Kent Turns 1

Kent turned 1 year old this week!

Kent is a vivacious little lad! He is curious and into everything! He likes to pull out all of the dishes in the bottom cupboards in the kitchen when I am working in the kitchen. He enjoys unrolling the toilet paper and sticking his hands in the toilet. He is the stereotypical one year old! 

Some favorite foods of Kent include mandarin oranges, blueberries, cheese, pretzels, raisins, graham crackers, noodles, and cake! He likes to eat and he will eat a lot! He went through a phase of weight loss from 2 - 4 months. He fell below the 1st percentile range. Today he had his 1 year old check up and he is now in the 93rd percentile for weight! When he has the privilege of eating, eat he will!

Being outside is one of Kent's favorite things. He crawls around in the rocks at the playground and is learning to master the slide. Depending on the playground we are at, he can even crawl up to the top of the slide. As soon as a door opens to the outside he is the first one through it. He does not mind getting dirty. He likes to push and ride a small push car we have. He is also interested in Taft and Joel's bike as well. When he is restless inside, we go outside and it immediately calms him.

Our favorite books to read together are Peek A Boo books. He likes to lift the flaps to see familiar friends like bear, doll, kitty, and baby. He also likes Peek A Who!

Kent's comfort items are the soft muslin blankets. He really likes the tag on them and will suck on them in the morning when he is waiting to get out of bed, which is sometimes a few minutes because Kent is an early riser. He is often awake before 6 am, no matter how quiet I try to be! 

Kent is a talker. He is already doing "mamama" and "dadada" sounds. He also likes to make other noises including yelling, growling and blowing raspberries. He makes sure that he is heard, which is important when you are the 4th child.

Back to his birthday...

We had a ball themed birthday! He received a homemade basketball hoop and all the balls in the house gathered into one place! He also go a few new bath toys, which Taft and Joel tried out for him that night in the bathtub. 

He enjoyed his cake very much. He was not shy about sticking his fingers in it and he ate the entire thing!

We sent a special invitation to Alyssa to come to the birthday party. All the boys had signs on their backs. I think Kent's sign said "Come to my birthday & eat ice cream".

Kent is well-loved by everyone in the family. He is happy and excited! He likes to play with his brothers, even though they aren't always too excited to have him wreck their creations. He is our little blonde boy and we couldn't be happier that he is in our family!

Taft Turns 4! At last!

The day Joel turned 2 (August 8, 2019) Taft started counting down the days until his birthday. He would ask Google every day, "Hey Google, how many days until December tenf?" To which Google would reply "120", "98", "74", "52", "33"...etc. At last it was one day until December tenf, and finally, it came! 

Taft had quite the list for his birthday. It evolved over time, but some things that remained consistent were an automatic Duplo train, a calculator, a book lamp, and a box of Fruit Loops. I am happy to report that he received all of those things! 

The night before his birthday he received a remote control truck from a kind neighbor! This was a fun way to start off his birthday! Alyssa, Joel, and Kent thought so too!

The face of a happy four year old!

I've imposed traditions of cinnamony goodness for breakfast on birthdays. We had bubble bread! I have to admit, bubble bread was always Jacob's favorite and since Taft constantly reminds me of Jacob, I picked bubble bread for him for his birthday breakfast!

For a special birthday day, Taft went to school with Erik and made a few things in the maker space. They saw a few interesting things along the way. 

Taft designed a special birthday sign for himself that was then laser cutted. He also 3-D printed a mini tractor and it turns out if you tell college students it is your birthday, they will give you random stuff they have created like a laser cut dinosaur and some other 3-D printed plastic thing.

He took his calculator to help him with his design.

The finished product, with Dad!

The finished product, with the snowman.

Taft requested a monkey cake again this year. How could I say no to this cute guy?

Happy 4th Birthday to Taft! 

Taft is a blessing and miracle. He broke our barren streak. He is happy and thoughtful. He is always thinking and asking questions and trying to understand the world around him. He loves Google with all of his heart and is so thankful for the jokes she tells him and the music that she plays. Taft likes to be outside, ride his bike, climb, and explore. He is kind and sensitive. He and Alyssa are the best of friends and he and Joel are each other's sidekicks. Surely Taft, Joel, and Kent will be the Three Stooges!

Taft really likes to know what Erik is up to at school. He loves watching explosion videos from Erik's daily experiments. Last night at dinner we asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up. He thought for a minute and then said, "I fink I want to be an ice cream cone." So then Erik found this movie on YouTube...

Taft when he grows up...

Taft is going to be one funny ice cream cone!

Cheers!

November 2019

We do a lot of stuff. A few sparse pictures here and there trigger memories. We had some good times last November!

The weather finally turned nice. We spent a lot of time outside enjoying the sun, the clouds, the lack of mosquitoes and the unhumid air.

Kent likes to play with balls and I don't think he was quite crawling at this point. He was very content to sit and watch everyone from his blanket!

Alyssa had her first choir performance, "Space Out!" She sang the opening solo - "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"! It was beautiful and clear as a bell! Grandma and Grandpa came for the performance.

While Grandma and Grandpa were here we went to the Waller Creek light show. We went the first year we lived here and it was kind of scary. We parked in a scary part of town and had no idea what we were doing. This time it was less scary, the light show covered less distance, and its popularity had increased! We had to wait in a super long line to get in, but it all turned out wonderfully! We went to the Kid's Zone at the end, first and the kids made glow in the dark slime and Alyssa hula hooped with a lighted hula hoop very proficiently!

Another fun thing we did with Grandma and Grandpa was a self guided tour of the Texas State Capitol. No pictures were taken by me, though.

More of Kent in the dirt with his two little teeth. I think he looks like an inverse chipmunk. He's always sticking those two teeth out!

Alyssa makes good use of her book light. I think she was particularly warn out on this night!

For Thanksgiving we went to Angel Fire and Taos, New Mexico with the Archibald clans! We stopped halfway on the drive. This is a reenactment of "Brothers in Diapers on Hotel Sheets".

November 2019

August 2017

We stopped somewhere and had lunch. This was a cool army gun thing the kids and dads saw.

We made it to Angel Fire, and man, it was cold! Also, we came to appreciate the warning that if you couldn't drive on the roads, there would be no refund. We could not make it up the hill to the house and our van become a big white sled. Luckily Papa's truck was able to pull us up. 

It was very cold and snow! We stayed inside for a good majority of the trip, but we had lots of fun things to do! We played bingo, sang songs, made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, made paper airplanes and helicopters, had lots of fires, ate lots of good food, took family pictures, went sledding on sleds (and in cars), saw some deer/elk, went for a nature hike, ate more food, drank hot chocolate, celebrated december birthdays, celebrated Thanksgiving, etc. etc. etc. When Taft was asked what he is thankful for he said Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Kent is so fun to take pictures of but he moves so much they are all a little blurry!

Alyssa, Fife, Vera, and Joel all ready for pictures!

We went down Taos to get out of the house...

Kent fell asleep with a scarf wrapped around his head. And Joel got a unicorn because he uttered his first full sentence in front of Nana.

Joel walks up to a window and points to the unicorn, "I want that one."

Nana: "Oh! Let's go get it!" Or something like that.

Joel and Nana disappear into the store and emerge with "Corn".

We visited Taos Pueblo - a Native American village where people live or they want you to believe that they live, but really they just sell you the weirdest cookies you've ever tasted. We probably should have gone for the Indian Fry Bread.

So, that was November. Taft asked Google every day how many days until his birthday. Thankfully the number was getting bearably smaller. We enjoyed our time with family and our vacation to the freezing cold. We probably did other things that are not all pictured. Oh, like go to the Austin Zoo, which was actually pretty cool. It's a rescue zoo so there is a slight stigma that it is not that stellar, but they had lions and tigers, and tortoises and crocodiles. Joel has an animal aura because every time he walked by an animal it would become attentive. It was fun!