things I'll likely forget

As our little toddler quickly changes and starts pushing limits and making it clear what he wants (dramatic fits included), I find myself trying to enjoy and remember the sweet moments. He now comforts himself by touching his ears (and also ours) when he's tired, falling asleep or in the early morning when he's first woken up. I know kids develop all kinds of ways to comfort themselves, some have blankets or stuffed animals or thumbs, but Keelan is all about his "pappi" (pacifier) and his ears. It cracks me up because his aunt Heidi used to be into her ears as a child and would suck her thumb at the same time, maybe it's in the Denton genes.

When he was sick recently and I would have to rock him to sleep at night and for naps, I would sing simple children's prayers to him until he fell asleep. If I ever stopped singing or humming he would look up at me in his sleepy state and sign "more". This is so funny to me because he doesn't really use his sign language anymore now that he's speaking, so it seems so 'baby-ish' to me, but I think it's sweet ;-)

sicky times

sick kid ammunition

The last couple two weeks went something like this... Keelan gets a cough and runny nose, no problem normal cold stuff. Then he keeps us up late at night and is unable to go back to sleep, we spend hours rocking a conjested and crying baby in the rocking chair (memories of his infant days are flooding my mind). We begin to notice that he is running a little hot- but having recently returned a poor performing baby thermometer without bothering to bring a working one home we have no way to check it.  The night we finally pick up a new thermometer Keelan wakes up burning, we check his temperature... 104! We of course feel horrible and start the rounds of meds to bring down his temp. Thankfully, it comes down to 101 and continues to drop. He stops being interested in eating or drinking and gets really low energy, cranky and clingy. We decide to take him to the pediatrician who says it's just a virus and not to worry, just keep an eye on his temperature and encourage him to drink as much water as he can. The next day the diarrhea and horrible diaper rash begin... ack! After two days of this we bring him back to the doctor who said the virus moved down into his digestive system AND he has an ear infection... great. Feeling pretty wiped out after over a week of this we were relieved that he was getting some antibiotics (his first) and that this should be done with in 48 hours or so. It took until yesterday, Friday, for him to seem really back to normal, but boy are we grateful! We went to nature babies with a friend and Keelan played in the water at lake Whatcom and we all felt like normal, healthy humans again. 

Keelan has had colds and some stomach upset before, but never like this. I had moments when I felt like, "Wow, so this is what it feels like to be a parent..." holding a feverish out-of-it Keelan in my arms. I just can't imagine how difficult and intense it would be to have a child with a terminal illness. Two weeks of this and we felt wiped out emotionally and physically, I just can't imagine that being every day. I feel so lucky that we have a healthy child and I hope our second one is just as blessed. 

new baby and mini-reunions

A lot of big changes around the Denton household! Biggest one would be... we're going to have another baby! Currently I'm 14 weeks pregnant and starting to awake from weeks of sleepy ickyness. This pregnancy has been so much better so far than with Keelan and I feel so grateful for that. I was expecting it to either be the same, or harder and amazingly, it's been better! We saw the first ultrasound and listened to the baby's heartbeat, it was pretty wonderful.

Keelan looking like a big brother!

I know a lot has been going on when I have to put all the photos into one slide show cause it's too hard to pick and choose from all the options. Or perhaps it's a testimate to the fact that I haven't been feeling that great. Todd can sure vouch for that, he would come home from work and I would basically hand him Keelan and beg to take a nap... and then just make grilled cheese for dinner :-)

Here is the run down of the events from May through early July... First in a series of mini-reunions with old friends was with my high school buddy Ashley Bahney, her mother and three month old son Brock in Seattle, WA. Of course we were so busy hanging out and enjoying our time together, I didn't really get any pictures with her :-(

Next was our Montana road trip which consisted of A LOT of driving and a lot of good friends too. We stopped in Virginia City for my good college friend Angi's wedding. Angi and I became great friends when I was going to school in Missoula, MT. There's nobody quite like Angi ;-) It was a beautiful day and Keelan enjoyed dancing around and getting attention from everyone at the reception.

From there we drove to Bozeman and hung out with some of Todd's friends from his Montana State University days, including Dewey (his old Juneau buddy) who is living and working now in Bozeman. It was in the 90's when we were there and the aircon in our car didn't work too well and we didn't have it where we were staying so my pregnant self just about died in the heat! I am not accustomed to it at all. Keelan did pretty well, enjoyed playing with a friend's daughter and running around in his diaper in the kiddie pool.

Lastly, we went to Eureka which thankfully is the northern most part of Montana and was much cooler and comfortable. We visited our dear friends Sarah and Ben Quilling and their son Emil. We hadn't seen them since their wedding in 2007. Sarah and I became close friends at Berklee in Boston and have stayed in touch since then.

Oh, I almost forgot! When we got back to Bellingham our friends from Shanghai (all teachers at SAS) who all have connections with Bellingham area were in town and all came over to our place. It was fun to spend some time reconnecting and hearing about all the changes in Shanghai over this last year.

Whew... I hate cramming important life events into one blog post, but unfortunately if I tried to be too ambitious it wouldn't get done!

Family time at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

So after moving to Washington state one of the 'must see' things that we've been told is to go to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in April and see one of the largest growing areas of Tulips in the world. Apparently it is one of the only other places, besides Holland, that has one of these festivals. Of course we decided to go on one of the busiest weekends of the season so ended up stuck in traffic for a long time. Thankfully Keelan is a champ in the car these days and enjoyed watching one of his favorite things (cars!!) and playing with some toys in his car seat. Getting stuck in traffic was worth it, we had a really nice time and got some great pics. Plus Todd found a way to avoid the log jam on the way back by taking a scenic ocean route on chuckanut drive. A pretty nice way to end our weekend :-)

A "five paces" toddler

The first of April Keelan turned 15 months! I can't believe how quickly the last couple months have really flown by, it almost seems like time is speeding up. He's started acquiring verbal skills a bit faster now, and is babbling constantly. Here are some of his newest skills.

• Ball, Go, Hi, Heidi, Socks, Shoe, Car, Hat, Animal sounds: moo, quack, monkey sound, cluck
• Kicks the ball around, does "headers"
• Found his pacifier again after giving it up at 9 months (when his top teeth came in) and it was almost like "Hello old friend, I've missed you!" So now I'm trying to figure out what limits I place on it, just for bedtime or naps etc.
• Does "all done" sign for more than just food. Does the "help" sign when he wants me to help him with pretty much anything... getting up on the sofa, out of his high chair, playing with his toys etc. 
• Still doing the "eat" and "milk" signs all the time
• Waves and says "Bye bye" and "Hi"
• Does high fives

AND the biggest new development is his new found love of cuddling :-) He now is very much into hugs and kisses and just being a sweet little guy. I think the reason for this might be that around 14 and a half months or so I got ready to nurse him to sleep and he looked up at me and started giggling! It was like, "hey ma, I'm so done with nursing!!" So, from then on he hasn't nursed. It's funny because that day I had mentioned to Todd that I thought Keelan was going to stop pretty soon, and that was the night!

Lastly, for my long winded list of my amazing son's accomplishments (so I don't forget, it's all happening so fast!) He is what I have recently dubbed, a "five paces" toddler. Example A., today I walked into the kitchen (about ten paces away) to grab something and all of a sudden it got very quiet. I ran into the bathroom, and there he was laying in the kitty bed, with the kitty. Now this kitty, MeiMei, is really not fond of Keelan and had her ears pinned back and scratched Keelan on the arm. This type of event is becoming more an more common and it seems if I don't have Keelan literally strapped to me in the ergo or I am five paces away from him, things happen... a lot. Worst part of it all, even when he gets hurt, he doesn't care or learn his lesson, he'll do it again and again. I was certainly not this type of baby, I would get hurt once and be done with it. I'm crossing my fingers he'll start learning his lessons.

                                                          ..........................................

Below are some pics from the Baha'i Naw Ruz (New Year) party. Here is Keelan and his little girl friend sharing some sweet baby kisses :-*

hitting our stride

It has been quite the year I'll be honest. We've had so many transitions it's hard to know where to begin. Sometimes it was hard for me to sit back and enjoy the ride, but I feel like now we, as a family are starting to get the swing of things.

Starting mid-January it felt like we went from zero to sixty all at once. We had a short reprieve from the craziness after we settled into our rental in Bellingham, but as soon as the house buying/fixing up/family visits started, it got pretty darn busy around here!

In the matter of a few weeks we had a laundry list of things that had to be done on the house before we could move in which included; painting trim, painting Keelan's room, putting in new carpet in the refinished basement, refinishing the bedroom floors (they're fir!), installing a closet, major cleaning of the whole place, unpacking TWO shippments of our belongings (one from Alaska and one from China), and a whole list of handyman stuff - like missing doorhandles, adding new locks and the like. I'm so glad that we decided to do as much now as we could afford, that was a piece of advice I got from my Mom who said "do it now or it will be years before you get to everything!"

In our parade of visitors, we also had both Todd's dad Bruce (twice!) and my Dad, Steve who did a lot of the random handyman stuff that had to be done. And Todd's mom Sharon and my mom Susan to help with the biggest task of all... Keelan. He's a busy one, to put it lightly.

Now that the house stuff has started to slow down, I'm starting to focus more on getting involved in all the wonderful things there are for babies and tots here in Bellingham. Right now we have so many fun things that are availble to do throughout the week, and many are FREE! MOM's club activities like play dates and swimming, library story time, a free yoga class (for me!), an open play gym in Ferndale, Nature Babies - exploring local parks with toddlers, and Music Together classes - my Mom paid for this one (Thanks Mom!). We've also gone to a handful of other playgroups recently that have been a lot of fun for Keelan. I guess I just really enjoy having something that we can do everyday, whether we actually do it or not, that's another story ;-)

For myself I've been helping out in the local Baha'i community Children's classes on Sundays - teaching songs and doing crafts, and also taking the free yoga class. Todd has been playing in a co-ed soccer league on a team called the 'Road Turtles', isn't that the cutest name? I love it, they're the little bumps in the median of the road. We've also been going up to Mt. Baker pretty much every Saturday, which can be trying on me sometimes, but it's worth it. It's about an hour and a half drive up to the mountain then Todd and I trade off and on a couple times (with skiing and watching Keelan in the lodge) before driving home. It's a commitment both of time and finances (gas, the season's passes), but after four years of living in Shanghai and no skiing, it was high time to be up skiing again!

Here are a couple of pics of the inside of our house. It has been so fun decorating with all the stuff from our travels, it reminds me of how incredibly lucky we are to have done so much exploring before Keelan was born. There is also a major 'Asia' vibe going on in our house :-)

these are a few of his favorite things

In the past three months, Keelan has morphed from baby to full on toddler! He is a walking, running, climbing, dancing, babbling and signing champ. He amazes me how much he is absorbing and how much he retains! Here is a list of some of his current "skills" :-)

-Points at the ABC cards hung in his room when he wants me to sing the ABC's

-Puts his fingers together when he wants me to sing itsy bitsy spider

-Makes the sign for 'eat' and 'milk'.... the kid loves eating, what can I say?

-Kisses pictures of babies, and sometimes other actual babies.

-Nods his head, swings his arms and does baby squats when he's getting his dance on

-Plays chase around the house with Todd and I, or any visitors who are willing

- Has learned to LOVE snow, not afraid to walk around, sit, eat and play in the snow up at Mt. Baker. 

- Says: Dada, GaGao (for our cat Xiao Mao), car, and the occational 'Mama'.

On another note, within the last three months we've moved into our new house and had a long parade of family visitors/helpers. This parade continues on pretty much through the end of March and then tapers off for our summer travels. My efforts to document these big changes for our family hasn't happend yet, but I hope to get my act together before I forget everything that's happend :-)