Sunday, April 27, 2008

This Story Has Teeth, and It Has Legs

In the past two weeks, there's hasn't been a lot of excitement, except Keelie is finally teething, and she's starting to walk unaided.

I think I finally captured proof that Keelie is a cyborg. Check out her right eye in that shot.

Actually, I kind of expect an outfit like this to come with a light saber.

"Use The Force, Keelie."

Or, you can just make a funny face.

That's our little blue-eyed gal. We almost caught her smiling on camera.

Probably because she is teething, she has also taken to sticking her tongue out. Here's a short video clip taken right after we put Oragel on her gums.

See? Not much going on around here.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Keelie Feeds Shelby

Okay, here's the short clip of Keelie feeding Shelby.

Taxed For Time

Finally, the moment you have been waiting for is here!

Keelie loves playing with red plastic lids.

Greetings from record-hot Anaheim. Certainly no flooding or snow problems here.

It’s been almost a month since the last update on what we’ve been up to. Mostly, we’ve been watching Keelie grow and develop. I’ve been working, but Kori has been doing the really tough job of holding down the fort. Keelie is very blessed to have the Mommie she does. One of the things Kori does is make Keelie’s food from scratch from fresh fruits and vegetables, instead of using jars of store-bought baby food. What a dedicated Mommie.

Kori did our taxes already, thankfully, so we’re not running around trying to get those done this weekend.

Keelie dives for the floor in an escape attempt. It's okay, Keelie. We file our taxes honestly.

Getting back to Keelie...she’s now almost ten months and has progressed quite a bit since our last update. When we go shopping, she loves sitting in the cart and trying to make eye contact with everyone. She’s become quite the quick and determined crawler, much to the dismay of the dog. But she’s also good at standing and walking, as long as there is something nearby to hold as security. Keelie does brief stints of standing without support - she doesn't even realize she's doing it, really. For some reason, she loves tearing up paper napkins and trying to eat them. She gets a little upset when we remove the pieces from her mouth to keep her from gagging.

When she is on the couch standing next to me, she’ll sometimes start jumping from a squatting position, over and over again. Her legs must be getting strong. If she’s not doing that, she’ll the glasses from our heads with the speed of Bruce Lee. But mostly, she isn’t content to stay on the couch anymore. She'll start climbing up the back of the couch, or slide off head first down to the floor so she can stand up at the coffee table and grab stuff, or move on to other parts of the room. I just want to hold her and play with her, but she has better things to do! At the coffee table or television, she’ll “slap” the surface like she’s a drummer. She’ll also do this when she crawls over to me when I’m in bed... standing there and slapping my shoulder and arm like she’s giving me a massage.

Keelie with Grampa Pellman on Easter Sunday. She was tired.

She gets thrilled when she's in the playpen, and standing at the side and looking out, and we'll play a game where we are face to face, then we both duck down and are looking at each other through the mesh of the play pen, then we straighten back up to look at each other over the top... she finds that hilarious.

The other night, she was having a good time dropping food over the side of her feeding chair and laughing at Shelby, who would franticly it up. Shelby loves to act as though we don’t have a bowl of food available for her at all times.

Keelie still hates going to sleep, hates changing clothes, and has now developed an aversion to the car seat. The moment we get to the car seat, she’ll arch her back and then, when she feels something, she will flip over, preventing us from snapping her in. It’s quite the effort to finally get her in, now, and she protests.

Speaking of protests, Keelie has picked up clapping, but doesn't quite know the uses for it yet. For example, she will clap in the middle of a crying session. Perhaps she is being sarcastic?

Awwwww!

Easter Sunday, we fell behind schedule because Keelie wouldn’t go to sleep the night before. We stopped by to see Grampa Pellman, Grandma Kathleen, her niece, and everyone else at her niece's place. We couldn't stay long, but we did take some pictures, as you saw. From there, it was on to my mother's, where the rest of my family was getting together. My youngest maternal cousin, Jennifer, was there from out of state on Spring Break from college.

Keelie was really tired because she hadn't taken her usual naps, so she ended up falling asleep in Kori's arms for about two hours (above). We waited for her to wake up before we left my mother's.

We’ve returned to my mother’s place on a weekly basis since, so that my mother, sisters, brother, brother-in-law, and nephews can see Keelie. We’ve also been over to Kori’s parents’ place, but not as often because Puma left town on a trip.

I took Shelby into PetsMart for grooming, as she was getting stinky and her fur was getting bad, and the weather is getting hot. Shelby now looks like a different dog and Keelie probably thinks she is.

Last weekend, we were able to slip in a short visit to the Disneyland Resort. Keelie really enjoyed the tram ride. Heck, we could have turned around and gone right back home and she would have had a great time.

We walked around Disneyland Park a bit and took Keelie on Peter Pan’s Flight for the first time. She didn't like it, because we had to hold her to make her face forward with that lap bar in her face. We ran into the same problem we’ve been running into lately with placing her in her car seat. We slipped into California Adventure to check out some of the recent construction there.

So, as you can see, nothing too exciting going on these days, and that can be a good thing.


Thanks for stopping by. Leave a comment here or write us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Granddaddy's Pictures of Keelie

It's been way too long since an update - thanks for acting as though life goes on as normal even though we know you're suffering "Pellman Update Withdrawl Syndrome". (Actually, thanks for indulging us as first time parents.) We're going to reward your patience and effective coping skills with some "new" pictures from the last several months. One of our regular updates will be coming soon.

Keelie's Granddaddy is an excellent photographer. Recently, we were able to take home some copies of his pictures. All eight pictures in this entry are from his files. Thanks, Granddaddy!

Remember - if you click on the picture, you can get a bigger version.

This one is from around Thanksgiving.

Here is the man himself with his granddaughter. Check out that expression on her face.

That picture was from around the first of the year as is this one below - we were celebrating Uncle Steve's birthday. There's Aunt Kendra, Uncle Steve, Kori, and... some lucky guy holding Keelie.

From mid-January, Keelie celebrates her mom's birthday...


There's Keelie snuggling up to the birthday girl. A beautiful lady and a cute little girl.

These next two pictures are from late January. Puma is getting her granddaughter to laugh and smile, and Keelie is returning the favor.

Too cute.

Finally, from the start of March, here I am enjoying being Daddy.

Thanks for stopping by. As I wrote above, we hope to update you on what we've been up to over the last few weeks. You can leave a comment here, or write us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.