Pumpkin Patch

Today Jessica and I decided to take the kids to a local pumpkin patch to enjoy the beautiful fall weather. But before I start showing all the pictures from today I must share the best picture I've taken in quite a while. I took this while driving through town today:



Yep, read it and weep. We officially have gas that's under $2 a gallon. I'm so psyched! Anyways, back to today's events. With Wesley, Alex and Abby in tow we made our way around the Pumpkin Patch, taking in all the fun activities. They had a giant slide that was megga fun.

Next was a petting zoo where there were baby goats, baby pigs, rabbits and a pair of angry llamas. Wesley tried hard to feed a rock to the goats.

Next we meandered through the corn maze. Wesley was walking like crazy today. He's thrilled with his new mobility, as are we. It's sure nice to not have him crawling and getting grungy all the time.

After the maze we loaded onto a trailer that was pulled by a tractor that took us out to the pumpkin patch. We had a teacher take this photo. We were crammed on this trailer with oodles of first graders. Cute age, although I'm happy to have six more years before Wesley's that age!

At the pumpkin patch we let the kids explore and select their pumpkins. He, of course, centered in on the big heavy ones and I had to steer him toward a little ugly gourd (that he had a death grip on for the rest of the trip). The thought of carrying a 25 pound Wesley along with a 10 pound pumpkin didn't excite me.

And here is the last picture of the day, the obligatory group photo of the little ones around the pumpkins. Abby has this "They're Mine, All Mine" expression going on. Happy Fall everyone!

Miss Sasha turns ONE!

Happy First Birthday Sasha!

Our family just wanted to send a huge Birthday wish to Wesley's cousin Sasha who turns one today! Happy Birthday sweet girl! We can't wait to see you for Thanksgiving. Hope you are being a wild child and celebrating it up today.

Love,
Aunt Mandy, Uncle Sean and Cousin Wesley

Enjoying the Fall

Wesley and I went outside and enjoyed this beautiful fall weather today. Just thought I'd share some pictures.

Blast from the past

I just ran across a website that is darn funny. It's called Yearbook Yourself and you can upload a photo of yourself and it will turn it into a picture from the 60's (or 50's). Here is Sean and myself.




You know you want to try it. Here is the website.
And since this IS Wesley's blog, here is Wesley from 1964.

Accomplishments

I accomplished quite a bit of stuff Saturday. I left Wesley inside with Sean to have a male bonding day while I escaped to the great outdoors to get much done. When I say "male bonding" I'm referring to sitting around watching college football in your underpants (well just Wesley on this one). Wesley didn't really watch the football game, he just ran around and got into mischief. And I do mean RUN. He's walking everywhere now, I'm not sure I witnessed any crawling today. He is so proud of himself. I tell you, seeing this little tiny human that is barely taller than my knees walk around like Frankenstein....it's utterly bizarre.

Anyways, back to my outdoor accomplishments. I went and dewormed horses and trimmed hooves. Trimming hooves is something I'm thankfully getting better at. Now normally a farrier comes to your house and trims your horses hooves but I decided to try and pinch a few pennies (they charge $40 a visit for both horses) and do it myself. This is not an easy task. I watched several people trim horses and did my own internet research before even picking up the nippers. It's definitely something I'm learning over time. Thankfully my miniature horses have simple little hooves so it makes it easier. But I must admit, after bending over low and using my thigh muscles like I did today, I can hardly walk.

Afterwards Rocky and I went for a walk. He's already got his winter fur coat on. Isn't he cute? Too bad he's the most ornery little booger on the planet.

Hope you all have a nice weekend!

He's a walkin' fool

Alrighty here is a little video of him walking. This week he's just been walking around everywhere. I'd say he's 70% walking/30% crawling. I even caught him "jogging" this morning.

The Master Plan

As I've mentioned before we will be leaving for the 14 hour New Mexico trip in less than a month. Having witnessed the Holy Terror that my child erupted into this past weekend when in the car for an extended amount of time I have devised a master plan. Several different plans come together to make up the master plan known as "Project Insanity Prevention".

First plan: Drive during times of sleepiness. Day one we will not leave until mid evening and then drive well into the night. A sleeping Wesley is not a screaming Wesley.

Second plan: I will be going to the local Dollar Tree and buying 20 one dollar toys and will be giving him one every 46 miles. I will also be stocking the car with every book and kids music CD we own (this is controversial since kids music can drive an adult insane, causing said adult to drive off of a cliff).

Third plan: I am purchasing a portable DVD player off of eBay (they only run $30 for a used 10 inch one, yay!). I will periodically throughout the trip show Elmo's World to try and keep the whining and straining against the restraints to a minimum. But the showing of Elmo's World falls into the above category of cliff diving if listened to for an extended amount of time so it will only be shown in times of utter frustration.

No, seriously I am just kidding here. I think deep down the kid will do great on the trip and will get used to it after awhile (I hope so anyways) so this is all in good fun. I am really looking forward to this trip and seeing family, I just wish I could blink my eyes and be there....not looking forward to the drive, that's all.

Here is our little goofball in the car last weekend. Of course he doesn't have pants on, why would he have pants on? I asked him to grab his feet and this is what he did. No modesty here folks.

The words I know

As we were playing in the car during the smokey wedding reception I took some cute video of Wesley reciting the words he knows. It's pretty cute so turn up your volume. The second video is the words I forgot to ask him in the first video.

The Truman Library & Museum

Sunday my family and I (minus Sean who went to hang out with his college buddies) traveled to Independence, Mo to see the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. It was quite the museum. I only got to explore it for and hour and a half since I decided to sit out in the car while Wesley took his nap (man did he needed it after our trip Saturday...the post below). So, here is our trip through the Truman Library.

Here is Wesley flipping through the Truman letters. Some of these letters were written to Stalin telling him about the atomic bomb which would later be dropped on Japan. Wesley just thought it was a really cool, big board book.

Next was an interesting exhibit about the origins of the cold war. Wesley just thought the benches were fun to walk around and around and around.

Here is Betsy and Blake along with Wesley outside by Truman's gravesite.

Here we all are (minus Betsy the photographer) on the steps of the museum. What a beautiful fall day it turned out to be.

Last of all is Little Man posing with Grandpa.

A KC Wedding

This weekend we traveled to Kansas City to celebrate one of Sean's friends wedding. We got up bright and early Saturday and loaded everything into the car and were out of here at 9 am. I assumed Wesley would take a nap but I assumed wrong. So for the entire road trip he whined, cried and strained against his car seat unless I was reading or singing to him. Needless to say it was a long trip. Let's just say I'm officially worried about the 14 hour car drive to New Mexico next month.

We got to my sister's house and let Wesley get out and move around for an hour before heading off to the wedding which was on the other side of Kansas City. It was a nice wedding, different but nice. I'd call it a down home wedding. We walked in and everyone was meandering around in a big room, after about 15 minutes the pastor walked in and asked us to clear a small space in the middle of the room and that's where they said their vows and it was over. Took about 5 minutes. We then went into another room with long tables and benches and stuffed our faces on BBQ. The music was loud and the beer was free flowing. It was fun. After a little while though the room started getting hazy with cigarette smoke so Wesley and I headed out to play in the car for an hour while Hubby stayed and chatted it up with some old college buddies.

That night we got back to my sisters house and Wesley decided it was time to party. He stayed up until midnight and would have stayed up later had it been his choice. He only slept in the pack-n-play for 2 hours before figuring out it wasn't his crib. We brought him to bed with us where he kicked Sean and woke up every half an hour for the remainder of the night. It sucked. I think I might have gotten 4-5 hours of sleep. I swear if I mess up his routine he turns into a little crying, anti-sleeping zombie.

We got up Sunday and drove to Independence, Mo to visit the Truman Library. I'll write about that in the next post as it was heavily photographed. Here are pictures of Saturday.

Chilling out before the wedding

The ceremony

Our escape to the quiet, non-smokey car

Dancing and fully awake near midnight

Trying out the dogs cage

The big T-W-O!

Happy Second Birthday Alex!


Happy Birthday Alex! Today Mister Wesley's pal Alex turns two! Last Sunday Sean, Wesley and I along with quite a few other people celebrated his birthday party. We had a great time watching Alex open presents and stuffing ourselves with junk food.



Wesley decided he needed to help opening presents since Alex was such a help at his first birthday, turn around is fair play. :)

Funny stuff

I love this site: http://icanhascheezburger.com/
Every day they post several new pictures of cats with some funny comment. It's sort of an acquired sense of humor but right up my alley. Just thought I'd share.

Lazy days

Just another dreary day here at home. Fall seems to have flown in this week with low 50 degree temperatures. It's been raining all week forcing Wesley and I to stay indoors. The toddler mentality is starting to show itself on a regular basis (God help me). The once wonderful eater has been replaced with a picky, whiny food thrower. He'll usually eat two or three bites to begin with and then toss everything over board. The dogs (aka The Clean Up Crew) love this new behavior. I swear the kid isn't getting much to eat, I hope he doesn't start loosing weight.

This weekend we are heading to Kansas City to attend a wedding of one of Sean's college buddy's. I'm looking forward to the change of pace. It will be nice to get out of the house. My sister and her husband are nice enough to let us stay with them. That's about all that's new around here.

Picture time

I have some cute pictures to share.
First one is Wesley trying to fart on the dog. The dog has been trying unsuccessfully to figure out this small fleshy creature for 15 months now and has given up. You can see the defeat in her eyes.



Next is just one of those cute pictures where he's starting to look like a little kid instead of a baby.



Here he is having fun with Dad.



More fun with Dad.



Thanks for looking!

The candy magnet

Today was our city's annual fall parade and Hubby, Wesley and I went. The parade was great, I don't think I've ever seen more tractors in my life.

Turns out having a kid at a parade is like having a candy magnet. Even if the kid is only a little over a year old and can't possibly eat candy. Oh well, more for the kids parents.

After the parade we went to the craft fair and used book sale. We made out like a bandit getting a big bag full of board books and kids books for a whopping three dollars. The kid has quite the library. This is also where a strange, random woman picked up Wesley and carried him around. Besides being a candy magnet, he's an old woman magnet too. She was ultra nice so I didn't care.

Then after the parade we came home and decorated ourselves with stick on tattoo's we got during the parade.

It was an all around good day. Hope you all had a nice one too!

Not so good under pressure

Well today was exciting. It started out like any other day, then after nap time Wesley decided to play peek-a-boo with the bathroom door. Here is the video:



What the video fails to show is that when he slammed the door, he also locked it. You can kind of hear me swearing at the end of the video. Yea, not good. So I grabbed a phone and called hubby to see how I can get the door unlocked. He informed me that the last time a door got accidentally locked (upstairs two years ago) it took him 20 minutes and a piece of wire to get it unlocked.

I didn't have 20 minutes.

I didn't like my 15 month old locked alone in a bathroom full of fun dangers (toilet, stuff under the sink, etc).

So I grabbed a hammer and preceded to start whacking the living crap out of the door handle. Wesley must have thought at this point Mommy had lost it and was trying to come in and murder him because he started crying hard. It was a cry I'd never heard come out of him (and hope to never hear again). He was scared, poor kid.

I whacked and whacked, with every whack I was becoming more and more upset. Just ask Hubby who was still on the phone with me trying to coach me through my first door destruction. I told him I was going to whack it fifteen more times and then I was going outside to break the bathroom window with a rock.

Luckily the door handle gave in before I did. Here is what remains of the bathroom door handle:


It actually held up better than I could have imagined after being pummeled with a hammer 30+ times. Needless to say we'll be replacing every lockable door handle on the main floor with a new, non locking handle. Very soon. Hey, and this gives me a reason to replace the fugly bronze handles with brushed nickel ones. Ah the silver lining to the story.

Poor Wesley doesn't seem too traumatized by the ordeal. He layed in my lap sobbing and hugging my neck for five minutes but then resumed normal activity (far away from the bathroom I might add).

I hope the kid doesn't grow up with an irrational fear of bathrooms or small spaces...or hammers.

Super Boy!

We just got back from Wesley's 15 month well baby appointment. It went so well. Usually I would have met with our pediatrician that we call Dr. TalkingHead. If you can't tell, we don't much care for Dr. TalkingHead. Dr. T loves to hear himself talk, and for the most part I don't think he knows what he's talking about. He talks and talks and I leave the office not much more informed then when I entered. Well, TODAY we met with a nurse practitioner (whom I love) and I felt comfortable enough with her to tell her than I don't care for Dr. T. She said I should transfer to another pediatrician and told me how. Interestingly enough Dr. T is the only doc ever accepting new outside patients, so obviously not many people like him. Poor Dr. T. So on the way out of the office I transfered doctors. Yippie! So now we will be going to a nice older pediatrician that is very helpful and will answer my questions fully. I'm thrilled.

So anyways, back to the appointment today. Wesley is meeting all his milestones. The nurse practitioner asked how many words he says and we counted 12 (almost all of them he repeated after I said them aloud). That's average she said. I asked about these little pimples he has on his cheeks, upper arms and the tops of his thighs and she said they are called Keratosis Pilaris and they will be with him throughout his life. I thought it had to do with the detergent I was using or something along those lines but she said is was genetic and nothing to worry about. Poor kid is gonna have sand paper arms for the rest of his life. He weighed in at 25 lbs 2 oz which puts him in the 61% for weight. He is 31 inches tall which places him in the 40% for height. And once again he has a giant 49 cm head, 93% for head circumference.
It was a good appointment, I am so excited to never have to see Dr. TalkingHead ever again.

Grace

I'd like to say the kid is graceful....but apparently not so much.

Sunday update

I really did try to get video of Wesley walking but it's so hard when I'm the one that he'll walk to. So trying to video and make sure he doesn't fall over is tough. I will get video though, he's trying the whole walking thing more and more. I figure if he's walking today then he'll be running by next weekend, that seems to be how he works. I receive monthly updates through Babycenter.com about Wesley's development and I got his 15 month email yesterday. It said 90% of toddlers are walking by 15 months...I'm glad he's finally showing an interest. He seems to be on the tail end of the motor milestones but I'm noticing that he rarely fails once he masters something. He's very cautious and deliberate in his actions. I doubt he'll do much bonking once he really starts walking.

Hubby has been working on the siding all weekend again. We always underestimate how long a project is going to take and now that he's working solo without my help it's taking twice as long. Here are a couple pictures taken this afternoon while he pushes it up a notch to beat the rain that is forecasted for tomorrow. He's such a hard worker, we're sure lucky to have him.

First steps!

I'm happy to report that Wesley took his first steps last night. He stood up in the middle of the living room and I sat down a few feet from him and urged him to walk to me and he did. Walked four steps. I'll get some video when he does it next and post it. He's so proud of himself...as are we, it's adorable.
Anyways, just wanted to share.

Fashion sense

I've decided that my poor kid never looks well dressed on this blog. He's always pantless, with just a t-shirt and diaper on. This is how he looks when we are at home. I don't photograph him when we go places, so to prove that he does look normal and decently dressed in public, here he is before going into town this morning.



Looking all cute in his new pants and hand me down fleece jacket. Since he's not walking as of yet, he's still enjoying wearing crib shoes. Robeez are little leather flexible shoes that are more like sturdy socks than shoes. He likes them and they stay on his feet. I love em.

We went to the vet clinic to get some flea protection for the dogs since this time of year tends to be the itchiest for them. We are standing at the desk paying for it and Wesley is just chatting away...pointing at the dogs and yelling "doggie" and "kitty." The secretary was laughing and said "Wow, he has quite a vocabulary! He talks better than my four year old." Ummm...all I gotta say is yikes! Lets hope she's kidding.

So as soon as we get home he immediately transforms back into his normal fashion sense (looses pants, gains sweats, somehow gets bad hair). Oh well.

The slow lane

My blog entries have been slowing down lately, there seems to be a lack of subject matter for me the past few weeks. Wesley is doing great. Growing like a weed. I need to get him into his 14 month appointment (which we are already 2 weeks late for) yet I find the well baby visits completely and utterly worthless. To me they are a way for the talking head of a doctor (can you tell I just love him?) to make money and make me worry about my kid being in a waiting room full of sick, coughing kids. So I'm putting it off. At 14 months the are supposed to get their first MMR which I'm pushing back until at least 2. So we'll see if I even schedule this appointment.

Sean has been busy putting new siding on the house. When we moved into the house we could tell that some parts of the siding weren't looking too well and that the previous owners knew it and tried to pass it off with a fresh coat of paint. It worked for a few years but now it just can't be put off any longer. He got the side of the garage finished last weekend and it looks beautiful. The key to replacing siding is to paint the back and sides as well as the front to keep it from rotting. The siding that was taken down was not painted on the back or sides and therefore it's not surprising that it was rotten. I wish we were paying someone to put seamless vinyl siding on the house but I'm scared at what it would cost. Oh to have siding that would never have to be maintained....it would be heaven.

I've been busy sculpting whenever Wesley is sleeping. Custom orders have been picking up and I expect them to continue doing so in preparation for Christmas time. I'm setting limits this year to keep myself from accepting every order and turning into a zombie. Sculpting is still fun and I intend to keep it that way.

Wesley is getting closer and closer to walking. I keep thinking "Will it be this week?" He'll stand up on his own and then sort of stumble towards the nearest object, it's not really first steps but darn near close to it. He has a daily routine that after his nap he gets all cozy in his bean bag chair with his drink and snack to watch Elmo's World. He'll focus on it for about 15 minutes and then he's off checking out other stuff, which is fine with me. I can stand Elmo for about 15 minutes myself.