My Chefs

For Justin's first Father's Day this last June I gave him two aprons - one for him and a matching one for Kendry. I was quite proud of my gift for many reasons:

First of all, I had purchased the fabric to make Justin an apron well over a year ago and it had just been sitting in my sewing stuff, waiting to be used. Don't ask me how I got so busy that I put off making it for over a year. Seriously, there is no way I was any busier last year than I am now that we have Kendry. Your busyness perspective certainly changes after having a baby, doesn't it?

Secondly, I needed to be really creative with my gift since when Father's Day rolled around I was actually unemployed, hence I really had no spending money for a gift but still needed to come up with something clever. It was his very first Father's Day after all!

Thirdly, Justin loves to cook, so an apron is a great tool for him. You as the reader should already know this if you know anything about Justin or have read some of my previous blog posts.

Which brings me to reason four, which I will admit is a bit of a selfish reason. You see, Justin loves to wipe his hands on anything available when he cooks, meaning that he might go through a few kitchen towels and washclothes by the time he has the meal prepared. This is fine for him, but since laundry is my household duty I really needed to find a better solution. As I've said before, Justin is the main chef in our family. If you figure about four dirty towels/washclothes per meal, times 4 meals each week....well, thats laundry that piles up pretty quickly. In my opinion, towels are for drying stuff off, not cleaning them off! So, an apron was our solution. He has something he can wipe his hands off on, and my towels/washclothes should stay cleaner (I hope!)

And when Kendry gets a little older he has his own apron to help out in the kitchen. Here is Kendry already helping daddy make homemade pot pies for dinner yesterday:

"Rollin' rollin' rollin'..."

A little over a week ago Kendry rolled over for the first time, and just this week we caught it on camera. I suppose I should use the term "rolled over" a bit loosely because, as you can see, it appears that he is actually tipping over more than he is rolling over. But regardless of how he accomplishes it, our little boy can now move from his belly to his back. He still isn't quite sure what to think about it once he gets there. The sudden rollover of his body seems to startle him more than anything, so we encourage him quickly afterwards to keep him from crying.

Smiles and Coos from Kendry

Yeah me! I finally figured out how to use the video feature on our digital camera - or rather, I had Justin show me last night. We've only had the camera since last fall! Yes, I've been busy with other things. Only now I'm kinda wishing we would have recorded a little video during my labor (perhaps after the epi but before the pushing), and definitely some early footage of Kendry. Guess we'll know better from here on out, and for Baby #2.

Anyway, to help make up for the lack of early footage here are a few smiles, facial expressions and coos from Kendry. Please disregard my "mommy coaching" voice in the background. I'm sure to everyone else I sound like a regular proud mommy, but personally I think I sound a little corny.

I Love My Fists!

Over the last two weeks Kendry has developed a strong obsession with his fists. It seems he is determined to fit a whole fist in his mouth, no matter what it takes. This results in him gagging himself with his fingers quite often, but he simply gags, recovers, and then puts his fists right back up there. On the plus side, he is not requiring his binky as much. This morning I captured his attitude perfectly:
For some reason I can't help but think of Veggie Tales' Larry the Cucumber singing his "I Love My Lips" song, only I exchange the word "lips" for "fists". "I loooovvvee my fists!...Its a fist, its a fist, its a fist fist fist..." Okay, you gotta know Silly Songs With Larry to appreciate this humor. Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1FGaCNN1aw

Not quite the Pink Poodle, but good enough for now...

Unlike some men, Justin isn't too particular about his haircuts. While Grandpa Rodger prefers to get his haircut done at the Pink Poodle, Justin prefers to simply have me do his haircuts at home with our own electric clippers. I might add that I do a pretty decent job.

In keeping with that practice, two nights ago Kendry got his very first haircut - or rather, his first trim anyway. Now, we fully realize that our child barely has any hair as it is, not to mention that its a very light strawberry blonde right now, so you can hardly see what little he has anyway. But it was really starting to look like he had old man hair, meaning that it was really long in back, but just kinda scraggly everywhere else. In fact, last weekend the sunshine caught it just right and Justin and I were horrified to see a few patches of inch-long hair sticking up at random around Kendry's head (obviously the hair he was born with), but then also lots of fuzzy hairs barely a centimeter long everywhere else. It looked really bad! Wanting to at least have his hair all one length, or close to it, we assumed we could simply set the clippers at that centimeter length and just buzz his head all over. And that assumption was completely wrong. It appears that Kendry may have been blessed (?) with his father's genetics when it comes to hair. We spotted hints of Justin's hairline on Kendry pretty early on. Of course, Kendry gets the super straight hair from both of us, but right now the fine texture of his hair is certainly from his father. I am hoping over time he will develop some thickness like his mother has, but only time will tell.

For anyone who has ever worked electric hair clippers, you know that super fine hair is not the most cooperative. We buzzed and buzzed, but the clippers would not catch anything. Finally, we resorted to the scissors to trim the long, scraggly spots, which is a challenge when you're working with a still wobbly baby's head and neck . Fortunately, as a pointed out, Kendry's hair is very light in color so no one should be able to tell what a botched first haircut he got. I think we probably failed miserably in trying to get it all one length because I'm certain the back of his hair is actually now ten different lengths. Oh well...

Kendry was a good sport though. He simply sat in his seat and stared at his daddy, trying to figure out why his head was being massaged by some noisy machine.

And rest assured, I did save a small clipping of hair for the baby scrapbook.