Labor Day

I really wanted to do something with water so my friend Amber, and I were trying to think of places nearby to take our families. Finally, after much deliberation, er, indecisiveness, we chose to go to Ponca City to their Sun-N-Fun waterpark. It was just a little over an hour away and not too bad on prices. The place was somewhat run down, like the slides needed painting, hedges trimmed, weeds and branches all over, etc. Other than that, I'd say it wasn't bad. They had a huge water slide type thingy that Kort lived on most of the day!

Obviously this isn't Kort, but it's what the slide was. We started out sitting behind him to go down. Then gradually went on our own side holding his hand, until he would go down next to us all by himself! He definitely loved that thing. 

They also had a lazy river with tubes to sit on, a wave pool that Clay and him played in. There was a kiddie area that had a mini water slide that Kort could go down by himself (about 10 feet) and he loved that just as much. 

I actually took Griffin down it with me as well and he didn't seem to mind it! Griffin did great through the day. He fell asleep in his car seat so I sat and watched Clay and Kort. Finally at the end of the day, the Clark's watched Kort and Griffin for a few minutes while Clay and I went down the big slide with inner tubes. It was fun!

We left the park and grabbed some food at this mexican restaurant which was actually inside their airport terminal, if you could call it an airport ;) 

Great day with great company.

Columbus Day

Sunday night rolls around, and I'm already thinking about the long week ahead until Clay gets to be home for the weekend. Out of no where, he asked me what time I fed Griffin in the morning. I told him when he wakes up, around 7, and then around 11. Clay was wanting to go shooting the next day. He asked if I wanted to go. I asked how that would work. Would he take some time off work, would I just drive there, who would watch the kids? After being in the dark and not knowing what was going on, he finally told me that he had the day off (ding, ding, ding, because of Columbus Day) and we would be going together to go shooting, and our friends were volunteering to watch the kids :) How I didn't realize Clay had the day off, I don't know, but I was super excited!

It was raining all morning long, but we still decided that rain wouldn't stop us. Clay really wanted to try out some of his new guns. We dropped the kids off at our friend's house and headed out.

We got to some guy's property that Clay knows through having a wind turbine on his land, and it was kind of down in a pit. I don't remember specifically the guns we shot, but I shot a handgun, AR17 I think, and I believe the other was another shotgun. Anyway, it was super fun and I did awesome at hitting the target! Ya'll better watch out ;)

Leonardo's Discovery Warehouse

Our friend/neighbor invited us to Leonardo's back in the beginning of October. We've been there a couple times, but they have changed things up a lot and it was much more adaptive to Kort's age so he had a ton of fun this time!

Kort loves watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so he called this rocking ship, the Pirate Ship. Griffin did great the whole couple hours we were there! 

This contraption, you would load the "bricks" and wind them up. The middle picture, Kort was "painting" the wall, and then putting his own flowers together :)

6 months

I cannot believe Griffin is already half a year old. It's been fun to compare him and Kort. At this age with Kort, we were just moving half way across the country from Washington to Minnesota. Four long days in a cramped moving truck. I remember Kort rolling off the bed at one of our hotels, and that wasn't even the first time it happened. Good thing I learned from that and haven't had that mistake with Griffin yet - and hopefully never! Kort started sitting up right after seven months. Griffin's already doing that. Kort started crawling after eight months - I think Griffin is going to beat that. Clay and I decided that having an older sibling really does help speed up their progression.
Here's Griffin's six month stats:

Height: 27 inches = 69%
Weight: 16.4 pounds = 26%
Head Circumference: 43.2 cm = 33%

I couldn't believe he was that low in his weight. I just read what I had posted about Kort's and his was 45% and I was saying how low I thought that was! Oh well, he's doing great, eating well and continuing with solids, which I have now introduced bananas to him for dinner time and rice cereal in the morning. He is still my chubby baby to me.

He is army crawling everywhere! If he sees a toy not in reach, he'll go across the floor to get it - sometimes only to see Kort grab it away at the last second.

Jabbers da-da lots of times during the day.

Oh and how can I forget that he already has his two bottom teeth!! I already posted about how that went. He's much happier now :)

(He had just woken up, hence the red mark on his face, and why he's not smiling :))

Will stay sitting up by himself if I put him down like that. Once in a while he might fall back or to the side, but he's beginning to catch himself forward or to the side. Sometimes when he's in the crawling position, he fall to the side like he is trying to sit down, which he can do, but his arm is clear away from his side so he's not sitting fully straight up.

He's not quite ready to sit in the shopping cart by himself yet, but he does pretty good with big brother!

I want to document his daily schedule so I remember so here goes:

7:00-7:30 a.m. Wake up. Nurse. Feed Kort. Give Griffin rice cereal.

9:00ish Morning nap.

10:00ish Wake up. Play.

11:00 Nurse.

12:00 Eat lunch with Kort.

12:15ish Griffin down for nap.

12:30 Kort down for nap = some quiet time for me!!!

2:00ish Wake up for Griffin (and usually Kort). Nurse. Play.

4:00ish Short afternoon nap.

5:00 Nurse. Make dinner. Feed Griffin solids (bananas right now).

7:00-7:15 Change into pj's. Nurse. Put to bed.

8:00 Kort to bed.

That's about as basic as it gets. We lead a boring life anyway. I've definitely become a homebody and don't really get out much. If I do, it's usually to go grocery shopping or just to whatever store to get out of the house. We did play in the water a little throughout the summer and a couple of parks. I need to do that more now that the temperature has cooled down. 

Anyway, just crazy that Griffin is growing so quickly! He'll be crawling everywhere when we go to Idaho for Christmas. Then we'll be celebrating Kort's birthday, then daddy's birthday. And before you know it, it'll be mine and then Griffin's birthday!!

Meadowlake Train

Kort is getting to the age where he likes trains. He can't really pronounce the "ch" in "choo, choo" so he makes some noise rumbling his lips (I can't think of how else to explain it right now). Earlier this summer we decided to make a family outing to this train that goes around the park and a little lake. I think it was $2 for each person.

Kort seemed to love it, but every time the train blew its whistle, Griffin started crying :(

Just so you know, Clay wasn't grabbing Kort's neck - ha ha He was trying to turn his head to smile at me to get the picture :)

We got sno cones afterwards, which were yummy. But Kort was misbehaving while sitting atop a log with planted flowers and fell off somehow and scraped his shins really bad. Needless to say, we ended the night right then and heard him screaming all the way home. Good thing we had some anti-itch and cleaning stuff in our somewhat newly put together first aid kit that helped him feel better. He's got some good scars on his legs now and every time he looks at them he does his choo choo sounds, then says flowers, then sno cones. It's funny how he associates all those to scraping his legs. Smart kid.

Summer happenings

Now that the temperature has dropped to the high 80's, summer is about over :)

Here's what we've been up to. Clay brought home some wood from work a while ago and I had been wanting nightstands so we finally got around to building them. I got the plans from the blog knock-off-wood, which I love and we've used her plans before. I love how mine turned out. I wanted it vintage/rustic looking so I added some type of glaze.

Clay didn't put the same stuff on his and is a little bigger with a little different design. Love them though! 

We finally got out of the house kid-less! Although it was only a couple hours and went by too fast, we looked at guns for me and got some groceries so it was nice and quiet. Just look at that hunk ;)

This little boy has been teething. For the first week, he wasn't taking any naps. He was fine throughout the day, but just would not fall asleep on his own. So I either held him if I could, or leave him in his bed for the duration of nap time and he would cry or laugh. Nighttime was still ok. Once that tooth was popping through, the nights got rough. He was now napping during the day, but waking up all night. I gave him Tylenol and orajel, but that didn't seem to work. I ended up getting teething tablets and that has helped a lot. He's now cutting his 2nd bottom tooth and finally going back to sleeping through the night. 

He is now way more mobile!! He's army crawling all over the living room, sticking his bum in the air, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, just getting ready to full out crawl! 

We tried out our county fair again this year. Fail. However, this year the 4-H had some games and prizes for kids to do for free. Kort got 10 tickets to do a ring toss, shoot some hoops, plinko, and spin the wheel. He got some candy and toys from it so he was happy. 

I decided to let him ride the ponies to at least have the experience even though it was 6 bucks for five minutes. 

He loved it though so it was worth the money.

We went to our city's Cherokee strip parade, which wasn't too bad. Kort did great and loved the horses and candy! He loved seeing the fire trucks, but there were too many and super loud with all the sirens going off that he was covering his ears! 

And the grand finale . . .

Longhorns!!!

Just so this post isn't super long, I'll stop here and do separate posts for other things :)

Potty trained!

Another amazing thing that has happened this summer is that Kort is potty trained!! The first few days he was only in undies and had quite a few accidents. He started getting it down and knew when he had to go so he'd run to the bathroom on his own. A while ago he was taking his diaper off grout hour the day and had to go pee so I took that as a sign that he was ready. I would just remind him throughout the day that if he had to go potty to just let me know, instead of constantly taking him every hour, etc. I made a sticker chart to let him put one on each time he went potty on his own. Once he got to the end then he could pick a toy out at the store. He also would get potty prizes each time he'd go poo in the potty as well as a potty snack (skittle, gummy bear) each time he went pee. The whole #2 thing took a while. Luckily he never went on the floor, just in his undies. A few times I could tell by his actions, or lack of, that he was getting ready to go, so I grabbed him and put him on the potty and he'd go. One time Clay and I thought it had been too quiet. Come to find out Kort was on the potty going #2 all by himself!!! It was all uphill from there :) To this date, he's only had one accident and he's doing great through nursery and letting his teachers know he's got to go! He still wears a diaper at night though but is usually dry half the time but I don't want to mess with wet sheets quite yet. 

His Lightning McQueen tent

Mickey Mouse chair

Potty chart completed