Tidbits

Kalin has recently become obsessed again with playing on his pony. He goes through phases with this toy. For a couple months he won't go near the thing and then all of a sudden it's all he wants to do!! I'm glad that he's enjoying it though. I love watching him bounce, make the sound that the animals are making and then go crazy when the music starts up.

His new favorite words are "uh-oh" and "buh-bye". He has 3 or 4 different variations of "uh-oh". We walk Kasey out every morning on his way to work and Kalin likes to tell him "buh-bye" and wave. He also likes to say "buh-bye" and wave to the cars that pass us on our walks or to any car that starts up in the parking lot.

This past weekend (Father's Day weekend) was a major milestone for Kasey, Kalin and I. While I had spent my first night away from him back in April during a friend's wedding festivities, this was the first time I had left him for an entire weekend. Kasey and I went up to San Francisco to celebrate our anniversary. This was the first anniversary that we have been able to do anything special for. Our first year we had been flown out to San Jose for a job interview for Kasey and I was in the middle of really bad morning sickness. So it was kind of a trip but not a fun, romantic one and I was throwing up the whole way home on the plane. Sidenote: Morning sickness and planes don't do well together. Our second year we had a 5 and half month old so we weren't ready to leave him alone for any great length of time. I think we did make it out for dinner that year. So this year we decided to do something extra special. We had a really good time and it was refreshing to not be on anybody else's schedule but our own for 48 hours. I relaxed - for more than just a few hours at a time. I did surprisingly well. I never felt the urge to call my parents to see how things were going and I didn't really miss him too much. At first I felt a little guilty about that but I knew that he was in excellent hands and that I really needed this break. Of course Kasey and I still talked about him some. It was hard to go even an hour without mentioning some cute or weird thing that he does. But we had a really good time together being a couple - not just a couple of parents. I think we need to make this an annual thing.

I thought it was really funny how different this Father's Day present was compared to last years. Last year I made a digital book of pictures from Kalin's first 5 months for Kasey to keep at work. It was a nice, sentimental type of gift. This year I bought him 3 different kinds of hot wing sauce from our favorite wing place, Buffalo Wild Wings. I couldn't come up with anything sentimental or creative so I decided to just give him something I knew he would be excited about. We loved this restaurant when we lived in Ohio and Kentucky and there just aren't very many out here so we never get to go. He really was excited about the sauces. I was really excited about them too and had a hard time keeping quiet about them for the 3 weeks they were hiding in the house. I did have Kalin make Kasey's Father's Day card. It's a bunch of scribbles on a sheet of printer paper that I then folded in half and wrote "Happy Father's Day" on the front of. I made sure Kalin knew that this was for Dada while he was coloring. Since Kalin was with my parents on Sunday morning he went to their church nursery. They had the kids make a special thing for their fathers. It's a poem for the dads and then they had the children put their foot prints on the paper. I thought it was a neat idea. I was surprised at how big Kalin's feet look. I need to compare them with his newborn feet.

For those who care - it appears that Kalin has weaned himself. It's been 8 days now since he last nursed. For the two weeks before his last nursing he had only been nursing once every 3 days. So I was prepared for it. "That's kind of sad" was Kasey's response when I told him last night. And I immediately said, "Not really!" I was ready. Kalin was ready. It was time. It worked out well this way. It wasn't traumatic for either one of us. We just let it happen naturally.

I am happy to announce that Kalin has gained his appetite back. For 5 or 6 days he barely ate anything. He was drinking his milk and juice and water just fine but would only take 2 or 3 bites at each meal. It was making me nervous except for the fact that he was acting completely normal and just fine. He wasn't acting sick or starving. Then all of a sudden he was back to eating normally again! I guess these are just the ups and downs of toddler-hood.

I was so proud of him today!! We were sitting on the kitchen floor coloring and I noticed that pretty much all of our crayons are broken. So I would hold up one part of a crayon and ask him to find me the correctly colored missing piece. 3 out of 4 times he picked up the correct colored piece!! He had lost interest in the little game by the fourth time. It showed me that he can follow direction well and that he can match colors together (and also that he isn't colorblind).

He appears to have gotten a new tooth. I don't know when. I have it marked on my calendar as last Wednesday because that is when I found it but I'm pretty sure it had already been there for a couple of days. He doesn't let my finger in his mouth to explore very often anymore. So that makes 6 on top and 3 on the bottom. He's a little lopsided.

So there a few tidbits of news from the last couple of weeks.