A tooth, a tiny baby step, and temper tantrums - oh my!!!

On Monday, we noticed that Kiley is getting a tooth!! A tiny little nub of a tooth on the bottom. She's been more fussy than usual but not awful. Wednesday, she took the tiniest baby step and then fell on her bottom. It was more like she just accidentally shuffled her foot forward but still... Then yesterday, we noticed something that the kids and I found quite amusing. Jake was playing on the computer and Kiley kept messing with him. He told her very gently and not at all in a stern voice, 'No Kiley you can't mess with that. No.' To which she promptly burst into tears and threw herself backwards onto the ground. This scenario was repeated several times, proving there was a definite pattern between her being told 'No' and her bursting into tears and flinging herself backwards. She is absolutely throwing little baby temper tantrums and it's cracking us up! Sydney found it slightly less amusing when I told her she used to do the exact same thing and get the same reaction.

On the food front, she can't get enough to eat these days. Today, she was so fussy and I'd fed her and nursed her and so finally I got out a bottle and some formula and she sucked down about 12 ounces of that on top of everything else. Now the challenge is to get her to eat at least one green veggie a day and we're getting there. Repeated exposure seems to be key, and sadly I'm hiding veggies in other foods, which is something I really never had to do with Jake & Sydney. She loves these low-fat spinach balls that I make, a broccoli, egg & cheese breakfast casserole, etc. But, she's eating her veggies and still eating food that the rest of us eat (and not her own special Kiley diet) so I'll take it... I've never been one to cook one thing for the adults and another for the kids - if I put one meal a night on the table we're doing really, really well!!

The big kids are doing well. Only four more weeks of summer! Jake has no more camps so he'll be home. I'm going to have to put him to work so he doesn't sit on the computer all day. Sydney is going to VBS this week and then to a drill-team dance camp in August; both are 1/2 day camps. We have their two free Six Flags tickets that expire in early August and will likely take a day trip for that. We have four Schlitterbahn tickets and are planning to maybe stay a night there in the coming weeks - hopefully with the Crider-Bleil family, whose daughter Bria is Sydney's best friend. We will wrap up summer with a long weekend at the Hill Country Hyatt. It's a fun summer with lots of little adventures and plenty of time to play with friends.

Jake Update and Family Reunion Pics

self-portrait of Kiley at family reunion

So, here is the promised Father's Day picture... Don't Martin & Sydney look great? It makes me laugh every time I see it - in case you can't tell, Kiley is screaming bloody murder!

Jake has been at Magic Camp the last two weeks. In past summers he has LOVED the camp, but this time around he's had a rough go of it... He said he was bored, the routines were the same, the classes and demos were all the same and he's seen it four years in a row now. He also had another little boy much like him in his group - and they kept butting heads and causing trouble. When Jake gets bored he has a hard time not stirring things up and it worries me. We've also been struggling with his attitude - calling his sister names and speaking disrespectfully to me. So, for the past week when he wasn't sick we had him doing yardwork each night - raking leaves, trimming bushes, and even picking up dog poop. Very surprisingly, he has tackled the extra chores without any attitude. Nonetheless, it's been hard to pick him up at camp and get pulled aside by the counselors every day.

On Thursday on the way home from camp, I had been on the phone in the car and he was in the back seat playing with his sister. After I hung up, I heard him say to her 'I love you sooo much. Do you have any idea how much I love you? You can't because you're a baby...' I love how sometimes when parenting is a challenge, you get a little glimpse of the adult that you hope for your child to become and it just keeps you going.

I'm posting a few more pictures from reunion. Above are my Mom and Sydney playing jacks. Hopefully the fact that I'm adopted means I can say this without bragging, but I think my Mom is absolutely beautiful and I love that she takes such good care of herself and is so healthy. She will be 79 in December and I think she's amazing.