Side By Side

One of my favorite things to see are my two kids side by side at the sliding glass door.

Who would have thought I would now have TWO?

Out With Therapy, On to Preschool

Grant's last day of therapy took place at the end of March. The end of an era. Grant had been seeing someone from the Child Development Center since he was almost 2 months old. They came once a week for about 2 1/2 years, and then increased his time to 4 days a week. He has really excelled in the past year. It has been amazing. Grant's speech therapist Casey Hopman, who came when Grant was 2 and a 1/2 years old. She came twice a week on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 a.m. She's actually LDS and we would have great talks about our kids. I feel like it is worth mentioning that she is LDS since that is so hard to come by. Don't get me wrong...the church is strong here, it's just nice to know someone else is. I've learned not to take that for granted!

This is Kelly Taubert. She was Grant's Occupational Therapist (often called Physical Therapist by me). She started seeing Grant when he was 2 months old. For a long time it was only once a week, and then she started to come twice a week. Grant always looked forward to her visits. Near the end, he gave her a kiss on the leg. How cute is that!

Of course, Audrey would want to get into the fun. She looked forward to the visitors as much as Grant did. She always wanted to climb into the chair that one of them would always bring.

Grant and Audrey loved this drum! Oh my! So glad that I do not own one. The keyboard downstairs is enough for me! The gal on the left is named Bree. She came to get Grant acquainted with a program that they apparently use in preschool. (I say "apparently" because I have yet to see it make an appearance in his preschool sessions.)

All in all, it is a great program, for infants to three. They come to your house! You don't have to haul your kids anywhere. And it's FREE!

I've also been impressed with Grant's preschool which is also from the same outfit. More about that though, in upcoming posts.

A New Discovery

A favorite fun activity for sure, was Grandma's piano. Audrey couldn't enough of it. She loved to press the keys, and climb up on the chair to reach it. She had a great time!

Grant's First Haircut

On March 5, 2011, I was just sitting in my chair watching my kids play, and just thinking how OUT OF CONTROL Grant's hair was getting to be. Audrey's hair is also getting long, and I have to do her hair or else she looks like a ragga muffin. Grant's hair was taking longer to do than Audrey's. And that is saying something. Audrey isn't the most compliant when I am doing her hair. Some days are better than others. So I was just looking at that massive amount adorable out of control hair, and finally thinking that "today is the day." I had no idea even the night before that I would be cutting Grant's hair. It just happened in a minute. I grabbed our clippers, got the biggest size of attachment I could find, and grabbed my toddler. I made him sit on Daddy's lap, and he was suprisingly good. I asked James, how I should do this, and he said, since I am just "buzzing it" it doesn't really matter. So I went for it. I held those clippers in my hand and did the deed.

Then I cried.

It was sad for me to see all those little baby curls on the floor, and finally realizing he is not a baby anymore. He is a preschooler, who needs to look like a little boy.

So it's done. And I am please with the result. He looks so much like a little boy now! It really grew him up a lot. It is short in these pics, but right now, it is just a good length. He still has his curls, so I am happy! :)

Look at how out of control it was! So happy that the deed is done. (And yes, I saved a curl!)

Spring Break Continued

Grant loves to play on these playgrounds. He had such a good time crawling through the tunnels and going down the slide. My mom and I heard the word, "tunno" a few times for tunnel.

Climbing up the slide...no matter how many times I say to go down the slide, Grant thinks he has to climb up it. It must be a kid thing to have to climb up a slide.

Entertaining kids is always something we think about. Luckily, when we go to Grandma Jeanne's, Kirk has his cars that he had when he was a kid. Grant loves them.

Audrey just loved being in Grandma and Grandpa Killpack's backyard. She could not get enough of being out there with the green grass and warm air. It was still pretty cold in Casper, so both kids were content with just being outdoors. I love Audrey's hair. It was just barely long enough for me to do something with it!

I love any picture I can get when my mom and my kids are together. I was just thinking about when we have birthday celebrations, its pretty bare to have no one else in the background other than just our family. Maybe someday Utah will be back in the picture. Not for a while though.

Audrey loves suckers. She has only ever had a Dum Dum sucker. This one was pretty big. In the car, it was nice to give to her. I had to sit in between Grant and Audrey because the car ride can get a little hairy without someone to referee!

Spring Break Etc.

The second week in March was our Spring Break, and James and I had been anxious to leave and get out of windy cold Wyoming. We had seven days for our trip and were so excited to take the kids to Denver to visit the aquarium and also the Children's Museum. This would require us to stay a few nights in Denver, so we booked a room and made the trek down. As you will recall in an earlier post, Grant had outgrown his old carseat, so we bought him a new one. It's much less of a chair, and he can be strapped in now with the seat belt. We should have taken into consideration the fact that when Grant was strapped into his old chair, he literally could not do anything, but sit there and play with toys on his lap. This new chair provided a lot more freedom, which made going down tiring even more to say the least. Grant can now undo his seat belt, twist and turn his whole body (even when he is strapped in), and lean clear over onto the seat, so that he is laying down. This makes travel interesting. This was our first big extended car trip with his new seat, and he just was not used to it. Neither was I. I ended up riding in the middle to entertain, and also to struggle with Grant so that he could remain safe in his seat.

Our first activity was the acquarium. This was the first time we have taken Grant anywhere where he seemed to enjoy himself. He loved looking at the fish, putting his hands in the water and attempting to touch a sting ray, and then pointing at all the numbers they had on all the fish tanks. We saw a tiger, a turtle, and tons of sharks. It was a neat museum, and I LOVE the fact that we went on a cold, rainy day, in the middle of the school year, so it was not crowded at all. That was the only way we could enjoy this musuem with our almost three year old. We went through twice.

Our lovely tiger. I have no idea why he would be at an aquarium of all places, but I was glad to see him. This made our choice of coming here instead of the zoo more worth it. (Although we are going to try to hit the zoo sometime in the summer.

We stayed at a nice place in Denver called The Commons. We booked a suite with a seperate bedroom and a full kitchen. We wanted to be able to come back to the room and eat lunch and our meals with out having to take the kids out to eat (since we take our chances whenever we do this!) Things went well the first night we were there, and then the second day, (after we had come home from the Children's Musuem), to eat lunch, Grant decided that he was going to scream at random times throughout the afternoon. When I say "random" I mean RANDOM! He was fine one minute and screaming short screams the next. We were there in the afternoon, and Audrey was napping-we thought we were fine, until we got a call from the front desk about a "child screaming in your room." You know, couldn't do anything about it. We tried to make him be quiet, but it happened at such random times, I could not tell when he would scream next. We decided to wake up Audrey and leave. It kind of put a damper on the trip for me, but I didn't feel too badly when we got another call that night from the front desk, about "someone throwing rubber balls against the wall." Sorry, people who are in ahotel, we have to walk and little kids pattering feet are going to make a noise. Maybe they shouldn't have stayed in a family hotel. So, ironically, after that last phone call, I felt better about the whole thing. There honestly wasn't anything more we could have done. What did save our life though, was this Leap Frog Caterpillar which plays classical music. Grant loves to hear it play, and will not scream while it is playing. So, dear people who have to share a hotel wall with kids-get over it!

I adore this pic of Audrey. Long car rides do not agree with her!

I had the most fun with Audrey this trip. She was just so fun. She was crawling everywhere and was interested in everything. She loved this rocking chair in which we were supposed to read together. The only thing is, she did not want to share!Grant doesn't necessarily like grocery shopping, but he does like to push things around. He actually went shopping and put a few things in his cart, and a checker was there to check him out in the grocery line. So fun. So wishing they had this in Casper!

I mentioned the Children's Musuem-the kids loved it. This was our second time visiting the musuem. Grant was one year old the first time we went, and could only do a little of all of the activities they have for kids there. It was fun taking both Grant and Audrey. Grant did much better this time, although I wish there was something like the musuem in Casper. He played with tools, climbed on a fire truck, pretended to be a vet, shopped around in the grocery store, discovered more to bubbles, and crawled around like a maniac in caves, up trees, and slid down slides. SOOOO fun for Audrey too. She got to dress up like a dancer, play with stuffed animals, and test her crawling skills. The kids had a great time, and it was so fun to be able to take them both.

My prima ballerina. She looked so cute in her little tutu with ribbons to hold. Now all we have to do is sign her up for dancing lessons and she will be all set. Too fun!

On to St. George. The trip, of course, wouldn't be complete without disclosing the fact that on the way down, Grant RUINED my Kindle. I absolutely have adored my Kindle since I got it for Christmas and could not survive a week without it, so I brought it on the trip. I needed to get a cover for it, and thought that would be a fun thing to shop for with my mom once we got to St. George. Well, Grant stepped on my pink bag that had it in there, and it was ruined. Sooooo sad. I hurried and called Amazon, and they got a replacement ordered for me so that it would be there when I got home. Any way, the trip from Denver to St. George was about like Casper to St. George -11 hours of fun entertaining in the back seat, topped off with monitoring Grant's status in the carseat. So happy when we finally arrived in St. George.

A Look Into Our Days

I love spending my time with my kids. They are a lively pair, and they keep me on my toes to say the least. I leave the room for one minute and can find them in the cutest situations. Case in point, the picture below:

Audrey got herself into this position voluntarily. She loves to climb into things. We have a wagon that she loves to get rides in, she loves to sit on the dishwasher door, and she loves to get into any container big enough to hold her! She is quite the character.

Audrey is growing up so fast. She took her first steps on February 11th, being enticed by a cookie. She isn't sold on the walking full time yet, so she is still very much a crawler. As of today, though, she took five consecutive steps in between furniture. She knows some words already! She can say juice, dad, and can wave hello, and goodbye. Still no "mom" yet, although we are working on it!

The day finally came when Audrey just got too big for the infant carseat. We, of course, followed the rules where she has to be one, and meet the weight requirement as well. This meant that for Grant we had to get him a new chair, which caused some excitement at our house:

Grant and Audrey have an interesting relationship. Audrey wants everything to do with Grant, Grant doesn't really want anything to do with Audrey. Occassionally, they have their moments. It's too bad these two have to grow up! I love thinking that all they need right now to make them happy, is a new car seat chair!

Of course, we had our Valentines Day. James and I gave the kids a little treat at the beginning of the day. We ate heart shaped pancakes on heart covered plates. We gave them each a Valentine book, and a heart shaped magna doodle. We had so much fun this year with the kids. Grant helped me make cupcakes:

He actually was a pretty good helper. He also likes to watch me make dinner. I will grab a pan and some salt and pepper, and a spoon and he has a great time pretending to make something. I love having him in the kitchen, watching my every move. It's fun.

Audrey was sick on her birthday, so we gave her a Valentine cupcake for her to go to town on. Boy, did she! She was quite the mess after she was done: