First Haircut

Gave Kieran a haircut yesterday.  He's had a couple of snips in the past already, but yesterday turned into, like, an actual haircut.  That's how long his hair was!  The bangs were dangerously close to being in his eyes, but what really bothered me was the hair hanging over his ears.  I spent months now trying to wait it out for a long-hair style to emerge.  But I just felt it wasn't tapping into his cuteness potential enough.

So I hacked it off above the ears.  But you know how that tends to go with a moving baby.  One side was ok, but other was a spock-looking straight line. Ugh.  So I tried to fix that.  It may have helped a little, but the more I looked at him the more I worried that it was a little too mullet-y for comfort.  So I trimmed almost all the hair in the back as well.  His bangs were still long, but today I trimmed just a teeny, tiny bit off of them too.  Hopefully it works.

Man, babies are the hardest to give haircuts to!  Except for Brennan at any age ;-)

Some before shots from last month.  Gosh, look at those bangs!

Aaaaaaaand, "after" shots you'll just have to wait for.  Because I'm too lazy at the moment to get the camera and spend half an hour uploading from card to computer and from computer to blog.  Sufficeth to say, my baby's all growed up! WAAAHAAAA

One Month and 5 lessons Later...

Brennan had his first piano lesson the 2nd week of February.  Here's a sampling of what he can play a month into this.

And yes, he's basically just memorizing everything.  We're still working on the "reading music/recognizing notes" thing. :-)  I think the idea of just learning some songs while just introducing music-reading (as opposed to a huge focus on the latter at the beginning before learning any songs) is supposed to keep the learner more motivated and excited in the early days.

Oh, and P.S. The second song, he really JUST started it.  He had been assigned it the week before, and then the sun came out and he spent every day playing outside not coming home until practically bedtime.  Somehow he got the right hand pretty much down after the equivalent of one and a half practices.

  Someone ate some frozen blueberries today.  Yikes!

About a Boy. And a boy, and a girl, and another boy

Kieran (8 1/2 months) has a favorite toy.  Not a music toy, or something flashy or intricate.  He loves hotwheels cars.  Just to chew on.  Obviously he's way too young to play "cars", but of all the options he has for things to hold, he picks a hotwheels car as a top choice.  It's so cute.

I'm calling his 'learned to crawl' date as his 8 month birthday, as that was the first day he made the real crawling moves.  Progression was slow though.  Just in the last few days he's finally starting to actually go places.  Until now he'd crawl 2 or 3 "steps" at a time and mostly hang out in a small area.  It took him a while to roam.  But yesterday he ventured into the dining room/kitchen, and I even found him in the bathroom chewing on legos!  Yikes!  It's time to keep every room Kieran-ready.  Ugh.

My gosh but he's such a cute little guy.  Brian and I are so smitten it's not even funny.  I love how much his siblings love him too.  Asher always likes to talk about how our baby is the cutest baby ever.  Brennan loves playing with him.  He just makes everyone feel happier simply by being here.

Hollyn's eye seems to be normalizing, but it's not completely gone.  Her lab results showed within normal in areas tested for autoimmune diseases (which are often a cause of such inflammation).  The only abnormal results were mild anemia and... something else I can't remember, but anemia is often the cause of THAT.  So, we still don't know what's causing the Brown Syndrome, but at least it's going away again.

Asher is kind of a conundrum.  He's very social and can talk anyone's ear off, but he's also sort of anti-social.  He STILL spends his time either playing on the computer/TV, or bouncing off the walls of his room playing something out of his imagination.  When his friends ask him to play, he usually declines, explaining that he "wants his alone time".  When I let the friends come in to our home, within minutes they've split up - friends playing with toys or something, Asher excusing himself back into his room to play alone.  One night Brennan joined him and demonstrated what he thinks it is Asher does in there.  Which led to Asher laughing and "teaching him" how to play like he does.  But he isn't interested in teaching his friends.  (He says he only gives lessons at night.  To Brennan).  I've asked him who he plays with at recess, and though at the beginning of the year he used to run around with others, he now spends a lot of recesses doing AIM.  AIM is "Adams In Motion" and is a track that kids can run and their laps are kept track of.  Asher's motivated by seeing the numbers and I think there are prizes, more than just loving to run THAT much.  But how normal is it for a kindergartener to run laps during recess instead of playing tag/chase/etc with other kids?  Part of me worries about the extent he avoids others, but at the same time he's totally gregarious and a little social butterfly in other situations.  When I make him play outside with friends, he has a blast and is very popular, I get the impression, with his peers.  I dunno.  He's just a mystery.

Brennan, dear Brennan.  He's doing well.  He started piano lessons and is busting out the beginning of "I am a Child of God" with two hands already.  Only 2 lessons, that most of them were spent on the very, VERY beginning.  He needs to learn the notes and terms and everything.  But it's coming along.  It's fun to have this in our home.  I let him quit soccer.  He just isn't into it.  And he frustrated his teammates because he'd spend more time spacing out than actually playing.  Most things he's tried he hasn't maintained interest in, except swimming lessons.  He loves those without tire.  And although he's not a prodigy or anything, perhaps by virtue of it being something he doesn't tire of (or space out during) it's a sport we can keep up longer term.  If I ever have the moolah for anything else, he'd love dance lessons.  Like, modern dance/breakdancing type stuff.  We'll see.  I don't believe in overdoing the extracurricular activities - there are so many options, it's ridiculous to try to get your kids into everything.  But I would like to pinpoint the couple of talents/activities that are worth pursuing for each child.  The things that hold long-term benefits for them.

Aaaanyway, baby's crying, dinner needs to be made, yada yada.  Here's to life!