Courtland's Big Week

This has been a big week for Courtland. He has started to say several new words, especially “Up, please” and “Down, please” (because I recently noticed that he’s been doing a lot of pointing and crying for things he wants, so I’ve been insisting on him using his words, and getting up and down from Mommy’s arms is what he wants most often). He also started opening doors (he had done this a couple of times before, but we weren’t sure if they were shut tightly or if his brothers had helped him, but we’ve seen him open them by himself now. So we’ve put on some more of the door knob covers, especially after he started opening the doors to the garage and back yard). He also started climbing out of his playpen (and making quite a mess with pulling the books off the shelf in the study at naptime), so we got the toddler bed out of the basement storage room and set that up in Kolby’s and Camden’s room. He is pretty cute, because we’ve found him sleeping on the floor or hanging his legs off his little bed, but he’s done quite well with the transition so far. And today he went to nursery for the first time. At church the youngest children’s class is called nursery, and it’s for kids 18 months up to about 3 years, so he just got to go for his first day today. They said he did great (actually, they said Isaac had a harder time in class today than Courtland did, for some reason). So, he had a lot of firsts this week.
Oh, and last week at church a camera man from Fox came and was given permission to take a little bit of footage at our Sunday meeting to do a story about a family in our congregation and to talk about these new tv and radio commercials that our church has recently started running. We thought they did a good job with the story. There is an article and a short video clip on their website at http://rochesterhomepage.net/search-fulltext?nxd_id=197465. (If you look real close, you can see the side of Michael’s head in one shot near the end, since we were sitting behind the family in church that day – so I guess he’s famous now).   :)

This week we kept busy as usual. We attended a picnic with the other residents and some community dermatologists they work with, the boys had their piano lessons and did lots of practicing, Michael had several busy days at work and a work meeting Tuesday night, I helped Kolby to make some bracelets to give to his friend Ella from kindergarten when he went to her birthday party this week, we explored a brand new park in Victor that just opened last month for playgroup, we had t-ball practice (can’t believe we’re almost to the last week of practice), Courtland had his 18-month doctor’s checkup (he’s healthy, and he’s at the 90th percentile for height and the 50th percentile for weight), I sold some things on craigslist, I had a couple of late nights helping my friend Julie to paint the kids’ bedrooms in her new house before they moved in, Michael helped them move some of their big furniture Saturday morning and then after picking out some fruits and vegetables at the local farmer’s market, we took a short trip to downtown Rochester to see High Falls and then took a little walk through a park to see the Lower Falls (in looking up the directions to these waterfalls online, I skimmed a bit of the history and I guess the waterfalls were one of the big reasons that Rochester was originally settled, because they could use the water power in their mills and factories). High Falls was nice, but you couldn’t get very close to it, and we liked the Lower Falls just because it was nice to walk down to it through the park. Then that night I went to a “how to host a murder” surprise birthday party for my friend Jen.

Oh, and we also had a little adventure getting Kolby a bike this week too. Michael’s parents sent money for a bike for Kolby (thank you, that was really thoughtful of you!), so we went for family night Monday and checked out Toys’R’Us, Target, and Walmart before finding a bike in the right size for the right price. We got a set of training wheels and headed home, only to find out that the training wheels wouldn’t fit on. Later on in the week I went back and got the other set of training wheels that they sold, hoping that they would fit on, but they didn’t. (The axle on the back wheel was just barely not long enough to screw the parts onto). So Friday night we went back to Toys’R’Us and found out that the bikes that don’t come with training wheels already on them aren’t made so you can put training wheels on (except for the ones with the trick pegs that stick out from the wheel axels, most of which were more expensive bikes). So, we ended up returning the first bike and getting one that already came with training wheels. We were also able to put some training wheels on the other smaller bike we have, so Eli can use that one. (And I also put training wheels on a third smaller bike that I got on craigslist a while back, so once we get the inner tubes replaced on that old bike, it’ll be all ready for Camden to use). So, it took lots of running around to get that all figured out, but it was worth it in the end. Now we can’t wait until we have a chance sometime this week to go over to the school parking lot and let the boys practice riding around.

And today is the last day before Michael turns 30! (What an old man).   :) The boys had fun picking him out a little gift and Kolby drew him a really cute card, so that’ll be fun to give him tomorrow. (I have a great birthday surprise planned for Michael from me, but it’ll be coming in another month or so). And then on Saturday we’re planning on celebrating with cake and ice cream, so that should be fun too. Happy Birthday, Love!