My bow wow buddy. . .

Kai and Darwin seem to have a good child/dog relationship. Darwin knows to be gentle and at the same time wary of Kai. They are both trying to figure out the game of fetch these days. Here are a few photos of our canine friends.

Kai understands that the leash goes on Darwin's collar, but he doesn't quite get how.

The two boys, planning their escape.

Darwin with our friend Ernie's 16 week old puppy Burt. Yes, both names are real and yes, he is already bigger than Darwin.

YUM!

Kai is quite the eater these days. He eats just about everything we put in front of him, with a special affinity for crunchy things like Cheerios and crackers. He's even been known to nosh on a little sushi (cooked fish of course). Here is donning a little broccoli.

Double Dunk

At the end of February, Kai & Addison were baptised here in La Mesa. It was a wonderful day with a small group of friends and family.

Auntie Koma Comes to Visit

Our friend Koma came in to visit from NYC. She was here to meet Kai, and then there was something about a rugby tournie too. . . :-)

Fun with cousin Maya

Cousin Maya lives close by, so sometimes she & Kai get a double dunk bathtime!

The acceleration things

So when did someone hit fast forward on our lives? I feel like just yesterday we were in AZ watching Addison be born and now she's almost 3 months old already. Today Kai and I will be leaving on our trip to Australia, but I've set up a few posts to release as we're away. Hope you enjoy!

Here is a photo of Kai, with Addison, and their Grandma & Papa when we went to visit the first week of February.

And here is Kai playing with Aunt Katie. Soooo big!

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And he's off!!!!

Kai started crawling on Saturday! Hope you enjoy the little low res. video clip. Gotta run! Lots of childproofing needs to get done!

Licence to Ride

Not so interested in crawling, Kai loves standing. Even better if it can be on something that moves. . .

Our sweet boy, out for a nice ride. . .

He is a lean mean, diaper wrecking machine!

Thanks to Ernie for lending us one of his Harleys and to Cousin Amy for the Harley duds.

He's Cruisin'!

Kai has figured out how to pull himself up to standing and how to scoot along holding onto things. My goal was to get him in the bath, his goal was to STAND! :-)

And look how proud he is of himself!

Babies, Babies everywhere!

Since November, we've had 5 people in our family have babies. Last weekend we were able to meet one of these new family members on a quick trip to Tucson. Yes! We drove back to AZ for a 2nd weekend in a row to go meet the 1 month old daughter of Kara & Jason Stanford, Brendt's cousin. Kherington is a beautiful little girl! She is already over 10 lbs and is really strong for her age. Kai and Maya found her fascinating. This is a good thing, because in just 2 short months there will be a new cousin/sister for those kiddos! It was fun to see all the Wilsons and Gideons as we weren't able to make it out there for Christmas.

Here is a photo of the three boys, Jason, Ryan & Brendt with their little ones! My how the family is growing. . .

Here is a photo of Kai with his Great Grandfather on the Wilson side, Papaw.

And Maya is a little annoyed that Uncle Jason is wearing her tiarra!

Look Mom! New Hat!

Last week Kai was fitted with his new "hat". This helmet (called a band by the experts) is intended to help round out his head that is a tad flat on the left side (plagiocephaly). Right now the doctor thinks that he will wear it for 3-4 months (wearing it 23 hours a day), but we are hoping that with the additional osteopathic treatments he is getting it will be shorter. We're really excited that there was a visible difference within the first few days of him wearing it.

For Kai it was as if we put him in a baseball cap. He has had no issue wearing the helmet right from the start. It is not tight on him and doesn't irritate or hurt him. This little boy is overflowing with joy and smiles, and a little hat won't change that. This condition is also totally cosmetic and he has no developmental issues. It is simply a result of the "Back to Sleep" campaign. Dramatically fewer kids dying of SIDS has resulted in more kids with plagio. There are increasing numbers of kids in Kai's situation; you'll definitely start to notice kids wearing the helmets in your area too. We are now on the lookout for fun surf stickers to jazz up his chapeau.

Welcome Cousin Addison!

On Friday, January 9th my sister Katie and her husband Josh welcomed their first child, Addison Grace Powell to the world. We got a call from Katie at 7pm on Thursday night that her water had broken and Kai and I were on the last flight of the night to Phoenix at 8:30pm. Addison arrived a month early, so we were just starting to think about getting prepared to make a run to Arizona. :-) Nothing like necessity to make things happen! I was in the delivery room with Katie by 3 hours after her phone call to me. Addison was born at 4:30pm on Friday, weighing in at a tiny but mighty 4 lbs 9 oz. Brendt drove over to Arizona to join us later on Friday evening and we were all able to enjoy the weekend with Katie, Josh, Addison and the whole family. Two weeks later now, and Katie and Addison are doing great! Addison has been steadily gaining weight and becoming stronger every day. Katie says that Addison is already showing some serious neck control and that she gained a 1/2 a pound in the past week, so she's broken the 5 lb. mark! Hooray!

In the rush, I neglected to bring my camera with me, so this phone photo will have to suffice until we can get back (very soon) to visit the Powells. Check out our new little peanut! You'll notice that Kai has the, "Hey! What about me? I'm in this photo too!" look on his face.

Here we go Chargers!

Welcome to the team little Carter!

We had a few friends over on Saturday to watch the Chargers game. Go Bolts! :-)
There almost as many adults as there were kiddos. Julie DeDe brought over their 2 week old little girl Carter (seen with Tobin here- Papa DeDe got tickets to the game!). Eliana was most curious about the littlest one.

Here are Kaelyn and Kai looking like they're up to no good!

Happy Holidays!

We spent the holidays here in San Diego. Grandma, Papa, Nana & Grandpa came to visit. Unfortunately Brendt, Kai and I all came down with nasty cold. As I write this, Kai is sleeping in Nana's arms in the glider because he doesn't wake himself coughing when he is sitting up. Poor baby, but TGFG (Thank Goodness for Grandparents!).

Despite his illness, Kai manages to shine his smiles, winning the hearts of millions (ok, maybe hundreds), sharing the true meaning of holidays "Joy"!

Here are some new pics that we took of Kai. . . more to come soon!

Kai's latest developments:

• Kai is ALMOST crawling. Mom & Dad beware! He loves to stand too, so we're trying to encourage him to crawl before he runs.


• Kai has 4 teeth, 2 top, 2 bottom, with another 2 on the top emerging any day now.


• It's hard to tell, but we THINK that Kai might be signing "dog" and "milk". We could be imagining it, but so be it.

Has it really been a month?

Yikes! A month between posts? I'm a bad blogger. Oh well. Moving on!

Last month we went back to AZ for a variety of celebrations. First we celbrated the 65th anniversary of my granparents. Can you imagine 65 years!? Most of my family made it out to celebrate the event. It was great to see the boom of babies in the family (cousin Ayden was born 2 days after the event) and to have more time with all my mom's siblings and a lot of my first cousins.

We raced down to Tucson and celebrated Thanksgiving with the Gideons. The 8 days that Kai and I spent in Mesa really reminded me that it is nice to have longer periods of time to visit our families. A fly by the seat of your pants weekend is just too exhausting and quality time is few and far between. Soon we'll have to take a longer trip to Tucson too.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we celebrated the pending arrival of my sister's baby with a co-ed baby shower. "Babies, Burgers and Beer" was the theme complete with relay races, a baby name March Madness game, and a Nacho fountain that got a little stopped up. :-( Oh well, the beer was tasty and the burgers were superb! It's hard to believe that Katie & Josh's little lady will be here in 7 weeks! More cousins, so exciting.

Here are a few photos of the week:

Kai with Cousin Megan, just days away from delivering Cousin Ayden

Katie holding Megan & Chris's son Ayden, Welcome Little Ayden!

Katie preparing to be Queen Mum to her little princess. . .


Kai with his 2nd cousin Brett who was born the day after him!

Kai with his 2nd cousin Axenia

No time to say goodbye, hello!

In the words of the White Rabbit, I'm friggin busy. :-) Lots to do before we go to visit AZ for my grandparent's 65th wedding anniversary (yikes! 65 years is a long time), Thanksgiving (that blessed American festival of feasting) and my sister's coed baby shower (think burgers and beer, not cooing and cucumber sandwiches).

So since I don't have time to wax poetic on some fun photos we've taken in the past few weeks, I thought I'd just get them up for you all to view!

First is the photo of Mary who was kind enough to put sweet Kai to sleep at Julie's baby shower.

Up next, Kai, heading to his first Steele Canyon High School football game. Go Cougars!
Next comes the adorable Brian, son of my friend Diana, who had a blast pushing Kai all over his house in his wagon. He repeatedly had to stop to oil the tires with his matchbox car gassing station gas pump. Too cute!
This past weekend we went to our Goddaughter Kimmie's birthday party. It was at a deluxe jumper place called Pump it Up where kids can bound and jump to their heart's content. Kai got a little bouncing in, but was mostly wide eyed with the wonder of it all.
Here is a photo of one of the silly things that amuses Kai. Why do we buy toys when he is thrilled by being put in the laundry basket (honestly there is a basket under all the clothes)? Ok, maybe it helps that mommy sings a silly song when he is in the basket. Don't worry, I'll spare you my singing. :-)
And lastly, here are Kai's passport photos. Yes, Kai needs a passport, because this spring (fall there) we'll be going to our friends' wedding in Australia! Brendt and I are VERY excited to be able to make it to Sam & James's nuptials and to introduce Kai to koalas and kangaroos!

Yes, I know how ridiculous this photo is. :-) But isn't he ADORABLE! What country would turn this face away?

My little Kewpie Doll?

So I posted this photo to Facebook the other day and my friend said,

"Your baby looks like a Kewpie doll." Not knowing what one was, I did a quick Google search,

and in fact, my baby looks like a Kewpie doll! Yikes.

Mom & I Rock the Vote

Today Kai came with me to cast my ballot in this historic election. I welled with hope, thinking of all the elections to come, where I will bring my child with me to show him the importance of participating in our democracy. Our hope for him is that he will understand the power of his voice in this process and take advantage of every opportunity to express it (in voting, not in teenage defiance-a mom can wish can't she?).

On a lighter note, yes, those are clothes hanging on the wall behind me. Our polling place this year is normally a clothing store.

Yoga Moms!

On Saturday, we had a little party with a bunch of the women that I did prenatal and Mommy & Me yoga with. There were kids aged 9 months to 6 weeks, and one 3 year old named Sicilia. Some were born within just days of Kai and we've managed to stay in touch.

It was great to have people ahead in pregnancy to learn from and to be able to help those who were behind too. Now it is fun to see our kids and their development, share the joys and laugh at the frustrations.

We had a fun little potluck and we were all supposed to bring our little ones in their Halloween costumes, but it was so hot, most of us either had to alter the costumes (Reece wore his SuperMan cape and his mom wore the rest of the costume) or didn't wear them at all. Look at the beautiful Veda flower! She got into her costume on once it cooled off a bit.

I can't wait to see them all running around soon! Thanks Jeri & Andy for hosting us!

Hallo-what?

Last night Ryan and Maya came over to visit for a while before they headed out for the Halloween festivities. We had hoped to get some pics of the kids in their costumes, but it was far to hot to actually put them on. Instead they wore them more like capes. :-) We think they're cute anyways!

After the sun went down, we got Kai all ducked out and sent him around with daddy to say hello to the neighbors. Our sweet little duck was sound asleep before dad got home with him 10 minutes later and slept the rest of the night! I think he grew another inch over night.

I was amazed, we ran out of our giant CostCo bag of candy before 8:30p! More likely from greedy teenagers than from masses of trick-or-treaters. It is sad how different it is from when we were kids.