Haircuts, Dentist, and Attitude

On Monday, I gave Kevin a haircut. He was not very pleased with the idea. However, as I am a lazy mother, my theory on my son's hair is this: If I have to comb it, it's time to cut it.

As you can see from the before pictures, he didn't want a haircut.

It went pretty well, though he cried the whole time. When we finished, he didn't want a bath, so I cleaned off the extra hair with a wet washrag and took him into the bathroom to show him how handsome he was.

At first, he seemed like he was going to cheer up, but then he spotted an old scrape on his forehead. Immediately, (even though it had been there for two days) he said, "It hurt me!" and he began to cry again. So, even though I assured him that this particular injury was already there and hadn't been caused by the clippers, the after pictures are just as sad as the before ones.

You can see the tiny pinpoint scab on the right side of his forehead.

It didn't take long for him to cheer up, however. I had cut everyone else's hair recently, and Kevin was happy to join the hair-cutting club.

Tuesday was Kevin's first dentist appointment. (I had one too, but it wasn't my first, thankfully.)

He did really well! It helped that I went first, and they let him watch. Then, when it was his turn, he was very obedient and held open his mouth when asked. They told us that his teeth looked great and he has really nice spacing between his baby teeth. I was really proud of how well he did. The nurses were impressed and one of them asked me if he was almost four. I told her he had just turned 3 in November, and she was surprised. She said that she didn't usually see such mature boys, mostly girls.

He wasn't scared at all, and the staff did really well with him. After we got home, he started doctoring his T-rex's teeth and repeating things the doctors had told him, like "Doesn't that taste like candy?". It was really cute. I should have gotten a picture.

Instead, here's one of him coloring on the side walk with chalk.

Siff is doing really well. She loves her kennel, and goes in there to sleep on her own. She's doing really well with potty-training and everything else. She does have a bit of an attitude though.

Now, don't get me wrong. She's not aggressive, and she isn't really disobedient. She just knows what she wants and she's not afraid to tell you about it.

For example, last night, Siff was having a bit of diarrhea. She had to go outside every hour or so. At one point, I nearly put her kennel outside and just let her stay out, but visions of her being eaten or something else terrible happening forced me to let her in a short time later. (I have a very active imagination.) So, I opened the door to let her in, and she ran right over to Arkhon's bed and laid down, as though to say, "I want to sleep here, thank you."

I laughed and told her that I would love for her to be able to sleep there, but not until she had been accident-free for a few months. She went pretty willingly into her kennel after that. She just likes you to know her opinions.

She's pretty awesome and adorable. She and Arkhon get along great, and she's so sweet to everyone.

For a random addition, on Sunday, Grig found a garter snake and brought it home.It was really pretty. Arkhon found it very interesting before Grig let it go again.

I love my family.

Highlights From the Family Reunion

As I'd mentioned a few days ago, last weekend we spent with family at a reunion.

This particular reunion was my mother's mother's family. It was a celebration of my great-grandparent's hundredth birthdays. My great-grandpa's birthday was last year, and my great-grandma's birthday is next year. So, they chose the year between to celebrate. Both of them have already passed on, but I'm sure they were there in spirit.

One of the most exciting things that happened, was that my sister gave us her old Nikon. It is an awesome camera! It isn't brand new, in fact she's giving it to us because they're upgrading to a new one, but it is a much nicer camera than any I have ever owned before. We were super excited to try it out. We have been so blessed as we've been trying to live within our budget. This is just one of the incredible blessings we have received. Thanks, sis!

I haven't been camping in a while, so I'd forgotten how hard it can be to sleep in a tent. Kevin did really well, but I had a really hard time sleeping the first night. It was pretty cold, and I was worried about Kevin getting too chilled. However, the second night was much better.

On the first evening, we had a good time pulling kids around in handcarts and taking pictures of deer. There were quite a few close to camp, and they really didn't seem to mind when we got pretty close.

My sister, who had to come home off her mission for medical reasons, was there, and we decided to get in the handcart and let Grig pull us. Both of us got into the back of the cart, and before we knew what was happening, the cart began to tip backward with both of us in it!

We ended up with our backs in the dirt. People came running over to see if we were okay. My sister, who was still struggling to walk because of pain in her knee, hurt her back a bit. I was fine. It was pretty funny. Lesson learned: don't put all your weight in the back of a handcart without a counter-balance on the front.

This is how Kevin fell asleep that night. It was pretty adorable.

The next day, we helped make breakfast. While we were waiting for clean up, my sister braided my hair while we were exploring the area with my father. That was really nice of her.

After that, my sister, Grig, my grandpa, and I went fishing. We saw some cougar tracks and some raccoon tracks while we were trying to find a good spot.

Racoon back paw print

Cougar track (toes are pointed down)

That was neat. For a while, I was the only one who had any luck. I caught two rainbow trout, but they were fairly small. We were going to stop fishing at noon, and just as noon hit, a fish struck my grandpa's line. It turned out to be twice as large as any fish I had caught. That was a nice end to that fishing trip.

However, as we cleaned up, we hit a snag. We had walked a fair distance to get to the spot where we went fishing, and we decided instead of walking all the way back, we would just go straight up the mountain to the road. My poor sister with her bum knee and my grandpa had a harder time getting up the mountain. We eventually made it, but it was quite the hike. Both of them did really well. I gave my sister a piggy-back ride back to the truck once we reached the road.

We spent the rest of the day talking to family. We ended up taking a nap with Kevin and when we woke up, everyone was swimming. We got ready and started driving down to meet with everyone, but when we got there, they were all leaving. So, we ended up getting the whole reservoir to ourselves. The person who gave us a ride wanted to return too, so we told them that we'd just walk back.

 We were walking back to the camping ground and we were almost there when my parents drove up. People had been worried about us, and so they came to make sure we wouldn't miss dinner. Kevin was pretty happy that we didn't.

After dinner, there was a presentation. We learned how to access stories about our grandparents online and my parents showed us a video that they had edited of my great-grandparents giving them a tour of their homestead. They did a fantastic job.

We had a good night's sleep. The next morning we went back out to go fishing again. Grig had the largest catch of the day. Here's what he caught:

There were garter snakes everywhere. We had a good time chasing them. Grig also took this phenomenal picture of a giant ichneumon wasp. It's pretty neat. 

We didn't have any luck fishing, and after we finished we packed up and went home. We had a good time, and it was really nice to be outdoors with family. 

Moving Rooms, Haircuts, and Garter Snakes

We've been trying to make a big change in our home.

We decided that it's time for Kevin to move to his own bedroom.

Due to this, over the last couple of days we haven't gotten much sleep. The first night, I was just going to stay in there until he fell asleep, but he stood on his bed with his arms stretched toward the door grasping at the air. I finally figured out that he wanted his dad.

So, we have slept on his bedroom floor the last two nights to help him get used to sleeping in there. He's been doing pretty well. He fought it pretty hard the first night, but during his nap yesterday he went right to sleep in his own bedroom.

When nighttime came, he wasn't too sure about it again, but as soon as our pseudo-bed was made on the floor he settled down and went to sleep. He slept most of the night on his own, but at about 3:30 a.m., he put himself between the two of us. It was pretty cold, so I didn't make him go back in his own bed. It's hard to find a happy medium with the temperature in our house.

We don't have air-conditioning, so at night we leave all the windows open and use a window fan. However, this can make it pretty cold in the bedroom. It's hard to want to turn it off though, because then it's too warm during the daytime.

Grig and I are okay, but Kevin hates blankets and always kicks them off.

It's a work-in-progress.

Yesterday, I also gave Grig and Kevin haircuts. I had been intending to cut their hair before our trip to Virginia, but then I realized his grandma would want to see his curly hair. She was grateful I waited to cut it.

Here's Kevin's before and after pictures:

It turned out quite well.

Here's the back:

He has a lot of hair.

For family home evening, we went swimming in the river last night. Well, swimming is perhaps the wrong term. Wading is probably more like it. At one point, we were walking upstream and it was getting thigh-high. It was pretty hard going for a while, but a lot of fun.

It was also pretty cold. It was fairly warm outside, so the water felt pretty good.

Grig also managed to catch a garter snake, so that was awesome! We were climbing over a tree, and Grig spotted it. He quickly jumped over the fallen trunk, and snagged the end of it. It was a pretty good sized one. We hadn't brought the camera with us, but it looked a lot like this one, with big spots on its body.

Its head seemed flatter than the ones in Idaho, but maybe that's because it was sleeping under a log.

Who knows?

We're finally getting back to the normal schedule. It's nice to be home.