Safety Gear

I mowed the lawn yesterday with Wesley in the backpack. To protect his hearing, I put these on him. Do you think he will ever thank me?

A Taste, A Tooth, A Tiger

When we went in for Wesley’s 6th month check up, his pediatrician predicted a tooth soon and wasn’t worried about his 10th percentile weight since he was starting solids. She was right on both accounts. His first tooth poked through a three days ago, and he went from tasting food last week to devouring peas, carrots, bananas, peaches, plums, blueberries, rice, and vegetable rusks.

Again, Dwayne’s total aversion to food mess amuses me to no end. I’m the one who dusts, cleans, and vacuums weeks before Dwayne realizes it needs it, but I love watching my kids figure out how to get pureed blueberries on their eyebrows. And Dwayne doesn’t.

Kyla’s Vacation

Kyla got a break from us and visited Gramma and Papa K for a full week. Gramma took her to Vacation Bible School at her church. Kyla was in the preschool class that Gramma helps teach. She loved VBS, but there’s a lot of good things about being at Gramma and Papa’s.

First, there’s really good food. Kyla husks the corn for dinner.

She picks rhubarb and helps Gramma make a rhubarb pie and rhubarb cake! (She helped eat them, too.)

Gramma bought her a pool, too!

And she got some bike riding in with her personal entourage. It’s a good life.

She and Piper did wonderfully apart for a week. When I went down to pick Kyla up, the girls were so excited to see each other and played and played and played. When they got that out of the way, they were able to pick up fighting again. I wasn’t 3 minutes into the drive home before I had to pull of the road and start the “I can’t drive us home safely if you are going to fight in the back seat, you two!” speech. Ah, my family is complete again.

Confessions

My favorite non-friend blog to follow is The Pioneer Woman. She has her confessions page, which while very entertaining, usually amounts to admitting preferring picking her toenails over doing manure-encrusted laundry. Or her love of dessert and her dog Charlie.

My confession is much worse. For the second time in less than a month, I dropped my child.

This child.

This beautiful, beautiful child.

The first time, I was carrying her and Wesley up the stairs to naptime. Piper was squirming, trying to climb up onto my shoulders and from there up on my head. She made it, just a moment before she kept going, over my shoulders and onto the tile floor, two or three stairs down. She was perfectly fine, eventually, but I did end up taking her to the ER later that night after she developed a few worrisome symptoms.

The second time was much, much worse. Fully accidental, but far more traumatic and very preventable.

We were at a summer concert in our hometown. We met a few friends down there and I took a few of the girls up front to dance. I was working with almost 4-year olds, so we weren’t doing anything complex. Think “Ring A Round the Rosie”. Occasionally backwards. Piper only wanted to hold my hand and eventually just wanted to hold my legs. That was getting dangerous for me (ha!) as I was tripping over her and I had four or five girls dancing with me by now. So I put her on my shoulders, letting her hang on with her hands and feet. And she did great, until I somehow mis-stepped, and she fell back, managing to turn in the air so she landed on her face in the gravel. If you are picturing this happening right in front of stage, with everyone watching the cute preschoolers dancing, well, you would be correct. No only did I drop my child, causing distress for both of us and decent injury for her, I did it while everyone in the park was watching.

Two lessons.

1) Back up moms are the best. I had two mom-friends there. Brandy immediately helped me with wipes, water, a chair, everything she could do to help me clean and comfort Piper. Jen completely took full responsibility for Wesley so I didn’t have to worry about him at all while I took care of Piper. They were great, and I don’t know how I would have managed without them. I think a stranger helping me out would have made me cry, and I didn’t have time to do that.

2) I did this right in front of the manned table that had two signs on it: “Lost Child” and “First Aid”. Piper fell no further than 1o feet from the First Aid sign and wailed loudly and bled profusely (well, it seemed to me). Not a single person from that table came to see if I needed help in anyway. No offers of ice, or tissue, or bandages, or phone calls, or medics. I guess the second lesson is really just how important the first lesson is.

Other than some scratches on her right cheek that will heal soon, and a slightly swollen upper lip, she was back to her usual self after a long nap (during which I checked on her often!). She healed more quickly than my heart did.

Dragon Park

My beloved parents took Kyla for the week so my mom could bring her to Vacation Bible School. We meet at a local park for the exchange and had a wonderful time. The actual name is Deane's Park, but scroll through the pictures to see why it’s often referred to as that dragon park.

Uncle Keith helps Kyla kick a soccer ball in mid-air. His baby boy is due in just a few weeks!!

Coincidently, she’s due to have a baby in few weeks. Okay, perhaps it’s not a coincidence. She’s sitting. She’s tired. She’s 8 months pregnant.

Wesley’s not sitting. And he’s not tired. Just 7 months ago, Wesley’s mom was feeling like Julie.

Butt look at her now! (Not a great angle with the camera, Dad.)

Okay, that’s better.

There’s the other one! If it makes you think of whack-a-mole, this may not be the park for you.

The climbing wall was a hit, too. Have I mentioned that my girls like to climb? Fearlessly?

Baby, Baby!

Wesley is 6 months old now!

He sits upright if you prop him up just right and don’t breath in his general direction.  He definitely knows his name and loves to watch his sisters’ antics.  It is difficult to take a picture with his fingers not in his mouth.  He sucks two fingers at a time, and although he has a preference for the two nearest his thumb on his left hand, he’ll take any two he can.  Even Daddy has given up trying to break him of this.  I find it endearing, of course.

Since it is a significant milestone (monthstone?), and I have recently found my camera, I took a lot of pictures of him this weekend.

Gang signs?

 

I’m not kidding about those fingers!    

Dwayne pulled Wes’s fingers out for this shot.  I love it!  And look at that handsome man in the back.  The Hawk is back!

Since Piper likes to snuggle on top, she assumes Wesley would appreciate the extra consideration she’s giving him.

  

 

Oops, must have breathed in the wrong direction!  

I can’t think of a good commentary for this picture.  Wesley speaks for himself here, I suppose.

Piper, Little Mother Extraordinaire

I mistakenly think of Piper as my little imp, an angelic-looking trouble maker who is so happy-go-lucky that is she is nearly impervious to correction.

Well, she is all that, but she is a tender care-taker as well. She likes to wear footie jammies, so she can zip her doll up and carry her around in her own Baby Bjorn.

Like me, she carries her baby while doing chores. (Please ignore the naked bottom in the back. Those familiar with this blog have seen this before. She is wearing shoes so she can go ride her bike again once she helps me water the tomatoes.)

Pooh Bear was the lucky recipient of a backpack ride after dinner. (You can see his foot by Piper’s hip.)

She likes to give her charges a bit of fun, too. Here, Pooh gets an underdog push in the jumperoo.

And here are one of those things that just melts my heart. Among the pictures I downloaded, I found a few Piper took on her own. She likes taking pictures of her kids, too.

Daddy’s Girl

Kyla knows her job is to help. When she was helping Daddy fix our shower, again, she realized she could see best if she sat on top of him. Good thinking, Kyla!

A good assistant knows that the right tools and gear is essential to doing a job. She dons her goggles to help Daddy go to the hardware store.

Rest is also essential to be at your best.

It’s Raining Babies!

Okay, that’s not true, but there was a baby shower for my sister-in-law for my nephew (soon to be known as Keith and Julie’s son) a few weeks ago. I didn’t get many pictures, but here is one of mom-to-be opening up the sweater from Grandma K. She knitted a blanket from the same yarn that was just as darling.

But here is what I am proud of and want to blog about. I had wanted to make Baby K a quilt. Julie sent me her vision of the quilt, so I had something to work with. The bike is a reasonable facsimile of Keith’s current bike.

I’m proud to say not a single hand-stitch went into this quilt.  However, that bike was just about the end of my quilting career. But I loved how it all turned out—the colors go great in their nursery, and the front is a cozy flannel while the back is an indescribably soft, textured solid blue.

NOTE: I haven’t made Piper or Wesley a special blanket yet. Sorry, kids.

The diaper cake was something I decided to do at 10pm the night before the shower. Fortunately, I wisely married a man of amazing intellect and problem solving skills. I had heard of making these by rolling up each diaper individually and fastening each one a rubber band. That is a clear violation of Rule #1: Don’t make more work for Mama. So Dwayne came up with the idea of using these old tupperware cake carriers to get the diapers layers right.  I used one big rubber band to keep them together and then covered it with scraps of ribbon I happened to have. It didn’t take long after that. The core is a bottle of sparkling cider. And then (don’t tell Julie), it’s decorated with a bunch of duplicate or extra toys/equipment I’ve happened to accumulate after three kids. I’ve seen much, much better designed diaper cakes. But not by me. :)

I Found the Camera!

I finally found the camera and can publish the pictures of our time with family last week. Unfortunately, I had only one day of pictures before I lost the camera and I had taken pictures mostly of my kids at the zoo.

Piper and the siamang examine one another.

Piper is interested in all types of wildlife.

Kyla sometimes is just interested in Daddy.

Beloved cousin Esther rode the carousel with the girls.

I’m hoping Dan and Deborah send us a few more photos of our time together! Dan’s camera has pictures of the 6 cousins together that I can’t wait to see.