Things To Remember

Some cute/funny things Kaylee says and does at the moment...

She calls Andy "Bud" more often than not. Seems that nickname might stick. :)

She loves to dance crazy for Andy, while he watches her and laughs. Then we hear, "look, Bud likes it! He's laughing!"

Also, she likes to "make up dances" all the time. When music's on she'll come over and say, "look, I maked up a new dance!" then do some crazy moves. Tonight she said, "I maked up a new dance. It has to take a lot of practice." Then she did her "dance" and asked, "now can you do it?" Um, not that one, it was seriously crazy!

She calls the perfect curl of hair that hangs at the front of her head her "spring," and she's always telling me not to mess up her spring.

As of the past week or so she's mostly started calling them the right names, but somehow she would mix up words with "re" - the recycle bin was the "cycle bin," but Andy's baby monitor was his "remonitor," and she still calls erasing "rerasing" (or she needs to "rerase" or use the "reraser"). She also calls the "thermometer" a "remometer" or sometimes it's also a "remonitor."

She says, "I love you! I love you, too!" and/or we count - "I love you!" "I love you, too!" "I love you three!" etc. but after "I love you nine!" she says "I love you infinity!"

Art & Craziness

Here's Kaylee with her under the sea artwork from today. The vertical(ish) lines are seaweed, as are the blobs of glitter glue. The fist are made from modeling clay and smashed down onto the paper (not sure how long that'll last if we hang it on her wall!). I think all the kids in her class enjoyed smashing the clay and sticking the googly eyeballs in the most. She only has one more art class left for the summer. I can't believe it's almost August already. She starts preschool in just over a month!

In the other pictures I was laying on my back and she was propping herself up on my bent knees being silly. I thought it was funny how her "spring" hung down.

Cute Suit!

My dear friend Cheriene (aka "Auntie Cheriene"), all the way from England, sent an adorable suit for Andy just after he was born. The last time I tried it on him it was WAAAY too big. It's actually too hot for a suit right now (though with the air conditioner running, it's not bad inside), but I thought I better at least try it on him now before he outgrows it without even having worn it! As you can see from the long sleeves, the shirt is still a little big and the pants and vest should fit for a bit longer, too (of course, the rate Andy's growing, "a bit longer" could just be a month!). While I had him all dressed up with nowhere to go, I figured I should get some photos of him, since he looked so dapper!




"Cheese!...Oh, hang on, I see some lint...
Whoa, it's making me sneeze...Okay, we're done here!!"

Faces & Bath Seat

A few days ago Andy started sucking in his bottom lip; Kaylee and I have been calling it his "funny face." I sort of got a picture of it today - it's very fleeting, so not the easiest thing to catch him doing! Click here to see Kaylee making the same face at just about exactly the same age.



We're still using Andy's infant tub for baths, since he's not sitting well enough on his own yet to be in the big tub alone. The tub has a more reclined side for smaller babies and a more upright seat side - right now Andy is not doing well in either side. When he's more reclined, he likes to kick out his legs and try to lie flat, which doesn't work and only makes him come close to dunking himself (or he hurts his back on the little hump in the tub). When he's on the upright seat side, he'll sit well for a bit, but then lean to one side or the other and start to slump down into the water. So while he loves bath time, we don't have a good way to bathe him! Then I thought, why not try the bumbo? We took it upstairs for bath tonight and it seems to work well. It keeps him upright and we can wash most of him while he sits, then stand him up to wash the rest of him and put him back in the seat after washing. He's better able to play with toys, and I think he enjoyed it more. So we may have found a new use for the bumbo for a while! Of course Kaylee had to have her turn in it once Andy was out...

Cake & Art

Last weekend we went to my parents' house to celebrate my dad's birthday. Kaylee had a super fun time swimming and eating cake! She had a cake goatee after she finished, as she refuses to use a fork to eat cake.



Every art class (unless we're the last ones!), Kaylee gets to doodle with markers as we wait on others to arrive. Jamie got home early and we were able to leave Andy with him, so we got to class even earlier than usual and Kaylee got to do a lot of doodling as she was the second (out of just 4 this time, normally 5) to arrive. They also did 2 art projects this week, so she had 3 things to show off! The art on the left is her marker drawing, the one she's holding is a chameleon she fingerpainted to look like the chameleon in the book "A Color of His Own" by Leo Lionni, and the one on the right is "dot art" of a ship sailing on the sea...I guess it's sailing near the shore, since there's also a tree. The blue sea was made by painting on bubble wrap then pressing that on the paper. I thought that was a fun idea that turned out really well!

Activity Center

Fun on the activity center! There are buttons that play music, 3 things to spin and a mirror. Andy's current favorite seems to be the bright red and yellow spinner.

5 months - Reading, Sipping & Sitting

Andy is 5 months old today! Here are some pictures from this past week...

I told him his new book was called "Choo Choo" but I think he thought I said, "chew, chew!!"


Learning to drink from a sippy cup! I gave him a little bit of water in the sippy cup for the first time a couple days ago. He can't hold it up too well on his own yet, but he did better than I expected The water still mostly just dribbled down his chin, but he did drink some.


And...sitting! Today was the first day he sat for more than just a few seconds on his own. He seems to be able to sit for at least 1-2 minutes, maybe a bit longer. He even started correcting himself, balance-wise, if he starts to lean a little, rather than just toppling over right away every time.



Also in the past week, he has definitely found his voice! It seems he is now either silent or LOUD. Talking, complaining, squealing or crying - we might need to buy more earplugs. Check out the video blog for some of it I recorded a few days ago.

Mini Monet

Yesterday's art class project was to copy Monet's Lily Pads painting. Here is Kaylee with her version...

More Pool

We went to a neighborhood pool party this afternoon/evening. Kaylee spent at least 3 hours in the pool and even Andy seemed to enjoy it some this time. The water was pretty warm, even despite all the rain we've had this week, and was much more like his bath water temperature than the cooler water the last time he took a little dip. Kaylee got a new bikini and was eager to wear it and show it off. She loves it and told me, "it's okay if you see my belly sometimes, because that's what you're supposed to do when I wear my monkey bikini." I suppose that's true. Here are the (taken with my phone because I didn't think to bring a camera with all the other tons of bags we were taking) photos!


Kaylee was a little jealous of Andy's fun pool float, I guess. She spent about 10 minutes in it before she got tired of not being able to go wherever she wanted since she couldn't steer the thing.

Dinosaur Drawing

This morning Kaylee watched a show called "Dinosaur Train" (great educational cartoon about dinosaurs on PBS; I've learned a lot watching it, too!). Afterwards she was drawing on her magnetic drawing board and then came to show me what she'd drawn. "Look, Mommy! I drawed a dinosaur!" I'm not sure if it was a blob she drew that she noticed looked like a dinosaur or if she was trying for a dino, but it does look like a T-Rex - even has a tail!

Happy July 4!

Happy Independence Day, Americans! We had a fun weekend, filled with fireworks and festivities. Saturday night a church near us put on a great fireworks show, and had a huge inflatable slide and jumpy house for the kids. Kaylee went down the slide 7-8 times and was super sweaty all that climbing, sliding and running. Jamie went with her each time, too, so he was worn out, as well. :) We had brought some sparklers, so she did that right before they turned out all the parking lot/stadium lights for the fireworks to start. Kaylee was excited for them last year, but I think she enjoyed them even more this year. We enjoyed that we found a place so close! Last year it probably took about 40 minutes for us to get home because of all the traffic (for what otherwise would have been a 10-15 minute drive). This year there was NO traffic getting out. From the time the fireworks grand finale ended, we were home within 10 minutes, including packing up our chairs and walking back to the car. Definitely know where we're going from now on!!

Sunday night we went over to a neighbor's house for a cookout. Some of them were planning to go to the city's fireworks show, but decided to pass in the end, so we took the party outside to our cul-de-sac and stayed up until about 10:30. We were glad we'd taken Kaylee to the fireworks the night before. She would have been fine not seeing them, but she did have a great time so we were glad she got to enjoy them (even though we could see some over the houses as we were playing outside, wasn't the same as being there).

Today we just enjoyed a mostly lazy day at home. I took Kaylee out to ride her bike some. It was hot out today (July in GA...of course it was!), but we were out about 30 minutes. She is getting really good at it! She still needs a push sometimes to get started going uphill, but has come a long way in a short time, especially considering we haven't taken her out much because it's been so hot!! See our video blog for Kaylee in action on the bike!

On to the photos...I think Andy was upset that we were taking Kaylee to see fireworks, but leaving him behind with Jamie's mom. He slept through it all, though, so I'm pretty sure he will be okay. :)









The "shirt" Kaylee's wearing (above) is actually a 12-18 month size dress that she wore two years ago! I realized we didn't have any festive attire for her this year and went digging through her old clothes. Luckily we could pair this with some shorts and re-purpose the dress as a shirt this year.

Here's our happy little Andy on the 4th, and with Daddy, getting ready to head up to bed. Now sleeping soundly through night 3 of fireworks!!