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.

Keelie is Seven Months Old

Keelie is seven months old, and Kori also celebrated a birthday. Wow, how time flies. I still want to write 2007 when writing the date.

I finally managed to catch Keelie gumming her toes on camera.

Not wanting to be rude, she offered me her toes, too.

Who can resist?

It has been a couple of weeks since out last blog update. In that time, Kori turned...an age older than seven months. Yes, another birthday has come and gone. We celebrated by getting sick with something that has been going around.

Actually, first we had a blast celebrating Steve’s birthday late at Puma & Granddaddy’s where Kendra threw him a party. Puma had to leave for work, so she only got to hold Keelie for a bit. Granddaddy, though, was at the party and helped put the karaoke machine to good use. There was a good turnout and more than enough good food. People took turns holding Keelie.

Several days later, the celebrations for Kori’s birthday began. First there was the dinner at Claim Jumper – just the three of us. Then another day, our dear friend Dale got our good friends Dave & Jenn into Disneyland Park so that we could treat them to dinner. It was our graduation present to Dave. We also took some rides, including Keelie’s first trip on Pirates of the Caribbean. Here she is being our lookout on the Buzz Lightyear attraction.

See how she cleverly pretended to be asleep on my arm? That child is a military genius!




Then came Kori’s birthday dinner at Puma & Granddaddy’s. We had a birthday dinner again the next night at Nanny’s.

Here's Keelie being a lookout again.

Finally, last night we had a specially prepared dinner with Grampa and Grandma, prepared by Grampa, to jointly celebrate Kori and Kathleen’s birthdays. You can see Grampa still working away on dinner in this shot.

Keelie really likes gumming fingers.

In this shot, Keelie forgets to not smile when the camera takes her picture.

Grampa and pink tissue paper is all that is needed to entertain Keelie, but Grampa used a stuffed animal anyway.

We finally had the cable company install their recorder, and we’ve instantly become addicted to it. It will help us keep up with the new seasons of American Idol and The Apprentice, and of course it is handy to pause those political ads on the ballot propositions so we can see that they are sponsored by "a coalition of people who sponsor ads for some ballot propositions and against other propositions and the Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things."

Keelie still likes watching football. Too bad the season is almost over. She also really likes to stand up, using our hands for balance rather than support. However, we're still trying to get her to crawl properly instead of rolling and using other work-arounds to bring what she wants closer to her.

Not much else to say, because we’ve been taking it easy to recover. Thanks for stopping by again and let us know how and what you are doing. You can comment here or write us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [com].

Keelie, Weird Al, and Fires - Oh My!

Thanks for tuning in to the Los Angeles Pellmans of Anaheim. It’s time for another photo update. Remember, you can usually click on a picture to see a bigger version.

First of all, as I write, there is a “red flag warning” again as far as the weather conditions, but the fire situation was under control the last time I checked. Where we live, we get ash, smoke, and haze, but the fires don’t ever come close to us, thankfully. But here I am grabbing Keelie just in case.

Okay... so where did we leave off? Oh yes… on the 20th of October, we went to get Keelie’s “official” four-month photo. Unfortunately, the place was busy because everyone was taking pictures for their holiday cards. We arrived in time for our appointment, and Keelie was great for the hour we ended up waiting. Then, the moment it was time to take her picture, she got very upset. It probably had to do with her adorable costume.

We ended up letting some other people go ahead of us and then we got a photo of Keelie after she fell asleep.

Saturday also happened to be the last night of the “Weird Al” Yankovic tour!!! We went to my mother's for dinner and to drop off Keelie, taking along her swing and some other stuff. It was the first time Keelie would be without either of us. My mother and Kim were happy to babysit. Kori and I took off for the Greek Theater. The Santa Ana winds were really going, and the Greek is in Griffith Park, where there had been some fires earlier this year.

The concert wasn’t sold out, and given that it was the last night of the tour, that’s understandable. Al and the band had made plenty of other southern California appearances in the preceding months. Guess who was there, though? Dave, the creative Idea Guy I once interned under. He was being a cool uncle again and taking his nephew to the concert.

Al and the band were flawless. They always put on one heck of a show. It wasn't quite the experience I was used to, though, probably because I didn't have my friends with me who are also Al fans. It’s a long story, but Kori and I were never sure we were actually going to the concert until about a minute before we walked through the door, and that lack of certain anticipation also kind of subdued me.

It was the first time I didn’t linger after the concert. So, I'm no longer a Weird Al Die-Hard Fan. I'm a WANNA-BE Weird Al Die-Hard Fan!!! All of the Close Personal Friends of Al, Al-oholics, Al-lies, and Yank-ees laugh at me and mock me for my failure.

But we had to get back to our little cutie.

Keelie had been mostly good for my family. She was asleep when we picked her up and she slept on the way home.

The next morning, we woke up to find that Malibu was on fire, and for the rest of the week the fires would be on television and radio nonstop. We could hear the strong Santa Ana winds all day and for the next few days.

For dinner that night, we went to Puma & Granddaddy Keel’s.

Okay, here are some pics of Keelie on the couch.

Looks like she is so happy to be photographed. Yes, she is on her way to becoming America's Next Top Model.

"Hmmmm, covering my eyes didn't work. Maybe covering my ears?"

I ended up working quite late at the end of my workweek, thanks to the Medfly. Then, instead of starting my weekend, I was up early the next day and off to the Palos Verdes Peninsula to do news media work.

In the evening, the entire Keel clan met for dinner in Fountain Valley to remember Kori’s Grandmommy Keel, who had passed away after a long convalescence.

It seemed like everyone had some stage of a cold, which was okay because Keelie did, too.

There she is with Auntie Kendra and Uncle Steve, and below are Auntie Kirby, Uncle Troy, and Uncle Toby.

As you can see below, Puma is completely bored with Keelie now ;-)

Granddaddy Keel got his turn to hold Keelie.

We went to Steve & Kendra’s annual Halloween party, which was a lot of fun.

We were able to make it down to see Boot Hill in Irvine, which is getting better and better every year. Keelie wasn't scared in the least.

This past Tuesday evening, we went to El Cholo for our last fix of green corn tamales until next May.

Wednesday, we went back to my old apartment complex (where I still have family) and used it as the base of our “trick or treating”. Really, what we did was dress Keelie up in her costume and went around to show some of the gang in South Pas. We even ended up getting a tour of my childhood home, which I’d been in once since it was sold, but Kori had never stepped foot inside. I was glad she got the tour. The family that bought it keeps it immaculately clean, and they’ve really done a nice job with the place. I had lived there from about the time I had my first birthday until I moved out for my freshman year of college, and my family had continued to live there for a few more years after that.

Keelie was getting fussy, so we had to stop making the rounds.

Kori, mercifully, takes care of Keelie when I sleep, and usually doesn’t have me get up to tend to her. Keelie still tends to wake up a few times overnight, and on my days off, one of us is usually holding her during the day, switching off to let the other person get something done. As a result, we feel like were getting very little done and some stuff just falls through the cracks. I also feel like an old fogie, with cutting back on activities due to time, energy, or logistics.

But gosh darnit, Keelie’s such an adorable little girl, with her laughs and her smiles and her eyes, and it is so heart-warming to see Kori mothering her.

I almost forgot – Keelie really likes her left foot, for some reason. She’ll grab it with her left hand and hold on to it.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this latest update. You can always comment here or you can e-mail us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com.