William at 15 months

William had his 15 month checkup this week and is very healthy, minus an ear infection that I had no idea about.
Height: 30 inches (20th percentile)
Weight: 24 lbs, 8 oz (50th percentile)
Things we want to remember about William at this age:

• When we say "airplane", William holds his hand above his head and makes a motor sound.


• He likes to play games like peek-a-boo and chase.


• He is getting his molars and a couple more teeth right now. 


• He still loves to play ball and holds a ball in his hand when he's in his car seat. "Ball" is still his favorite and most common word.


• He calls my Dad "Baba" instead of Papa. This little guy loves his Papa/Baba.


• When he hears Kevin's voice when he comes in the door from work, William says "Dada" even if we can't see Kevin. 

William loves our cat Snowball and calls her "Bo-ball".

• William has started sucking his thumb all the time now. It used to just be when he was going to bed but he does it a lot now. 


• He is walking 95% of the time now. He is still pretty wobbly and falls a lot but he almost never cries. He will hit his head on the tile floor and just get back up and keep walking. Our little buddy is tough.


• William loves to walk up to anyone sitting on the floor and just throw his arms around you and hug you. He puts his whole body into and its so sweet. When I picked him up at the gym daycare yesterday, one of the workers said he was really cuddly and kept hugging them.


• William takes two naps a day: one from 8:30-10:30 and another from 1-3. He sleeps from about 6:30 PM to 6:30 AM.


• William has become much pickier with food. He loves milk and oatmeal. He eats a NutriGrain blueberry waffle almost every morning for breakfast. 


• He has started feeding himself with a spoon. 

Justin Beaver

Here is the conversation while we ate dinner tonight.

Kevin: What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?
Caroline: A Justin "Beaver" cake!    (We recently went to of her classmates' birthday party who had a Justin Bieber cake and I was in shock. What happened to Dora? Hello Kitty? My Little Pony? I'm not a Barbie fan but she's better than a teeny-bopper heartthrob, right? I might even prefer Spongebob.) 
Kevin: Why do you want a Justin Beaver cake?
Caroline: Because I really like him.
Kevin:  What song do you like of his?
Caroline: { silence }
Kevin: What does he look like?
Caroline: { silence }
Kevin: Then why do you like him so much?
Caroline: Because he's so hot and has fashion.

Oh my!! Our five year old said a guy was hot! The comforting part is that she doesn't even know what he looks like and when asked what hot means, she had no response.

Hilarious and scary all at the same time. Oh and don't worry - we kept referring to him as Justin Beaver during the whole conversation.

"Forging" ahead

Everyday, Caroline brings home her school agenda for us to look at and sign. She writes things like the weather, her behavior for the day, and whether they had music, PE, etc. We sign each day and send it back and the teacher just verifies we are looking at it.

One day this week, Caroline forgot to bring her agenda home. I asked where it was and she didn't know. (I suspected it was hanging out in Caroline's own personal lost and found where all of her water bottles, books, etc must live.)

The next day, Caroline brought it home. I told her I needed to look at the day prior since she had not brought it home that day. Caroline replied "I signed it for you." What?! She said she went ahead and took care of it since she forgot to bring it home. I panic because she's forging my signature in KINDERGARTEN! Kevin calms me down and says she didn't know what she was doing and we just ask her to never do that again because its a form of lying.

The funniest part is when I look to see how she signed it. She signed that day by drawing a picture of me. Ha! As if the teacher thinks I might have drawn a picture of myself with a crayon instead of signing my usual (and slightly unfortunate) initials: BM. :)

House redo

On tv, home remodels looks so clean and fast. Not so in real life I suppose. Today was day 1 of tile demo in our house. Jackhammer all day. Plastic tarps everywhere and fine white dust everywhere. Did I mention we turned off the air conditioner so the dust wouldn't circulate? No air conditioning combined with large plastic tarps cutting off any air circulation caused it to be a nice, balmy afternoon in our house. (After being home from work for about 5 minutes, Kevin declared "it's really not that hot in here!" Really? Oh Lord help me.)

Needless to say, by 2:00 I called Kevin and said we need to go somewhere for the weekend. So the kids and I are staying at my mom and dad's house (they are out of town) and Kevin kept driving north to help someone in Dallas.

Here are three pics from Day 1...

William the Responsible

When William wakes up in the morning or from nap he turns on his crib aquarium and either lays back down to listen to it or sits up and watches it. I know he's awake when I hear the aquarium music come on over the monitor. Clearly he is like me and needs a little time (and a little coffee) to really wake up.

When I get William out of his crib I turn off his aquarium so we don't waste batteries. (If you've changed the batteries in one of these crib aquariums you will understand why it's important to save every little bit of battery power.)

For the last week or so, when William sees me walk in his room, he goes to the aquarium, turns it off and then stands up for me to get him. I'm so proud! He's already responsible and trying to save energy and money.

A chip off the old block, as my parents would say.

Caroline's (temporary) tattoo

Kevin brought a temporary tattoo of the FBI badge home for Caroline. Because the "real" tough guys usually have tattoos of law enforcement agencies.

See how tough she looks in the smocked butterfly nightgown?

Jackopierce concert

Jackopierce has been my favorite band since high school. They broke up when I was in college but are back together now and do a limited amount of shows per year. They played in Austin on Saturday night so we went to see them.

It was a great concert! Thanks to my parents for keeping the kids. :)

Here I am with lead singer, Cary Pierce before the show.



Here I am with my sweet husband who continues to support my Jackopierce obsession. :)

Camping...and why I love Kevin

Kevin and Caroline have been talking about going camping for a while now. On Monday night Kevin promised Caroline he would take her camping in our backyard on Friday night.

Enter Friday. Kevin had something at work early Friday morning and woke up at 4 AM to go in. At 4:30 he was in a car accident on the wet roads on the way to work. (Everyone involved was ok.) The rest of Kevin's day proved difficult as well.

Here at home, I was thrilled because today was the day we were getting granite in our kitchen. The installers came around 10 AM and busted out out existing countertops, stovetop and sink. After everything had been taken out, they realized the granite had been cut too small for our counters. So after a looooong day of not-so-nice conversations with the granite company, we don't have countertops, a stove, a dishwasher, or a sink. Most of these conversations were handled by Kevin so add that to his day.

At 6 pm, Kevin is exhausted and Caroline says how excited she is to go camping. I told Kevin just to tell her they would do it next weekend. The ground was soggy from a storm that day and I knew putting up a tent in our backyard was not something he felt like doing.

Kevin insisted that they camp because Caroline was so excited. Plus, he didn't want Caroline to remember her daddy promising something and not following through.

So while the kids and I ate dinner (pizza delivery of course), Kevin put up the tent my family used when I was a kid. The smell of the tent immediately brought me back to Rocky Mountain National Park and the Blue Ridge Mountains where we camped when I was growing up.

At that moment, I realized my parents invested so much time and effort in wonderful experiences and memories for Michael and I. And here I watched my husband, exhausted from a long day, happily working so hard to do the same for our daughter. To say I'm happy that I married Kevin is an understatement. I've always said I won the "parent jackpot" and it's pretty cool that I also won the "husband/father of my kids jackpot" too. I'm a lucky girl!!

Here are some pictures of Kevin and Caroline's first camping adventure!

My favorite quote of the day was Kevin putting up the tent and saying "this isn't a tent, it's a house." It is a tent that sleeps nine. I loved this tent as a kid and it's just as great as I remembered.


I wondered what our neighbors thought when they saw this in our backyard.



Eating s'mores in the tent after dark.