Weekend in Sheldon

We just got back from a pretty fun weekend in Sheldon. Lots of things we were home for; Gary had work on the farm to get it ready for the farm sale and our nephew graduated from high school. We always love to see family, and each time we are with our family we cherish that time more and more. Life is so short and so precious!

At the park with papa; he always wants to go higher!

At Chris's graduation, he thought he could get his head through the hole.

Spending some time out on the farm. This time papa came with us and Isaac thought is was pretty cool to get a 4-wheel ride from papa!

The rest of the pictures I tried to take a little "mini photo shoot". The time Gary has to spend with Isaac out on the farm with grandpa's tractors is fading so I'm trying to capture their time together. Isaac is probably too young to remember these times but I hope someday we'll be able to use these pictures and tell him lots of stories about his grandpa, his daddy growing up and how much he loves the farm!

Isaac could ride hours in the tractor, you can definitely tell farming runs through his blood!

Isaac fell asleep an hour from home. When we got home I laid him on the couch thinking he would wake up shortly after. He woke up for 5 minutes and I came back in the room and he was asleep again so I just put him to bed. Must have been a fun weekend for him. Now I'm just hoping he is not up at 5 am tomorrow!

I Think She Likes It...

Just a glimpse of our days together!

Pretty Girl

Kylah keeps us really entertained by her many faces, she has such a personality! She is such a calm and relaxed baby; she takes a lot from her brother and she still usually has a smile on her face. She loves her brother and Isaac loves to "giggle her" (translation- make her giggle) but he doesn't always understand what 'gentle' means. She doesn't mind being without him but she would prefer to have him around, she's always watching what he's doing. Kylah is 7 months old already, it's so hard to believe. It seems like yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital and now she's sitting on her own and she is not far from crawling. She is one sweet little girl and we absolutely adore her and we couldn't imagine our family without her!

A Day at The Farm

This is my first attempt to get back to blogging. I figured what better day than today to start...read to the end! I don't know if I will keep up with it but I'm going to try for all those who want to keep up with our kids. It was just to hard to blog during the construction phase of our house and then the adjusting that took place afterwards. A slow computer doesn't help either, but I'm back from the stone age thanks to my husband so I can do things much faster now!

Anyways on to our day we at at the farm. This morning we went with some friends from one of our playgroups to Tom's Ranch which is a farm about 20 minutes north of Ankeny. He had goats, chickens, sheep, cattle and horses for the kids. He also sells grass-fed cattle, broiler chickens and eggs; I've been checking out his farm and what he sells for awhile so there were two good reasons to go. I told Isaac last night before bed that after mommy had to teach class we were going to go to a farm and he goes "woo hoo!"

Since Gary has been out to Grandpa Pennings farm a lot lately getting things ready Isaac has been able to take a lot of tractor rides so he thought we were going there to ride on the tractors and he got mad at me every time I told him we wouldn't be able to do that. When we pulled up he asked if he could milk the cows (even though they were not dairy cows) and he was all excited about them. As soon as we got over to the cow's I said do you want to go into the barn to look at the cow's and he said "I think I don't like the cow's, the cow's are scary." So he wasn't a fan of the cow's after all.

He's big talk in the van but once he's up by the animals he wants nothing to do with them. He did pet the bunny but he wanted to keep his distance from every other animal there.

Funny things

Watch out! I've posted two days in a row, it's a record! :) Today was a good day with Isaac and I just had to post about some funny things he said and did today. It started snowing early this morning already and I decided to go to the gym this morning as I knew it would be a day or so before we could get out again. As we were backing out of the drive way Isaac said "Mommy, I don't like snow. I kick a the snow, mommy." I was completely frustrated with his 'I kick a" statements a couple weeks ago but I have decided to write it down and chalk it up to being 2 1/2. When Isaac gets frustrated or doesn't like something I have figured out his way of expressing those emotions is to say "I kick a"... you fill in the blank. While I tell him that's not how we speak, I'm trying to remember he's two and has a limited vocabulary and he needs to learn how to express these emotions correctly and some day he will outgrow wanting to kick whatever is bothering him. At thanksgiving when papa was carving the turkey we were all oohing and awing over the turkey and Isaac said "I kick a the chicken." If I know he needs to go potty and I take him and he doesn't want to break from playing he says "no potty, I kick a the potty." Just so you know he won't actually kick these things, he just says he wants to.

Today, Isaac also broke a house rule, and it's a rule he knows not to disobey. Since I have told him over and over not to do this, I decided natural consequences were going to rule his decision to disobey me. I was right there watching him, and just as I knew would happen he ended up falling as a result of doing something he knows I have told him not to do because he could get hurt. Well he fell, he bumped his head on a toy and got his first ever (surprisingly first!) 'goose egg' on his head. We hugged, he cried and we had a talk and after our talk I noticed this goose egg and told him he got a goose egg on his head because he didn't listen to me. Tonight as I was putting him to bed, the other side of his head got bumped on the door and we had more tears, this time was an accident. So we sat down in his chair to read a story and he says "kisses mommy" with tears rolling from his eyes and pointing to his head. So I kissed him on his head, and then he pointed to the side where he had the goose egg and he says "I got a goose on my head." That got a few good laughs out of both of us.

Here's a video of Kylah to leave you with. I took this a couple weeks ago just haven't had the chance to post it. She is a very vocal baby and we all love to hear her voice, it is music to our ears!

Thanksgiving

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with your families! We celebrated Thanksgiving with the Pennings side on Thanksgiving day and then we headed to my parents house to see Grandma, Papa and the aunts. It was the first time most of my family had met Kylah. We had a great time and the kids and I got to stay a few extra days, I love spending time with my family! Here's some pics from the weekend and a video of Isaac. We celebrated Aunt Gina's birthday on Sunday by going bowling and it was Isaac's first time. I'll let you see from the video what he thought about bowling! :)



Big boy carrying the ball on his own
Kylah taking her turn at bowling, she didn't like it
Playing pass the baby. Kylah with Aunt Gina (top) & Aunt Steph (bottom)

Waiting for his ball to hit the pins, he averaged a whopping bowling speed of 1.54 mph!The excitement of bowling didn't last long. The rest of the time he kept himself entertained by loading his 'bobcat' with peanuts
Taking a turn with mommy

So excited he hit a pin!
Look Aunt Steph!

Getting there!

I am getting pretty anxious to get into our new house. With each night that passes that we have a snorting baby in our room, the more anxious I become :). Space is definitely becoming a thing of the past around here! Isaac is excited to have a new room as well, and he picked out his bedding the other day. I asked him (and showed him) to pick between a jungle theme or a cars/trucks theme and he said he wanted a bobcat, so go figure the cars/trucks theme won. Everytime we go over to the house he remembers which room is his and he screams at me to go downstairs. So hopefully he will like his playroom we added to the house and that he won't want to spend all day playing in an unfinished basement. Here's a recent picture. I have to say a big thank you to my sister Steph who worked very hard of the design of our house, we love it and this house wouldn't have been possible with out her help! Siding goes on this coming week!




Here's some other pictures from the last couple of weeks. We are still adjusting and Isaac especially continues to adjust. He loves his sister but we are definitly finding that when it's time for Kylah to eat Isaac thinks it's his time to disobey and be naughty or mean to his sister. I will never understand the psychology behind trying to get attention negatively! We are trying to find a lot of grace and mercy for him as we know his world has been turned upside down, new sister, new house, less time with mom, daddy's never here because of long work hours and working on the house...it's a lot for a two year old and especially when it's all happening at once.

My sweet little babies!

Always has to being doing what sister is doing!

I took Isaac to the Center Grove Orchard last weekend on the beautiful 70 degree day we had. He liked it, but he wanted to go on the big tractor the whole time, we only got to go on the hayride once.


Corn pool

The best picture I could get of all of us on the hayride

This nap didn't last long because big brother couldn't keep his hands off her!

We still can't get over her cheeks! If you go to one of Isaac's baby pictures in the picasa album you can see he had no cheeks what so ever! We think they are pretty cute though. Isaac even notices them too, he's always trying to squeeze her cheeks and Gary and I never do that!