Organic Matter

 

Cheers to good friends and organic matter! Kerala, Kian and I were finishing up dinner on Wednesday when Kerala told me that she had an orange peel up her nose. I thought she was being silly and I started to laugh it off, but she insisted that she had an orange peel up her nose. She loves to peel oranges and is constantly smelling the peel. Anyway, I looked up her nose and what would you know - she had an orange peel lodged up there. I calmly called Troy at work and told him the situation and he suggested having the neighbors come up and hold her down while I tried to get it out with tweezers. We don't know our neighbors super well so I called Tamra. Being the good friend that she is, Tamra was over in 10 minutes flat. We both took turns trying to hold her down and perform the operation but we were not having any luck. Fortunately for us, Kerala's doctor's office has fabulous hours and were able to get us in in 20 minutes. When we walked into the office, the receptionist greeted us by saying "You must be the orange peel patient." Despite everyone's efforts (three of us holding her down and one person performing the procedure) we were unable to get the peel out - at this point I am starting to freak out a bit. The doctor decided that because Kerala did not seem to be in any discomfort (although she was getting a constant whiff of citrus) and we were dealing with organic matter to just keep an eye on it and squeeze nasal spray up her other nostril over the next couple of days - basically, we would either force it out or it would start to shrink and fall out itself. As Tamra pointed out, thank goodness we were dealing with an orange and not a piece of meat which would take a while to begin to dissolve. Good news is that the orange peel came out this morning. Hopefully we won't have any more episodes like this - although the doctor did say this was somewhat common for this age and warned me that if she put something up there once there is a good chance that she will do it again.

Other than the orange peel, we have been having a pretty good week. Kerala really enjoyed the disco last week and we were honored by going with Henry who won the dance contest for his age group with some pretty cool moves. Kian is starting to crawl on all fours - he still prefers the inchworm crawl but it seems likeeach day he is crawling more and more. He is also getting much better at his solids.

 

6 month/2.5 yr Updates

 

We had Kerala's and Kian's 2.5 year and 6 month doctors appointments yesterday. Both kids are doing really well. Kian was such a good little guy the entire appointment and a lot of times when the doctor was checking him out he was just laughing and having a good time. I scheduled their appointments at the same time and Kerala asked that Kian go first, which really helped Kerala since she saw that Kian was not being hurt by the doctor so her appointment was a lot smoother than normal. As for stats, Kian is my big boy and Kerala my tiny girl. Kian is just under 18 lbs and is still 90% for height and his head circumference is just one inch smaller than Kerala's. Kerala is petite but the doctor isn't worried since she is doing great developmentally. Overall, a fabulous appointment.

We have enrolled Kerala in an art class (painting 101) and I must say this is the best class we have ever done. Kerala was so engaged the entire class and was just really excited about it (she has actually been talking about hte class the last two days). For our first class, she did a color wheel and learned all about mixing colors. I am really happy this class is on Mondays since that is my day off when I return to work next month.

As for Kian, he is still inch worming along. He still gets on all fours and rocks, but his mode of transportation for now is the inchworm. He is getting quite good at moving from a tummy position to sitting up and has been babbling up a storm. We have also increased his solid consumption so he has two solid meals a day. Today he gobbled up all of his rice cereal and pears. I think we may start him on a veggie tomorrow.

I am excited about this coming weekend - we are going to a disco with the kids. A local concert hall is having a kids' disco which should be a lot of fun.

 

Swinging at the Park

 

Kerala has two favorite activities at the park - swinging on her tummy on the big kid swings and "pushing Silas in the swing." I put pushing Silas in quotes because she imagines that she is pushing her friend Silas (I am pretty sure she has never actually pushed Silas in the swing although they have swung next to each other since they were babies). It's pretty cute how she will pretend to lift Silas into the swing and take him out. Kian is becoming fonder of the swings and seems to really like it when Kerala pushes him although we do have to remind her that Kian is too little for under dogs and not to push him too high.

Lately our conversations with Kerala have involved some pretty serious subject matter. We have been talking about how I am going back to work in a month and she has been asking some really good questions about it. The other day we were on a walk and she was asking if Emily, our new nanny, will take her to the park and I told her she would and then she asked if I would see daddy at work. I told her that daddy and I didn't work at the same place but that we would see each other for lunch sometime. She then asked if she could come to lunch with us. You can tell that she has been thinking about me working since she will bring it up at various times and ask questions about it. We have also been discussing her grandpas which was a topic I wasn't really prepared to discuss but she started to ask about where my daddy was. I tried explaining to her the best that I could that he was no longer with us. I know I didn't do the best job explaining, but for now she thinks her grandfathers are in the sky and was saying "cheese" to them on our way home from our friends' house.

Kian is doing really well. He has moved from a tummy position to a sitting up position a few times and is getting quicker with is inch worm crawling. He is also doing pretty well with solids. We started him on rice cereal which he seemed to do pretty well with and then moved him onto bananas (did not like) and apples (seems to tolerate slightly better than apples). I am also happy to report that I finally have gotten him on a nap schedule where he takes his naps at home. Right now he will take an am nap around 9:00 at home and wake up around 9:45 or so. Once he is up we are out the door doing some morning activity. He then goes down right after Kerala finishes lunch and will generally sleep 1.5 - 2 hours. If he takes a shorter afternoon nap then he will typically nap again late afternoon but overall it seems like he is moving to two naps a day. His bedtime has also been pretty smooth - he is usually in bed by 7:15.