Summer is Here!

Since I last updated this blog, I had a birthday, Keelie had her third birthday, and my nephew Macon graduated from my alma mater. On a sad note, we lost Aunt Vicky. No, not my sister. The woman who married my mother’s late uncle. She was Aunt Vicky long before that, though. She had been in declining health and had defied the odds for a long time – her death was not unexpected, but still sad.

She’s the one in red in this picture…

When she saw the picture later, she asked, “Did I really wear red to your wedding?!?” Of course, it was December and reds and greens were part of the look of the wedding. She was like a grandmother to me, though she hated to be called that, so it was always “Aunt” Vicky.

On to happier thoughts… like playtime!

Yes, we have a playpen full of colorful plastic balls.

The next five pictures were taken by Kori’s father, who definitely knows his way around a camera.

Keelie is getting into animated features, so I get to watch some of the DVDs in my collection. “Toy Story” and the sequel are favorites. She sings “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and she also likes “Mary Poppins” and will sing the songs from that movie, which goes along fine with the Sherman Brothers songs she knows from Disneyland.

Kyle is quite the crawler, and he’s learned to stand up without holding on to anything and sit back down.

The whole family relaxing in the hot tub…

Kyle has been in the habit of nibbling on his own toes. When I try, Keelie says, “No Daddy! Kyle’s toes are yucky!” They aren’t yet though, since he’s not walking. Well, he was doing his thing and his cousin decided she wanted to try…

…ah yes… one of those pictures that will come back to haunt both of them.

Keelie and Kyle got decked out in Tiger Orange for Cousin Macon’s graduation.

I went to SPHS, as did Kim, Vicki, Chris, and Blaine.

There’s Cousin Blaine holding Kyle, Autie Kim, Cousin Macon in his gown, Nanny, Uncle Mike, Aunt Vicki, and Keelie.

Keelie contemplates turning 3.

For Keelie’s birthday, we had some people over for a party – it was mostly a family event, but when you have families the size of ours, that’s a lot of people. We’d only hosted one such event before since moving in. Keelie had a lot of fun and certainly enjoyed the presents and cake. So much so that fives days later she informed Kori that she was ready to turn 4, have everybody come back, and have me bring home another cake – but one with four candles. But she also talks about going back to being 2 and thus getting her crib back.

Kyle hams it up for the camera as we watch Keelie enjoying one of her presents…

Keelie points to where she’s going to hit the ball.

Well, there you have it. Thanks for stopping by to check out this latest update. Leave a comment here or e-mail us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.

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Grad, Dads, and a Birthday!

So hard to believe it has been over a year since Keelie emerged into the world!

Keelie is doing well as far as height, weight, head size, and developmentally. She got her latest round of shots and was really upset about it but was fine after a couple of minutes.

We tried to surprise my father with dinner out the Friday before Father’s Day. All of us – Kathleen, my dad, Kori, Keelie, and I - hadn’t been together since Easter Sunday.

In this picture, you can see Keelie’s technique of getting everything from the bottle without using her hands, which she likes having free to pick up things and to point.

These days, if you pick her up, you are almost guaranteed to get her to point to something and say, “Muh!”

Here she is having a good time sitting next to Grampa. Notice the bottle.

For Granddaddy, Kori’s family - all of us but Toby and Kirby, who couldn't make it - got together at Marie Calendar’s on Father’s Day.

Keelie has become obsessed with patty-cake, and will grab your hands or wrists, no matter where they are, so she can get you to perform for her. Like so...

Shelby and Keelie are interacting more, with Shelby being more willing to allow Keelie to put her hands on her. But it sure looks like she’s tired.

My nephew Blaine graduated from SPHS, my high school alma mater, and the ladies and I joined my entire family at the graduation ceremony. At an SPHS function, you’re just as likely to recognize a face because of their appearance in film or on television as you are because of family resemblances. “Do I know you? Or do I just know your work?”

As always, the grads are reunited with their friends and family on the baseball field after the ceremony.

Here they are all together – Mike, Blaine, Kim, and Macon. In the background, you can catch a glimpse of the high school’s pool, where I spent much of my childhood and adolescence engaging in recreational swim, swimming lessons, swimming practice, races, and community service. And sunbathing. Ah yes… soaking up the deadly rays of the sun and going through puberty in a Speedo.

We did go swimming after the festivities… but that was back at Nanny’s condo complex. Here you can see Keelie in a rocking chair at Nanny’s that is a family heirloom. My mother was counting up the generations that had sat in that chair as of Keelie’s use… I think it was six.

Keelie’s birthday was celebrated over at Puma & Granddaddy’s. Here’s Keelie about the moment she reached a full year.

Keelie and I enjoyed the pool. I have been taking her “swimming” at our condo, too.

After dinner but before presents, Keelie got to enjoy a cake, albeit with everyone standing around - two big, flashing cameras, and a video camera pointed at her.

She probably expected me to take the cake away and clean her hands and face. She seemed a little hesitant.

She did manage to get into it enough to make a little mess. Such a cutie.

Thanks for stopping by! Please let us know how you are doing. You can leave a comment for us here or e-mail us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Happy Mother's Day

It's Kori and Keelie's first Mother's Day since the umbilical cord was cut. Woo-hoo! Kori has been such a great mother to Keelie. She takes to it like a duck to water, or like a nerd to Apple products.

We've been keeping things simple around here. Hopefully, we'll be looking for a house before too long. If the prices continue to go lower, perhaps there will be someplace around here under the seven figure mark.

Now for a round of the game "Where's Keelie?"

Keelie has become very familiar and comfortable with the family room, and can navigate around it quite well. If we don't put the gate up, she'll make a beeline for kitchen. If we get the gate up before she make it there, she let's us know how disappointed she is in our protectionist ways. She's at the point where walking is becoming preferable to crawling, but if she elects to crawl, off she'll go! She also climbs into her little rocker, though she' s more apt to slide and wiggle off of furniture, or out of someone's grasp.

Shelby and Keelie seem to have arrived at a new level in their interaction. Shelby is still not always happy with Keelie, but is more open to playing with her. That's probably because Keelie slips so much of her food to her.

Below we can see Keelie inviting Shelby to join her in waiting for me to come home.


"Nope, that's not Daddy. He's coming. Mommie says so."

"There's Daddy!"

I like how both Keelie and Shelby express excitement at my return. The topper, though, is getting the welcome home from Kori!

We like these pictures below, because if Keelie ever wanders away, we'll have good "mug shots" of her.

"Look to this side, Keelie."

"Okay, now look to this side."

She's our little blue-eyed cutie.

I wanted to slip in some more photos of Keelie and Shelby waiting for me on a different day. Can you blame me?

"Hey, Daddy's almost here."

"Open...open....open..."

We decided to go to see my mother a day early and spend some time with her, Kim, and Kim's family. Here Auntie Kim is helping as Keelie learns "Patty Cake".

Keelie loves to play with lids. She'll bang two together to make noises. She's got rhythm.

Here's a short video clip of her playing in Nanny's kitchen.

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We Survived Groundhog Day

It has been more than couple of weeks, so it is time for another update.

Keelie tends to wake up in the morning in a great mood, but strongly protests bedtime.

We’ve been seeing Puma & Granddaddy regularly, as they often have their kids over for dinner.

Keelie has had recent follow-ups with doctors. She’s at the taller and heavier end for her age. When she got the second part of her flu shot, she took it pretty well. Much better than getting four shots in rapid succession.

On a recent afternoon off, Kori arranged for us to drop Keelie off with Kendra & Steve (who are great at being her aunt and uncle) for a couple of hours so that we could be alone. It seems ridiculous, but that is where we are for a few reasons, including the fact that Keelie doesn’t take long naps and she’d much rather be interacting with one of us than playing with a toy.

But... she is very cute when she does nap.

Of course, we think she is cute all of the time.

Keelie has been enjoying all sorts of “solid” foods, most of which Kori has diligently prepared from raw materials. I am usually the one to feed Keelie her dinner (Kori feeds her the other meals), and it is a lot of fun. She gets all excited and slaps her hands on the tray, makes a face as she inhales sharply, and then says "mah-mah-mah-mah", which she has taken to saying at other times, too.

Below, she sits in her feeding chair, anticipating the culinary delights.

She promptly falls asleep when the sound of it doesn't excite her.

But then she perks up when she realizes that she has inherited my eating genes, and loves just about any meal!

Keelie seems to be fixated on left ears. Not sure if that is because we hold her on our left sides more often, or what. She also is interested in Kori’s hair, which Kori has taken to wearing in a bun so that less of it is torn out. She is very good at snatching our eyeglasses for taste tests, and loves running her hands over our faces in general. Crinkling up junk mail can keep her entertained for several minutes.

Here she is with the drawstring from Kori's sweatshirt.

We went to babysit for Chrissy & James, who have an 18 month-old boy. Our daughter and their son got along just fine. But they really didn’t interact all that much.

This past Friday evening, we had dinner at Puma & Granddaddy’s. The highlight was when we were all standing around and Keelie said "Ma-ma!"

It had been a few weeks since my mother and siblings had seen Keelie, so we went to my mother's place for dinner this past weekend, where my mother, Kim, Vicky, and my nephews could see how Keelie had grown. I think Blaine has grown even more. He’s 17 and getting really tall, so he looks different each time we see him.

Here's Keelie with Aunt Kim.

And Keelie with Kori...

Keelie has become quite adept at rolling to get from here to there, and has finally picked up crawling. She’s not an expert crawler yet, though, often sliding on her belly or getting up on her feet instead of her knees. Her favorite thing is standing, grabbing our thumbs for balance. Lately, she has realized that she can stand up by grabbing on to furniture, too.

Shelby continues to adapt. She knows exactly how far away she has to stand from Keelie to avoid her clutches, as Kori noticed.

Like 100 million other people, we watched the Superbowl. One more NFL football game left, and then Keelie will have to find something else that interests her until the next pre-season. I liked the commercial with Richard Simmons.

And now, since you've been so good, here's a word from Keelie...

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A Dip in the Pool and Making the Rounds

After I last blogged here, on Saturday the 15th, we took a trip to the Disneyland Resort, to Disneyland Park in particular. It was the first time we pushed Keelie around in her stroller, still in the car seat because it attaches to the stroller. No pictures, though. I didn’t think to snap one. Oh well.

All we did was walk around. That’s it. We roughly circled the park in the after-dark hours to take a look at how things were, and we came home. Keelie slept for a good chunk of the time. We find it a little difficult to stay out in public too long.

The next evening, we caught a little bit of the Emmys. I think it is a little silly that we have to watch stuff three hours after it happens because we’re on the west coast. The upside is that all I had to do was a quick search online to find out why people were getting cut off in mid-sentence with an odd camera shot accompanied by silence.

We are part of a homeowners association, although there has been almost no activity with it since I married Kori and moved in (yes - in that order). There was a single contentious meeting last year, attended by a rabble-rouser who doesn’t even own or live here. I suspect he was there simply to get people to join his activist organization, because once the “minority” group he was targeting signed up with him, he disappeared, apparently sidetracked with bigger fish to fry in some more high-profile protests last year.

Well, this week there was another meeting. This time, without the huckster. We’ve hired a new management company. The old company didn’t really do anything. This new company claims to be strict, which I know can be a mixed blessing. The downside is that our fees (or whatever the technical term is) will likely increase, but they are ridiculously low right now.

But enough about such mundane matters. Most of you are here to get your Keelie update.

Keelie hit two milestones this week. She hit 3 months of age, and she’s up to the weight she should be, given her birth weight and her age. Yay! Kori has put in a lot of hard work. As a result, we are graduating Keelie from her newborn onesies.

These pictures are from Keelie’s 13-week mark, a day before she turned 3 months old.

Eyes are opening up...

There they are!

Friday, we went to Puma and Granddaddy Keel’s to visit with them and to enjoy their wonderful pool.

It was Keelie’s first time in water, aside from the bath. She didn’t hate it.

I barely recognize this man holding my daughter.

Puma’s enthusiasm for her granddaughter has not diminished in the slightest.

We stayed for quite a while, and so I went and picked up dinner for the four of us. Granddaddy Keel wasn’t feeling well, so he didn’t hold Keelie, which is why there is no picture of that.

Yesterday, we ran some errands and made some more visits. That’s no small feat around the Los Angeles County/Orange County area when we’re undergoing the first real rainfall in many months. Even on a Saturday, traffic was horrible and there were accidents everywhere.

We stopped by Nanny’s, so that Nanny, Aunt Kim, and Aunt Binky could all hold Keelie again.

They are also unfailingly eager to see Keelie.

From there, it was off to True’s housewarming/birthday party. The place was packed. Even though we hadn’t seen the house before, we could tell True had really done a great job on the place.

Keelie hadn’t met Marina since being born, so it was nice to let Marina take Keelie off our hands for a little while.

There were two other babies there and lots of food. It was good.

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