Short Hair in a Winter Wonderland

Yesterday was my birthday... I'm now older than dirt. And for those of you who are older than me, you are VERY OLD!!!

One part of my birthday activities included getting a hair cut. I had requests for a photo so you can see what I look like now. It's different, but if you pass me by on the street because you 'didn't recognize me', I'll know you are really just avoiding me.

Another weather update... it's snowing again at this very moment! I snapped the photo with the white lights outside our house last night after it had been coming down for a while. When we got up this morning there was a good three inches on the ground. Jay took Kahlil to Bald Hill for some snowy fun. He didn't really get the gist of making snow angles, he kept getting upset with having snow touch his face, but he did try.

Developments

Just a quick update on what's going on here. First off, it is COLD! The highs for the next few days are about freezing and the lows are in the teens. I know that isn't cold if you live in Alaska, but we don't so it's cold. I'm SO happy we got our new windows put in this summer. It was cold and really blowing the other night and you couldn't even tell when inside. YEAH!

Now for laddy stuff - Langston is pretty much crawling. He will still scoot around on his belly, but he is up on all fours now too. He hasn't realized how much faster he can go on all fours, but that will come. He has also started to pull himself up on things (check out the video). That is very exciting and he is very proud and the head bonks have already started. He is also still not much into solid food. If I remember right, Kahlil was excited about eating solid food by this point... but then Kahlil also had teeth by now too. Maybe the interest in food and teeth come at the same time.

As for kiddo - Kahlil has given us a timeline for how you age: baby, big boy, teenager, and then adult. It's simplistic, but I can't really fault it. I've started a list of the songs he likes to sing. If you don't know him you may not realize what he is singing since he doesn't know many words, but in general I think he does a pretty good job. I know I've missed some, but this is what I have so far: Hide Your Love Away (Beatles), My Sharona (The Knacks), Route 66 (we have the Depeche Mode version), Low Rider (War), Rock the Boat (The Hues Corporation), I Wanta Be Like You & Bear Necessities (songs from The Jungle Book movie), One Way or Another (Blondie), Spider-Man (from the cartoon), The Wallace and Grommet theme music, Mahna Mahna (a Sesame Street song), Rocket Man (Elton John). He had Keita at Soft Star laughing today when Low Rider came on the radio and Kahlil started singing... Low-ri-da goes a little slowa da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da

SNOW DAY!!!

We had a bit of snow last night... and it's COLD so it is sticking around. We tired to make a snowman, but the snow is so dry and light that we couldn't get it to pack and ended up with a snow mound. But Kahlil has found that the snow texture is just right for tractor digging! Too bad we got our snow this week rather than for Christmas.

Does this count?

For the last several weeks, Langston has been mobile but not really crawling... it's sort of a G.I.-keep-your-butt-down crawl... or maybe an I'm-half-paralyzed-from-the-waist-down crawl. In any event, he is getting around quite well and we started the "he's touching my toy" phase of the brotherly relationship.

Things to Give Thanks For

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We stayed here in town so it was a low stress holiday. On Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we had a potluck turkey dinner at Melissa's house. The kids had a great time, especially since Jeremiah made a special visit.

On Thursday we had dinner at the Gottfried's house. There were three families... ours, Gottfrieds and Salcidos. The six kids had a good time playing together. Shikha's sister was visiting and she is a FANTASTIC cook. We really had a feast!

For the rest of the weekend we worked around the house. Jay spent a total of about five hours in the crawl space re-routing cables that were just laying across the living room floor. I got the Christmas lights up on the outside of the house... and I must say they look great.

And then to top off the nice Thanksgiving day, Langston slept through the night, only waking ONCE between 9pm and 8am. Yeah! (Of course that was just a taste of what we are missing as the next night he was back to his every two hour routine.)

Over all, we are a very lucky family; we live in a great community, we have good friends, we have wonderful family (that we miss everyday), and we have each other. Not a bad life.

Oh Happy Day!

Langston must have felt the ones of you that were wishing for a good nights sleep because he was only up a couple times... down at 8, snack at 10:30, eat at 2:30 and then another big meal at 6:30. That's right 4 hours in a row of sleep!

So today I'm just normal tired... not beyond belief tired. A few more nights like last night and I may feel human again.

Cold Weather and Stuff

I have a few minutes because Jay took BOTH boys to the athletic club down the street - Kahlil and Jay will swim while Langston hangs at day care. The amazing thing is that they have been gone just over an hour and in that time I've cooked dinner, cleaned the kitchen, signed up on Facebook, and started this blog entry. I guess I could still be a productive person if I didn't have two wee-ones. The picture is of them heading off tonight.

So here is what's going on... Kahlil is been cracking me up lately with some of his doings. One of them is that we get a minute by minute update of his goodness or badness. Yesterday I was buckling him into the car seat and he gave me a little kick - I gave him a cross look and he immediately asked if that was being bad. I told him yes, it was bad and he needs to apologize and not do it again to be good. So after saying he said sorry and was sitting there for another 5 seconds he asked if he was good yet.

Another funny Kahlil thing... at daycare they are going to a gymnastics place, Peak Elite, once a week. Kahlil pronounces it Peek-a-Leek (or maybe Peek-a-Leak?). We had a big discussion about how to pronounce the name and he told me I'm definitely wrong. I guess I need to brush up on my reading skills.

Langston is still dying to crawl. He is now pulling himself around on the floor. He can get up on all fours, but he can't quite get the balance working for lifting a hand or knee off the floor. It wears me out to watch him pull himself across the room. If would be so much easier if he just crawled!

The little booger has been waking me up a lot lately too. It started several weeks ago when he was sick and I think he just got in the habit of getting a nighttime snack every two hours. I've started to close the breast-aurant for at least four hours between feedings. This has really pissed him off, but I'm hoping he'll get the idea that sleep is as important as food. Please figure it out! I'm exhausted!

There we go... now I can add finished a blog post to my accomplishments.