Wow!  Time is flying by.

 

April Showers have left May mud puddles! Rayleigh loves the water- in any form. On a recent walk she managed to find every puddle along the way. She has also started to sport pig tails regularly.

Last week Mimi came to visit for a few days. We all enjoyed her company.  After a dreary week we decided to go to the Children’s Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY.  Some of the activities are geared at a slightly older audience but she had a good time! She particularly loved the club house.

Dillon coped well with the over stimulation…

 

On Sunday we met up with a friend and her son (about a year older than Rayleigh) at Crandall Park in Glens Falls for some kite flying on the VERY breezy day! The wind was perfect and Rayleigh was able to fly the kite by herself.

The wind was so strong the kite actually pulled her around the field ( think big dog on a leash style).

The kite is actually Kevin’s from his youth. He has two, this one and a stunt kite.  Both have made at least one annual trip the beach since we’ve been together (8 years) it wasn’t until Saturday that I ever saw his stunt kite in the air! Unfortunately, the wind pulled my budding kite enthusiast to a tree so I was distracted during photographing Kevin.

Rayleigh’s vocabulary is growing daily and Dillon is adding more cooing to his daily routine.  Her imagination is developing too. Here she is playing with a Christmas gift.  Notice the delight of feeding the giraffe and ignore the uncropped recycling container.

Although her choice of activities is growing (see below for table dancing) she usually wants to be doing it “with” Dillon or at least as close as possible.

 

Kevin and I are doing well.  Enjoying domesticity and parenthood.

I’m attempting to get this up to date.  There are lots more photos in the kids’ respective albums so feel free to browse.  As for me while writing this post Rayleigh took all the paper off  her crayons.  Threw the crayons in the garbage and put the wrappers back in the box.  So I’m off to go rummaging.  Enjoy the post.

Okay all I apologize for the severe lack of blogging recently.   I can make excuses- I “lost” the camera for several weeks, Rayleigh spilled milk on my computer rendering it useless for a bit, the weather has been nice so we’ve been outside not inside writing blogs etc.

But the honest truth is that I now have a 10 week old baby boy and a 20 month old daughter and I want to spend my days and night enjoying everything from afternoon snuggle naps to the spilled milk on the floor or computer.  In between I’ve tried to make sure the house isn’t condemned but I’m not entering a Good Housekeeping contest anytime soon.  That said I recognize we live in the great frozen north and most our family and friends get to enjoy our children through the magic of the internet and blog post like this so I’ll try to recap the highlights of the past month. Enjoy!

We have had some big milestones since the last posting.  Dillon has passed the newborn stage and is now officially an infant!  He has celebrated with several big accomplishments including a mastery of rolling over.  He had rolled over the first time at 3 weeks but is now determined to avoid tummy time by promptly rolling to his back.  He has also started to consistently let Mom and Dad sleep for 6 hours stretches at night.  On March 9th he successfully followed my hand from left to right and back (a very big developmental milestone).  And as Kevin said a few days later it is very cool to see him looking back at us now.  He is continuing to grow like crazy 2 month statistics were: length 23″, weight 11 lbs 8 oz, head circumference 15.5″ all perfect and on track.

Rayleigh has been having a blast in the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having.  And has had some milestones of her own: she is now firmly in picking out her own clothes and dressing herself (at least from the waist down), dancing and singing (“E-I-E-I-O” is a favorite phrase as well as lyrics to  “If all the raindrops”), she also is becoming proficient at playing pretend… horses galloping is a big hit.  This week she also has added full sentences and following two and three part directions.

Now you say that’s all great Kelsey but what have you been up to with all these new tricks? Here’s the past few weeks in pictures…

 

 

 

 

There are plenty of new pictures posted in the kids’ folders so feel to browse and see what else we have been up to. I’ll work on labels in the coming days.  Have a great weekend everyone we are off for some new adventures in Connecticut with some good friends.

 

We survived!
This past week I embarked on my new job… a Stay-At-Home-Mom!  We have decided that for at least the near term I will stay at home with the kids and Kevin will bring home the bacon.  He is now finished with structured classes and is onto reading and writing and researching for his dissertation.  The result will, I’m sure, us both being extremely busy.

Here are some picture highlights from our first week at home.

Dance Party-  It has been yucky outside and I felt bad having Rayleigh cooped up in the house all day.  We had a dance party to get the ‘wiggles out’.  She doesn’t usually sing but is a big fan of participatory songs, “If you are happy and you know it” etc.  But she will sing E-I-E-I-O!   Periodically she would go try to help Dillon “dance” too.

She has also been working on dressing/undressing herself.  She’s doing well but as you can see her bubble butt sometimes gets in the way.

This week the skill she chose to tackle was snaps.  After unsnapping her brother’s outfit I decided we needed a new Dummy… Welcome Baby Stella.  A Christmas gift from Mimi & PopPop Dillon’s premie clothes were a perfect fit!

Rayleigh is great about entertaining herself when I need to take care of Dillon or start on dinner.  She often chooses and art activity- stickers or coloring books.  A fan of arty projects myself I wanted to help foster this interest.  So we painted!  I made paint from evaporated milk and food coloring (it is thicker and dries shiny).  Then I repurposed her magnet board as a painter’s mat and let her go to town.  Fun for both of us.

I did have to run some errands mid-week.  Along the way I needed gas- a simple and quick stop right?  Wrong!  The credit card system was down which meant after pumping gas I needed to unload both kids- which included redressing Rayleigh since her favorite car ride activity is to undress herself- in the below freezing temperatures to go into the Stewart’s Shop to stand in line while everyone paid for their items using a “chu-chunk machine”.  Why tell you this story, because Rayleigh was a great sport all morning during our in and out of the car a dozen times.  She was rewarded with a St. Patrick’s Day donut while I fed Dillon.

On Wednesday it started to snow it was finally starting to look and feel like winter so we baked cookies.  Rayleigh and I wore our aprons from Aunt Nicki & Uncle Flip and baked sugar cookies.  She helped measure (Kevin will tell you the flour to sugar ratio was perhaps a bit in favor of sugar!)…

Roll them into balls….

She got the sprinkles out of the drawer which is what started the whole process.  I’m not sure what we would have made had she brought me the vinegar!

By Thursday morning we had a wonderful covering of excellent packing snow.  Since it has been such a terrible winter snow wise i definitely wanted Rayleigh to go out and enjoy it. She went out to try out her snow legs while Kevin snowblowed the sidewalks in the morning.

Later in the day I took her out while Dillon took a nap (I had the monitor on me!).  We built a snowman.

Professor snowman was a big hit!  She helped roll the body and continued to make lots of “heads” which she lifted “up, up, up”.

Upon coming in from playing in the snow and getting undressed she promptly walked to the counter and clearly said “cookie”.  So of course she had a post snow playing cookie with *gasp* hot chocolate milk.

As for Dillon his activities are fairly limited to eating, sleeping, and pooping.  And since two of those activities require a fair amount of my attention I have a collection of pictures of Dillon sleeping.  Enjoy!

Today marks Dillon’s 3 week birthday!  I am thrilled to report we are all doing great. We’ve been so busy/tired/self-consumed we have been terrible about keeping in touch and returning phone calls so I’ll try to address the questions everyone has been asking and give you some other details along the way.

Kevin and I spent the first two weeks enjoying the family we created and adjusting to life with a second child and with a newborn.  Dillon has been a great baby and Rayleigh has been a fantastic big sister.

Last weekend Kevin’s parents and brother came for a visit.  We enjoyed a relaxing weekend of good food and good company.   Kevin’s mom (Mimi) stayed through the week to help me/us transition back to reality after our two week hiatus!  She was wonderfully helpful- allowing me to take a much needed afternoon nap nearly every afternoon and cooking for us everyday.

On February 7th we went to the pediatrician for his check up, here’s the statistics:

Height- 19.5″, Weight: 6lbs 7 oz, Head Circumference: 13.5″   All was good.

About a week later we returned for a weight check he weighed 7lb 4oz a pound up from his birth weight – a perfect bill of health!

This past Wednesday Rayleigh had her 18 month check up- she also got a perfect bill of health.

Her statistics were weight: 22.5 lbs, height: 33 3/4″, head circumference:    basically she is tall and thin.

While we were there for her appointment we used the scale to weight Dillon- this would have put him a day older than Rayleigh was when she was born according to due dates…  our little chubby man weighed in at 9 lbs 4 oz!  He’s a good eater what can I say.

Immediately after his birth we purchased a few preemie outfits- he was so tiny he was swimming in newborn clothes, the diapers came to his knees.  Now he is fully filling out newborn outfits, the preemie outfits come to his knees and the diapers are now looking fashionable (well as fashionable as diapers can).

She is learning and mastering new skills on what seems like a daily basis.  Here’s some of the highlights- her vocabulary is exploding nearly 50 words clear with more added daily including manner based words- please, thank you and you’re welcome, she can dress/undress herself with limited help, eats well with utensils, and is incredible helpful with ordinary tasks- putting clothes away, laundry, unloading/loading a dishwasher, dusting etc.  The newest amusement to those around has been her ability to recall stories- like- the dog next door stretched, the squirrel went up the tree, I feel and bonked my head, etc.

There hasn’t been much else new to report here.  Thank you to all for the gifts, congratulations, and phone calls.  I will work on getting in touch with the rest of you soon.  Please feel free to call or stop by, we love visitors!

As a late night parting gift here’s a ‘smile’ from the little mister, I recognize that true smiles aren’t part of his skill set yet but this will do for now.