Busy week: Country Jam edition

Before all you country music haters click away, just imagine this: there is a music festival coming to your town.  It's your favorite genre, there are lots of big name performers coming, it lasts four days with a total of 19 concerts in all.  And the best part?  Tickets are only $120.  That's for ALL FOUR DAYS.  (For those of you who avoid math at all costs, that's $30 a day.)  Who wouldn't go to that?  Well that's what Country Jam is for me.

Plus, Country Jam is sentimental to me.  We got married during Country Jam in 2006, and saw Alan Jackson just a few hours afterward.  So when I heard Alan Jackson was coming BACK this year I thought, "we have to go."  Then he "postponed" the week before the actual concert (and long after I'd purchased our tickets.)  BUT.  We still went (see: already purchased tickets) and had a good time.

For those of you who know country music, and you know, care who we saw, the concerts we went to were:
Sawyer Brown
Billy Currington
Lee Ann Womack
Trace Adkins
Jake Owen
Miranda Lambert
Keith Urban

We skipped the day shows because: A) Nobody I was really interested in, B) it is BLAZING hot out there in the middle of the day (I speak from experience) and, maybe most importantly, C) I can't really leave a nursing baby all day long.


ANYWAY.  For those of you who don't care at all about the music and just come here to be amused, I give you this photo.



Did you catch if?  Look right there between Brian and I.  That's right, we got photobombed.  I actually caught it right away and turned around and she blurted out, "I'm sorry!" which was pretty hilarious.  It was too bad though, because that was probably the best picture of us.  Brian kept closing his eyes (he blames the flash.)

Now, a few pictures for anyone who cares.  I'll understand if you want to skip this part.  I mostly just want to make Kari jealous that she didn't come with us.

We took Kalena to Jake Owen, the only 5 pm show we went to.  She had a good time dancing.  And playing in the dirt of course.  One show was plenty for her.  It amazes me that people willingly take their kids and spend ALL DAY out there.  Insane.

A stage shot of the Jake Owen show.

Stage shot at Miranda Lambert.  

P.S.  We saw Miranda Lambert the year we got married too.  She was an afternoon show (because she wasn't well known yet) but we knew lots of her stuff, so it was fun to see her again as the big-name closing act.

Shot of the jumbo-tron during Keith Urban.  Because let's face it, unless you buy VIP seats or get there right when the gates open, mostly you see the screen, not the stage.

Maybe we'll go again next year.  Or maybe we'll wait another four years.  You never know.

Busy week: more momentous occasions

Last week was also our 4 year anniversary!  On the 23rd to be exact.  I'm tempted to tell our wedding story again, because I love hearing people's reactions to the whole thing, but I'll spare you.  Because I already posted it last year.  And the year before.

We celebrated by going back to Country Jam.  We haven't been since we got married, but since we're back in Junction I thought it would be fun.  And then Brian agreed to go because he loves me and I don't have any friends here.  At least, not any friends that wanted to go to Country Jam with me.

Waiting for Keith Urban to start.

Good music and four child-free evenings.  Does it get any better?

Busy week: this will take more than one post

As I said before, last week was a busy one.  It was full of things like this little man hitting 6 months old!

He had his six month check up, made significantly easier by leaving Kalena at home with my mom.  (Thank you summertime!)  He weighs 18 lbs 12 1/4 oz and is 26 inches long.  That puts him in the 74% for weight (again) and the 36% for height.  So, believe it or not, his height is actually gaining on his weight.  Incidentally, his head is 18 inches around.  That's the 93%.  Apparently his is not only short and fat, he has a giant head.  Good times.  

He's rolling around a lot, loves the exersaucer, and likes to chew on stuff.  He drools all the time, but no teeth yet.  And, as I said last week, he started solid foods.  I really wasn't ready to deal with the mess of feeding a baby every day, but it got to the point that he would just cry during dinner because everyone else was eating.  He was SO SAD that he couldn't have food too.  So I gave in.  The first thing we gave him was actually some applesauce because we didn't have any baby food, but we went out and got some later that day.  He had some sweet potatoes for dinner.

Uh, I know I wanted this stuff, but now I'm not so sure.

Alright, I guess it's good.

What?  Do I have something on my face?

He pretty much loves eating.  It's a very different experience than starting Kalena on solids.  (The picture is worth clicking on that link.)

More big firsts

Because Kari and Amelia are here we had to deal with sleeping arrangements.  In case you forgot, we're currently living with my parents.  Before we lived here, they had 3 empty bedrooms.  Now they have zero. Here's how things have been arranged:
Bedroom one: Brian and I have room with a queen bed.
Bedroom two: Kalena's room has a crib and twin beds pushed together with a mattress topper to make it a king bed.
Bedroom three:  Has a queen bed and Will sleeps in a pack-n-play.

In the past we probably would have just set up a second pack-n-play in our room and moved Will in there so Kari and Amelia could stay in his room.  But miss Amelia is almost a year old, and getting a little big for a pack-n-play.  (Although, she is teeny.  Like, I'm pretty sure Will outweighs her.  I'll find out for sure and let you know.  (Incidentally, this also means Will is getting a little big for a pack-n-play.))  SO.  We decided we should just get a toddler bed for Kalena and let Amelia sleep in the crib.

Yes, no preparation, no reading up on the best way to transition.  We decided on Sunday that we would switch her to a toddler bed and then yesterday we did.  She did fine last night, but got out of bed around 6:30 this morning, despite her Good Nite Lite.  She didn't nap in there this afternoon.  (That was her choice though, she requested a nap in the crib.)  To avoid her leaving her room before we want her to, we turned the door knob around so we can lock it from the outside.  And before anybody gets all judgmental about locking her in there, what's the difference between that and sticking her in a crib, or putting a child proof thing on the door knob?  Whichever way you do it, the point is that they're stuck in there.  It's for her own safety, there's a loft she could fall from if she got out.  (My mom has a serious paranoia about it, and it's rubbed off on me.)

ANYWAY.  Toddler bed.  And Mr. Will is eating baby food now.  As of lunch today.  Messy face pictures later.

I wish they lived here

My sister Kari and the lovely miss Amelia are coming to visit today!  YAY!  I keep trying to get her to move back here, but she's always giving me all these excuses.  Like that Jonathan "has a job in Pueblo" and "they own a house there" and a whole bunch of junk.

ANYWAY.  We'll be doing lots of fun stuff, like going to Dinosaur Journey every day.  Okay, I don't know that I could handle going every day, although I'm pretty sure Kalena will want to.  It didn't impress her too much last summer, but we went the other day and then she got obsessed.  She keeps asking, "nious?"  (That's dinosaurs, if you didn't catch that.  Yeah, I didn't either.)  We ended up going back the next day to buy a family pass.

There's more going on this week, but since I'm pretty sure reading my schedule for the week would bore you all to tears, I won't post it.  Instead I'll just post about things as they happen, so instead of being bored to tears by bullet points you can be bored to tears by entire posts!  HA!

Fine, I'll try not to bore you.  No guarantees though.

The thumbsucker in question

You want me to quit sucking my thumb?!

But look how cute it is!

And it makes me happy, see?

Thumb sucker or binky baby

Will has discovered just how much he enjoys his thumb.  He's been sucking it quite a bit lately, particularly when he's tired.  Although, not when he goes to sleep because that still requires a swaddle.  Incidentally, I may be writing a future post titled: How to swaddle a one year old.  Because he doesn't seem like he's going to be giving that up anytime in the near future.  But back to the topic at hand.  Thumb sucking.  I feel like I have two options right now.  I can either: let the thumb sucking continue, and hope he gives it up at a reasonable age, or replace the thumb with a pacifier and encourage that instead.

Apparently we got off easy with Kalena.  She quit liking pacifiers at about 4 months and she never sucked her thumb.

Part of me thinks I should just leave it alone and maybe he won't ever really get into the thumb sucking.  Then the rational part of me says, "HA HA HA!  Yeah right."  I don't doubt that there are good things about thumb sucking.  There's always a thumb!  No lost pacifiers!  Makes it easy for him to self-soothe!  BUT.  You can't take the thumb away when you want him to quit.  I just don't know.

And before anyone brings it up, I'm not worried about his teeth.  Brian was a thumb sucker and has perfectly straight teeth, no braces.  I never sucked my thumb (or took a pacifier) and I had an overbite and a cross-bite and I've had retainers and braces and more retainers and I STILL have to sleep in retainers and probably will every night until I get dentures.  So dental work = not a factor in my decision.  I let you know how it plays out.  I know you're thrilled.

My children are the world's worst nappers

I used to wonder if Kalena just never napped because of something *I* did.  If I just wasn't doing something right and that's why she didn't sleep much during the day.  But she was always happy, so I just didn't worry about it.

Will, on the other hand.  This kid needs to nap.  BUT HE DOESN'T.  I have tried: the swing, the bouncer, a bed, the pack-n-play.  I have: nursed to sleep, given a bottle before naps, driven him around, put him down awake.  I have put him down: in a quiet room, with white noise, in the living room with lots of noise. have swaddled and not swaddled.  The naps ALL SUCK.  He used to take a 2 1/2 or 3 hour nap every morning.  Now he won't sleep for longer than an hour.  And I have NO IDEA why.  His nighttime sleep is fine. (knock on wood)  So I don't know what the deal is with the naps.  But this really needs to change, so you guys all need to tell me your very best tricks to get a kid to nap.  HELP ME!

I'm a scaredy cat, but also a Stephen King fan

I like Stephen King.  I've read lots of his stuff, and I recently picked up Duma Key, one I hadn't read.  It is creepy.  Shocking right?  Creepy novel by horror author.  Anyway, I'm kind of a big wuss when it comes to scary stuff.  I don't watch horror movies.  I won't even watch scary suspense by myself.

I can handle scary books a *little* better, if only because my imagination is apparently not as gruesome as that of movie producers.  Usually if a book starts freaking me out my solution is to finish it.  But this one is sort of long.  So what am I doing?  Oh, reading it late at night, by myself after Brian goes to bed.  GREAT way to not get freaked out.  And let me just tell you, catching a glimpse of a tangle of dolls legs (on a bed where there are not normally dolls) in the moonlight after reading creepy novel late at night by myself?  A LITTLE unsettling.

I would tell you I've learned my lesson, but pretty sure I haven't.

Words and more words

Kalena seems to be in the midst of that "language explosion" that the pediatrician said she wanted to see happen about now.  She now regularly copies words we say to her, and is adding several words to her vocabulary each week by doing so.  Of course, I can understand them when she's mimicking, (OBVS, since I JUST said it) but out of context things are a little sketchy.  It's frustrating for me, but I'm sure it's incredibly frustrating for HER since she is now using real, actual WORDS (ish) and I STILL don't know what she wants.

She did say a three word phrase to me today, entirely unprompted!  She will put two words together quite a bit, and she'll do three if you help, but this was all on her own.  What did my genius child say, I hear you asking?  "Wash pooh peez."  For those of you who don't speak toddler, that's "Watch Pooh please."  (Pooh as in "Winnie The")  That's right!  First unprompted three word phrase is a request for television.  Am so proud.

This may or may not have to do with the fact that there has been WAY too much TV watching going on here lately.  I was miserably sick on Friday, so Brian, because he is a SAINT, took Kalena to work with him.  Yes, his boss is awesome enough to be okay with that.  And, so he could you know, get some actual work done while she was there, she spent most of that time watching Winnie the Pooh.  Then she's been off lately (maybe a touch of what I had) which also results in extra TV time to cut down on the whining.   Oh MAN the whining.  She is not a particularly whiny two year old, but when she's sick she's a champion whiner.  In fact, that's usually our biggest clue that she's not feeling well.

Anyway, I'm sure she's glad to know that all these words are actually good for something.  How else can you request your favorite show, right?

Our newest Cowboys fan

I know it's not football season yet, but Will is going to outgrow this onesie before it is.  And sadly, since we don't live in Texas anymore, we can't just walk into Albertson's and get new Cowboys gear.  (Anyone in Texas want to pick us up some?)

Will is shocked at those of you that aren't hard-core Cowboys fans like he is.

Here he is trying to look super adorable so that you'll convert to being Cowboys fans.

Interestingly enough, it bothers me when parents put political outfits on their kids (just because you're a democrat/republican/communist your kid is also a democrat/republican/communist?) but I have no problem with parents dressing their kids in sports team attire.  In fact, I usually find that adorable.  What's the difference though, really?  

Yoga and fat thighs

My sister Kari believes that Will has the fattest thighs of any baby ever.  (Oh, you thought I meant MY fat thighs?  No, no.  I try to avoid referencing those.)  I think she may be right.  See Exhibit A:

He is quite a chunk.  My mom is always using words like "sturdy" and "solid" but we all know those just mean fat.  She even admitted today that we should keep baby powder around so he doesn't get a heat  rash in his fat rolls.  And don't get me wrong, he's adorably fat, just like a baby should be, so I'm not saying fat like it's a bad thing.  It's just the truth.

Anyway, on to yoga.  I want to start doing yoga again.  One of the things I planned to do with Kalena sleeping later (aka staying in bed later) was to get up at 6 and do yoga before she's up.  Unfortunately, Will only sleeps through the night sporadically, so most mornings I end up sleeping until about 6:30 instead.  I really want to get started though.  Even Will has been reminding me to do it.  See?

Getting started...

And there it is!

There's a reason they call it "happy baby pose" you know.  Although, in his case the "happy" seemed to mostly come after the "pose" part.  I guess at 5 1/2 months holding your toes is serious business.

P.S.  Isn't "happy baby pose" a WAY better name than "dead bug"?  

Buried treasure

This morning Kalena was walking around with an object I didn't recognize, so when she put it down I went over to investigate.  Turns out it was this:

A two inch tall plastic Gizmo.  And for anyone who's wondering, yes, I recognized him as Gizmo even though Gremlins is before my movie watching time.  Full disclosure: I've never seen it all the way through.

ANYWAY.  The thing was filthy.  Just covered in dirt.  (I washed it off, in case you're wondering why it looks so clean in the picture.)  My mom told me Kalena just walked in from the yard with it yesterday so the dirt makes sense.  Here's the thing though.  This isn't her toy.  Nor was it ever my toy.  It didn't come from the old toys we had in the house.  I'm FAIRLY certain she dug it up in the yard.  I'm guessing it belonged to one of my brothers.  (Eric, care to chime in on that one?)  I'm also guessing it's been out in the dirt for, oh, 20 years or so?  There were rose bushes against the side of the house until last summer, so he could have been lost under there.  

However it ended up there, it was quite a blast from the past to see her walk in with it this morning.  What's the craziest thing you've found in your yard? 

Pictures of the little man

This is Will most of the time.  Fat and happy.

How can you resist that face?

Oh yes, that's life.

Kalena took a tumble yesterday trying to get into the seat of a shopping cart.  Then she had a throw-herself-on-the-floor tantrum when I told her she was too big to get in.  Oh yes, she was trying to get into THIS shopping cart:

You think she willingly gets in the cart at stores?  Sure, for like 27 seconds.  After that she is telling me "all done" and asking to get down.  When I tell her no she'll throw both hands in front of her face and try to work up some tears.  

So, to summarize: has to get into a cart at a store?  Breakdown.  Can't get into the cart at home?  Breakdown.  I can't win.

Yeah, yeah, don't compare your kids, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

I know all kids are different, and I shouldn't be comparing my kids with each other, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Here's the thing though.  They are too close in age NOT to compare.  It's not that I'm doing it negatively; I don't get worried that Will isn't doing the same stuff at the same age.  I mostly find it interesting.  I've heard that a child's development will either tend toward the verbal side or the physical side.  Kalena definitely tended toward physical.  As social as Will is, I'm guessing he'll tend toward verbal.  We'll see.  I've also heard that girls tend to develop more quickly, so maybe that's the only difference.

Anyway, since I know YOU all want to see the comparison too, here are some pictures!  (That's why you read my blog right?  No?  Then what do you read for?)

Here is Kalena at 5 months, working on her backward crawl.  Backward crawled herself right into a wall for this shot.

Rolling around, getting herself wrapped up in a blanket.  

Here's what Will does at 5 months.  Hangs out on the floor.  Happily I might add.

Hangs out on his baby Einstein mat.  

Sits on the couch ready to topple over.  Well, he only does that when I put him there for pictures.  And he is sort of top heavy, so you can't blame him for the toppling.

Personally, I love the put-the-baby-down-on-the-floor-and-he-stays-right-there phase.  I do hope he gets out of it before he gains another 10 lbs though.  My arms don't need more of a workout.  Alright, FINE.  They do, but I'd prefer to work them out on my own terms.  By, you know, typing and stuff.  That counts right?

Siblings, they're good to have around.

Will is rolling over these days.  He did it the first time just before 4 months, and he does it regularly now, but still not a whole bunch.  That's it as far as getting mobile.

Kalena, at 5 months, was rolling herself all around, could push herself in a sort of backward crawl, and was *almost* crawling for real.  She wanted to get INTO stuff.  Will doesn't so much care about getting into stuff.  What he wants is company.  He wants to be smiled at and talked to and held ALL THE TIME.  Luckily, (for Will AND for me) Kalena is often right there ready to help with the entertaining.

See?

Alright, maybe she doesn't always understand the *best* way to entertain him, but at least she tries.    

The picture you've all been waiting for

Remember when I wrote this post, about Kalena's hair?  What, you don't?!  Alright, fine.  Most of the time I can't even remember what I posted last week, let alone 9 months ago.  Anyway, I mentioned how crazy Brian's hair gets when it's longer and lamented the fact that I hadn't taken any pictures of that craziness.  WELL.  It turns out I DID take a picture.  And yesterday I found it!

For those of you who don't know, Brian typically keeps his hair REALLY short.  Like so:

And there's a reason for that.  If he lets it get long, he wakes up with it looking like this:

I'm not even kidding.  He would go to bed with it looking perfectly reasonable, and when he woke up it was ridiculous.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  He ought to grow it out every few years just for the amusement factor.