Uh-Oh

On the changing table last night I asked Keller if he had fun playing with the little girl at the park. He said, "Yes." Then he follows up with, "Not a penis." And he's right, the little girl does not have a penis. We've been talking about how he's a boy and Daddy's a boy and Neko's a boy and BoBo's a boy and Mommy is a girl. When we see other kids we've been differentiating between boys and girls. He's also been sitting on the potty here and there so he's very aware of his penis. And this morning when I told Trav about our conversation he quizzed Keller and he got everyone right and followed up with all the boys saying that they have a penis "cause he goes peepee." So he's learning I guess. I just have a feeling all of this knowledge of his is going to embarrass the heck out of me sometime soon...

These Are Days...

I've been really enjoying our family summer fun this year:) We've managed a handful of little adventures that I'm always wanting to do but find it hard to actually make things happen. Let's see...I'd say the summer kicked off with our trip to the hospital to get the baby to bring with us on our adventures;)

We hunkered down for a little while, and made our first venture out on the Fourth of July to my parents and then to Trav's aunt's for BBQs. We celebrated our anniversary on the beach here in our lovely town, hit the sprinkler park a couple of times both alone and with Justin, Jackie and JoJo, and took Keller to the lake which he LOVED fearlessly splashing around in.

Cheers to Us! Fourth anniversary, two kids later...

Keller "Cheers-es" his water and Pad Thai

We went for a hike with BoBo and some friends (Tupper and Jo) at Lake Mohegan in Fairfield. We took the family to the Willie Nelson show at the Ives Center in Danbury and enjoyed lawn-seats along with all the grandparents who also happened to have tickets to the show.

BoBo and Keller both love their Tupper!

Neko seemed to enjoy his very first concert...A musical legend, at that!!

Keller has fun at the concert sitting on his Papa's lap (note Grandma and her binoculars in the background;)

We visited with Elise, Maribeth, and Gretchen from college along with their families/soon-to-be-husband. We had a pizza picnic with friends and Trav's sister's family before heading out to the Easton Carnival where Keller went on his very first rides...Dumbo and the Magic Carpet Slide. We had an impromptu visit for a swim and dinner with Abby and Shan who were in town briefly at my parents' house. And on Sunday we motivated to get up and out (sort of) early to go to the Podunk Bluegrass Festival in East Hartford which made for a perfect summer day---beautiful weather, sunshine, clouds, a breeze, the sound-man offering to share his shade tent with us, a dirty little boy playing on the baseball field, festival food, a sleeping baby, oh, and the music, yes, the music:) I love me some bluegrass music on a hot summer day, or any day really! Keller learned about some of the instruments (and how to tip a lawn chair;) and Travis and I finally managed to acknowledge each other after both children were strapped into the carseats and we could manage to catch our breathe before departing for home! Family Fun!!

While getting out and doing all of those things has been wonderful, it is equally wonderful to just hang out in the backyard with the itty bitty pool, the hose, some buckets and balls and splash around before dinner.
I'm loving all of these moments with my family. I'm loving all of these memories we are creating. While the boys are still too young to remember any of what we've done this summer, I know that I will look back on both the adventures and the every-day moments with joy and fondness one day, missing this beautiful young family that we are, while hopefully celebrating the beautifully "grown-up family" that we will one day become.

These Are the Days....

Keller spent quite a bit of time engaging with this box in varying capacities:) Trav and I would say, "Go play box." Or Keller would say, "Mommy play box with Teller." We'd color, cut, hammer, nail, screw, measure, play cars, etc. in or on the box. A fabulous toy, really. Got plenty more use than any other single toy in the house!

Mr. Silly Goose. I'm fairly certain that it was dinner-in-the-hair that made it stand up like that!

It has been the summer of trucks here on our block. Bulk trash dump trucks and front loaders, cherry-picker to cut down the neighbors tree, fire-truck and ambulance a few doors down, cable guy in the cherry-picker bucket in our front yard. It's a good thing Teller has his hard hat handy at all times!

6 Week Check-Up

I went to the doctor this morning for my 6 week post-partum visit. All is well. Doc said I am healing quite well, "considering" as she put it;) When she walked into the office she looked at Neko and said, "He's still good and chubby!" which is so true:) I got the okay to go swimming--yay! I've been missing the water on these hot hot days. I'm 20 pounds down from where I was at 39 weeks but still have close to 15 to go to get back to pre-pregnancy weight, which I guess I shouldn't stress about considering it too me a year to get to that weight after Keller (I started my Neko pregnancy 5 pounds less than when I started my Keller pregnancy so we'll see where I end up once I get back into my irregular exercise routine. I've been walking a dog (either Bo or Becky) 3-4 times a week and have gone for 2 official jogs in the past week or so. It's hard to squeeze in solo-exercise time these days so I have to depend on Trav's one late morning during the week to get a jog in and at least one weekend day. Aside from that, it's a stroller walk in the neighborhood, which is better than nothing. Sometimes, I even lift my weights, sometimes. And once I did abs on the giant exercise ball (with one little rugrat grabbing my legs the whole time...extra resistance, right?)

As for goings on, Neko is doing well. I have been loving his big gummy smiles (the real kind) and his beginning conversation skills. It takes the flailing movements of all four of his limbs to muster up enough momentum to get the tiniest "talking" sound out--hard work for a little peanut you know. Sleepwise, we're gettin' there. That first stretch is usually 4-5 hours and the next about 3, which brings us to the morning so it's not so bad. It seems that he has officially been kicked out of our room for being a noisy sleeper, grunty, gassy, and loud breathing. (Not even earplugs did the trick!) And so he's been sleeping outside of our bedroom door in the kitchen. Seems to be working better for us. We're playing with the idea of setting up the pack-n-play in the living room so he can be even further away, especially once we stop using the fan in our room. We'll figure it out as we go along. Neko seems to have also caught on to Keller's naptime in the sense that he is now wide-awake for that/those hour or two, knowing he's got mommy to himself (unless she's on the computer updating her blog or something...) So as much as I'd love for both guys to sleep at the same time (at least for some of the time) it's actually a good thing because I get that one on one time with Neko to have our developing conversations and such over a cup of tea. He's also just mastered the art of oblivious holding on---whether it's my necklace, hair, or Mr. Sun on his tummy time jungle gym...

Keller has been a busy busy guy around here, too. Fixing stuff all over the house with his screwdriver. Watering the plants, flowers, grass, and sidewalk outside with the hose. I don't know what we're going to do when it starts getting cooler. Perhaps actually go out and buy sand for the sandbox from Marisa? There's an idea:) Over the past week we've been busy watching all the big trucks outside. Last week the bulk pick-up trucks came to pick up all the neighbors STUFF outside (thankfully not until After we rescued a perfectly good exersaucer, music table, Leapfrog overhead toy thing, Winnie the Pooh ride on train, and some fancy gear toy, two "like new" safety gates, a booster seat, and a plastic pull sled...) I figured that even if we didn't need this stuff, we could either pass it along to someone who did or else sell it ourselves. All of these big chunks of plastic baby-toy madness going straight to the dump seemed no good--and ironically, all the work we've done keeping "electronica" baby toys out of the house was totally negated in that one bulk trash sweep, but for the good of the planet;)

But anyway, the three big shiny red dump trucks pulled up our front and then came the "scooper/front-loader" type truck that scooped everything up and dumped it into the dump trucks. Fascinating for a 21 month old. And this week's excitement was the tree crew coming to take down the big old tree in the neighbor's yard which was entangled in the the electric wires. So sad:( Now there's a big hole there where that giant shade-providing, nature-providing tree once stood. I hate it. But at least Keller enjoyed watching the cherry picker truck lift the man in the bucket up up up with his chainsaw and cut down one little limb at a time. My favorite part was that just a couple of days earlier on our way to Becky's house we passed two cherry-pickers and I told him the name of it the first time we saw one and when we came upon a second one, he called it a "blueberry truck"--He gets his berries (and cherries) mixed up still:) He even calls one of the soymilks we get "blueberry milk" because it has a bowl of cereal with blueberries in it on the carton. I love the way his little brain thinks! But anyway. Sounds like he's up now. Just in time for child two to have fallen asleep. Pictures to come. This is all just very time-consuming when you don't really have the time to do it (or take the time to do it when you could/should be doing a million other things...) I'll just be at peace with whatever though. Time is time and there will never be enough of it, the house will ALWAYS need cleaning, and little boys will only be little for a short time so it's important to write down these special little things about NOW.