Play Time

Everyone tells you that your children will all be different. It's definitely true and I think I started to see some of the differences between Cate and Keaton before we even got Keaton home from the hospital.

One big difference between them (as infants) is that Keaton likes to play on his tummy. Cate always hated being put on her tummy. With all the "back to sleep" efforts now, newborns don't spend much time on their tummies, so the "experts" really emphasize putting them on their tummies during play time for at least a few minutes each day. Keaton likes being on his side or his stomach. Of course, he really prefers it if I just hold him....but he'll tolerate some play time as long as I'm right beside him.

The biggest surprise? He can roll over all by himself. He did that for the first time about a week ago. He is very strong, particularly when he is angry about something. He turned over when Stephen was playing with him one day last weekend and he's done the same for me. It's hard to believe that he was just born six weeks ago and he's already turning over on his own...pretty soon he'll be getting his own dinner out of the fridge.

Fourth of July

We had a great Fourth of July weekend, for the most part. Stephen and I are still adjusting to having two little ones to cart around. It seems like it should be just double the work to have two kids, but it's actually more like quadruple the work when it comes to getting out of the house.

But back to our weekend. We started things off with a carnival and parade at Cate's school. They organized a "carnival" for the kids with simple games and prizes (fun things like toothbrushes were the prizes!). Cate had a lot of fun, particularly in the parade. We stayed for a picnic lunch and then Cate, Keaton and I spent the afternoon together while Stephen wrapped up a few more things at work. She wore a blue skirt, white shirt and a red and white barette to the festivities. She was quite proud to show off her outfit before school on Thursday morning.



We went to church on the fourth. Our church has a really nice service, followed by cake and ice cream. It was a good, cool way to celebrate the holiday.




A very generous co-worker of Stephen's gave Cate a gift card to Toys R Us when Keaton was born, so we let her pick out something. She got a sprinkler for the backyard and we used it this weekend.


We were planning to eat dinner outside at least one evening because it was unusually nice here, but Cate was frightened by the noise in the neighborhood. It's really out of hand with all the firecrackers and other large fireworks in the neighborhood. I started to feel like we live in a combat zone by the end of the weekend.

We had the idea to go shopping and out to lunch at an outdoor mall in Kansas City on Sunday afternoon. As we were leaving the house, Cate was being difficult and Keaton was screaming like crazy. We decided we were pushing our luck. Even though we had just loaded the car up with the 50 things we need to go anywhere for any length of time, we decided we should stay home. We went out for a casual lunch in Topeka, then stayed around home the rest of the day.