, feed him, keep him as happy as we can for 3.5 hours. Praying the whole time that their won't be a major toddler melt down.

All that is the worst of it. Everything *should* be okay once we get there. Then it will just be struggling to fit in regular naps and meals and keeping everyone well rested and happy.

Should a vacation be this stressful? Probably not. I kind of wig out about all of this stuff and I will try to calm down. But until we get there I know I will be packing everything in my mind to make sure I have it all right, I will be trying to second guess Keegan's airplane mood, I will be praying no one gets sick, and hoping that we don't get delayed.

So am I looking forward to vacation? Yes and no...I try to keep in mind that this is just another life adventure and that we should approach it with a sense of fun :-)

Hockey Obsessions Continued

So we were thinking that maybe this hockey thing would get old for Keegan. Apparently not, it is still his favorite pastime. We have been trying to take him out ice skating and play hockey indoors and out when we can. Apparently though we have failed him in the most important of hockey essentials...that of equipment.

A couple of weeks ago Keegan walked out of the Mudroom with his version of a hockey helmet.

Yes folks he has a dog muzzle on his head. I did not even know you could do that with a muzzle go figure he's so creative.

We also failed to provide him with hockey gloves. So daddy's gloves worked very well as a substitute.


Then there was another attempt to find the perfect hockey helmet to portray his outgoing and crazy personality. Take this Backstrom your helmet has nothing on our boy's.


Try as I might to fight my future as a hockey mom, with each passing month my fate grows more and more certain. Keegan loves shooting baskets, he loves kicking the soccer ball, he talks about how he loves his swimming lessons, but nothing...absolutely nothing is as cool as hockey. So, for his birthday, this Saturday we are taking him to another Gopher Women's Hockey game. Hey, if you can't win you mine as well have fun being sucked into the time void known as hockey. Keegan has been asking to ice skate all the time; so maybe skating lessons will be in order in another year we will see. Maybe we have the next Gretzky on our hands here...or maybe (I'll keep telling myself this) he will outgrow it :-)

Lasting memories.... Future NHLer? or maybe a Swimming gold medalist?

First off the NHL part. I was reading an article about Cal Clutterbuck who plays for the Wild. I thought it was interesting in two parts....

In fact, Jocelyne, while pregnant with Clutterbuck's now-18-year-old sister, Megan, used to play goal as 2-year-old Cal practiced shooting. "So Megan's blocked the odd shot, too," quipped Tim Clutterbuck.

Sounds familiar around our house. Thought that it was kind of funny, of course Keegan isn't quite two yet, he is pretty close, he has gotten quite a bit of time shooting, and being goalie around the house. The article also mentioned that Cal started skating around 2, which Keegan has done once, and I am hoping to get him out again this weekend if it is nice out. Karissa and I were talking about taking him for his first outdoor experience, and I thought I might bring his hockey stick along.... and his helmet ;). I doubt that he would be able to skate and play hockey, but we might get some boot hockey time in if he wants to.

Ok, now for the memories. Karissa and I were hanging around the house on Sunday, and talking about going swimming. Keegan's swimming lessons are in the afternoon, and while asking him if he wanted to go swimming, he asked if Auntie Kimmie would be there. We explained for about the billionth time that Kim is very far away, and that he would see her again much later. But every once in a while he brings up Kim and asks about her. So Kim if you read this, you are not forgotten :). This kind of surprised me since Kim was here for about a week during Christmas and New Years, and though he spent a lot of time with her, I didn't think he would be asking a month later where she is. I am glad that he likes his aunt though.

Also at swimming Keegan was excited the moment that the teacher said that they would be doing "Jack be Nimbles" during class. This is basically a large styrofoam platform that they run from one side to the other and jump in the pool when you reach the jumped over the candle stick part of the rhyme. He remembered this from the last time he was swimming, and that was like a year ago. I am constantly amazed at his memory. Anyway he did really big jumps into the pool, I think his butt was almost touching the platform at the low part of his jump. The teacher was very impressed, and shouted over to me that he does so good in class. Considering he is the only one of the three kids in his class that will actually do a backfloat without us having to hold his ears in the water, it shouldn't be a surprise that he is a teachers favorite.

Either way Hockey and Swimming both seem to be pretty high on his list of things to do. Sadly swimming is not as easy to do at home. He tries to do some swimming in the bath tub, but we really don't fill it full enough for that :).

Imagination begins...

Keegan is getting really big into imagining things. He likes to imagine things scare him, or imagine he is a doctor, or imagine that he is pretend eating.

This weekend he came walking out with his safety goggles on (from his Black and Decker workbench) and a stethoscope (from his vet hospital kit). I am not sure what the goggles had to do with the stethoscope but I guess if you are a vet things can sure get messy. He walked up to me and "Mama, I listen to kitty's heart." Then he proceeded to chase the cat around yelling at the top of his lungs "Kitty hold still, won't hurt." I don't think he ever did catch the cat.

Then yesterday on the way home from daycare he started making funny munching noises in his carseat. He loudly stated, "Keegan is eating, now mama's turn to eat." So then I made munching noises and he liked that. Then it was daddy's turn to eat. So daddy made munching noises. To which Keegan exclaimed "Silly daddy!"

This morning (at 6:15am) we were getting ready to leave for daycare. Keegan ran and got his hockey stick. "Let's play hockey, dada!" Daddy told him we had to go to daycare. "Bring hockey stick?" Keegan inquired. It's a small hockey stick so I didn't really care one way or another but Lyle said "I think you need to leave that at home." To which Keegan replied, "But I Neeeed it daddy I really neeeeed it." Sometimes it is so hard not to laugh when your kid is disobeying you.

The at dinner tonight I was trying to convince Keegan to eat some black beans. Getting him to eat veggies is nearly impossible so we usually focus on fruits because he loves all fruits. I was trying to cajole him into eating those beans when suddenly he screamed at the top of his lungs and grasped his hands to his heart and exclaimed; "Mama, the beans are scaring me. I can't eat them." I actually lost it this time and snuck into the kitchen so I could laugh...Lyle had to turn away for a few seconds too and giggle. How can you convince your kid to eat his beans when they are so darn scary!!!

So, the Keegan stories continue to get more and more fun and interesting. What a silly boy *he* is.

A bird in my ear...

Okay so it's been a long time since I've posted anything, of course that doesn't mean nothing has been going on...quite the opposite actually.

Christmas was crazy and getting ready for Christmas was crazy. Lyle's half-sister Amber visited the weekend before Christmas and we haven't seen her for 8 years or so. Then my sister came in a few days before Christmas and we hung out with her. Of course we had to go to Lyle's parents' house, my grandparents' house and then to my parents house. As much as we love our family we were relieved to spend some time at home with just me, Keegan, and Lyle on New Years Day.

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, but it just getting to be too much work and not enough fun! I suppose it is kind of a kid's holiday so as long as Keegan is having fun all is good. Keegan got a billion toys. We finally opened the last of the toys this last weekend. I am losing my mind trying to figure out where to put them all. Keegan doesn't know what to play with, he has so much stuff. Of course his birthday is coming up in a month so...we have to figure this toy thing out.

The good thing about Christmas is that no one was sick!!! In fact no one was sick for 6-8 weeks from mid-Nov until now. Yesterday Keegan had a fever of 103oF. On Sunday and Monday he kept telling me owie ear. We had swimming lessons on Sunday so I thought maybe he had water in his ear. Then Monday night his fever started and I thought "uh oh, betcha' he's got an ear infection coming on".

While we were waiting for the doctor last night, I jokingly asked him if he "had a bird in his ear". There was a Dr. Seuss book we'd been reading where the guy can't hear cause there's a bird in his ear.

To my surprise Keegan said "Yes! I have a bird in this ear (his right ear) but not this ear (his left ear)." When the doctor came in Keegan pointed to his right ear and said "I have a bird in my ear." The doctor looked at me quizzically and I explained where he had got that from. Then the doctor said she was going to use her scope to see if he *did* have a bird in his ear. He was pretty agreeable to that. He told her again he had a bird in his right ear.

The doctor looked in his left ear and no infection...then she looked in his right ear and he has a horrible ear infection going on. She told Keegan "Wow buddy you were right you *do* have a bird in your right ear." So we ran to the pharmacy to get some antibiotics for Keegan.

He didn't want to take the medicine, so I told him it would help to get the bird out of his ear. Then he said "Okay, get that bird out." and took his meds.

Really there is a point to this rather funny story. I put him down for nap today and I heard him say "Mama, I scared." over the monitor. He said it a few times so I went downstairs. He was pointing at the window. There is a bush outside the window and the sun was reflecting the shadow of it onto his curtains the wind was making it blow back and forth. I said "Keegan it's just a bush." Keegan "No, mama it's a bird and it'll get in my ear." It kind of did look like a bird. So I opened the curtains and showed him the bush. He was okay with it then. He settled down for his napping crumbling about how, "The bird hurt his ear and he wants it out."

On a positive note we now know that when Keegan has an ear infection he'll have a bird in his ear; so that should help us figure out what is going on. On the other hand Keegan is now convinced that a bird is going to get into his ear and is convinced that anything that looks like a bird is a threat. Well, what can you do. At least he is napping now that the scary bird is gone. Hopefully he'll be better tomorrow so that mommy can go to work.

Hockey Obsessions

Keegan likes hockey. He likes to watch it on TV; he yells "goal" and "Go Wild!" and "Yay, Hockey!!!" Then we took him to a Gopher women's hockey game. It was $8 a ticket, general admission. I figured we could probably sit right up against the glass and if Keegan hated it we could leave and not be out $400 in tickets (GO WILD). Below is a pic of Kee at the game.



Yes, he is wearing a Wild jersey, yes they do make hockey jerseys in 2T. Okay I guess that probably isn't that surprising. Keegan loved the game. He talked about it for weeks afterward. So finally we decided it was time to get him skates. We got him a pair of the cheapest skates we could find (the guy at the store tried talking us into $80 hockey skates for a toddler and that didn't fly). Last weekend it was time to go to open skate at the Super Rink and do some skating. See picture below.



Keegan was a little nervous about skating. He did okay. Then he wanted gma and gpa to hold him while he watched mommy and daddy skate. He really enjoyed that, he clapped for us and gave us high fives when we did laps; he liked it.

Despite his nervousness skating as we left the rink he proudly exclaimed "I PLAYED HOCKEY!!!!" He was convinced that he played hockey. He also said that Mommy played hockey, which I never knew I had done so I guess I am cooler than I know.

Okay, so fast-forward to this last week. Keegan proudly proclaims that those are "My hockey skates" every time he sees the box his skates are in. All of the sudden Lyle gets a glint in his eye and leaves, saying he'll be right back. In a few minutes Lyle is back with a broken hockey stick that he has cut down to Keegan size. OMG, Keegan flew through the roof. To our surprise he ran up and took it from Lyle exclaiming "My hockey stick!!!" We didn't know he knew what a hockey stick was.

Then he immediately got a ball and started knocking the "puck" around upstairs with his new hockey stick. He would intermittently yell "I score" and "GO WILD!". It was hilarious. See the video below.



Of course, he kept saying "I play hockey!" Then he wanted to take his hockey stick to bed with him. Now that's dedication. I think we are in trouble. I am trying to resign myself right now with spending many many hours watching hockey. I suppose he might outgrow it. Then again, he steals the remote when I put on Little Einsteins, and tries to find hockey. I am like "Keegan what are you doing?", he responds, "I watch hockey!" Yep, he could grow out of it. Just in case though, I did some research. He can join Mites at 4 years of age and he can start skating lessons in about a year. Until then he will have to live with his mini-hockey stick and open skating.

Although he is good at thinking outside the box. When we came out of Adventure Park today everything was covered in ice and the temperature had dropped considerably. As we slide our way to the car Keegan looked at me and very seriously said "Mama, I need my hockey skates!" I suppose they might have worked, but I don't think the ice was quite thick enough.

Keeganisms

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.

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.

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 :-)

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 :-)

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.

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!

A Boy and His Pumpkin

On Sunday we carved Keegan's pumpkin. Lyle cut the top off and I cleaned it out. Keegan helped with the design by letting me know what shape eyes, nose, and mouth he wanted. Then I started carving the pumpkin, Keegan had a safety knife and pretended to help cut it while I carved in the faces. Lyle had to finish carving it because my arm got tired, it was a really thick pumpkin.

Then we put a candle in it and turned off the lights. There was a lot of "oohhing" and "Awwwing" from Keegan. He really enjoyed seeing the pumpkin lite up. We left it sitting on the coffee table.

When Keegan got home from daycare on Monday he ran up and gave his pumpkin a big hug and a kiss. Not sure why, but it was pretty funny. Then he said, "Mama, fire, pumpkin" He wanted me to light the pumpkin. So I lit it for him. It was really cute, he kept trying to blow out the candle. Unfortunately he would line his eyes up to the pumpkins eyes and then when he went to blow out the candle he didn't blow inside the pumpkin but into the side of the pumpkin's outside. A couple times he backed up from the pumpkin and waved at it saying "Hi". He was a bit disappointed when the pumpkin didn't respond.

All in all it was a good time. Although I am a little worried about what will happen when we have to throw out the pumpkin because Kee seems to think the pumpkin is a good buddy of his now. See below video and picture for the interaction and the finished product!

We also got a small pumpkin that Keegan could carry. That pumpkin has been getting rides in Keegan's dump truck, he thinks it is the coolest thing ever. What can we learn from this? Well, the love a toddler has for his jack-o-latern is boundless and knows no bounds, even if the jack-o-latern doesn't wave back :-)

Keegan's First Parent Teacher Conference

Keegan had his first parents teacher conference tonight. So after dinner we packed everyone up and drove back to Tutor Time to meet his teacher Sarah.

Sarah has only been Keegan's teacher for a few weeks; his last teacher left and got a new job. I liked Sarah pretty well right away. She introduced herself to me right off the bat and explained how long she had been with Tutor Time (she transferred from a different site)and that she had done infants and pre-K for the last 6 years and was excited to switch to toddler. Keegan seems to like her too, which is what I really care about. Still it was nice to have a teacher actually introduce themselves to you :-) Some of the girls there don't do that very well; although they are really good with the kids.

While Keegan dismantled the Toddler 1 room (absolutely thrilled to have the whole room by himself), we stood and talked with Sarah. She had a checklist of things that Keegan was doing well. He's somewhat ahead in gross motor skills as he can jump now and climb. He also is doing good in fine motor skills (like drawing) and self help skills (like eating with a spoon). He does great with staking blocks (he can stack up to 8 blocks now). She said Keegan was very good at following simple instructions and also was good at sitting still during story time.

The area that Sarah was really impressed with was his language skills. She said that she was absolutely amazed at how much he talks, how many words he knows, and how he is saying three to four word sentences already. I explained that we read a lot together so maybe that helps. She went on for a few minutes about how great this was and how smart he is and how happy we should be. I really didn't know what to say. So I thanked her and said it was good to know that he is so advanced for talking, I mentioned maybe he got all that talking tendency from me :-)

It is good to know that he is so far ahead in speaking ability. We kind of got a hint of that because of our co-workers and how amazed they are at the things we mention Keegan saying. Right now Keegan is picking up words at an amazing pace, I think I hear him say a couple new words each day. This weekend he walked up and pointed to my eyes and said "Mama, sparkly eyes?" He wanted to know why my eyelids sparkled; I tried explained the concept of eye shadow to him. I think he still thinks I am a bit strange for making my eyelids sparkle.

Sarah also said that he plays fine with kids his age and interacts well with adults. When he gets put with bigger kids though he tends to get overwhelmed and stay out of their way, preferring to play by himself. I asked her about this specifically because I have noticed that he does tend to find older kids overwhelming. They are too erratic and noisy for him; he tends to get a bit clingy or just very quiet and wide-eyed.

Overall Sarah says he is a laid-back, very pleasant kid to have around. She said it really was a joy to have him there. Of course, I am happy to hear it because he's my son and I would like to think that I somehow influenced him to behave well! Oh, and of course it's always nice for people to like your child :-)

Lyle and I were discussing how the teacher probably says this to every parent. Sarah is a very enthusiastic teacher and I bet she finds good things about all the children.

Still I do know we are paying them, so it is in their best interest to say nice things about the children. Part of me, of course, hopes that Keegan really is a joy to her and that he really is an exceptionally smart boy...that is to someone other than me. I will always think he is the most special little guy in the world because I am severely biased.

Anyway, it was interesting and nice to know that people like him. Of course, we already know that Keegan knows everyone at daycare and that they all like him. So hopefully he can keep that up well into his teens....

Chairs and Cars

After dinner today Keegan decided that the house needed rearranging. He has done this a couple times before but tonight he was especially serious about it. He decided that all of the chairs in the kitchen needed to be put in a straight line running from the sunroom through the kitchen to the living room. I mean all the chairs too. So it was the six kitchen chairs and the two bar stool chairs that ended up being put in quite a long line.

He was very intent on it. Probably took him 20 minutes to do. Then he walked up and down the line to make sure they were absolutely perfect. After that he stopped at the end of the row and threw his hands up in the air yelling "Yay!!!" He was so proud of himself. Of course we were obliged to clap for him and congratulate him on his successful lining up of chairs.

Of course he had trapped Ruby in the sunroom with his train of chairs but she didn't seem to mind all that much because Keegan also couldn't get into the sunroom.

Then the chairs were quickly ignored and it was onto the next project. He had a bowl of cheerios sitting on the coffee table for a snack. Then suddenly he got an idea and took off running into the playroom. He came out with one of his Little People cars and started stacking cheerios in it. Apparently a little people car is something like a 7 cheerio vehicle. Then it was time to run the car into the banister to see if the cheerios would stay in the car or fall out. Whenever a cheerio didn't survive the crash Keegan would stop, put his hands on his head, and say "Oh, no!"

Unfortunately the pushing by hand then moved to kicking the car around the kitchen and the cheerio passengers couldn't survive that....

All-in-all it was a pretty typical Sunday night :-)

Baby Loves Disco Profession Pics

The pictures done by the progfessional photographer at Baby Loves Disco are finally up. They can be seen at the following link:
http://sbhphotography.com/BLD-10-08/

You can find pics of Keegan on:
- Bottom of the 2nd page
- Top of the 3rd page
- Middle of the 4th page
- Top of the 8th page
- Middle of the 11th page

I would send a link to each one, but they are loaded into a flash application so I can't do that.

On a somewhat related note we went to the Barnyard Boogie last night. This was an event the City of Blaine put on for kids 5 and under. They had balloons, a petting zoo, snacks, a DJ, and a huge park nearby.

We forgot the camera and decided to not go back and get it because Keegan didn't dance much at Baby Loves Disco (BLD) so we figured it would be the same here. We were very wrong! AS soon as the music started Keegan abandoned the bunnies, chickens, and sheep and ran out to the dance floor to dance. He shook his groove thing like you wouldn't believe. He was out there pulling some dance moves that I have never seen the likes of before. It was hysterical. He had everyone in stitches. He keep the dancing up for a good hour or so, with quick breaks to refill his hands with snack. He was kind of the star of the event; which is saying something considering that I think it sold out with 75 kids there.

I really wish I had had the video camera. He was *so* funny. He was doing the twist, doing some side-stepping, a little funky chicken, maybe some electric slide, and an occasional break dancing move. I wish I could better describe the hilarity of it; I haven't laughed so hard so a long time :-) Much to our dismay he really got into the country songs...then when some electronica came on he decided it was time to go swinging. I guess he doesn't get to here much (any) country at home so...

Anyway, Lyle and Keegan are napping. So I have some stuff to get done. Hopefully we will have a fun weekend!

The Big Move

On Friday we did Keegan's "big move". We finally moved him from the upstairs open "nursery" to his bedroom downstairs. I finished that pesky mural which you can see here: http://picasaweb.google.com/UtherPup/2008RoomPainting#5254578728483166002

Moving him down was more work than I thought it would be. We ended up needing to do some stuff in his bedroom that we had forgotten about. Silly little things: like a plate for wiring in the ceiling, a closure for the hole in the wall where the sewage access is, fixing and mounting the drawer in his closet...you know little stuff.
We moved the big stuff down, Keegan thought that part was a lot of fun. Then it was all the other stuff like blankets, cloths, toys. Then I was fussy about other things. I wanted everything in a place that felt right to me. I wanted his pictures hung up and all the odd things I have collected for his room set up. Then I realized that some of the wall still looked pretty darn bare. Well we can't have that, so this weekend it was off to Ikea to get some cute kids bookshelves to hang on the wall (among a billion other fun things for Keegan). I couldn't believe all the stuff we ended up with. There are just so many cool kids things there.

Anyway, Keegan took to his new room instantly. He loves it! We have had no trouble with him sleeping down there; he actually seems to sleep better because the cats don't bug him. He is still waking up once in a while at 4am hungry. The last couple days also sucked because he is getting more molars in and he bangs his head a lot at night and moans. I feel bad for him but what can you do, the kids been on Tylenol for the last two days cause it seems to help with this.

Now that his bedroom is set up downstairs we are finding somethings are easier and some things are not as easily done. Like walking down to his bedroom in the middle of the night if he gets upset seriously sucks. I usually sleep though him though, so that is more an issue for Lyle. It's nice now that we don't have to sneak around upstairs so that we don't wake him up. It is also nice that we were able to turn the "nursery" into a playroom. That way the toys are out of the living room and Keegan has more space to play. So all-in-all it's been awesome.

We had a busy weekend. Saturday we went to Baby Loves Disco, which was fun. Keegan didn't dance much because he was too absorbed watching the other kids dance. He did love the bubbles, the hula-hoops, and the egg-shakers though. The food was okay and the neat lighting was fun. We stayed for 2.5 out of the 3 hours. When we left and got outside the nightclub then Keegan finally decided to dance back to the car :-) The photographer there pulled me over to let me know she got some really cute pics of Keegan. As soon as they are up we will send some links to them. Until then you can look at the pictures we took here: http://picasaweb.google.com/UtherPup/2008OctoberBabyLovesDisco#

Sunday we got up to meet some friends for brunch and then drove out to Afton Apple Orchard. Luckily it stopped raining as we got out there. It was even sunny for a while. Keegan loved the apples and pumpkins. He enthusiastically screamed "Apple!!!" and "Pumpkin!!!" more times than I can count. He absolutely loved the hayride, loved eating the apples, and had a great time at the petting zoo. It was awesome. After that we stopped by Ikea to get all of the above mentioned stuff for Keegan's room and playroom. Here are some pics of that:
http://picasaweb.google.com/UtherPup/2008OctoberAftonAppleOrchard#

It was a busy weekend, but we had a ton of fun.

Vacation Up North Day 4

Today we managed to sleep in until about 9am. By the time we finally got our behinds out of the lodge is was 10am. We decided to stop by the Vanilla Bean bakery for breakfast and get muffins. My muffin was burnt and dry and yucky. This made me crabby and I ended up throwing it out and grumbling. Lyle suggested we stop by the Rustic Inn Cafe for breakfast instead. So we did. The breakfast I got here was fantastic, wild rice and cranberry french toast, and made me happy again.

We drove of to Split Rock State park and used the GPS unit that we had gotten from the lodge to find the geo cache here. It was at the top of day Hill; a very nice hike with a beautiful view of Lake Superior at the top of the hill. We took another small hike to another outlook; this lead to the old Cornumdum mines but the outlook wasn't great. Then back to the car.

We decided to go back to the lodge. Worked on the puzzle, took a nap, sat by the lake and read some. Of course while I decided to take a nap, they decided to mow the lawn which was a bit annoying but I slept nonetheless.

Then I changed into nicer cloths and we started the 1.5 hr drive up to Lutsen. We got up there in plenty of time (Lyle likes to drive fast and pass people). Met up with our friends in the lobby. I got the programs from Bianca and packed those away in the car. They are getting married down by the lake. So while they rehearsed, we collected some rocks and then Lyle and others stood behind the rehearsal making strange faces and poses in the background of the pictures. Very mature. Of course I do think Bianca will think that is hilarious when she looks at the pictures.

After that it was time for dinner. It was a BBQ but the bonfire was cancelled because of a big store blowing through. It didn't start raining until 7:30pm or so and then BBQ was under a tent so it ended up being okay. We left around 8:30pm. It was raining really hard on our drive back, I am glad Lyle was driving. When we got back we ran past the main lodge to get some hot chocolate and then can back and finished the puzzle. After the puzzle we watched the movie "The Fall" which was interesting, if a bit slow. Then off to bed by 12:30am. Tomorrow will be a busy day.

Vacation Up North Day 3

Yesterday was our third day of vacation. We started out the day by checking out a GPS unit from the main lodge and driving into Two Harbors for breakfast. We stopped at the Vanilla Bean Cafe to eat. Food here is always good, although usually service is slow. Lyle got his favorite citrus french toast with hash browns and I tried a new dish they had, pecan and caramel bread pudding with some bacon on the side. Mine was very yummy and so was Lyle's. The service was faster than normal for once. I should mention that we managed to sleep in until 8:30am today :-)

We left Two Harbors and went north to Tettegouche State Park. We decided to go ahead and try and find the geocache here. The coordinates they gave us got us to the State park entrance and from there there were additional coordinates. We opted to skip the 6.5 mile hike and just go straight to the cache. We really wanted to get up to Temperance River today too. So we parked at what we thought was the right area and took off towards Two Step Falls which is where the GPS was pointing. 1.5 miles out there we realized we were on the wrong side of the river. So we had to go to the High Falls bridge and cross. I hate this bridge, it's a metal grate and sways like crazy and I basically went across as fast as I could. It doesn't help that there are warning signs to not jump on the bridge and to make sure that no more than 5 people are on it at a time...

After a long hike up the other side of the river we realized that we had parked in the wrong spot initially and we ended up over where we had been the day before. So, we hiked and hiked and hiked. Ended up on the Superior Trail and then up this really tall hill. Finally at the top of the hill we ran into a guy that was leaving the cache. He told us he buried it under this pine tree. I thought that was kind of jerky of him because we were seriously in the middle of no-where and just finding the cache under a pine tree would have been difficult enough, you didn't have to bury it under bark. I crawled under the tree and pulled it out, took out history card, and made an note in the journal, Lyle went to the look-out and took some pics. I put the cache so that it was visible under the pine tree. Then we had a *long* walk back to the car.

Given all our navigation errors our quick jaunt at Tettegouche took around 2 hours and was about 5 miles long. By this time we were tired and (at least I was getting) cranky and hungry. So we decided to do temperance park the next day. We drove into Duluth to the Mall there and walked around the mall. I bought some clothes and so did Lyle. Ends up Gap was having a super awesome sale. I got some nice shirts for extremely cheap as did Lyle. Then we left the mall to go watch the movie Ghost Town at the theater.

The movie was pretty good, it was mostly funny but kind of sad. After the movie it was off to Grandma's Sports Garden for dinner. The idea was to eat dinner and then play some pool but the pool tables had been moved for a banquet. That and I got a drink that was really strong and after that I had trouble walking straight much less playing pool :-)

So we decided to come back to the cabin. We stopped in the main lodge and returned the GPS unit and ordered some dessert to go. Then we worked on the puzzle for a long time and went to bed and read for a while...then it was off to sleep.

Today we will be going further up north since we need to be at Lutsen for Bianca and Ken's rehersal dinner tonight. Figured we'd make a day of it. Anyway, so far so good.

Last night when I talked to my parents I found out that Keegan is doing really well, he seems completely recovered from his illness. They are having to keep him off milk because he gets D really bad if he drinks it. Hopefully this is a temporary thing. I am just happy he is doing so well!

Vacation Up North Day 2

Today we were able to sleep in. Which was great, except neither of us could sleep past 7:30am. So much for sleeping in really late.

So we got up and took our time getting ready. Then we went over to the Rock Ledge Grill (the on-site restaurant) for breakfast; we had a voucher for this place. It ended up being cheaper to get the breakfast package than to pay per night. Like last time the food was mediocre and the service horrible. They actually managed to burn Lyle's french toast and my fruit and nut granola had raisins as the "fruit" and no nuts but lots of chocolate chips....

Anyway, with that aside we packed up our bikes and drove down to Jay Cooke State Park. We never have spent much time at this park. We ended up taking our bikes out for maybe 15 minutes; it was extremely windy and the biking trail was in pretty poor shape. We gave up on a long bike ride and brought the bikes back to the car so that we could go on a hike. We did the hiking trail along the river and then up the bluffs. After about 2 hours of hiking we decided to go do something else.

We went to Best Buy in Duluth to check out how much their portable GPS units cost. Lyle looked up prices online on his phone and, as expected, the prices online were about the same as we could get at Best Buy with the 40% off coupon. So we decided to skip the GPS for now. We left Best Buy and drove to the New Scenic Cafe for lunch. Lunch there was very yummy. We had a maple sugared Fig Plate with Blue Cheese for an appetizer and then I had a tomato/mozzarella sandwich while Lyle had a burger. Like everywhere up here, service was pleasant but very slow. We kept reminding ourselves that we weren't really in a hurry to get anywhere so we should just relax. After lunch we decided to go back to the lodge to drop off our bikes.

I dumped out the puzzle and we started doing that. We ended up spending a couple hours on that and then realized since this is supposed to be the nicest day for weather that we should probably get another hike in. So we took off planning to go up to Temperance River State Park. We underestimated the time it would take to get there and realized that the sun was starting to set and we were only to Tettegouche State park. SO we pulled into Tettegouche and did the hike to the High Falls. It was getting dark by the time we got back to the car so we went back to the lodge. Once we got back we went to the main building and got some hot drinks and dessert to go. Then back to our lodge to work on the puzzle some more. I am not sure what we will do next. Maybe we will watch a movie tonight.

We did find out that we can check out GPS units at the main building for free. So maybe if it's not raining too bad tomorrow we will do some more geocaching at some of the more northern parks. We will see.

First Day on the North Shore

So today was the first day of our vacation. I should start by saying that I have had a horrible cold for the last week; it's finally getting better. Unfortunately Keegan has also been very sick with diarrhea and vomiting. He finally stopped puking on Sunday but he's still having diarrhea. Hopefully that will cure itself soon enough. After a very traumatic trip to the doctor's office on Friday I am reluctant to ever take him back! The Dr. decided to run a blood test to make sure he wasn't getting dehydrated. It took 3 nurses and me to hold him down so that they could draw blood from his arm, then he moved. They had to get another nurse in and stick him in his other arm. It was a horrible experience for both of us. Sadly now my parents are stuck with Keegan and his diarrhea while we are on vacation up north. I hope that it gets better quickly. I was worried about leaving him and am worried that maybe he has a bacterial or parasitic infection and not the viral infection the doctor assumed he had...

All that aside we decided to come up to the north shore as planned today. We dropped Kee off at my mom's house around 7am. Then we took off to eat breakfast at Bruegger's. It's not often that Lyle and I get to eat breakfast out and a yummy warm bagel with melty cream cheese was the perfect start.

Lyle and I listened to an audio book on the way up. We are listening to Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 4; the Battle of the Labyrinth. We also stopped to check out Black Bear casino on the way up. It's a pretty new casino (relatively speaking) and was very nice. Unfortunately I was as unlucky this time as I was lucky the last time we went to a casino. My $20 gambling allowance was quickly blown on video poker. Then I blew another $20 on black jack and decided that it wasn't my day to be at the casino. Luckily Lyle was doing well at Black jack and made up for my losses :-) It was a nice break and then it was back into the car and off to Duluth.

At Duluth we parked at Canal Park and wandered around for a bit. We went through the outfitters store there and through the toy store. We had to get Keegan this cute little wind up fish for his bathtub. Then we decided to go to the Lake Avenue Cafe for lunch. We've stopped here before and they always have interesting food. I got the falafel platter, which was excellent, and Lyle got a BLT. Their ice tea was also extremely yummy. After that we toured some of the art galleries; there is one that has a whole bunch of very creative yet affordable clothing that I always like to check out. After that we had to make our traditional stop at the Chocolate store to get a chocolate covered caramel apple to eat. While eating the apple, we walked over to the Omnitheater and cinema to see what was playing. There is a movie out called Ghost Town that we might go see later in the week if we run out of stuff to do. Then it was back to the car and up to Gooseberry Falls.

At Gooseberry Falls we decided to sign out a GPS unit and do the geo-caching treasure hunt that the state parks are running. It was pretty fun. We ended up out on the gitchi-gummi trail, which was cool because we don't usually take that trail. We followed the clues and the coordinates and without much trouble found the cache site. It was hidden in an old CCC outhouse; the last CCC outhouse in the US! It was a bit creepy but only because I have been watching too much Supernatural episodes lately. The coolest part was there was a log book to write a message in and there were coupons for 40% off a GPS unit at Best Buy. Then we backtracked and did our normal hike up to Fifth Falls and back. When we got back to the park office we wandered through the gift shop and found a cool puzzle that shows all the shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. We got the puzzle and returned the GPS unit and took off back to Larsmont Cottages.

We checked in and our lodge is absolutely beautiful as well as closer to the lake and more secluded than last time. We got organized, walked down to the lake, and then took off for dinner at the Rustic Inn Cafe. A buddy of Lyle's from work had recommended this as a great place to eat. We had never been there and I was a bit doubtful. The food was excellent though! Lyle and I both really enjoyed what we got to eat and the pie was yummy too. Then back to the "cabin" and a nice long soak in the jacuzzi. Now I am sitting by the fire in the fireplace while Lyle plays Wii, drinking a Bulldog, wrapped up in a nice warm blankie. It's still raining outside but it didn't rain while we were at Gooseberry and that's what really matters. So far, so good! I just wish I wasn't worried about Kee. I talked to my parents and he is doing okay but still has the D. Ah, well I am sure he will be okay!

Update on Biking

So they have started blocking blogger at my work which means I won't be writing anymore lunchtime updates.

Still I thought I would do a quick update on how the biking is going. Lyle and I usually do the carpool/bike combo 2-3 times a week. This is pretty good considering I only work 4 days a week. Unfortunately the last couple weeks it's been more like 1-2 because I have been having to get into work early and staying a bit late. I try to make up for this by going out for a 6-10 mile bike ride at night after Keegan goes down for bed. It's been starting to get kind of dark though; so last weekend we went out and got head and tail lights for the bikes.

Now that we have been biking 12 miles a day for 2-3 days a week there are some things that I have learned that I never thought about before:
- Bike shorts are really nice as they reduce the bruising to my tail bone
- Bike jerseys are awesome bcs I and put my ipod in the back pocket there-by eliminating the funny ipod shaped tan on my arm (from using an sports armband).
- Be careful about opening your mouth; unless you want a high protein snack of dubious quality
- A 10-15 mph wind is a lot of wind; especially when you are riding against it up steep hills.
- Your body is a lot like a windshield; at least where bugs are concerned. When riding at night you will come home with gnats smashed on your face and torso.
- Riding in 96 degree heat really isn't that bad if there's a good breeze.
- Riding in 45 degree weather sucks when you are going 14 mph on your bike; you need gloves and ear covers as well as long pants.
- After riding in 45 degee weather for 6 miles it can be hard to get your body to separate from the bike frame
- Riding in the fog is weird and covers all of your exposed arm hairs with a fine layer of moisture.
- Eventually, at some point, you will be passed on the bike trail by some 85 yr old who is biking twice as fast as you and deflates any sense of pride you have that you cut 5 minutes off of your commute time from last week.

So as mentioned above, 45 degrees is d$% cold on a bike. Lyle and I finally broke down and bought cold weather cycling gloves and brightly colored jackets; as well as head and tail lights. We also bought a cycle trainer. I used the cycle trainer the first times a couple days ago. It worked pretty awesome. It was easy to set up (at least for me, Lyle set it up) and you just plop you bike on it and off you go. It was way more comfortable than the stationary bike we have in the workout room. There are only two large problems with it: you get really hot because you are not generating any breeze like you do outside and I tend to bike a lot faster because that's all I have to concentrate on and end up getting tired a lot quicker. But so far I like it, not as much as riding outside, but it's better than not riding at all.

I haven't really lost much weight from biking. Maybe a couple of pounds, but my endurance is a lot better and I notice that my jeans are looser in the butt and thighs so something must be going on. I still love that the biking doesn't hurt my knees. So, for now, biking is good!

So something funny for ya if you have the 2 mins to watch the video above.  My mother in law took some video of Keegan with a cookie during our last camping trip.  I thought it was really funny, I hope some of you enjoy it as well.....

Thunder and Lightening Very Very Frightening....

Last night we had a doosie of a storm blow through. It went on for hours and had lots of very vivid lightening and booming thunder. Around 11pm the storm woke Keegan up. Lyle went in to console him and give Keegan back his nook. Shortly after Lyle came back into the bedroom Keegan started screaming in terror.

I went out then and the poor little boy was shaking and pointed at the window. Every time lightening shot across the sky he would say "Uh Oh". He was absolutely terrified of the storm. I realized that this is the first time he had been awake at night when it was storming. So I sat in the sun-room with him for awhile. Every time it would lightening I would tell him that that was lightening and every time it thundered I would say "boom!". Pretty soon Keegan was calm, no shaking, and everything it thundered he would say "boom!" with me.

I tried to put him back in his crib but he started to get scared again. So I brought him into the bedroom and set him on the bed between me and Lyle. He sat on the bed perfectly still and watched the lightening with rapt attention. Every time it would lightening he would say "woah!" and when it thundered he would yell "boom". He was very attached to me and Lyle though. When we first got into the bedroom he panicked because he couldn't see Lyle (Lyle was under the covers). He started yelling "Daddy, Daddy!" Then at one point I got up to get some water and he got concerned and said "Mama, Mama!" He wanted everyone in one spot with him so that he knew we were all okay.

As time went on Keegan finally propped himself up on a pillow and quietly laid between us watching the storm out the window. After awhile the storm calmed down. Then Keegan got restless and pulled Lyle's hair and tried to steal the remote to play with it. Then we knew it was time for Keegan to go back to his crib. Keegan went right to sleep after the storm went through.

It was interesting to realize how scary the storm was for Keegan. I guess it makes sense, I mean think about it, you wake up in the middle of the night and lights are flashing and big booms are sounding. It would scare the stuffing out of you; especially if you couldn't figure out what was going on. Hopefully Keegan will be calmer about the next storm.

Now That's Using Your Head

Last night Keegan had, yet another, collision between his head and an inanimate object.

We were walking to the park and Keegan was kicking his ball down the sidewalk. This works pretty well because it keeps Keegan moving forward at a decent pace. Last night though Keegan decided to bring a small plastic ball instead of one of his normal play balls. So, the trip to the park went well. Keegan could kick the ball remarkably straight. He was actually running up to the ball and kicking it, then chasing the ball and kicking, on and on and on. I was amazed that he was so coordinated.

Then on the way back the inevitable happened. He kicked the ball, ran up to it and kicked it. Unfortunately this time he missed the ball and when he put his kicking foot down he stepped on the ball and rolled a little bit on the ball before doing a very impressive flip/fall right onto his forehead on the black top. He now has a equally impressive goose egg that is black and blue, with lots of accentuating scrap marks. There was a lot of screaming. From both Keegan and me; I thought he had cracked his head open.

Apparently this kid is one tough cookie. After about 30 seconds of holding him he wanted to get back down and kick that ball some more. Unfortunately I winced every time he got near to kick it because I was sure he was going to fall again. So, he was carried the rest of the way home along with his ball. Luckily he was pretty tired so he didn't mind all that much.

On a side note we had a great camping trip up at Crow Wing State Park this weekend. The campsites were wonderful, it was quiet, no bugs, the weather was beautiful. It made me really want fall. We ended up turning the heater on in the tent trailer for the first time ever; it got to 45 or so the second night. I just can't wait for fall; I am so sick of the hot weather. This was probably the best camping trip this year. Nice hiking and quiet. I would highly recommend this park! And little Keegan walked a good couple miles too; he really wore himself out.

Toddler Property Rules

Our Healthy Start Newsletter that we get from the Anoka Early Child and Family Education had a list of Toddler Property Rules in it that was funny; so I thought that I would share:
- If I like it, it's mine.
- If it's in my hand it's mine.
- If I can take it from you, it's mine.
- If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
- If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
- If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
- If it looks just like mine, it's mine.
- If I think it's mine, it's mine.

That is sooo true. Keegan isn't quite that bad yet, but I definitely see the potential there :-)

The newsletter also had a recipe for bubbles that looks like it would be easy to make.
1 Cup of Water
2 Tbsp Glycerin (get at drugstore)
4 Tbsp Dishwashing liquid

On that note, I will conclude my post for the day!

Yellow makes the world go round...

Keegan has been starting to learn colors recently. He knows yellow, red, and blue pretty darn well. But when asked what color something is, he quickly responds yellow. If you say point to the blue ball, he points to the blue ball. If you say what color is the blue ball? He says enthusiastically "YELLOW!"

Keegan is very good about pointing out the yellow flowers and the yellow grass, the yellow playset and the yellow balls. When I point to the tree and say "Keegan what color is the tree?" Keegan yells...you guessed it "YELLOW!"

Apparently if Keegan had any say at all in the matter, everything on earth would be yellow. I guess yellow isn't a bad color. It's usually denoted as a happy color. I mean the sun is yellow, smiley faces are yellow, and cheese is yellow (at least the yellow-type is). Lyle and I are surprised he likes to say yellow so much; wouldn't red or blue be easier to say?

Hopefully Keegan will expand his knowledge of colors soon. Until then I guess his most favorite of all colors in the world is yellow, yellow, and more yellow.

18 month check up

Keegan had his 18 month checkup last week. He ended up being 24 lbs 6oz and 32.5 inches tall. That makes him 30% for weight and 50% for height; so basically he is still trending towards the tall and skinny build :-)

The appointment went okay. Keegan decided to sleep in later than normal, then he didn't want to take a nap before we went to the doctor's office. By the time we got to the doctor's office he was getting tired. He was pretty good, except that at one point I took a travel pack of wipes away from him (that he had found in my purse) and he absolutely lost his mind. He threw himself on the floor kicking and screaming. Of course, right then the nurse walked in. I was trying not to laugh at Keegan because he was just being *so* dramatic about it all. The nurse laughed and said "Oh, my there's just so much drama going on at this age". I am convinced we are now starting the terrible 2s.

Keegan and I also got into a disagreement when I was brushing his teeth last night. Usually I brush them and then he brushes them. This time Keegan jerked the toothbrush out of my hand and said "Mine!". Then he got upset when I tried to take it back. Finally I explained that this is Mama *and* Keegan's toothbrush and we need to share it. He was okay with that and let me brush his teeth (as long as we took turns at it). Keegan has really been grasping what things in the house belong to what people. He is constantly asking "Mama's ___" or "Dada's ___" or Mine?

On Friday Keegan helps me fold the wash, as such he is learning what cloths belong to which people. For example, Dada's shirts and Mama's pants, etc. Well on Friday we were grocery shopping at Target and we were going past the intimates section. Keegan got all excited and pointed at a bra, he then shouted "MAMA's!" He looked at me to make sure that he had got it right. I was like, "Yes Keegan, mama wears those." I was again trying not to laugh and trying not to be embarrassed...I supposed everyone knows I wear a bra but still... We then had to go down the whole aisle with Keegan pointing at each bra and saying "mama's, mama's, mama's". You get the idea, at least he didn't shout it again after the first time...

The other neat thing Keegan did on Sunday was that he said his first sentence. We had just gotten out of the car to do some hiking at Bunker Hills Park. Keegan grabbed my hand, turned to point at the car, and then very clearly said "That's mama's car!" I was pretty impressed :-)

So this talking thing is going pretty good. I am also amazed at how much the boy understands. He can go and get his shoes for us, help with basic chores around the house, and follow even slightly complicated instructions. It's cool to watch him learn all of this stuff!

Almost 18......

Months that is. Keegan will be 18 months on Wednesday this week. Man have things changed in 18 short months. Keegan is walking, running, and kinda jumping, and is pretty stable doing all three, though he really has to get his arms moving to be able to accomplish any movement for some reason. Also as mentioned in some previous posts, Keegan is of course talking up a storm, we don't always understand what he is saying, but the fact that he is talking a lot hopefully means he will learn how to talk and read without too much difficulty. I guess we will have to wait and see on that one. As a matter of fact, Keegan has taken to saying entire sentances that we have no idea what any of the words are. I am sure that he knows all about what they are, but for us, we just try to catch any words that we can. Of course he gets frustrated when he says the same thing like 50 times tring to get us to catch on. When we don't he usually just gives us a look to let us know he is done trying to communicate, and goes to do something else.

Over the weekend we went to the art fair with another couple, and Keegan had a really good time. We tried to keep him away from everything breakable, but of course every glass item there, he had to make a B-line for. Most of the time we were able to get him away without making too much of a scene, but Keegan did get his hands on one fountain, and I have a feeling the maker was not entirely thrilled with us, as he mentioned that it was a three piece fountain, and if it fell over on top of Keegan he would probably be hurt. We just muttered sorry and pried Keegan away the best we could. We did bring along the backpack carrier that we normally use for hiking, and he did ride in that quite a bit, so that did keep him out of trouble.

We also met my parents on Friday night for dinner for Karissa's birthday (0nly a couple of weeks late...). We met at an asian place near our house, and Keegan and my parents had fun together. After we were done eating we went outside, and Keegan was running around like a wild child with his mohawk up and making sure that people noticed him. My parents played with him, and they seemed to get a kick out of how much fun Keegan can be! Keegan was of course hamming it up, since it seems that attention is always awesome in his book. Anyway he was practicing jumping, and doing "booms" which is when he keeps walking lower and lower till he falls to his knees and throws his hands up and shouts boom. Karissa is the culprit in this instance, since she was encouraging him to do it. Of course it was also on concrete and after the first couple we had to make him quit so that he didn't scrape up his knees any more.

Well happy 18 months buddy!

Watch out for that...camper?

We went camping again this weekend. This time to Father Hennipen State Park. I can't say I would really recommend the park. The electrical sites were really crowded and there isn't that much trail to hike on. We tried to take a hike out to Pope's Point but halfway down the trail we got swarmed by what I can only speculate (after looking online) were male mosquitoes. There were so many of them that you could hear the whole forest buzzing. Beside this and the really annoying people that camped across the street from us the camping trip went well.

The people across the street bear mentioning...they were really loud and they stayed up until 3am. I am really surprised the park ranger didn't have something to say to them. They also had a kid a bit older then Keegan who was a real brat. He was constantly whining and screaming and coming over to poke through the ex-pen at the dogs. His mother was constantly cutting through our campsite yelling loudly at her son. At one point I finally told her that our baby was sleeping in the camper so if she could please keep it down a bit that would be great.

The other odd thing that happened was creepy. At about 4am Sat. morning Lyle and I were woken up by a loud humming sound. It was really loud, it sounded like someone's generator had kicked in or something. A couple hours later it stopped. Then Sat night around 8pm it started up again. Having had enough of noise for one camping weekend, I took off through the woods to the other campsite to find out what the heck was making all of this noise. Well it was getting louder and then when I got out of the woods it was softer. Lyle and dad met me on the trail with the dogs (mom was back with Keegan who was sleeping). We finally figured out the noise was billions of bugs up in the trees. I kid you not there were so many of them the noise was very, very loud. When you looked up into the trees you could see black clouds of them. The noise went on for a couple hours and then stopped. It started up at 4am again and then stopped a couple hours later. It was seriously creepy. Reminded me a bit of Hitchcock's the Birds. I was waiting for them to all come down and get us.

As far as we can tell they were swarms of male mosquitoes, they never bit, and they never came down from the trees in large swarms. Still it was odd.

Lastly I'd like to talk about Keegan's ADD. Not really, but I swear toddlers have the attention span of a gnat. Keegan was walking toward the camper and then he saw the ball and hitch out of the corner of his eye. Did he stop walking? Of course not. BAM! he walked straight into my parents' camper and bumped his head. An hour later he saw my dad fill up a bucket of water and then took off running towards the water. Did he think to look at the path between him and the water? Of course not; BAM! he hits his head on the other side of their camper. Now he has two nice red bumps on his forehead.

So, now we are at home. Lyle and I are pushing the camper into the garage. Keegan is sitting in the grass reading a book. Keegan decides to come and help us push the camper...while he is reading his book. BAM! He walks right into our camper while reading his book. Now he has a big bruise in the middle of his forehead too! I swear that kid knew that I wanted to take him in on Sunday to get his 18 month pics taken. Now it will have to wait until he looses the bruises. Although maybe I should go ahead with pics...it does say something about his state of mind lately :-)

Mine!

Keegan learned something new at daycare last week. He learned "mine". He still doesn't grasp the concept all that well. Sometimes he says "mine" and then hands whatever he is holding to me or Lyle. Although sometimes he says "mine" and then takes off running with the toy.

He is also employing a hopeful "Mine?" when he sees one of us holding something he wants. It is cute but points to harder times in the future as he struggles to grasp sharing :-)

He has also been dropping his enthusiastic "no" head shake and replacing it with a very clearly stated "NO!". He doesn't do this a ton yet, but it is interesting to watch him develop his own mind about things.

As for the highchair, Keegan is using a Cooshee Booster now. He stays in it really well and really seems to enjoy eating at the table with us. Occasionally he bends over really far and we have to tell him to "sit forward" and "not lean over". The coolest thing about it is that the booster is really lightweight so Keegan can carry it around. He liked to carry it into the living room and read books in it. Then when it is dinner time I say "Keegan go get your chair." Then he'll run over and get it and sit it on the chair in the kitchen.



Speaking of which, Keegan is becoming quite the helper these days! He helps set the table by bringing the placemats over. He also helps bring a plate over once in a while. Although sometimes the plate gets sucked on during its journey to the table. He is very good about helping to feed the cats at night. He goes and collects the cat bowls and tries to set them on the counter (he's not quite tall enough yet). Then Lyle puts him up on a chair so that he can scoop cat food into the bowls on the counter. The Keegan helps put all the bowls down for the cats to eat.

Keegan is also very good at helping with the laundry. He helps sort the cloths and put them in the baskets. He's also been helping to make our bed in the morning, he gets the pillows and puts them on the bed and helps straighten everything out. The fun thing is that he really truly enjoys helping. It seems to help him feel useful. It does make everything a bit slower to do, but that's okay, it's a good learning experience!

Well we are going camping again this weekend. This time it's up to Father Hennipen State park. Here's to hoping the mosquitoes aren't as bad as they were at Banning! We are definitely packing more lightweight long sleeve shirts this time around.

Packing up the highchair

Early on Lyle and I decided to forgo the big expensive high chair and just get one that straps onto a chair. We got the one below and it worked really well.



It reclined, we could take it off the chair and use it normally, and we could pop the tray into the dishwasher. The biggest drawbacks to it were that I was constantly washing the cloth cover and the chair it was strapped to took a bit of a beating despite our efforts to keep it clean.

Well Keegan is getting to be a big boy now and his tray is getting too small for him. So after hearing my mom tell me that Keegan could sit at the table to eat his snacks, I thought that it was time to get rid of that high chair and go to a booster seat. We have a Fisher Price Healthy Booster seat that we use to travel with everywhere. It is awesome. I absolutely love it. We use it at the bowling alley, camping, at friends' houses, and when we have a baby visiting.



So yesterday I was trying to decide do we get Keegan a booster seat that is made to stay at home or do we use the Fisher Price seat and just take the tray off? I spent some time online looking for booster seats and came up with a new question. Does Keegan still need straps on his booster? I think he probably does at least for a few months. The booster seat I absolutely fell in love with is pictured below. It's sleek, modern, in a nice color, and looks super easy to clean, as well as very portable.



Problem is that it is kind of expensive and the straps look pretty integrated to the seat. My next choice was a Cooshee booster seat. The Cooshee looks more adaptable to other uses and doesn't have straps on it (which is a good and a bad thing). Plus it has a carrying case.



So what to do? I probably research this stuff too much and put too much thought into it... Anyway, I decided we would try Keegan at the table first to see what he thought about it. He was slightly confused at first but really seemed to enjoy eating up at the table with us. I finally got some use out of this placemat that I originally bought for traveling. I only used it traveling once and it's been stashed away in the cupboard forever. But the suction cups on it worked well on our glass table and the trough caught almost all of the food that Keegan dropped. So, I am happy that the placemat wasn't a waste after all. It is pictured below:



Anyway, dinner went really well. Keegan seemed to be proud and happy to sit up at the table. I was happy to get rid of the constantly dirty looking high chair. As for my booster seat dilemma, I think we will try this out for a week and then try Keegan in the FP booster without the straps. If he can manage without straps I'll get him the Cooshee booster; if not well we will have to see if it's worth it to fork out $50 on a ultra-modern sleek design Mutsy booster! Either way it's an exciting change!

Evil fireworks of doom

On the 4th of July we followed our normal tradition of having parents and grandparents over for dinner and fireworks!

We wanted to make sure Keegan could enjoy the fireworks so, we put him to bed at his normal 7pm and then went and woke him up at 9:30pm when we started doing fireworks outside.

Now try to put yourselves in Keegan's tiny little shoes. Here he is snuggled up with his blankie sound asleep. When mommy comes up and plucks him out of the crib. She starts babbling about fireworks and how cool Keegan thinks they will be. By the time we get downstairs and out to the backyard Keegan is still blearily clutching his blankie and sucking on his nook. Then we go outside and "Bam, Bam, sizzle, whistle" (along with bright lights of course).

As I look back on it, that may not have been the best way to do things. Needless to say Keegan was very upset with the fireworks. He starting shaking and crying and clinging to mommy. Then when that didn't stop those nasty fireworks he asked to be put down and then drug himself (Blankie and all) over to my mom's lap and cringed there for a while. Well, that didn't stop them either so it was off to grandpa's lap, etc. etc and then back to mom.

We tried to make them exciting by clapping and talking about how neat they were. Well finally Keegan relented and cracked a little smile. I set him down and then (unbeknownst to me the next fountain was a "Screaming Tiger") "loud whistle". The noise scared the poo poo out of Keegan and he crawled right up the chair into grandpa's lap.

We finally started asking Keegan to go pick out the fireworks. This was the beginning of his firework acceptance. He would go over and dig a fountain out of the box of fireworks. He would toddle it over to Lyle. Then he would come back and sit in my lap while Lyle fired it up. This went on for a while. Then Keegan got too enthusiastic about his duties. He wanted to bring all of the fireworks to Lyle, "Right Now". It didn't really matter and it kept Keegan busy and happy.

For the noisier ones my dad would hold Keegan and yell "bam, bam, bam, bam". For some reason Keegan thought my dad yelling "bam, bam" was the funniest thing in the world and he laughed very hard at it.

After that it was time to go out on the pontoon and take that out to the middle of the lake so that we could watch the Blaine city fireworks. Keegan thought this was super cool. He loved watching the lights from the boat reflect in the lake. The Blaine fireworks were pretty far away and much quieter; Keegan enjoyed them a lot. He kept running between people and yelling "whas that" (his version of what's that) for every firework that was shot up. He also loved shouting "red ball" for all of the big red circular fireworks. He really had a great time which was a relief given how the evening of fireworks had started.

Hopefully he will "remember" some of this next year so that we don't have to start over in dealing with this fear of big loud fireworks :-)

He said what!?

We went camping this last weekend with Tony and Julie and it was a lot of fun. Well, it was fun except for the mosquitoes. I thought that I was going to be carried off. I am not kidding. I stepped out of the car and had around 50 mosquitoes land on my body. It was horrible.

When we got Keegan out of the car I was worried that he might get carried away. All I can say is thank goodness for puddles. While Lyle and I tried to get the camper set up super fast, Keegan happily jumped in puddles. Oh, did I mention it was raining while we were setting up the tent trailer?

It was also the first time we used our awning and screen porch and those things were super nice to have. I don't know what we would have done without them!

All that is well and good but it's not the real reason I am taking time out to write this blog entry. The reason I am writing it is to talk about Keegan's talking.

Man can this kid babble! He talks so rapidly and so non-stop that I haven't got a clue as to what he is saying. He takes himself very seriously when he is talking too. He will sit there and be like "adba gaba fofoo re baloo" and then stare at me. Sometimes he will wait for a reply but most of the time he just starts in with another line of gobbilty goop. Every once in a while he takes a breath and then says loudly "ball" or "kitkak" (kitty cat), or "car" or something else that actually makes sense. I suppose to him we probably sound like we are babbling all the time and he is just trying to imitate us.

It's been funny to listen to him though. Especially while we are in the car! The boy can chatter non-stop for a good 20 minutes or so. Lyle and I just listen, try to get a word in edge-wise, usually end of resorting to saying "oh, really", and laugh it off!