Jump-a-roo

Kindi has really been struggling with being the little one.  She would fuss and fuss and fuss unless she was being held in an upright position.  Usually standing was required although sometimes you could get away with letting her sit up on your lap.  She watched Kaden running and jumping and wanted desperately to be a part of it.  I was about to the point of losing my sanity with all of the fussing, when my Mom saved the day!  She found this 'Bounce, Bounce, Baby!' at a garage sale.

Now Kindi can stand to her hearts content and I don't have to hold her all day, I can even get things done once in awhile!  I was beginning to doubt that would ever happen again!  The bottom has three height settings and is suspended with three strong bungee type straps.  Now my fussy little girl can be found giggling and bouncing with a big smile on her face.

To say that she is always happy and content in it would be a bald faced lie.  I fear she will always be my cranky little girl, but we have much more content times and they even last longer than 2 minutes now!  She does the best in it when Kaden will play with her or at least be playing in her nearby vicinity.  Kaden loves to play with her, but...

He likes it better when she is somewhere else and he can just play with her toys by himself!

It's about right for his knees!  It gives enough that he can't crawl out of it by himself though.  

We take this thing everywhere!  It travels through the house all day long as I work in the kitchen, living room or bedrooms and it even goes outside with us.

Kindi loves to play in it outside where she can watch the tree leaves rustle in the wind.  In fact she does so good in it out there that Jeremy had her in it while he worked in the garden and I was working on dinner and he almost forgot she was there.  If she hadn't started talking to herself he might have come in without her.

A Boy's Best Friend

Meet Maggie. 

She is Max's monster of a Mastiff dog.  She is easily waist high on me, and definitely WAY bigger than Kaden even though she is a few months younger.  This is her perch on the front porch, an old wooden pew that she can guard the door from.  That way no one gets in or out without her knowledge.  Kaden loved to go in and out that door, partly because he could open it himself and partly because 'd-ahh' (aka dog) was always waiting there to greet him.

Why am I standing back and taking a picture while that dog eats my son's hand you ask?

Well I don't know exactly what is going on, Kaden is probably feeding her something, but Maggie was so amazingly gentle with Kaden so I wasn't worried.  She treated him like he was her puppy. 

She's as big as a horse!

Kaden and Maggie just hanging out in the shade and talking.

So the first time I saw Kaden tackle her like this I was a little freaked out.  I was sure she was going to say enough is enough and lash out at him, but she never did.

He got a little scratch (and I stress little) here and there from their wrestling matches, but Maggie never got him on purpose.

Jeremy is trying to help them get untangled.  Sometimes they would get all twisted and it was difficult for them to separate without Kaden getting a little bit banged up.

We really want to get Kaden a dog, but don't feel like Kindi is old enough for that yet.  I don't want to have to worry about a dog stepping on her, I already do enough of that with Kaden!

Looking at this picture you would never know that he was a bit intimidated by Maggie the first night we were there.  He learned quickly that Maggie wasn't allowed on the cement BBQ area though.  He would run out onto the grass and wait for her to come near then he would run back to the cement and look at her, teasing her.  It was pretty sweet.

I don't really want a dog as big as this, but I sure did love watching them interact.  For several days after we got home Kaden would get so excited whenever he heard a dog bark.  He'd point and exclaim, 'd-ah!'.

Apparently Maggie had a dirty face?  Or maybe she was drooling like sissy does?  In either case Kaden felt the need to clean her face.

Then try out some grass just like dogs do!

So this:

irritates me... a LOT!  I tried and tried and tried to upload a great video of Kaden and Maggie wrestling.  I tried making it shorter, I tried saving it in different formats, and different places, but all I ever got was 'failure to upload video'.  Grrrrr.  It was a really fun video too!
Well I think this concludes our Milton Freewater adventures (Although I can't be positive until I go home and double check my files.) so I hope you enjoyed, or were at least slightly amused by them!

Papa's 4-Wheeler

Kaden went on his first 4 wheeler ride with Papa a couple of weeks ago.

I had my camera set on action shot since they were moving, unfortunately it doesn't flash then, so the pictures are a bit dark.

When he saw me he started crying and wanted off.  I was fairly shocked!  My boy is fearless and had been wanting to ride that thing forever.  (He can crawl up onto the seat without any help.)  Too bad he had yet another cold!  I think he would have been just fine if he wasn't feeling so crummy already.  I guess we will have to try again when he is all better!

His cousins Kori and Lillie had been riding several times before and were eager to take their turns.

Sand Box

So G&G Wells came to visit for a weekend and helped to finish Kaden's sandbox!  Jeremy and his dad got a yard and  half of dune sand to fill the hole.  It is such wonderful sand for building!

Someday we need to figure out some sort of framing for it to help hold the sand in, but for now it is just a patch of sand in the yard!

Kaden's first steps into his sandbox.  It was sprinkling off an on, but we just couldn't resist letting him check out his new toy.  He walked a few steps in then started stomping his feet in a happy little jig!

Grandma and Lily went to town and bought Kaden some toys for his new sandbox, they even bought enough for his cousins to come and play too.

Lily would help Kaden build a castle and he would gleefully smash it to bits with his little shovel.

He quickly figured out how to use his shovel, but had a hard time getting the sand to stay on it all the way to the bucket.  He sure enjoyed it though.

Ooo a big one to smash!

It was so sweet of Lily to build castles for Kaden to destroy!

Kaden                                                         Kori

My sister moved back to Lebanon the week before we finished the sandbox so Kaden got to invite them over to play with him.  He adores them.

Lillie                                                     Malaki

It's wonderful that it is plenty big for all of them to play together and still have space to move around.  This sandbox is going to get tons of use... if we ever get any real sunshine around here!

Wahl Lambing Barns

The Wahl family (friends from church) are sheep ranchers and it just happened to be lambing time when the girls came to visit. So we packed up and headed out to see the cute little lambs. Connie gave us a tour and explained their operation. The girls, who raise goats, were very interested and impressed with how many sheep they have. It was so nice of them to let us come hang out for awhile.

Kaden got to pet several of the new day old lambs.

This poor lamb had his head part way under the fence... Kaden thought he would tug him out the rest of the way.

We brought our monkey boy to the sheep barns!

Jacy showing Kaden the momma sheep. He was more interested in them.

So much fun.

This was Kaden's favorite part. A cage just for him. :)

More Bits of Randomness from Our Lives

Kaden loves to eat! His cheeks are full of bagel and more waiting to get in, he's a happy boy!

Our silly little boy LOVES to play in tiny spaces. His favorite in our rental was behind the end table. He could turn the fan on, and even got strong enough to tip the table over. Luckily we were near by to catch it when he did that. Then the table got moved right up against the wall!

He probably has a dead leaf from my plant shoved in his mouth in this picture.

This picture doesn't do his disaster any justice, but you may be able to tell that he is holding ribbon and that it is running out of the left side of the picture. Well that ribbon is from my Christmas packaging stuff... down the hall, through the bedroom and in the closet.

During our Christmas trip to Milton-Freewater we took Kaden out to visit his cousins and their funny farm. He got to visit Emma's bunny.

Jacy's goat.

This goat was a little bit too friendly to Jeremy...

He even got to meet their new pot bellied pig. And steal his food.

(Well he wanted to steal his food, so the girls just gave him a few pieces of stale popcorn all his own. We may not be rich but our son doesn't have to eat out of the pig slops yet!)

Kaden loves to play IN his toy box, which means most of the toys get tossed on the floor.

Jumping in the toy box is always fun too.

Gotta love that grin!

He pushed that upside down pot (that we let him play with) into the corner, crawled up on it (while I had my back turned doing dishes) and started turning the light off and on.

Kaden reading a book after crawling up into the rocking chair all by himself.

(This totally reminded me of Jen Rouse's pictures of her girls.)

Kaden's Papa Wells built me a beautiful cabinet for my kitchen. It matches my other cabinets and you would never know that he had never built a cabinet before! It is huge and will hold all of our random kitchen appliances... or if we choose it will hold our son! He sure got a kick out of playing in it. Now it has shelves though so he is out of luck.

Well that is it for my blog of randomness today. Maybe I will do better at keeping up to date... or maybe not. :)