Caleb the photographer

Caleb has been really into using my camera lately. He's figured out how to take pictures, and I think he's doing a pretty decent job! I think his favorite subject was our over-full trashcan. He took tons of shots and after each one yelled, "Yay! The trash can!" Here are some of the pictures:




Kaiana has decided that she needs to be able to eat people food. I was holding her and eating a slice of pizza the other day, and she was trying to lick the grease off of my fingers! I'd love to tell my doctor that pizza grease was her first food. :-) Here she is trying to drink Daddy's milk. She got pretty upset that we wouldn't let her drink it! I'm looking forward to September when we can let her eat people food.

She had a doctor's appointment last Monday and she weighs 11 lbs 12 oz and is 26 inches long. I'm surprised, I was sure she was at least 13 lbs now! She still doesn't like vaccinations (no surprise there) and the worst part is the betrayed expression she gives me when they poke her. We need to find a new doctor now. I love our doctor, but he's retiring. I wish he'd wait until all of my kids are grown... :-)

Bunk Bed and Dining Out

My Father-in-law made a railing for Caleb's bunk bed. Caleb has been asking for it for a while, because we wouldn't let him sleep up there until he had a rail. He hasn't fallen out of bed in a long time, but I didn't want to take any chances! Here's how it turned out:
Today we were out running errands, and I decided that we could go and grab lunch at Chick-Fil-A. We had coupons for a free sandwich and free chicken nuggets, so I figured it was perfect. Well, we got there and found out that the entire parking lot was packed, and there were 4 cars waiting to get into the drive thru! Talk about busy! We ended up going to Wendy's instead, where there was only 1 person ahead of us in line. I had to pay for lunch, but at least we got to eat it. :-)

Caleb loves his ranch dressing. He has made an instructional movie detailing how a salad is meant to be eaten. Here it is:




He was also using the spare dressing as a facial moisturizer, but I couldn't convince him to do that for the camera. I'll have to see if his skin is softer and firmer after this. :-)

4th of July

For the 4th, we went to a party at my cousin Ben's house. It was really fun. They'd just bought a Wii, so we tried that out. My favorite part of it was creating my Mii. A "Mii" is a little person you create to represent you in the games. There were a lot of options and initially I tried to make mine look as much like myself as possible. Then I found out that even if you select a female character, you can still have facial hair. So, I added a fu manchu moustache. Daniel has requested that I not grow one in real life. :-)

Daniel's favorite game on it was golf, and he got pretty good at it. I tried it out, but only did one hole. I got par on that one, though.

The neighbors brought over a pool, and Caleb actually decided to get in! It was pretty amazing! He's only been in our pool once so far this summer, but we're hoping to convince him to continue getting in.

Kaiana spent her time spittting, that's her new talent. You can kind of see the bubbles on her lips in these pictures:


And here she is in her cute outfit. Do you recognize the shorts? Extra points if you figure out where you've seen them before. :-)

Cloth Diapers

Lately there have been articles about cloth diapering all over the place, and I've been reading them. At first I wasn't interested, but we're working hard to save money, and they really did sound pretty economical. I joined a discussion group to get advice, and ordered some diapers. We've now been cloth diapering Kaiana for a week and a half. (We're not bothering with Caleb because he should be getting potty trained soon if we're lucky.)

It's been going really well. It was kind of expensive to start off with. I figure that I'm committed until November, because I calculated it out, and that's when I'll break even cost-wise. It turns out that I ordered more diapers than I need, but I'd like a few more covers. I guess that's what comes from trusting other people's advice. ;-) However, they were really helpful and I got lots of advice for which products were good. We haven't had a leaky diaper yet, which is rather exciting. Usually we have at least one every other day or so, so this has been a nice reprieve.

Just so that those of you who babysit for me don't worry: I am still using disposables when I'm out of the house. It's just a lot easier that way, and I figure I don't have to make everyone else deal with cloth diapers just because I'm willing to. :-)

Bunny Behaviors

We had dinner at my parent's place last night. It was a goodbye party for Julie (my sister) because she's moving up to BYU. While we were eating dessert, we noticed these rabbits jumping around outside. I have no idea what they were doing, but it was pretty cool looking! My best guess is that it was some sort of show of dominance, but it looked like a lot of fun. :-) Here's the video so that you all can contribute your ideas for what they're doing. :-)

Close Encounters of the Reptilian Kind

We had dinner at my in-laws house last night. We grilled up steaks for everyone else and chicken for me and it tasted great. It was still light outside after we ate, so Jane asked if she could take Caleb outside to play. I decided to let her, but we asked them to stay close to the house and away from any tall grass since evening is snake time.

About 10 minutes later, we heard them running toward the house and Caleb was crying really hard. We got them inside and Jane told us that there had been a rattlesnake out there and she hadn't seen it until Caleb was really close. She'd yelled at him to run to the house and (thank goodness!) he obeyed. We asked him if he'd been bitten, and he said yes, so we stripped him down. Fortunately, he was wrong. The snake hadn't gotten him. While most of us calmed him (and ourselves) down, Dad and Laura went outside and killed the snake. I think we've learned our lesson, we won't be playing outside in the evening in the desert anymore!

Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you write with me?

My mom takes Caleb to storytime at the library on Wednesdays. It's really great because he loves spending time with my family, and I can catch up on things around the house and run errands without an adorable little boy saying, "Let's go home now!"

They do really cute art projects at storytime, and here is Caleb's from yesterday.
Yes, that's his name at the bottom. I had no idea he could do that! For mother's day he "wrote his name" on the cards, but it wasn't anywhere close to legible. We're pretty excited about his new skill, I'm going to have to see how many other letters he can write! :-)