Museum!

Rock Hill has a cool new museum for the little folk. We checked it out...and bought the membership. Shepard ran around for two full hours exploring. It's based on the illustrations of Vernon Grant, most well-known as the guy who created "Snap, Crackle and Pop" elves for Rice Krispies. Apparently, he was from Rock Hill.

Here you go!! (finally)

This is a test...

...of the slacker blogging system. Does my password still work? Did my camera stop working? Has my child just been sleeping for the past three weeks?  :)
We're all alive and well. I'm cooking up some posts, I promise! We visited the Main Street Children's Museum in Rock Hill a few weeks ago, went to an ice cream social with Gigi and Pops and miniature horses, sang in the cat microphone (you'll see!) and have generally been POINTING at EVERYTHING saying "...'s that?" It kind of sounds like "DAT?" But occassionally we'll get a "What's dat?" So we tell him. "Truck, clock, pottery, art, clutter, bird, tree, dog, cat, fan, light..." and on and on and on and on. I love it. I love seeing his little eyes spy something the second they fly open in the morning. He's pointing at stuff in his room before he even completely wakes up. He greets me with "Mamamamamamamamamamamamamamamama. S'dat?"
This morning, he toddled into our bedroom where Jerod was getting dressed for work. He loves walking around with Daddy because he gets such a great birds-eye view of the world. Over the long weekend, we celebrated a birthday, rode in the cozy coupe all around the neighborhood and ate snacks and learned about farm animals and balls and trucks and gravity. And even fought off a wee fever. I had to come to work today to get a breather.
Keep your bloggy-eyes peeled. I hope to get a few things up this week!

Hugs,

The Mommy

Snapshots of August

Shepard is learning something new every day it seems. His little personality is beginning to pop out, too. Here are some photos of him in the last few weeks. Some at Gigi and Pop's house, and some at our house.

Fun! A nice long hallway. I shall run back and forth.

Who me? I'm not up to anything...



Don't let this smile fool you. I'm all shark.




PLAY!




I eat drumsticks for breakfast.



Puzzle or xylophone? It's a tough one.




Xylophone! And drum!



I love doors. And dogs.

Four Generations

You can tell it's the beginning of a new school year. Blogging Mommy is behind. I'll start today with our visit to great-grandpa late last month. "Papa Stevens" is Shepard's only living great-grandparent. This is Sherrelle Stevens Giles' father (Shepard's grandma). He lives south of Atlanta in a retirement community. His friends there call his hall "Talmadge Lane" (his first name is Talmadge).
This was the first time the two guys got to meet. There are 91 years between them! We went to Papa's favorite Chinese buffet and then walked around his "town" for a while. It was a great visit, and I'm so glad Shepard got to hang out with his Great-Grandpapa.

Four Generations: Shepard is examining Papa's "American Idol" trophy.
He recently won a singing competition among three retirement villages!





Shepard and "Gigi," Mommy, Papa S and Uncle Harry




You can tell a tall Daddy took this one!



Daddy and Shepard explore Papa's apartment





 

First Haircut!

Well, yes, it did happen over a week ago. But, I'm a busy woman. It was finally time to snip the little curls that were happening on the back of Shepard's sweet head. Sometimes he really likes to wipe his banana-hands in his hair, and I needed there to be less hair to do that in.  :)

We found a cute-as-a-button kids hair salon in Newnan when we were visiting the grandparents, so it seemed the perfect time.

Adventures in parenting

Shepard has been under the weather, so we've had lots of time to hang out this weekend. We've been giving him several remedies in droppers and plastic syringe style medicine dose things. (my brother is clearly the doctor, not me)
In light of that we've said some pretty funny sentences around here over the past few days. Some are not really sick-related...just part of the package when you raise a curious kid.
File these under sentences we never thought we'd say...

Jerod: "He just gets suspicious of us when we come at him with a syringe."
Me: "Shepard. Stop licking the door!"
Me: "Did my child just lick the carpet?! Jerod get him. He's trying to lick the carpet like Barley!!"

I also managed to dive over the baby gate and land knee-first on the kitchen floor. An umpire would have ruled me "safe!" Let's say that I won't be trying to step over it again any time soon. I was going for Shepard's sippy cup at the time. I laid on the floor for a solid five minutes before I dared to move anything. I'm intact. I just feel like the umpire beat my knees with a bat. And, Shepard was NOT in my arms at the time.

That conversation went something like this:
Me: "AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" slam, kaboosh, pow, bam, bang
Jerod, bursting into the kitchen from outside..."Talk to me. What happened? Are you ok?"
Me: ".............." (silent)
Jerod (freaking out) "Talk to me. Can you move?"
Me: "I think so. I just need to lie here a minute." (on the kitchen floor)

And then, this morning. Shepard is staying home one more day just to get all rested up. I left for work, and he was peacefully sleeping. When I talked to Jerod at 9:15 or so, this is what I heard...
Jerod: "What did you leave me with?"
Me: "Oooh. Is he fussy?"
Jerod: "Oh my God. Nothing is making him happy."
Shepard (in the background): "AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Me (thinking): "Oooh. Bummer."

Shepard has roseola, which is basically a fever-rash virus. He now has the rash portion, which should not be troublesome at all...except that one of the symptoms listed is fussiness. He definitely has THAT.

I am interested to see what else ends up flying out of our mouths. Feel free to pray for patience for us.  :)

Here is yesterday's "sick day" picture. He was watching Thomas and Friends. I promise I'm getting the haircut and great-grandpapa visit up this week as well.

What a fun weekend! ~by Shepard

Every day I learn new things and have new adventures. This weekend, I went back to a far-away place called Georgia to see my Gammy and Pops. They live there in a pink house with big stairs and a dog named Jazzy. I like to say "DA!" for dog. And pet their ears. Dog have soft ears.
My Aunt Suzette and Uncle Harry came over from Alabama. I haven't seen them since before Thanksgiving, so I had lots of new tricks to show them this time. My Mommy is busy making some videos of the weekend so she said I could releviate alleverate help her.
I had to ride in the car for a long time. I do not like to ride in the car for a long time because my legs want to run and they can't. Mommy fed me goldfish and sang songs and made animal noises. She's silly, but I still wanted to walk around and explore.
Uncle Harry and Aunt Suzi brought me lots of stuff off my wish list for my birthday. Uncle Harry is a "bean doc" and had to work at the hospital on my real birthday. But it was really fun to have a birthday all over again! I love the books--especially the one about a pigeon driving a bus. And there are some DVD's that will help me be smart and an elephant that sounds like a trumpet when mommy makes the noise and my favorite thing was the bang bang table (Mommy says to type 'percussion table'). It has beaters and metal noisey things and a drum and I can make lots of noise on it. And then I liked to walk around and test the beaters on other things. The coasters make good noises too.
We went to see my great-grandpapa. He is the only great-grandpapa I have, so that was really nice to meet him. He is 91 years older than I am! He lives in an apartment at a retirement village. He sang for us because he had won the American Idol show for his village plus two more villages when they had a singing contest. I chewed on his trophy. It was shiny. He showed us all around his place. It was very nice and he was going to be in a fashion show later that day. He is a very busy man. We took some pictures since there were four generations. My great-grandpapa has 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. That's a lot of people I still need to meet. I hope they all wear nametags.

Opening Presents! Happy Birthday to MEEE!

Bang bang! I love this thing!

Mommy helps me with a farm animals puzzle

I really like presents

On Sunday, we ate Thai food. Well, everyone else ate Thai food but I still am not sure if I will like it, so I had sweet potatoes and chicken. That is always yummy. And then...I got a haircut! I have never had a haircut. It was lots of fun. Before my haircut I played with a train table. Then I got to sit in a Hummer while Miss Judy cut off my curls. Mommy said I had an infa-mullet, so it was time. I liked driving the Hummer and Miss Judy was very nice. I think Mommy will put up a picture of it. And probably a video. She is always using the video camera. Now when I wipe my banana-hands in my hair, there won't be so much to comb out. I even got a certificate and they put some of my hair in a little bag.