One of the core concepts in our teaching philosophy is to allow for Kennedy’s independence when possible so that she can begin to develop skills with our guidance. Although this may have messy results – they’re also hilarious.
This weekend my cousins Kirkland and Katrina stayed with us – Kennedy had a blast playing with Kirkland.
Katrina really bonded with Kennedy too – here they are taking in a book together.
Despite all of the fun and diversions, Kennedy is still drawn to the complexity and high-techiness of the paper towel tube.
That pink outfit was one of her new birthday outfits from Mimi and Papa Clark. Not shown is the super-cool matching beret. Also on display this weekend is this super sweet dress – it’s the first time she’s worn tights. The outfit didn’t stay on long since we changed plans and decided to go to the pumpkin patch instead (pictures tomorrow).
Kennedy’s favorite new game involves pulling out all the Tupperware from the various cabinets and drawers. Here she is in Mimi’s kitchen.
Before leaving Kansas last week we took a snapshot of Kennedy and her new friend. This doll is nearly as big as Kennedy – here they are sharing a seat in the rocker.
Kennedy has learned how to work her spoon all by herself. As you can see everything on the spoon doesn't always make it into her mouth, but that's okay. She's doing great!
OK – Birthday cake photos are finally rearing there heads here. But before that – the big news is that Kennedy is finally cutting her second tooth. This one seems to be bothering her a bit more – at least so it seems.
Here was the birthday spread from last weekend:
Kennedy had a great time with the Winnie the Pooh tableware and the frosting was a big hit!
The adults had their own cake and we put a pretty big dent into it. Kennedy managed to eat off a good portion of hers too!
More photos from the trip to Kansas… On Saturday we ventured out to the park in my mom’s town. There they have a large train engine that is available for exploration. Here is Mimi taking Kennedy around to see it up close and personal.
We have a bunch of photos from the park – but they’re hard to distinguish from all the other pictures from the parks. Kennedy swinging with a huge grin on her face, Kennedy climbing stairs, Kennedy eating bark mulch… Of notable interest, this trip involved the biggest slide in Kennedy’s repertoire. She squeals with delight now when she’s at the top for she knows how fun it is to descend on her own only to land in the arms of whoever is there to ‘catch’ her.
We managed to catch Kennedy’s kissy-fish lips; pretty funny!
And finally, for this installment, a shot of Kennedy trying out my rocker from when I was a baby. Mom promises to ship it soon so she will have it here to grow up with – just like I had.
Tomorrow: birthday cake all over Kennedy's face, present opening, and showing off some new gifts.
Just a quick pic of Kennedy enjoying a new train she received from Mimi and Papa while in Kansas. This was one of Jonas’s toys that will complement many of Kennedy’s existing collection of plastic blocks.
More photos soon, we promise!
We've spent the last few days visiting Mimi and Papa Clark in Kansas. They have a new house / farm that has been a blast to explore. Kennedy was super excited to see her Kansas family.
We started by opening some 'early' presents on Thursday. This is a black velour suit from Mimi and Papa. We joke that it's her 'leisure suit'.
Mimi and Papa Clark own a local grocery store. We couldn't resist the fall display of hay bales and pumkins for a photo op. It didn't take her long to try and eat the hay.
Kennedy's cousin Jonas came for a visit with his dad, Nick. Jonas is about 11 months older than Kennedy and already he's showing her the ropes in 'Papa Barn'. Jonas and Kennedy hit it off and here he is sharing the love.
Mimi and Papa took the kids for a tour of the farm. Jonas loves to drive his mini-Gator.
Kennedy thought Jonas's gator was about the funniest thing she'd seen all day.
Another kiss from Jonas. That's Ollie in the background supervising.
We have a ton of photos coming up in the following days from our trip - stay tuned...
Happy Birthday to Kennedy!!! Today she turns one year old. It's hard to believe how much has happened in just 12 short months. It also blows my mind to think just a year ago my belly was the size of France:
Kennedy has developed into such a self-assured happy baby; we couldn't be more lucky!
Tomorrow we'll have another birthday party so more photos to come...
Sometimes the best part about birthdays is the leftover tube from the wrapping paper. Kennedy and Elle both have had a riot playing with this particular ‘toy’ together. Kennedy just squeals with laughter as she bangs Elle with the tube. And Elle thinks it’s a pretty fun game too.
I got a call from Niki tonight (Glynos-Wolford blog on the left nav bar); she’s been stationed with the Red Cross to help survivors from Hurricane Katrina. It was just last week that she got a call from the Red Cross and they asked her if she could be in Texas the following morning. She dropped everything and went where she was needed. She says it’s been very tough but she’s having a great time helping others out where she can. What a woman – sometimes I wish I could be more like her.
On Sunday afternoon we all attended a family halloween event sponsored by the
Q Center. It was "Spooktacular"! We all donned our costumes and got lots of stares - can't imagine why!
One of the celebrity guests was our city's mayor, Tom Potter. Mayor Potter has always been a strong advocate for equal rights for all and we think he's a peachy keen guy. We couldn't resist the opportunity for Kennedy to have her photo taken with him:
On Sunday morning Sheryl and I took Kennedy to the
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). They have an entire section devoted to small children called the
Science Playground that encourages exploration and learning. Here Kennedy is carting around groceries.
After tooling around with her cart, we went to the infant corner where Kennedy really liked the fish tank and the pool full of large plastic balls. Then it was on to the section with blocks. My, how that girl likes to knock them down.
After a trip to the sand box it was time to wind down a bit as nap time was looming. Here she is laughing as Sheryl made the puppets talk in the reading corner.
More birthday celebration photos. Susan made a fantastic cake for Kennedy that had no refined sugars. It had wheat germ and wheat flour and carrots and applesauce and raisins and white grape juice. The frosting was cream cheese based. Mmmmmmm mmmmmmm. Good stuff.
Kennedy wasn't very happy with her birthday hat but we managed to snap a quick picture of Grandpa and Grandma and Kennedy in their hats.
C.K. came over for the celebration and as usual, he and Kennedy had a lot of laughs together.
The Anderson family and a few dear friends gathered yesterday to celebrate Kennedy's first birthday. It was a good time. Here's a picture of Kennedy in her birthday dress. We have more pictures to post later.
We put Kennedy's small toys into a box. It didn't take her long to figure out how it opens.
She likes to show us what she pulls out of the box. Putting stuff back in? Not so fun...
Finally, a good shot of that lone tooth.
New for Kennedy: ball rolling. She loves it!
We also tried some new food tonight, sauerkraut. The first picture is Kennedy after the first tasting. The second picture is Kennedy turning away from a second serving.
Kennedy has been getting a lot of mileage out of her latest set of
Robeez shoes. This red pair features a monkey and is one of our favorites. Kennedy also has a
pink pair with dragonflies and a
blue pair with geckos – which were a gift from Jake this weekend.
Today is
National Coming Out Day. The event is managed nationally by the HRC and this year’s theme is “Talk About It”. Today NCOD serves as a reminder for how important it is to talk about our family to those around us.
In college this was like a national holiday for the students – we had a large doorway borrowed from the drama department to represent the closet door (out of which people could ‘come out’). There were parties and rallies – ah, the activist days of my youth. Ha ha! I was happy to see that the University of Oregon
continues to host a variety of activities around this holiday.
A long update here after a busy weekend in the Anderson household…
On Friday we went to buy Kennedy some new clothes (well, new to her anyhow – all hail the resale shop!). This is really the first round of clothes we’ve had to buy – she is growing so slowly that most of her clothes in her current size are summer threads. So off we went to gather up overalls in cool colors (black, red, khaki), sweaters, pants and turtlenecks.
Saturday was a work day for Sheryl (see previous post) and Kennedy and I laid low as she recovered from a nasty stomach bug (yuck-o). While padding around the house trying to find fun things to occupy Kennedy, we re-discovered the piano.
Since she was born we had the piano in the office (the previous home had been in the dining room) in order to make room for her Pak ‘n Play. With the new interest in playing piano and her resistance to being contained it was an easy decision to pack up the Pak ‘n Play and bring back the piano into the dining room.
On Sunday we went for a play date so that Kennedy and Jake could connect and we could spend some time with Kim and Adrienne. Kennedy loved having all the new toys to explore – here she is trying to tell Jake how to use the phone.
And here’s Jake showing Kennedy just where exactly her head is located.
New things Kennedy is doing that are exciting to us... She has learned to clap her hands together, kiss on request (big ol’ slobbery kisses!), and making smacking / kissy noises.
Rob and neighbor Robert and I did some fence repair today. The reapir work isn't done, but it's progressing well (at least in this section). We put in new posts and frames but think we can get a few more years out of the old fence boards so we're reusing them.
Later this afternoon the family got ready to take a neighborhood stroll. Here's a picture of little Miss Kennedy. Unfortunately, we only got a few feet out of the door before it started to rain. So instead of a walk we hopped into the truck and did our errands on wheels.
Girl loves her dump truck...
I picked up the newest
Kanye West cd today
Late Registration. Kennedy and I listened on the way home from the learning center. C.K. was with us too--he had stopped by to visit Kennedy at the center. I first heard about Kanye a while ago from Stacey who had his first cd. Later I read an
article on HRC's site that said he spoke out against hip-hop discriminating against gay people. Finally, I saw him recently speak and perform on Ellen's show and he spoke some truths about the failings of the government in its response to hurricane Katrina. He seems to be a stand-up guy and the cd is a blast.
Here's Kennedy with one of her toy musical instruments.
A few words about the new blog links. First, the additions and then the deletions. I've added some blogs to the
organization group. They are the
ACLU,
Basic Rights Oregon and the
Human Rights Campaign, all of which this family supports or belongs as members. I've added some blogs to the
Other Blogs We Read category.
37 Days is a sweet blog with insightful posts about life and life's journey.
Adventures of Patrik and Bartolina chronicle the travels of a co-worker as he and his companion move through Central and South America.
Common Dreams is a progressive news clearinghouse.
Lefty Blogs is just what you think, a collection of lefty blogs.
Oregon blogs lists posts by Oregon bloggers.
I'm very sad that the
Portland Communique editor has called it quits. It was one of my favorite blogs. Local news reporting suffers at this loss. Earlier this year,
Gay American stopped posting as well. Those two links have been removed.
On to Kennedy. Here she is playing this morning before we left the house.
She's really grown. She's nearly as tall as the stool!
Last weekend Grandpa Anderson took Kennedy to the first fall class of Music Together. This will be a ritual for Grandma and Grandpa going forward and Kennedy can’t wait to spend more time with them in music class. (Grandma would have joined if it weren’t for her cold. Seems like it’s really going around; Sheryl is taking her turn being sick this week too.)
New things Kennedy is doing include banging the drum with a drum stick (or anything else that happens to be handy) and playing peek-a-boo all on her own (be it with her bib or blanket…). She is also very adept at picking up food and throwing it over the side of her chair to the floor – I'm not so sure we like that game too much!
Kennedy’s funny scrunchy face has also returned – she used to make this face when she was about 4 months old. We caught her in the act the other night – here you can also see her lone tooth peeking up.
Never too early to start a girl reading the New York Times Style section.
