Shane's 1st Baseball Game

We took Shane to his 1st baseball game this afternoon. We knew he wouldn't really enjoy the baseball game, but we didn't take him last year as a baby baby, so we wanted to for sure get him to one game this year just for the memory sake of it. It was the last game of the season as well as Kid Appreciation Day. His nap schedule has changed since we bought the tickets. We had to wake him up from a DEAD sleep so that he wouldn't sleep through the whole game.


I had come up with a little plan so that we could attempt to watch the game. We found a large open section of seats. Kenny sat at one end and I sat at the other end and Shane just played between us. He kept himself entertained for quite awhile with all the noises, people, toys, and food. We played in the kid area for awhile. We tried letting him walk around, but there were just too many people. He lasted about 2 hours, not bad for a 15 month old.

When we first sat down Shane got really scared when the crowd would get loud. He ran to Kenny and wanted up.




Life in a forward facing car seat is SOOOOO much better for the WHOLE family!

I finished it!

I was inspired by a friend to work on this craft project way back in May. The cabinet has been sitting in my scrapbooking room just waiting for me to get to it. Finally in the last week or so I jumped in and put the finishing touches on it yesterday. I'm really happy about how it turned out. I have it hanging by our front door. I love looking at it when I'm sitting in the living room.


(Click on the picture for a bigger view of the image)

Busy Week

We had a busy busy fun filled week. It may have contributed to the demise of Shane's 2nd nap.

Monday: We had a great play date at St. Edwards State Park. The playground there is awesome. We had a picnic lunch and enjoyed the wonderful sunny September weather. We even took a little hike on a trail. Shane walked 3/4 of the way all on his own. I thought for sure he'd take a 3 hour nap when we got home...nope...1.5 was all I got.

Tuesday: Our 1st day at MOPS (Moms of Preschoolers). This was Shane's 1st time in a nursery/day care setting with unknown people and location. It didn't go super well. I got paged once and as soon as he saw me he stopped crying and then he showed me around the room. I found a little buddy for him to share his grapes with and left. He did better after that. Most of the kids were crying....with time I'm sure he'll do better.

Wednesday: We took a trip to a local farm. They have toddler time 4 times a week that includes a tractor ride, picking a fruit/veggie in season, various animals and a craft. We picked green beans. The tractor ride started out great, but for some reason by the end of it he had crawled into my lap and was gripping my shirt very tightly.





Thursday: Shane had his 15-month check up. He weighs 20lbs 4ozs (5%) and is 30 3/4 (25%) inches tall. We made it just past the 20lb mark so we decided to flip his car seat forward facing. We were going to try for 22lbs, but the kid just wasn't having the rear facing any more. Life is A LOT more enjoyable in the car now! The doctor said he seems to be growing and developing nicely.

Friday: We headed to preschool where we did apple artwork, sang songs, and played in the rice center, water center and playdough. He did pretty good, besides that he had two shots the day before and wasn't feeling super great. We did have a huge screaming session during snack time, but once the bubbles came out all things were good again.

There is a reason I don't generally make our weeks this busy....it wears me out. Plus, he decided one nap for 1.5 a day was all he needed. But he did hit the sack every night around 6:45.

First Day of Preschool

Today was Shane's 1st day of preschool. We are doing a Preschool Co-op this year, so I get to go with him. It's once a week for 2 hours. He showed all of his true colors today. Here is a little run down of his first day.

1.The first toy he decides to play with is the only outdoor large motor push toy in the room...a great big green lawn mower. He did circles in the classroom running into adults, kids and furniture. So Shane!

2.After a good 10 minutes of the lawn mower I tried to direct him into a different center. We ended up in the pretend area where the doctor stuff was out. He grabs a 6 inch long syringe and uses it as a light saber. He gets into his light saber crouch and makes his light saber noises (all of which he has picked up from the neighborhood kids). Thankfully there were very few kids or adults around him at this point! Also SO Shane!

3.I then try and direct him into the art area (with the pretend light saber in hand). He liked the little kid chairs so he willingly sat down. I showed him how to stick some feathers, yarn and glitter onto some sticky paper. He then found some craft balls and proceeded to throw them across the table. Again...SOOOO Shane!

4.The next area we hit was the slide climber gym thing. But he didn't want to go down the slide. He just wanted to climb up and down the stairs and get in the way of all the kids trying to actually go down the slide. Yep...you guessed it, Shane true and true.

5.There were two circle times and both he thought it would be much better to stand in the middle of the circle and watch everyone. The 2nd circle was fun enough to sit on my lap for half the time. During this time he waved non-stop to the teacher who was sitting on the other side of the circle from us. Guess he wants to be teachers pet?!

6.As we headed out the door I went to pick up his first preschool art ever and found out that someone had taken it be accident. I'm very very sad. But I'm sure we'll have plenty more art projects to bring home.

7.I was beat after preschool!! He ate some lunch after we got home and headed for a nap. I was sure he would sleep for a good 2-3 hours. He surprised me with just one nap today of a whole 1.5 hours. :(

Good thing I have a whole week to rest up before our next preschool day! I was also a terrible Mother and didn't take any pictures. There was no way I could manage him and our getting to know you activity along with the camera. Maybe in a few weeks I can manage the camera too!

Shane is 15 months old

Shane had his 15 month pictures taken this week. We had a super good coupon for Picture People so we went there, which we don't normally do. The pictures turned out FANTASTIC. This was his best photo session ever I think. There were so many good pictures that it was sooooo hard to pick. Plus, he was running around like a mad man which didn't help the focusing on the picture picking part either. The pictures really captured his personality.

Here are a few of them:

Shane and I have a Job.

After doing some random internet browsing one evening last week I ended up on a website call The Conciergerie. They provide services such as errand running, grocery shopping, pet sitting, home repair, etc. A large portion of it is stuff I did as a Nanny/Household manager. I emailed them to see if they had any openings and sent my resume over. The owner of the business emailed me back and said she was looking for a Nanny and wanted to know if I was interested. We meet up yesterday and have decided to give it a trial run to see if it works for everyone. She has an 18 month old daughter. Shane and I will be going over to their place to watch her. We are going to start out with 2 days a week for 4 hours a day and see if we want to bump it up to 2-3 days a week and 5 hours a day. She also said that I can do some Conciergerie services, too. I think it will be a great fit for everyone. We start in October and are excited for our new adventure together.

Scrapbooking Retreat Weekend

This past weekend I went to a scrapbooking retreat. It was located just 45 minutes from here in Auburn. It's a fairly new scrapbooking cottage. It's only been open for just short of a year. The cottage was soooooo cute. There were 7 rooms all decorated beautifully and set up for two people to sleep in. Then there was a huge great room set up with a table for each person...which as a scrapbooker we all know you need all the space you can get. There were two full bathrooms and a full kitchen. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were provided and the food was FABULOUS! Not to mention the late night snack, too! I can't say that we slept much. The days pretty much went like this: scrap, eat, scrap, eat, scrap, eat, scrap, sleep, scrap, eat, scrap...you get my point. :)

I completed so many pages. Shane's 1st year album is finished. I'd say 95% of 2007 is completed and I'm up to the summer of this year. It felt great to just sit and talk and scrap all day long. I didn't have to think about anything else.

I do want to give a huge thanks to Kenny for having Shane all weekend by himself. They had a lot of nice Dad and Son time together. And to Sarah, Mike, Anna and Brooke for watching Shane Friday afternoon while I headed out-of-town to have some fun.

We have it booked again for next year...I'm counting down the days already!!

This is my stack of completed pages.

The Poor Dogs!!

Sadie and Dodger have asked me if they could move to another house. Shane has come up with a few new games around here and they all seem to involve tormenting the dogs!

Game #1: Grab onto a dog tail and pretend to ski behind them. Neither dog likes this game much. At times they have figured out that if they don't move or sit down the game comes to an end.

Game #2: Get Lighting McQueen or any other large push toy and run around the house trying to run over the dogs. Both dogs HATE this game. They jump on the couch, which has become a safe base for them, as fast as they can.

Game #3: Hit the dogs with what ever may be in his hand, any toy will do. Then when Mom says be gentle, he goes back over to them and gives them hugs and kisses. Um....can you say abusive!

Game #3: Throw the ball for Dodger...or tease him by taking the ball and not giving it back. Dodger can't decide if this is fun or not?!

Kenny Passed!!!!!!!

Back in May, Kenny took a really important test (See "The test has been taken" in May for more details) He just found out today that he PASSED!! He needed a 55 to pass and got a 61. He is so happy and relieved to have that over with. He spent the whole month of August waiting and waiting to get his results back. Nothing ever came, so finally today he emailed the organization and found out he had passed. A fellow co-worker took it at the same time for his 2nd try and he didn't pass. All that hard work and studying paid off!!