My Kenna

This is post is devoted to my first born!  She's pretty hilarious! I love her!  These are just some pictures of her from the end of May-July.  

My sister-in-law, Lara, took most of these.  I love her photography skills and especially love she often does little candid photo shoots after Sunday family dinners.  

Remember that one time I was doing a heal click and McKenna ran up behind me and I totally nailed her?  And then remember how my sister-in-law totally got a picture of it?  Mom of the year award!  

Thankfully, she forgave me quickly and let me snuggle her! 

This cute dress my mom made for her.  

With some Webster cousins

Wrestling dad

Too bad she doesn't have a very expressive face (with cousin Whitney). ;) 

With baby Kate

McKenna's really big into coloring lately.  Here are some of her works of art on display.  I also love that Ben face! (Editor's note: don't mind his shirt. It's his "play in the mud" shirt)

The Rest of July

Dress-Up 

This bunny costume says it's for size 6-9 months.  So it's definitely a little small for Ben.  But he still loved it.  So did Kenna.  You can also see she has on what she calls her "ballerina-tard."  :)

Here's something a little more masculine.  

This is all we could fit on her.  

I love it when they're nice to each other.  :) She pretty much has "Go Dog, Go!" memorized so she could "read" it to him.  

We attended the Bountiful City Handcart Days Parade.  It was expected to be one of the biggest crowds so I was a little stressed about getting a good seat.  But the getting up early, setting out chairs, and then getting there 2 hours before the parade started totally paid off.  We sat with most of both of our families pretty much front row.  There's always lots of kids that run out in front of everyone, but you know...  

This was his face pretty much the whole time.  I also love his pink cheeks when he gets hot.  

A princess float

The highlight of the parade was the Stripling Warriors entry which is why the crowd was so much bigger this year than in years past.  Check out another news clip here.

It took them 4 minutes to walk past so I can't post the video we took.  But it was pretty amazing and inspiring! 

Unfortunately, we had one casualty after the parade.  The blessed binki down the street drain. :(

Also in July, we saw Sound of Music at Hale Center Theater as one of the events during my Dad's work conference he could invite family to.  

Dan had to work one evening at the Tooele County Fair and since my parents were gracious enough to babysit for us, I decided to tag along.  The traffic through the indoor arena where all of the vendor booths were set up was getting pretty slow since the fair's demolition derby had started. Did I mention this was Tooele? :)  They came around and told us we could pack up and and go home anytime and didn't have to stay till closing.  As Dan was packing the Utah Foster Care booth up, I heard them announcing they were going to be having a dance competition (using the Wii and the "Let's Dance" game- I think) with a chance to win a a Kindle Fire.  I didn't really have my heart set on the Kindle, but when I hear good dance music, I just can't help myself!  So I signed up!  :)  I won the first round, but got booted the second round.  Over all, I probably placed 4th out of something like 15 people.  And of course I had tons of fun dancing in front of complete strangers!  I'm in the gray hoody, second from the right.  Check it out here.  

I tried on my wedding dress a few weeks ago.  I could barley get it zipped up, but I was still pretty pleased it hadn't "shrunk" too much.  McKenna only kind of liked seeing me in it.  ;)  

Ben-18 Months

Ben's 18 Month Stats

Height: 32.6 in (1.6 in increase in 3 months) 50th percentile

Weight: 24.8 lbs (1.9 lb increase in 3 months) 30th percentile

Some pictures from July

 This one cracks me up every time.  Gotta love our uncle Jake! 

 Hanging with Grandpa Mike while watching the iPad.  

Some AWESOME pictures from church.  You do what you gotta do to keep the kid happy. 

Something to note in Ben's development lately is his speech development.  At his 18 month check-up, I told the pediatrician that Ben has ZERO words.  Many people might think it's because McKenna does all the talking for him.  But she doesn't.  He points, grunts, nods, shakes his head, does 15-20 signs, and can pull you where he wants you to go, but NO words yet.  He doesn't even really babble.  No consonant vowel pairs at all.  You get the point.  :)  So, the doc said let's get him evaluated.  The evaluation was free and actually pretty fun.  They played some games, asked him to point to things in pictures, did some easy puzzles, and asked him lots of questions to test his vocabulary understanding.  They found out that he's right on or in most cases above average in many areas of development such as gross and fine motor, cognitive development, social/emotional, self help and receptive language.  He had to have a moderate to severe delay to qualify for early intervention services, but since his is only mild, we just have to wait.  They were very nice and helpful and said if I still don't feel like he's where he should be in 3-4 months we can bring him in again and they'll just update his file.  They also gave us a booklet with about 10 strategies to help things move along.  Basically, we need to frustrate him more and let him know his current methods of communication aren't working anymore.  One thing's for sure, I'm pretty darn excited to hear his cute little voice whenever he does decide to talk and I'm very interested to hear what his first word will be. :)  

Other development:

• Almost has all his teeth (minus two year molars of course).  We're still waiting on his upper right molar.
• Loves to give kisses, especially to babies.
• Just became interested in trains.
• Doing very well in nursery at church.
• Loves to read books.
• Starting to actually sit through some kids TV shows.
• Loves being outside and has mostly done well with swimming this summer.
• Plays well with McKenna when she's not teasing him to death.
• Signs: dad, mom, eat, milk, drink, cracker, more, all done, shoes, dog, horse, bird, water, banana, cereal, sleep, ball, blanket.
• Loves to clap and celebrate.
• Really good climber!  He can do things at the park that McKenna's not brave enough to do.
• One nap a day.  Usually 2-3 hours.  
• Pats the front of his diaper to let me know he's poopy.
• Uses his binky only at night and nap time (and long car rides).