1. Himself, in the master bathroom, with the towel – he was pretending to be a terry-cloth ghost.  Walked backwards, tripped, and whacked the back of his head on the linoleum.

2. Mommy and Daddy, in front of the house, with negligence – A few months ago the kids chose to swap spots on the sit & stand stroller, so Kev now rides the seat in the back, facing backwards.  Yesterday we let the kids climb in while Bernie watered the flowers and I packed snacks.  Bernie and I each assumed the other had buckled Keves in, so we took off and when we hit a bump at the bottom of the driveway, Kev popped out and landed on the street on his hands and knees.  His head was spared only because it hit Bernie’s shoe.

3. Himself, at the park, with the picnic table.  Kev was sitting at the table and leaned too far forward.  His bum slipped off the bench and he fell to the cement, whacking the back of his head on the bench on his way down.

4. Himself, in the playroom, with the futon.  Kev and I were goofing around and he kept fake-laughing.  Threw his head back and whacked it on the frame of the futon.

5. Himself, in the dining room, with a dining chair.  Clipped the side of his head on my chair as he tried to run past.

Kev turns two next week.  Perhaps we will be getting him a helmet and shin guards, or some bubble wrap, or a sumo suit.  Maybe a nice soft ball pit to spend his days in.

Tonight we went to the Hembrees for a little shingdig, along with the Carbos and their neighbors Cathrine and Emma.  Along with a great dinner, we just had fun visiting, watching Dan and Bernie compete in glow-sticking, and taking the kids trick or treating.  We borrowed some cowboy vests and hats from a friend, but Keves refused to try them on.  I wasn’t too surprised since he usually protests getting dressed at all.

The Carbos brought along Penn’s old Superman costume, and we tried to convince Kev they were Superman jammies, since pj’s are the one thing he enjoys putting on.  He wasn’t fooled in the least.

Kenzi wanted to wear the Elmo costume from her dress-up box and we’re all about not having to buy new stuff, so Elmo it was.  Emma had the same costume, which was supercute but got a little confusing when we were trick-or-treating in the dark; we reprimanded “Kenzi” for trying to greedily sneak in a second turn at the candy bowl before we realized Kenzi was all the way on the other side of the porch.

In this pic Kev seemed like he was tolerating the costume but he started bawling again a few seconds later.

I tried holding him, Bernie tossed him up in the air, we tried giving him raisins – Kev refused to be comforted.  Right about this time I was begging Bernie to just take the stupid costume off already because the crying was making me irritable.

Then Krista convinced Kev to accompany her to the kitchen.  I don’t know what she injected him with but I walked in to find a whole new toddler.  He played happily the rest of the night.

Kenzi-Elmo ate nothing but lettuce at dinner.  Prepping for a night of sugary goodness.

This was the first time trick or treating for all the kids and they did really well.  It helped that we had a 1:1 adult:child ratio.  This lady gave out sugar cookies that were still warm from the oven – if we didn’t know that the Hembrees were friends with them, I would have freaked out about the kids getting something that wasn’t vacuum-sealed from the manufacturer.

Keves, shy mama’s boy Keves, kept trying to go inside her house, even opening the screen door back up after she closed it.  Superman knows the sugar cookie lady’s house is the place to be.

Tonight we get to fall back an hour – we kept the kids up late, and hopefully the crash from the sugar and the excitement leads to an easy transition.  Bernie’s being good and going to bed at his normal time so he can enjoy the extra hour’s sleep.  I might do the same, if I can keep thoughts of tomorrow’s half-price candy at bay.

Courtesy of birthday money from Tia J, I took the kids to an indoor play place last month.  We’d never been to this spot before and Amy, Penn, and Indie joined us to check it out.  Kenzi was totally enchanted right from the start – but what do you expect when a little girl walks in and is greeted by dozens of tutus and princess outfits?  She understood that they weren’t for playing but were for sale, and while it’s a nice marketing ploy, my little girl has been too deprived for too long to assume that I would buy her anything.

Dear darling Keves had to be carried into the play area, most likely because he associates big toy-filled rooms with Mommy running off and leaving him behind, and I wondered if he was actually going to play at all.  I convinced him to let me set him down at the table, and he spent the first half hour watching from the safety of the snack table.

Penn is a trainophiliac and spent about 95% of the playdate at the train tables.  Kenzi joined him for a while…

…but all the fun dress-up clothes soon pulled her away.  The stage had a video camera set up so that the kids could watch themselves on the big screen tv off to the side.  Kenzi liked this Himalayan princess gear:

Dress-up was followed by puppet time with Amy and Indie Marie (Dindie WeeWEE as Kev calls her):

Kev’s curiosity finally got the best of him and he headed to the play kitchen.  He insisted that this canned corn was soda.

He also got a little too friendly with the hand broom and dustpan.

He played on the stage with Indie:

Then he discovered the train table, and when it was time to leave I had to drag him outta there the same way I had to drag him in.

We’re going to a birthday party at this spot in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to hanging out there again.  And seeing which of my two boys actually ends up having more fun with the trains.

Kenzi and I were reviewing her lesson for tomorrow night’s Awana.  Their verse is “I am wonderfully made” so we were discussing what different body parts were created for.

Me: Why did God give you eyes?

Kenzi: Because I love Him.

Me: (ignoring sketchy theology) God is so happy that you love Him!  What does he want you to do with the eyes He gave you?

Kenzi: They’re for seeing things.

Me: Why did God give you ears?

Kenzi: So that I could listen to things.

Me: Why did God give you a nose?

Kenzi: So that I could blow out all my snot.

Mr. Keves seems to think he’s ready for a big boy bed.  His parents, however, want to hold off until after our Thanksgiving visit to AZ, since it would be nice for him to sleep in a pack&play there.  Bernie thinks we should put it off as long as possible since he will feel extremely old when our youngest is no longer in a crib.  (Don’t bother telling me there’s an easy way to remedy that – I am not entertaining any suggestions.)  As for me, I’d like to get rid of the sleepytime pacis first since it seems weird to make a big deal over what a big boy he is with his new big boy bed, then tuck him in with a half dozen binkies.  But again, I’d like to have the pacis for that long car drive south.  We’ll just have to see how this all plays out.  Kev hasn’t tried climbing out or anything so it’s not a safety issue, which is why we feel fine making him stay in there for now.  But before naptime and bedtime he’s been climbing onto Kenzi’s bed, saying “no crib,” and laying down with a stubborn look on his chubby little face.  Then he protests about going in the crib, because even though we’ve given him a pillow and tucked in a big blanket for him to snuggle under, he knows he’s still in the baby bed.

Kenzi’s ready for her bohbah to graduate from the crib.  She’s been telling us for a while now that when Kevey’s too big for his bed, he’ll sleep in her bed with her.  We’ve given her plenty of reasons why that’s not going to happen and why it’s a bad idea, but she insists that she and Kevey can share a bed without bumping into each other and waking each other up.  She tells us, “I and Kevey will jump around and squish each other, then when we’re done playing we’ll just lay down and go to sleep.”  Yes hon, you’ve definitely talked me into it now.

This morning I played a fill-in-the-blank game with Kenzi (who has returned, for now, to spelling her name like Kenzi).  I would name a family member and say “So and so likes……” and record her response.  This is what we ended up with:

Kenzi Sue likes trains.

Kevey likes toys.

Daddy likes backpacks.

Mommy likes glasses.

Nana likes giving me and Kevey a bath.

Tata likes giving Keves kisses.

Grandma likes making me a princess dress.

Grandpa likes being Mommy’s Daddy.

Mike likes peanuts.

Tia likes taking me to the zoo.

Uncle Oliver likes taking me for a walk at Grandpa’s house.

Nana C likes getting better.

Nana J likes her doggie Mosa.

What do you think, family?  Pretty accurate or what?

I hate being paranoid, but I’d rather be on the safe side when it comes to Kenzi and Kevey.  This is why I am extremely suspicious of adults who play at the park without kids.  Someone who’s alone and reading the paper or feeding the ducks – that doesn’t really set off my radar.  I just figure they wanted some fresh air, or they work nearby and they’re on a lunch break.  Or a guy and girl who are obviously on some sort of throwback-to-childhood date, where they sit together on the swings or pull out a blanket and share some ice cream while watching the kids play – not a big deal.

But if you are an adult, you are alone, and you are climbing the jungle gym – what is that about?  I’ve been seeing this a lot lately and it’s gotta be 1) that person is slightly imbalanced, 2) it’s a really pathetic attempt at parkour, or 3) there’s something fishy going on.  One skill I’ve developed as a mom is assuming the worst of people, so I will convince my kids that the other side of the playground is the awesomest place to be, or we will just leave altogether.  Weirdos.

For the first few months of Kenzi’s life, we spelled her name Kenzie.  It’s the typical way of spelling it and we never considered doing it differently.  Then Nana J  wrote “Kenzi” on a Christmas card and we thought it was really cute and unique.  Like our little girl.  So we spelled it Kenzi from there on out.  Recently Kenzi noticed that a lot of people write her name Kenzie and she’s decided that she likes it, so she now spells it Kenzie.

I’m surprised by how much this bothers me – it’s just one letter, it makes it easier for other people since it’s more intuitive, and of course it sounds exactly the same.  So why am I sentimental about it?  This is not a good sign for how I’m going to handle future expressions of her independence.  I think for now I’ll keep spelling it the way I always have, and let her spell it the way she wants to.  Maybe she’ll decide on her own to drop the e and maybe not, but I need to look at the two big hurdles she’s overcoming here.  She’s being flexible enough to try out something new, and gracious enough that she doesn’t mind if I still write it the old way.  These are pretty big steps for the girl whose sense of order is so strong that she got upset about the possibility of Bernie coming home for a couple hours this afternoon before returning to work because it wasn’t written it on the calendar.  Therefore, in her mind, it’s not supposed to happen.  There there, Kenzi(e).  Life is hard and you just have to get used to it.

kenzie

(Kenzi asked to type her name.  It’s like she knows what I’m saying about her and wants to rub it in.)

I’m chomping on some of the 8,000,000 sunflower seeds we harvested from our two huge flowers and looking at the kids’ calendar to figure out what we’ve been up to lately. But with Kenzi sick all last week, “trash day” is the only thing on the calendar that actually happened, and that’s because it wasn’t dependent on us being able to interact with other children. It wasn’t a bad week though.  She’s pretty low-maintenance when she’s sick since she’s content to lay on the floor staring off into space or sludge on the couch watching a video. Whenever she got a big burst of energy, she wanted to do………worksheets. Keves, knock on wood, didn’t catch the nasty virus and actually did pretty well being at home for long stretches of time.  He’s talking soooooooo much and with each passing day he looks less like a toddler and more like a little boy.

We got to take a little 24 hour break courtesy of our friends the Hembrees.  They’d rented a cottage up the coast for a long weekend and offered to treat us to our own little family vacation.  Bernie wasn’t able to get Sunday off so we just went up Friday and came back Saturday, driving through naptime both days.  I was totally unprepared for the crazy winding roads along the coast – such a vomitaceously scenic drive though.   Kenzi just thinks Christopher is the funnest toddler ever and he scored more points by playing with her at the beach.  Keves wasn’t too interested that first afternoon but really got into it the next morning.

Sean and Bernie had to show off their strength for their women.

But they have their soft sensitive side too.

This is not as cute and innocent as it looks.  Kevey didn’t like digging with his hands (he’d run up to me, shoving his sandy hands in my face and crying “Dut! Dut!”) so he chose to scoop dirt with his feet and dump it on my legs.  Toad.

The seaweed made the kids look like they were fighting off snakes in the Amazon.

We hung out at the Hembrees’ place pretty late Friday night, keeping the kids awake as long as possible, and finally went to the hotel around 10.  Bernie and I were pooped so we had no problem going to bed the same time as the kids, but we began to wonder if we’d ever get to sleep.  We had Kev in the pack&play on one side of the room, Kenzi in the bed on the other side, and we were in the bed in the middle.  Kev would jabber, Kenzi would shush him, we’d shush Kenzi, Kev would laugh, Kenzi would shush him, we’d laugh, and on and on.  After a couple minutes we decided that this must be what they do every night in their room, and that if we just let them go through their little routine they’d quiet down faster.  We all fell asleep pretty soon after, but Keves decided that 6:50 is a good wakeup time on vacation.  I brought him in bed with us but he’s never slept with us so going back to sleep really wasn’t an option.  But he stayed quiet enough that Kenzi slept another hour and then we high-tailed it out of there and to our continental breakfast.  We spent the morning at the beach and just hung out and visited with the Hembrees until the little boys started melting down and it seemed like a good time for a naptime drive.  It was a fun little break and we’re thankful for the generosity of our friends.  And even though Bernie worked Sunday, having Monday off made it feel like we had two weekends.  Score.

Kenzi’s all dressed up and pretending to be a fairy princess. Since her main exposure to fairies has been Abby Cadabby on Sesame Street, she thinks her wand makes things happen by spelling them in the air. She tries to make something small and it doesn’t work. If you watch closely, you’ll see that she actually makes an S, then a few seconds later makes A-L-L so I guess it didn’t work because she didn’t spell it correctly. At the end she asks, “How can I write ’stop crying’?”

Keves loves meat. That’s all there is to it.