Fall 2011

It has been an eventful fall so far, and I have a feeling we will have many more fun experiences in the months ahead.

Kellen is as sweet and loveable as ever, and his spunky personality continues to evolve. He makes his preferences and dislikes very clear, and if you dare to give him something he does not like, he is not afraid to let you know. His emotions are very BIG, as he goes from extremely happy one moment, to fiercly angry the next. I've learned that he is quite the stubborn child. Case in point - walking. Kellen is officially 14 months now, but he is not walking. He has taken 2 - 3 steps on his own a handful of times, only to fall to his bottom and look at you like "how dare you make me do that dreadful thing!" He also doesn't mind walking while I hold his hand, but that's the furthest he'll go. I don't know why, but he just does NOT like walking. He is such a fast crawler, and can cruise along any piece of furniture or wall, but he will not attempt to get anywhere by walking (unless mommy and daddy try). He also likes pushing his big fire truck and dinosaur walker around the house, and can turn sharp corners to get into any nook and crany, but will not let these things go! At first, I was extremely concerned that he wasn't walking and had myself convinced that he had some type of gross motor delay. After calling the pediatric nurse line half a dozen times to express my concerns, and have all the nurses tell me that he is FINE and that some completely NORMAL and HEALTHY children don't walk until 16...17...even 18 months, I finally talked myself out of my worries. It's hard not to have anxiety about these types of things, especially when your career is based on children who have disabilities, but I had to tell myself to just step back and accept that Kellen is just not mentally ready to walk yet. He's physically capable, as I've witnessed multiple times, but he's just too scared, and its not going to help if I'm constantly trying to push him to do something he's not ready for yet. Very important parenting lesson - let him do it in his own time.

In all other developmental areas, Kellen is moving along swell! His language has really popped these past couple months. He jibber-jabbers constantly, with all sorts of influction, and loves to tell me stories about his day. His current words consist of: mama, more (meh), banana (bama), bye bye (buh), yeah (yayaya), dog (gog - he's only said this a few times, but I think it counts!), and woof-woof (wu-wu). His fine motor skills are impressive - he loves to play with board puzzles, will sit and turn pages (one-by-one) of paperback books, stacks legos (and loves to knock them down), and loves to roll balls back and forth with mommy and daddy. He is an extremely social baby, which makes this mommy proud. Any place we go, he loves to make eye contact with random strangers, give them his silly grin, and then look away shyly, only to turn and look at them again like "hah! I tricked you". So cute!

His latest toy obsessions include any type of transportation vehicle (his current favorite is this Little People police car) and barns with farm animals (also from Little People). We seem to have a LOT of Little People toys, which is a good thing, because Kellen loves them all. Even when he's not playing with an actual toy car, he "vrooms" other objects around the house (his Elmo phone, a spoon, a tater tot, you name it, he'll turn it into a car).

As far as what we've actually been doing the past few months, we've been spending a lot of time outside, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. A few weeks ago, we went to a lake in Burnsville and had a picnic. Afterwards, we played in the water and went to the park. I tried to get Kellen to play in the sand, but he did not like how it felt on his feet. He however LOVED walking in the water, even though it was super cold. He kept trying to sit in the water, but this paranoid mama wouldn't let him! Too much slime and gunk for this lady.

Last weekend we went to an apple orchard in Lakeville. Kellen had his first hay ride, which he LOVED. When he saw the tractor coming down the dirt road, he got an enormous grin on his face and said "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"! The man driving the tractor saw this and returned his grin. We also climbed up on a big pile of hay, had brats and chips, and found a perfect pumpkin to take home.

With only a few more weeks left of bareable weather, we plan on doing as much as we can outdoors. We hope to carve pumpkins tomorrow, go to a pumpkin patch or corn maze next weekend, and participate in lots of Halloween festivities the following weekend (including Mandy's annual pumpkin party and trick-or-treating).

Happy Fall everyone! Hope you're all enjoying this beautiful weather! :)