Park Play

It's almost December, and the weather is heavenly out.  It has been such a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend!  Josh had 4 days off, we had my brother and family down from L.A. for the holidays, I got all the Christmas decorations up, and there was plenty of time for play with the little monkey.  Today we took him to the park to monkey around.  ;o)  It's so fun having a professional photographer for a husband, because we end up getting so many beautiful photos of our son.  Such wonderful faces, moments, and memories...captured forever!  I just wanted to share a few of these moments and silly faces from today.  Kyle has the most beautiful deep blue eyes, that I swear just talk to you when you look into them.  He has all kinds of silly faces and smiles....he is just a delightful little boy, and we are so blessed he is our son.  Enjoy some photos of our handsome 3 year old from the park today.

Handsome boy!

He's a climber!

Climbing UP the slide...

Swinging on his tummy.

There are those talking eyes.  Love it!!!

So sweet, just melts my heart!

What's the caption on this one?  Haha!

It is winter time, so why not make a sand angel....since there's no snow...  ;o)

Toothpaste, Car Seats, and Park Ladders

I figure it's been a while since I've written, so I better keep up!

Kyle is still 18 months old, he will be 19 months on February 26th.  He is doing amazing things for his young age!  Yesterday I took him to a park that we haven't been to yet.  There was a curved ladder that went from the ground all the way up to the top of the tall playground platform.  Kyle went right up to that ladder and started climbing it all by himself, like he had done it a million times before!  He went one foot after another, and climbed right up!  I could not believe my eyes...he is only a year and a half after all!  There was a time where he fell through in-between the ladder rungs, but he held on with both his arms, holding all his body weight until I helped him back up.  He is SO strong, and SO smart!!

Here is the link where you can view a video of him going up the ladder:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ky1edavid#p/a/u/2/ogN410_55-M

Kyle is very into tools right now.  He watches and helps daddy work on things around the house, the boat trailer, etc.  He has his own set of plastic tools to play with, and one of the sets has a little plastic piece that looks like wood, and a plastic screw and nut to go on it.  The screw was secured with the nut on the "wood" piece, and when Kyle pointed to the screw (non verbally asking what it was), I told him it was a screw.  He then proceeded to go to his bin of tools, got the screwdriver, put it in the hole end of the screw and started turning it back and forth.  He is SO smart!  After fiddling with it on and off for a while he did manage to get both the nut and screw off of the wood piece using the screwdriver.  Very coordinated little guy for 18 months, I think.  :)

Kyle still enjoys going to The Little Gym, and likes to swing on the uneven bars all by himself.  He can hold on for longer amounts of time, and can now swing with just one arm like a monkey.  Too cute!  I'll try to get a picture one of these days.

Kyle started using toothpaste on his toothbrush at 18 months.  We are using the "training toothpaste", that is supposedly OK when swallowed.  It's a good thing because most of the time he likes to suck it off the toothbrush right after it's been applied on there.  Ha, ha!  Most of the time though if he gets distracted with something on the bathroom counter, I can get in enough brushing with the toothpaste while he isn't paying too much attention.  Tricky mommy.  :)

Just a couple days after Kyle turned 18 months old we turned his car seat around to face forward in the car.  I wanted to try to wait until he was at least 2 year old, just for safety reasons, but Josh really wanted to turn it around because he though Kyle would be more happy.   Kyle was starting to really make it known that he was feeling unhappy facing backwards.  He seems much happier now that he can see us and interact a little more during car rides.  Often when I take him out in the car and he sees a truck now he says "da, da."  Josh has a truck, so Kyle now associates trucks with "da, da."  If you ask him to say truck, he will say "uck." (He knows that it is a truck....he's just now making the association between truck and daddy having a truck.)

Kyle's vocabulary is growing more every day.  He tries to imitate almost anything you ask him to say...although his response often doesn't sound clearly like the word you asked him to say.  But he sure does try, and most of the time he gets it pretty close!  :)  Today he was trying to say "yellow" which is a new one.  His favorite one right now is "bye, bye."  He also has a word for "Grandpa" now, it almost sounds like he's really saying Grandpa.  The other day he said "bye, bye ma ma."  We had just arrived at the gym where I work out, and I was taking him out of the car.  I think he knew that I was going to drop him in the daycare and he'd see me when I was done.  What a smart little guy, and CUTE!  He doesn't talk a lot in general yet, but it's getting to be more and more as he learns and gets more confident in his language skills.  We're just letting him do it at his own pace, no pressure, and no worries.  :)

We took Kyle to the zoo the other day and it's amazing how much he really looks for the animals now when you tell him what to look for.  When he sees the peacocks (which are free to roam all over the zoo) he points and says "ock."  I've been taking him to the zoo since he was about a month old and it's funny to see how his perception and interest for the animals has changed over time.  This time at the zoo there was a baby zebra, so that was a treat for all of us to see.  Kyle's favorite animal, ever since he was really little has been the giraffe.  That is the one that he is most fascinated with.

For my own personal record I should mention where he is at, growth wise and all.  At his 18 month well check he was 27 lbs. and 35.25" tall.  He still goes to bed at 6:00pm, and usually sleeps a good 13 hours at night.  He is currently taking about a 2 hour nap during the day (we've been doing one nap a day for a good couple months now at least).  He likes his sleep!  He's been in size 4 diapers for what feels like forever!  He went into size 4's when he was pretty young...around 5 months I think (I don't remember exactly).  He was just too tall for the smaller sizes, they were rubbing his little legs red.  Kyle is currently wearing 18 month size in pants, but I think he'll be moving up again pretty soon just because of his height.  He's wearing 24 month and 2T in t-shirts.  A few of his 18 month shirts still fit, just depends on the brand.  He's wearing size 6 shoes.

I have Kyle all signed up for his ISR (Infant Swimming Resource) refresher class coming up next month.  I'm excited to watch him swim again!  He hasn't swam since right after his lessons at the end of last summer.  He was 12 months old.  His teacher is amazing, we just adore her so much!  This time he will only have lessons once a day (last time he did an accelerated class and was going twice a day 10 minutes each lesson - every day...this time he will only be Mon-Fri, 10 minutes a lesson), and for 1 or 2 weeks.  Then we can enjoy swimming together for the rest of the summer, YAY!  I see lots of swimming at Grandpa Hayes' house this summer!  :)

Kyle 12 months old

There, now that I have that all documented...I hope you enjoyed the update, and I'll catch you next time!

Kyle's 9th Tooth Is Here!

Here's a picture of our silly boy playing first thing in the morning yesterday.  He makes me laugh!!!  These are his play construction goggles, obviously a little big for him.  LOL

Kyle is 15 months old, will be 16 months in another week or so.  His 9th tooth came in yesterday...another molar.  Ouch!  I was wondering why he was so cranky for a couple days, and he didn't poop for 3 days (he has been going every day, so 3 days is a long time).  Anyway, the tooth broke thru, and I'm glad we are past that one.  :)  It is on his bottom left side...not his very back molar, but the next one forward I think.  It's hard to get any amount of time to look in his mouth with all his wiggling around.  It's the tooth that matches the other molar (his 8th tooth) that came in a couple weeks ago, just on the other side of his mouth.

Josh took Kyle to the Little Gym today for his parent/child class.  I stayed home and took a nice long soak in a hot bubble bath.  Ahhhhhhhh.  It was nice to have an hour of peace and quiet in the house.  It's been a while!  Josh said they practiced somersaults on the "cheese mat", and doing a flip around the high bar.

Josh has been working two nights a week as a delivery guy for Black Jack Pizza.  So, on top of working all day, he spends two nights a week working as well.  Yuck!  Times are tough, so we are doing what we can.  It's hard on all of us.  Josh is exhausted from working so much, I am exhausted from taking care of Kyle 24/7 with no breaks, and Kyle is missing Daddy and family time.  But, I know we'll get through this, and in the end be stronger for having the experience.

We took Kyle to the park today so he could run around and burn off some of his energy.  That kid is quick these days!  Pretty much running!  Then we took him out this evening for our daily walk around the neighborhood in his blue car.  He LOVES this blue car...we definitely got our money's worth out of it!!!  So here's a cute picture of Kyle and Josh on our walk today.  I think Kyle is so cute with his hood on his head from his sweatshirt.  :)  (It was a little chilly out this evening, about 67 degrees-ish.)

Kyle has been expanding his vocabulary every day.  He says "ock" for clock, he is saying ma, ma and da, da a little more these days.  He is starting to give kisses a little more, which is cute.  He understands more words every day, even though he can't say them.  Today on our walk I asked him where the cactus was, and he pointed to a cactus.  :)  Smart kiddo!  He pointed to clouds in the sky when asked where the clouds were, and he still enjoys collecting rocks wherever he can find them.  He says "ock" for rock...so depending on the context, "ock" can either be rock or clock.  He points at trucks, and he says "uck".  Basically he is learning words with the first letter omitted.  The doctor said this is very common for kids his age when learning to talk.

 That's about all for now.  I'm still getting articles in my email about vaccinations in general, as well as the swine flu vaccine...so keep checking out the articles that are posted on the left menu bar.  :)

Till next time.....

Cell Phones and Slides

Here's a story, and some advice...all in one!  :) 

Yesterday I took Kyle to the park to play.  It was a pretty nice day out (a little on the warm side), but Kyle says "out" all day long!  He just wants to play outside all the time.  So, we went to the park.

Anyway, I had just sent a couple text messages, and Kyle was climbing up on the play structure with me.  We got to the top where the big twirly slide goes down.  My cell phone was placed in my back jean pocket for safe keeping.  I didn't think anything of it, really.

About half way down the slide I hear, "bling a ling a ling", you know, the Verizon phone jingle.  I thought that was a little odd, it's a jingle that I've never heard on my phone before.  I looked at my phone after I got down the slide, and my picture background was gone, it was in some weird mode, and it said "no service".  What the heck?!!

All my contact phone numbers were gone, all my data was gone, and I couldn't send or receive text or phone calls.  I tried turning the phone off and on again.  It made no difference.  I tried taking the battery out and putting it back in, and that made no difference either.

So, today I took my phone to the Verizon store, hoping that they could help restore my phone and it's settings.  The guy played with the phone for a few minutes, and then said, "your phone is pretty much fried."  Great.  He said that the phone wasn't even recognizing itself, there was no serial number in it anymore, and it had "phone amnesia".  That's what the guy said, "phone amnesia".  Great!

Now I need a new phone, and I have to get phone numbers from all my friends and family all over again to put in my new phone when I get it.  Big pain, but oh well!

The moral of the story is: Don't go down a slide with your cell phone on you!  You could fry it!