12.5 miles

That's how far I biked this morning. At Mike's Hike and Bike we've had a men's riding group leaving the shop a couple of days a week for several weeks now. I've been trying to find a good time to do a women's ride and decided that Saturday mornings are as good a time as any.

This morning was the first of them and I was the only person to show, which is not at all surprising since we did not really advertise this group ride. I did pretty well I think, I completed this ride in just under 1 hour - to make it back in time for the weekly family ride that we've been doing for a while now. No other families showed up for our ride this morning, but Mike and the kids and I had a good ride.

I enjoyed the time to myself and I'm in some selfish ways hoping that others don't show up. Well, that's not true. I want them to show up for that ride, but I want to be sure to have at least one other good ride a week to myself.

I meandered through the countryside, mooed at some cows, and just enjoyed the freedom that a bicycle offers.

Don't read the back of baby food ...

unless you really want to be freaked out by what they put into the food that is supposed to feed babies!

I can tell you (because I have read the back of the packages) that some of the wost processed and man-made ingredients find their way into baby-food. In addition to the huge number of things that you can't pronounce and you're sure you don't want to know what they are are the several kinds of sugary or sugar substitute products. Can some one please tell me why you need to add sugar to fruit? Is it just me or is there something inherently wrong with putting sugar into very naturally sweet food items.

Can you tell I'm smack in the middle of the "what the heck am I gonna feed this kid today" stage? She only has two bottom teeth, but she wants to eat everything in site. She likes me to spoon food into her mouth; she likes to pick up the pieces and eat it herself; mostly she just likes to eat. I just have a hard time figuring out what to fix her to eat everyday. I wish there were a few more good (healthy) options that didn't require prep work on my part. As many of you know I'm the queen of hunger, but the (what is opposite of "queen of something"?) not-queen of preparing meals or figuring out what to prepare. If I have a fixed menu in advance, I do OK, but the whole, walk into the kitchen and whip something up is just not my forte.

I like Morgan's age. She just tells me what she wants. The only problem with this approach is that she occasionally tells me something that we don't have on hand. I usually just find something and figure out a way to make it what she asked for. Although, she's getting wise enough now that if I tell her that we don't have something she tells me to go to the grocery store to buy it. :) I really love the almost 3 stage, really I do. :)

So, here's to hoping I make it through this stage with Kenna and eventually she tells me that she wants a mayonnaise sandwich or something equally appetizing. (If you're kid ever asks for it, don't tell them you'll give them turkey with mayonnaise on it. Just ask if they want turkey or roast beef on their mayonnaise sandwich. This tactic has saved me from several meltdowns.)

Going down river again

We took the girls down (and back up) a short stretch of the Kentucky River again today. Mike's parents have a pontoon boat that we took out with his dad today. While we were going down the river, we realized that this is the first motorized boat ride (excluding the Ferry ride to Granny Nannie's house) that the girls have ever taken. We all enjoyed ourselves.

Kenna much preferred the amount of space offered on the pontoon compared to the canoe on our last trip. Actually, I think the real positive for her is that she has grown enough that the PFD doesn't force her chin up. She was crawling all over the boat and standing looking over the rail.

Morgan's favorite part was when we let her jump off of the back of the boat into the water. She is quite the swimmer, and we're doing everything we can to encourage it. We've been going to the pool at EKU at least once a week to let her swim in the big pool. She is very happy to go underwater to try to swim, she likes blowing bubbles, and she loves jumping off the wall. The biggest problem with the EKU swimming pool is the kiddie pool. When Morgan gets in there and "swims" she ends up putting her feet on the bottom which just encourages the "standing" swim instead of the belly position.

When she does the "standing" kick she just turns circles. Today in the river, she had her PFD on, so it was much more comfortable for her to be on her belly instead of upright. This really helped her get the hang of how to move forward in the water instead of spinning circles. She propelled herself several feet forward a couple of times today. Now, if we can just transfer that skill to the swimming pool without the PFD we'll be "golden" as Michael says.

Kenna also enjoyed swimming in the river. She floated around on her back for most of the time that we were jumping off the boat and swimming around. While doing so, she drank much more of the water than I would like to admit. She had a big smile on her face every time she turned her head to the side and the water just washed right into her mouth.

We had a camera (old style with film, smile) with us today. We actually got some pictures of this river adventure. I'll try to get them developed and scanned in to share here.

11 days

That's how long it's been since I last posted. I even have friends e-mailing me to tell me to get back to it. It is funny how you can post for several days in a row, but if you just miss one then it is sometimes easy to just keep putting it off.

A friend of mine is posting daily until her twin boys turn 2 (just a couple of weeks to go). I was trying to keep pace with her, but as you can see I've fallen way behind. So, I'm committing to at least trying to post more frequently. I won't be here daily I'm sure, but I will try to come more frequently or at least post from my e-mail account.

I think I can do fairly well while I'm "off" for the summer, but I'm afraid once school starts back up again, I'll be dreadfully behind all of the time.

And the race is on

If you remember Kenna learned to crawl about a week ago. She has become amazingly fast in that short amount of time. Check her out moving quickly in the video (it's my first one on-line; so forgive me that it is sideways and forgive me for the file being so large).




Today, we were all outside playing when I remembered that I needed to return a call for an interpreting job. I put Kenna as far away as possible from the little pool we have on the patio and I walked up the steps. I went inside, walked to the dinning room, got the paper with the phone number on it, and dialed the phone number on the phone. Just after dialing the number I stepped back on the porch.

When I looked down to the patio to see what the girls were doing, Kenna was leaning over the side of the baby pool splashing happily. Let's just say I wasn't so happy to see her like that. She was fine in this case, but it really made me think about how quickly she can get into dangerous situtations. Just another vivid reminder to me to "never leave a child unattended near a pool."

On an other note, Morgan amazes me everyday. After making my phone call I put Kenna the rest of the way in the pool and was splashing and playing with her. Morgan was blowing bubbles that she got at a friend's wedding and all in all running around like a heathen on the patio. We don't have much shade out there. At one point Morgan asked me to get something for her. I told her that she could climb up to do it. After investigating the situation further, she walked toward the pool and said "I will put water shoes on." Then she put one foot in the pool reached down and "tied" the laces. Then she switched feet to put the other foot in the pool and tie the laces. Then she got out and walked to where she was reaching for the bubbles. Before she got there she decided she needed more "water shoes." She came over and this time, she put both feet into the pool and tied the laces up really tight (meaning several times of pretend tieing) then walked all the way to what she wanted, got it, and walked back. How did she even think of that? I mean besides the obvious of the water keeps your feet cooler on hot pavement.

The trouble with cars

is that the kids fall asleep in them at the worst times. You may remember a previous post of mine when both of my kids fell asleep in the car when I was making a trip to Lexington specifically to check out a store and to stop at the library to pick up some reserved materials. Mike wasn't with me; so, I ended up coming home without accomplishing much.

Today was a totally different story. Michael and I headed out to the Peddler's Market to look around for a few things. We took the bikes and the trailer with kids in it. When we got to the store the kids were asleep in the trailer. Now, if we'd been in the car one of us would have stayed with the sleeping kids and the other would have gone in to do the looking. Today, we just unhooked the trailer from the bike and both went right in the store. We got most of the looking done before Kenna woke up. Morgan didn't wake up until we had to shove her over so Kenna could get back in the trailer to go home.

All in all, our family had a wonderful relaxing day without the car. Ok, Mike did take the car to go bring his parents' dog here to play with our dogs while they (his parents) were out of town, but other than that it was another car-less day in the Hale household.

Mike's Hike and Bike

Things at the store are moving right along.

We had another family ride this morning (every Saturday morning at 9 AM). Two other families joined us for a few miles around town. It looked like it might rain when we first got started this morning, but the clouds moved on and it was a beautiful morning for a ride.

In addition to family rides we're trying to get a couple of other groups set up. I'm trying to get a Women's ride going. I think it will probably just be one or possibly two times per month. We also have a friend that is hoping to get an evening group ride that will go from the shop.

Mike is also going to be doing a safety and repair clinic the next two Tuesday nights at the Richmond (12th) and Berea (19th) libraries.

We have customers in the store pretty steadily all day on most days. Many of them are buying things so that is a plus. Even if they don't buy something on the first visit, we're getting lots of repeat visitors/customers. We're enjoying getting to know more people in the community through the shop.

Zoo Passes and Vans are great!

We loaded up our van on Thursday for a wild adventure. We had 5 babes in car-seats, 3 mommas, 3 strollers, and enough "gear" to keep all of the mommas and babies happy for the trip. I love the size of this van. I used to think it was overkill, but we've used it to full capacity several times now. I hate driving several cars to go places as a group because much of the group experience is lost in transportation, but this van allowed all three families to ride together and enjoy the full spectacle of my children crying most of the way to Louisville. ;)


I'll also just say that babies in the van should always be buckled into the car seats or they may fall out of a non-moving van. (See my friend Deborah's blog for proof positive that falling out of a stationary van does in fact leave big ugly ouchies). Two of the five kids fell out of the van while we were getting car-seats situated.

After some crying fits by several of the children (two of which were mine - the other had a big ouchie on his head) we finally made it to the Lousivlle Zoo. We are members and we highly recommend becoming a member of your local zoo (or the closest one you have). Our family pass gets us in as often as we want for free, and we frequently get coupons for getting other people in too. For all 8 of us we only paid for one admission. It does help that non of the kids are old enough to be charged admission yet.

Although it was hot, we had a great time looking at the animals, watching the children interact with one another, and talking with other adults.

Here are a few highlights of our day: Kenna's first kiss - well really, this was not the first of the day heck I think Charlie may have even beat Jackson to the "first kiss", but you get the idea.



And for the "after the kiss" picture, you see how much she liked the Weber boys' kisses.

Morgan is hitting the stage where she realizes that she is "big" compared to babies, but that she is actually quite small when compared to adults and some animals. The first exhibit was of the orangutans. It was holding on to something above the glass and it was right up against the glass. When I heard her say "Mommy, get me out of here." I quickly undid the buckle of the stroller and picked her up to walk closer - then she yelled even louder "Mommy, get me outta here!" Ahh, now the dummy momma figures it out - she wants out of the building not out of the stroller.

After we decided to steer clear of exhibits inside of buildings/shelters, she was fine and back to her normal self of enjoying the animals. Just after seeing the giraffes up close and personal Morgan decided to ride this giraffe.

That look of wonder is one of the things I really love about that kid.

Traveling family

We're trying to keep our "weekends" (Sunday and Monday - the store closed days) free to do family things and not much else.

This weekend, we went to Indiana to visit Michael's brother Carroll and his wife Sarah. We had a great visit of bicycling around their nice neighborhood and hanging out on the front porch. The also cooked us a great steak lunch.

Morgan enjoyed the wide open spaces for running around, Kenna enjoyed tasting lots of grass and leaves.

After leaving their place we went to Cliffy Falls State Park to camp. It was a nice, quiet evening. Morgan played in the campfire ring for about 45 minutes straight. And who says that 2-year-olds don't have long attention spans?

Kenna Crawls!

Ok, it is more like a crab walk at this point, but heck she made a good 3 or 4 foot of forward movement today toward an object.

Over the past month I've tried every enticing object I could find to get her to continue moving forward instead of dropping to the belly and doing the fish-swimmy-thing. I put down the beloved-goldfish (you know that yummy, but completely unhealthy eatable things), I put dangerous toys in her path, I put the non-puke-proof camera just out of reach. None of it worked.

Today we stopped by Sportsman's Warehouse (checking out the competition's selection and prices - not shopping) and she crawled directly across the floor to reach the hanger that Morgan had removed from the PFD that she was wearing. I moved the darn hanger and she came after it again without the silly swimming thing!

Ahh, gone are the days of leaving Kenna unattended and unstrapped down. We're firmly into the mobile mania days!