My Little Escape Artist
We have a new heightened awareness in our house after a recent incident. It was a Saturday afternoon and we were all just kind of lounging around the house doing our own thing. Kevin was in and out of the house a lot because he was working on stuff in the garage. Serophina was by his side the whole time, like she usually is when he’s home. Saioa spent half her time outside with Kevin and then inside with me. Well, there was a moment when I heard Kevin say he was going to brush Kona. I was distracted with something else so a little while later when I heard the garage door open, I didn’t really think anything of it. Then I realized Saioa wasn’t around. I thought she probably was outside with Kevin. I stopped what I was doing to go check. I was a little horrified when
Helping Out In The Kitchen
Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen, Timothy will come in and out. Sometimes he wants to show me things and sometimes he just wants to see what I am doing and every once in a while he will bump into me because he is not watching where he is going. Even though this is cute it can be frustrating when I’m in a hurry to get supper going. One night Timothy started his escapades and I stopped him in the kitchen. I asked him if he wanted to help me make supper. He became excited. I told him that I would get everything ready and call him into the kitchen when I needed him. He said okay and ran back into his room to play. I browned the hamburger and drained it. Then I put it in a cool Dutch oven. I opened all the cans and measured out the
She Thinks She’s Helping…
I have only moved twice in my lifetime (Forgive me if I have already shared this fact with you). Once from Florida to North Carolina and a year later, we bought our first home and moved from one side of Jacksonville to the other. I thought that I loved moving. Until now. Moving used to be a time of cleaning out your things and purging the stuff that you no longer need or want. Although we did a lot of cleaning and throwing away, this move has been completely different from the ones in the past. The main difference has been the addition of our little helper named Braylin. She is very loyal to her job as a helper and is diligent in her tasks. The perfect worker bee, right? Well… not exactly. You see, her version of helping consists of putting whatever she can get her hands on into
He Loves To Stand
It’s not new that Ben loves to stand. He’s loved it for months. He loves it when you hold his hands and let him stand: on the floor, on your lap, on a table, anywhere. But the new phenomenon is being able to stand on his own. Over the past week, Ben finally learned how to pull himself up to standing and hold himself up. That made me very excited (another milestone conquered!), but then came the scary part: standing in his crib. I am not a handy person, at all. So when this first started happening, I was both happy and terrified. We still had about a week or so before Matt would be home from training (and could thus lower the crib mattress), and all I could think about was Ben pulling himself up to standing, and then toppling over the side of his crib. I was scared
The Great Car Seat Switch
This week marked a major milestone in the life of Joshua – we finally turned around his car seat! We didn’t make it as long as I had hoped we would with him rear facing, but it was time to make the switch. And everyone is happier for it. About a year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out and recommended that children remain rear-facing in their car seats until the age of two, instead of until their first birthday as they had previously recommended. And so, when Joshua turned one, we dutifully kept him rear facing. He didn’t know that turning around had ever been on option, so he was (mostly) fine with it. Then we went to Utah in August to visit Chad’s family. He spent so much time in car seats and stroller there that just the sight of any form of restraint made him madder
No Crawling For This Baby
At eight months old, Ben should be crawling now — or at least getting close. That’s what the developmental milestones say, anyways. The first step is supposedly being able to sit on their own without support, something Ben’s mastering more and more every day, although he still usually will topple over after a few minutes. But crawling? Not even close. No, Ben enjoys his own methods of getting around. Since he was about two months old, he learned to low crawl like a Marine: pulling himself along on his belly with his arms. When he was younger, he didn’t get very far, but now he zooms around all over the place. If I leave the room, sometimes he’ll try to follow me. If he sees something he wants to play with, he’ll low crawl his way over to it. He also enjoys a rudimentary bear crawl: pushing himself up on







































