A year of Kieran (1y)

(To the tune of the Oobi Theme Song)

Kieran’s like me
Kieran’s like you
Kieran’s got a lot of big things that he’s gonna do

Kishou’s his dog
She’s big, he’s small
Daddy is his very best friend
Mama loves them all

Oh, Kieran
Kieran, Kieran, Kieran, Kieran, Kieran
He’s got a lot to see
He’s got a lot to do
And he loves Mama and Daddy too!

It’s been an incredible first year, and Kieran has his own song to prove it.

Just minutes old...6 pounds, 4 ouncesIn the nursery, getting checked out with Daddy nearbyDSC_1914.JPGDSC_1936.JPGDSC_2040.JPGFirst Family PicturesDSC_2519.JPGA Saturday Morning Saturday Morning PlaytimeWatching the leaves dance in the breezeSeptember 22, 2010: Meeting with Mr. Giraffe about his strawberry carHappy gurgling baby!Two Wild and Crazy GuysKieran's diaper change on the garage floorKieran wanted to see why Laurel Cat likes this so much.Love those eyebrows! (3.5mo)Kieran takes post-bath modeling very seriously.Trade ya?Chillin with my homies.Mama is so funny!Oh yes Mama, we need onions for the stuffing...Investigating Grampa John's faceAunt Nita, you're so funny!I'm gonna chomp yer nose, Mama!December 8, 2010 - Setting up Christmas LightsPaul and Cassie wtih thier sons on Christmas Evening.Kieran is surrounded by Belgians at Kurt & Cassie's New Year's Eve wedding.This.  Every time we change his diaper.  Roly Poly kid.Kieran, ready to enjoy a slumber party with Grammy & Grampy!Sweet clean little boy!There's a clydesdale watching Kieran!  (In Mama's office, no less!)Funny Mama, Funny Dinosaur, Funny Baby (6m2w)Thicker runny oatmeal is a winner!Pulling himself up is Kieran's new favorite activityA boy and his floaty toys, it's a beautiful thing.Gotcha!  HAHAHAHA!  WHEEEEEnded up letting him have the spoon since he was grabbing for it so much.Practicing crawling on the changing padWaiting for the next ball!Pulling up is Easy Daddy!Pool (19)Would really prefer to not touch the grass!Kieran's First WatermelonDaddy and Kieran goofing around20110423 - Baby discovers direct volume controlDodgers (10).JPGGrampy Tom is such a goof.See Grampa, you mash on the buttons like this...Happy nekkid crawling baby!Kieran loves playing with Kishou!Happy Pool Baby!What you talking about, Doggy?Goodnight Sweet Prince

Happy Birthday, sweet little boy.  Mama and Daddy love you so much.

CAKE!

1st Father’s Day (11m3w)

Happy Father’s Day, Paul.

You are the most incredible Daddy to Kieran.

I thought I knew what love was. We’ve had a pretty amazing 19 years together. And I thought I knew what love was: the amazing, wonderful way I feel about you.

But then we became parents. And I’ve seen you laugh and cry more in this last year than I have in our whole relationship. (I think you could probably say the same about me though, which is really saying something…) I’ve watched you change thousands of diapers (3286 total and counting…) and watched you melt at your son’s gurgles, cries, and laughs. He is undoubtedly your best buddy. And you are his Hero. You are his Daddy.

I thought I knew what love was, but this year I’ve learned all over again why I love you, and how much I can love someone. You are an incredible Father. Kieran is SUCH a lucky little boy. And I am so blessed to have you both.

You’ve been my friend, my love, my help mate, my soul mate… but now you are the Father of my child as well. I have fallen in love with you all over again, as we’ve fallen in love with our son. He is the best gift we’ve ever given each other.

Happy Father’s Day, Honey. I love you so very very much.

Paul, cutting the cordMama's favorite pic of her boysDaddy & BabySnoozing with Daddy & Laurel Cat after a big day!Catching a nap with Daddy in Mama's home officeTwo Wild and Crazy GuysKieran loves his Daddy!Whacking DaddyKieran and his DaddyMama's upside-down boys.Daddy and Kieran on Mama & Daddy's 11th AnniversaryDancing with Daddy before bed

Not a real update, just Photos (11m3w)

I am so far behind on posting, I feel like I’ll never catch up.  (Between the plague that was on this house for 5+ weeks, and life in general…. )

Kieran is almost walking, he’s almost talking, he’s almost eating chunky stuff. He laughs and babbles all the time. He terrorizes the dog and cats as often as he can. He stacks the rings on the ring stacker and puts the shapes in the right holes on his shape sorter. He loves to play with kitchen utensils, so I got him his own whisks and measuring cups and colanders at the $.99 store.  He crawls and cruises at light speed, and follows us around the house.

He is incredible. And SO VERY BUSY. I know we’re going to spend the next 2 years chasing him.

Here’s a typical weekend day these days with our very busy baby:

What you talking about, Doggy?Shaka-ShakaStolen from Mama's kitchen drawers...

There are, of course, more pics….

Photo Blast (10m)

I was gonna title this post “Photo Bomb” but I realized that has a whole new meaning these days. :)

So even though I totally fell down last month in updating the blog, we still have been taking pics and video of Kieran – when he’s feeling up to it. We attended Grampy Tom’s company picnic, went swimming again, and Kieran has been enjoying new-found freedom as he crawls all over the house!

Kieran loves playing with Kishou!Kieran helping with the baskets at the Co-OpPlaytime with Daddy's Camera

Kieran’s 9th month was a busy one filled with growth and milestones. He crawled, pulled up, and cruised for the first time all in this last month. He’s eating way more, of an increasing variety of foods (as long as they’re not green.) I’ve been increasing the texture of his foods steadily – eventually he’ll get into chunks and pieces. For now he’s content with the occasional melon to chew on, but he still spits out any chunks he manages to bite off. He’ll get there in his own time.

Kieran's First WatermelonKieran's First WatermelonKieran's First Watermelon

Oh, and his favorite color is Orange. Give him a box of toys, and he’ll pull out the orange ones first. His favorite thing in the house these days is the orange circle from his shape sorter set. He carries that around with him.  It’s so great to watch him playing with toys (or our ipads) or enjoying time in the pool.  As much as we want him to stay our little baby, it’s so incredible to watch him becoming a little boy.

Happy Pool Baby!Happy family of 4Baby has places to go!

Even as I start making plans for Kieran’s first birthday party (June 25th) I refuse to accept that this first year of our son is coming to an end.  What an amazing kid we have.  Paul and I ask each other every day how we got so blessed and lucky to have this little guy in our lives.

Dancing with Mama before a diaper changeKieran has BabyLegs (leg warmers) to protect his knees while  crawling.Kieran and Daddy had a busy day...

There’s a whole bunch of new pictures in several galleries:

The Story So Far

Pool Time!

Adventures with Solid Food

Time keeps on slippin’ (10m)

I have no idea where this last month has gone.  Well, actually I do.  It went to a baby who had an awful tummy bug for two weeks, and then has had Mama and Daddy chasing him as he decided to crawl after all – and is surprisingly good at it!

Kieran picked up a tummy bug right after Grampa John and Great Grandma Cat were out at the beginning of April.  He spent the better part of the next 10 days barfing.  (Paul joined him about 2 days in.)  It took a full two weeks before we were able to get him back on solid food and regular bottles.  It was incredibly hard to watch him go through that, obviously feeling so awful with projectile vomiting and everything.  Three trips to the doctor (Ped and Urgent Care) to make sure he was really OK were necessary – especially after two days of chalky white diapers.  (Dr. Google and our baby books said that could indicate something VERY wrong with his liver, so that freaked us out but good.  Turned out his body just wasn’t digesting the little bit of formula he was taking in , so we were seeing dehydrated formula in his diapers.)  Two weeks after it started, the tummy bug FINALLY went away.  Kieran’s been eating like a champ to make up for it!

Apparently feeling the need to *prove* that he felt better mid-month, Kieran decided to start crawling.  He’d been pulling up on things when Grampa John and Great Grandma Cat were here, but still not crawling.  We’d assumed he would just skip crawling and go straight to walking, but we were wrong!  One Sunday morning (April 17th, to be precise) Kieran windmilled his arms, fell forward and started crawling.  He hasn’t looked back since.  He’s shockingly fast and can crawl surprisingly far before taking a breather.

(Kieran had other ideas during a diaper change one April evening, so Mama acquiesced to his demands to be put on the floor. Fortunately, he decided that he was too tired to go far and came back on his own, having realized that a cool breeze up the bum isn’t what he wanted that evening after all.)

For the most part, he likes to follow us around – pulling up on our legs when he gets to us.  This is a little difficult when I’m in the kitchen trying to make dinner.  Kieran has also discovered the dog door as well.  This is problematic – as I’m convinced he’s going to take a header through the door and topple over on his gigantic noggin any day.  I think for the time being we’re going to have to block the dog door and just let the dog and cats in and out manually.  (If anyone has any suggestions or advice on how to manage a dog door, I’d appreciate hearing it.)  Baby gates were ordered and arrived today, so that’s the project for this weekend.

Going along with pulling up on everything, we knew it was just a matter of time before Kieran started pulling up in his crib.  We’d been meaning to lower his mattress for weeks to head that problem off at the pass – but busy (and then sick) weekends kept stuffing up those plans.  Fortunately, Kieran waited to start pulling up until just last week.  So last weekend Paul lowered Kieran’s crib to the lowest setting, which works just great.  And just in time, as about half the time we go into get Kieran after a nap or in the morning, he’s standing up waiting for us. Kieran has been all over the place in his crib for several weeks now, even pulling upon all fours or sitting.  It’s annoyingly common now to hear him fighting a nap and to go check on him only to find him standing up, whinging.  Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about him toppling over the side now at least.

On the subject of naps though: sleeping at home has gotten pretty good in the last month.  (Pardon me while I go knock on some wood.)  Kieran is sleeping through the night more often than not.  And by sleeping through I mean pulling 9.5-11 hours straight from his 6:30pm bedtime.  If he wakes up around 4:00ish, I’ll go in to change his diaper and give him a bottle, after which he goes back to sleep for 1-3 hours more.  I’ve actually been able to get him to 7:00am!!  Paul is a HUGE fan of this obviously, since that means he gets a real full night’s sleep.  There’s still the occasional 5:15 wakeup, but usually Kieran’s staying down until around 6:00 at least.  He takes 2-3 naps a day on weekends.  During the week though, it’s not so good.  We don’t know why he’s not napping at school for the last 2-3 weeks; or more precisely why he’s not napping for his main teachers at school.  The couple of days he’s had substitute teachers all day, he’s napped like a champ: two 45-90 minute naps each day.  We’ve talked to the teachers and director about some concerns we had and that seems to have helped.  Here’s hoping Kieran gets back to napping at school because our evenings are fairly well ruined when he hasn’t napped all day.  I have to start our bedtime routine within 15 minutes of walking in the door if Kieran hasn’t napped at school.  Which really blows, because we get no time for dinner or baths or play.  Ah well, I know naps change as the kid grows, so maybe he’ll settle into just one HUGE afternoon nap in the next few weeks.  That would be pretty awesome, actually.

Kieran continues to talk up a storm, but nothing specific.  He talks to himself when he’s playing, like he’s narrating what he’s doing.  He mimics sounds we make, and is getting really good with “Mom” and “Mama” – but I’m not ready to say that he’s talking about or to me quite yet.  He talks to himself in his crib in the mornings – sometimes we hear him wake up but he lays in there for upwards of 30+ minutes just hanging out and talking to his hands and feet.

Kieran shows off his Dinosaur impression as he plays with a letter from a friend. (Also, check out the awesome Easter gift Auntie Cassie sent from Belgium! What a cool gift box!)

Kieran is 10 months old as of yesterday, so we’ll be taking his 10 month photos today. (He was too sick for his 9 month photos, but there were plenty of pictures taken during the month, so it’s not like we won’t remember what he looked like, ya know?) 10 months already. How is that possible?