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.

Little tiny stove boy

He decided climbing into the bottom tray of the stove was the coolest thing since sliced bread. So here we have him reading while in the stove tray.



Here he is tossing his book while in the stove tray.



Looking all around cute while sitting in the stove tray.



And last of all, deciding he is finished sitting in the stove tray.



Can you tell it was a slow day?

The twins

Alex came over today so Jessica could do a little sane shopping with just Abby. Turns out we decided to dress our children the same today so they were little "twins" all day. Here they are being crazy...when the walking begins so will the insanity:



Wesley is loosing his "baby" look more and more each day. I can't pin point it but it's definitely there. I think he's just finally growing a neck....it's like he was just a giant head on top of some shoulders before. See what I mean? My little man.





Here are the "twins" being crazy today. Wesley gets very happy when there is someone to play with in the house, besides old Mom or Dad. That's about all that's new around here. I haven't been blogging much because of the lack of things to write about. Our life is simple and predictable, the way I like it.

Dud mom

Today I was a dud mom. Yesterday I peered out on the porch to find a glorious little box from Amazon with a book I've been waiting for. My sister told me to read Twilight. I was skeptical....a love story between a vampire and a high schooler....yea I dunno. BUT, she is my older and supposedly wiser sister so I bit the bullet and ordered it. I sat down at 10pm yesterday evening after my shower to read a few chapters before bed. I finally pried the book from my hands at 2am after reading over half of its 500 pages. Oh golly is it a good one. Thanks sis for the recommendation. How that author got that much electricity between two characters in a book is unknown to me. I couldn't put it down.

So this morning I awake at 8:30, knowing full well I could sleep another hour before the Kid wakes up, and sneak into the living room to read some more. I told myself I'll put it down once Wesley wakes up and I can resume reading it during his nap. Didn't happen. I made him breakfast then popped in Elmo's World and plopped myself on the couch to devour another 100 pages. I was a dud mom. I finished it today at 4pm at the end of his nap. That's the fastest I've ever read a book. Good book, I recommend it. Now I have to go get the other two books in the series. I've decided not to even purchase them until I've got a Saturday to myself and a babysitter.

Look Ma! No hands!

Little Man is doing something new. He'll get up and stand by himself and we'll say "no hands!" and he raises his hands to show he's not holding onto anything. It's pretty cute.



Also, I wanted to wish a very Happy Birthday to my Dad today. They are coming over this evening to eat his birthday pie. I made a raspberry/blueberry pie and it's cooking right now. Yum! There was about half a cup of the filling left over that wouldn't fit into the crust so I put it in a bowl and let Wesley have a spoonful. He followed me around for the next half an hour signing "more" while yelling "more" at the same time. I couldn't get it through to him that he didn't need to sign and say it at the same time. To say he really liked the berry filling would be an understatement.

Kitties, pool and milk

We have one cat. Her name is Lady and as of today she is officially an outdoor cat. I think I wrote about the fun times I had last month ripping out the carpet in my workroom upstairs thanks to her unwillingness to always use the litter box. Well, after that she went to live in the upstairs bathroom that is unused. It's got linoleum so she won't use it as a toilet (she prefers absorbent carpet), but it's pretty small. SO during the day she would go outside and then in the evenings it was back up to the bathroom to sleep. Then Thursday night at 2am hubby and I awoke to the lovely noise of her throwing herself at the bathroom door. Over and over again. How it didn't wake Wesley up I haven't a clue. That was the last straw. So last night I moved her litter box, food and water dish out to the shop. In the evenings she will get locked in the shop and during the day she is free to roam the great outdoors. Good luck outside this winter kitty!



The pool demolition is coming along. Hubby gets out there on weekends when he has a chance and when it isn't too wet. It's actually flat on one side now. We have to remove the wrought iron fence on the other side before he can get to work on that side. At least we can now order some fill dirt and the dump truck will be able to just back right up to the hole and dump it. It was a year ago that I said "Hey maybe we should just fill in the pool" and ever since Sean has been working his tail off to get it done. He's such a hard worker...Wesley and I are lucky to have him.



Last week was a success at weaning Wesley off the bottle. He has gone this whole week (minus last night) without a bottle. He had a little remission last night when he just wouldn't go to sleep, so a little bottle of warm milk and off to sleep he went. He's got one straw cup that he just loves...it's a wonderful cup, it won't spill anything and he can't yank the straw out like most straw cups. Here he is with his favorite cup.

Random Observations

I forgot how much I love Fall! Wesley and I have been spending as much time outside during the day as we possibly can. Today we went over to my parents house before lunch so Wesley could see Grandma and to take a walk around their neighborhood. I'm lucky my folks are only 4 miles away. He still really enjoys his buggy that I walk him around in. He holds onto the steering wheel and toots the horn, it's a hoot. Since he's not walking yet we can't do a whole lot outside on the ground, he has this tendency to try and eat rocks. I still can't understand the fascination with putting everything in his mouth. Oh well...here's hoping that ends soon.

Other observations: I was wondering how long it would take before Wesley would take a liking to some toy and become obsessed with it. Looks like it starts around 14 months for this little guy. He just loves this little cookie monster stuffed toy he got for his birthday. He calls it "cookie" and carries it everywhere. It's not allowed anywhere but his room since the dogs would love the chance to "kill" it. I can't imagine how he would react if he found "cookie" murdered with guts all over the living room. That would not go well.

This little kid is just a sponge. He soaks up everything and spits it out when you least expect it. We have a little picture board book that he flips through on a daily basis and he'll point to the pictures and talk in his baby gibberish. Well he's starting to figure out what each picture is. He'll point to the picture of kittens and yell "kitties," it's so cute. He's got a few pictures down, quite a few to go. He's a bright little one.

That's about all that's new around here. I've been back to sculpting in all my free time and able to get back to selling which feels good.

Box Ride

More random laughing baby video.

Horsey Dad

Not much to blog about today. I did take a cute picture though. Wesley is climbing on everything in sight. He managed to climb up on the couch today by himself (lord help me). So this evening hubby was lying on the ground playing with Wesley and he crawled right over and climbed right up on Dad. Then he "rode" him like a horsey for 10 minutes. It was very cute.

Turkey

Wesley is finally figuring out he can get into trouble. He's climbing everything. This morning he crawled out of his room and over to the stairs and proceeded to climb up three steps before I even made it over there. He looked so proud. Then this afternoon I leave him with hubby (who was on the internet) to run upstairs for a second. I come back down and find this:



If you click on the picture you will see that the only part of him that is actually touching the toy surface is like three little tiny toes. I'm surprised I'm not writing about our trip the ER this afternoon because he fell off this toy and cracked his head open. Note to self, the kid can climb now watch him closer.

About an hour ago I am preparing to vacuum the house and look over to find this:



With the amount of tiny sharp teeth in that kids mouth I'm surprised I'm not writing about how I got to take him to the ER again after he fried himself eating an extension cord. Note to self, the kid can chew anything and everything.
Little tiny turkey.
edited to add: in the picture of him climbing above, hubby was right next to him while I quickly grabbed the camera and took the picture...there was no chance of him falling.

We're gonna need an ark

So it's been raining here for two days straight. This morning the news man said we got 10 inches of rain overnight. There was a news anchor out covering the flooding that is happening throughout town and in the background there was a man kayaking down the street. It made me laugh. It's good to see someone still has a sense of humor.

Wesley and I have been staying in where it's dry (and hopefully stays that way). Our sump pump has been running all day long. I'm praying we don't get a power outage. Our basement would flood pretty quickly if we did loose power. Nah, hubby and I would be down there with buckets before we ever let that happen. What's funny is that we've gotten all this rain and Ike hasn't even come through yet...this weekend is going to be a wet one!

This weekend is our "Wean Wesley from the Bottle Weekend". Yeah! He doesn't seem to have any huge attachment to his before bed bottle and that's the only one he's down to so I don't think it will be too traumatic for him. My plan is to just work a sippy cup of milk in right before his bath and maybe he won't even remember he's missing a bottle. Wish me luck!

Here is a cute little picture I took today. I walk out of the kitchen and am looking around for Wesley and this is all I see:

Portrait of a Fourteen Month Old

Wesley will officially be fourteen months old tomorrow. Dang, where has the time went? This little tiny man is just the light of my life. Makes each day worth it. Here are some of his favorite things:

Fruit: frozen wild blue berries and bananas...and he never passes up "orangies"

Veggie: broccoli

Food: frozen cheese ravioli, french toast and scrambled eggs.

Toy: today it's a balloon

Words: Daddy, doggie, juice, lunch, balloon (sounds like baallo), ball, light, high chair (sounds like hiiiicha), oranges

Past time: tossing stuff down the stairs, tormenting the dogs, eating board books, watching Elmo's World, "walking" around the house, reading with Dad.

Book: Elmo's Mother Goose (great nursery rhyme book)..poor book is falling apart he loves it so much.

Here he is sitting at the computer watching Elmo. He gets so excited to sit in a big boy chair.

Follow that tasty baby butt

Today we have more video. I seem to be posting a lot of video recently due to the lack of interesting topics to write about. So here is Wesley "walking" with his push toy. I think he could do this all day. Notice Chance the little terrier following Wesley around. You can always tell when Wesley has left a present in his diaper because Chance will follow him around hoping beyond hope that some of the yummy "brownie" will somehow escape his diaper. Nasty little dog.

What rednecks do for fun on the weekends.

We build stuff for goats to play on. When we tore out the pool we had to tear out the large wrap around deck and therefore have a ton (or maybe two ton) of pressure treated wood that was too good to trash. So we stacked it up until a project came along requiring wood. Today was that day. Hubby and I went out during Little Dudes nap and built a large wooden table for the goats to play on. Goats are notorious for always wanting to be on the tallest object around. People with goats roaming around are not surprised to see them standing on the tops of vehicles. We, of course, contain our goats so we came up with this:



Not bad for a couple of hours of work. Plus we only used like 3% of the wood, so maybe a chicken coop is in our future. We let the goats into the pen and they immediately ran over and hopped right on. Fun times.

Changing seasons, changing kiddo

Not much to write about lately. Wesley and I have been staying in more recently due to the weather being utterly crappy. Tuesday was down right chilly, with rain and wind. I thought fall had appeared overnight until I heard the weather man tell me it was just the remnants of Gustav. I didn't think Gustav would go that far inland. I can't imagine what those people down south were feeling. Yet another reason I'm glad I live where I live.

With the dramatic change in the weather I thought it time to clean out the kids drawers and make room for some fall/winter clothing. It was kind of sad to pack up his little 12 month tank tops, knowing he'll never be that size again.

Wesley is learning more every day and becoming a little person. He tells me what he does and doesn't want. Our toys are becoming boring so I've started picking up new ones whenever I can. Today he got his Leap Frog Fridge Farm in the mail. It's this little barn that sticks to the fridge and he can place animals in it and they make noise. He was so enamored with it that when we had to go over to my folks house this evening he ripped it from the fridge and played with it in his car seat. New toys rock!

Here are some cute pictures taken yesterday during reading time. The kid does love his books. I'm thankful for that.

Victory over the teeth

The kid has an almost full set of teeth and he isn't afraid to use them. Witness exhibit A:



My (I mean his) really pretty wooden crib is getting the crud chewed out of it on a daily basis. He finds nothing wrong with sinking his chompers into the nice juicy wood. These little chew marks go up and down the crib rail. So I go online and start researching my options. First option is to buy these little plastic rails that fit nicely over the existing wooden rail. Nice in theory, the reviews were horrid....saying they nicely pop right on and their kids pop them right off within minutes and then start beating everything in sight with them. Yea I could see Wesley doing that.

So my other option (seems to be only two out there) is to buy this padded fabric strip that has Velcro along each edge and it attaches to itself under the crib rail. It arrived yesterday and is working wonderfully. If all it did was cover up the ugly teeth marks that would be enough but it protects the crib and his little teeth. Victory is mine.

Cheap entertainment

Well Granny Randi the fascination with the mixing bowls that you observed back in July is still going strong. He'll play with those bowls for 10 minutes straight...putting the bowl on his head then pulling it off, giggling then starting all over.

Doggie Lover