Our Christmas

For Christmas this year we went to Spokane for only a suuuper quick visit (about 18 hours) and we opened presents from my family and got to see my sister Annie and her BF Sam who were up from Utah. That was fun, and in typical Stephenson fashion the Nerf bullets were flying day and night as soon as we walked in the door. 

It's Tradition in our family to get to open one present on Christmas eve from my mom, and it's always pajamas. Then you have to immediately try them on and do a fashion show (which usually gets more and more inappropriate as it goes on). This year my mom made Annie and I matching jammies and funny enough without knowing it, I had made kade a matching high chair cover and blanket from the same chili pepper material. 

After our quick stop in spokane we went on to Pullman and they had just gotten dumped with snow and kade got grandpa sharratt to pull him on the sled and play with him in the snow for the first time. He thinks he liked it but he wasn't quite sure about it. In pullman Andy had four of his five siblings there so they had lots of fun playing football and video games and board games the whole week. It was fun to see everyone and get some time away to relax. Also we really enjoy pullman and we like to visit there and recall the days when we were in college and dating (and ridiculous). :)

I've heard it said a hundred times before that Christmas is more fun with kids and boy is that true. I found myself so excited to see how kade would like his toys and like the tree and all the elements of Christmas, that I couldn't remember what used to be fun about Christmas before he was around. And I suppose it will only get more fun cause right now he's only at an age where he's hardly aware of Christmas going on around him. :)

Sign sign every where a sign

I've been trying to teach kade to sign for MONTHS now, probably since he was about 6 months old with him showing very little interest. Now in the last few weeks it's really just like a switch flipped. He can sign "milk" and "more" and "all done" and "help." The American sign language sign for help is actually pretty tricky and involves what I think is a lot of coordination. You make a fist with one hand with your thumb up and place it on your other open palm and raise the two up. Soo... that seemed to difficult for a little boy just trying to figure out how to use one hand at at time. So i actually taught him the sign for "help I'm choking" instead. haha It's just patting the upper chest with both hands. Easy peasy. And he does it ALOT. It's very cute and pathetic when he looks at you and signs "help" for everything he wants, so it's hard not to cave, but I'm trying to teach him to be a problem solver at the same time and learn to do things for himself.
He also is a big fan of signing "all done" after about 30 seconds in his high chair. And he signs it emphatically! hands waving like crazy till he's literally red in the face. (He hates to sit still long enough to eat anything). As my mom told me, I guess the problem with communication is that sometimes you don't wanna hear what they have to say. :)
My pediatrician counseled me not to teach him to sign cause he told me that boys will cling to it, and then not learn to talk till later cause they already can communicate through sign.... uh? who here thinks it's a bad idea to teach their kid to communicate before they can talk to help them avoid frustration? I did alot of research and I've decided the doctors worries are old wives tales in my opinion and he can shove it. :)

Mastering the stairs

Stairs are one of those things that babies can't do, but all in the sudden it's like they've been doing it all along. He couldn't get up more than one or two and it took a lot of encouragement. Then all in the sudden I'd turn my back and wouldn't be able to find him and he'd zoomed up the stairs. It took a little longer to learn to go down. The stairs make me have a constant mini stroke... I go back and forth between thinking "well he's gotta learn sometime" and just wanting to barcade the entire end of the house. It's a long steep staircase with stone floor at the bottom so it's a stair learning nightmare for this mommy.

Part of the problem is he refuses to go down on his stomach. He insists on standing up and walking down holding on to the railing. 

I'm convinced the whole reason he decided to learn to do stairs was to turn the light switch on and off. :)

To far gone

Whoa it's been so long since I was able to get any blogging done so it's to the point that I can't catch up.  So I'm just gonna start from now-ish and I'll just include a bunch of random recent pictures with captions

  

Kade's great grandma and Grandpa Peterson came to visit from Minnesota for the weekend in october. Kade and I went on a fun bus tour of Seattle with them, it was very interesting. I've been to seattle and or lived here for my whole life and i learned lots of stuff I didn't know. Then on saturday I went to work and they all stayed home and played with kade and hung out and watched football. On sunday they came to sacrament and got to see the Primary program... and more importantly Kade putting on his typical sunday show of shenanigans.  

At the begining of November Kade and I went over to the Ward's house to have a little birthday party for our friend Sarah (on the left) who is on the end and just recently had baby James. Paige and baby easton (about 4 months) was there and next to him is baby Jaxon and his mama Alicia were also there. He's about 8 months old. It so dang fun to see all the babies about 4 months apart so you  can really see the development and how much they change. It's also fun cause you can already see their different personalities. Kade is the oldest so he's the most mobil, but he's also a bully. He likes to sit on the other babies and take their toys. :) it's ok, he's just learning still, ... I hope. 

Clay came and starting living with us about three months ago. Him and kade have a great ol' time together. Clay has babysat him a few times so we could go out, which was super nice. Kade LOVES unkie C, he gets all excited when he comes home from work. Kade tries to be like unkie and he picks up clay's empty Mt dew cans (which he leaves out!) and pretends to drink out of them like Clay does. 

Kade and his little friend at church. His family usually sits in front of us and they like to pass their crackers back and forth over the bench and share toys. In this picture they are comparing shoes. 

The biggest problem we've had lately is Kade putting stuff in his mouth that he shouldn't be eating. He just hunts along the floor and every little piece of lint and every little piece of leaf off our shoes etc. In this picture he's searching under the couch for some snacks. He usually finds some crumbs or "treats" there. :)

Kade is gonna be a future self-pic-junkie. He loves to look at himself on the forward facing camera on my Iphone. He's got like a million "myspace pics" on my phone. haha

For Example...

 This is only three of like 15. 

Daddy's 27th birthday

First let me tell you before you judge me about what a lame birthday Andy had... he HATES his birthday. I do not know why, and it is a source of constant confusion every year, but he legitimately does not enjoy celebrating very much and he really does not want gifts. ... but I think THAT is just sad and not one bit fun so I celebrate anyway and only get him gifts of things he needs anyway so he cant fuss too much about me spending money on him. 

So for one of his gifts I made a frame for Andy to take to work and hang in his office because he doesn't have any pictures of Kade up there yet. So I got these photos, after about a million tries. It took me a zillion tries to get him to either stop waving the letter around or licking it and coving up his face with it. Anyway, after I got a few I could work with I edited them and printed them and framed them in black and white. 

This is a really bad picture of the final project but it turned out super cute I think, and Andy loved it. 

When Andy got home from work (he's such a hard worker working on his birthday) we opened presents. Kade wanted to help. This was a lawn dart set and a bike helmet that we'd been needing from andy's parents. 

Then Kade and I sang happy birthday to Daddy and gave him his cake. Andy and I are on an eating good kick and he didn't want a regular cake cause of course just with the two of us eating it we'd end up either eating a million calories we don't need, or most of it going to waste. So I peeled this mini watermelon and decorated it with fresh fruit! I have to say it was one of the tastier birthday cakes I've had and I didn't have to feel one bit guilty about getting seconds. :) 

After Kade went to bed I made Andy blow out his candle and we cut the cake. We ended the night by watching a movie and going to bed at ten. :) We are such wild party animals these days. 

Visit to Spokane

The second week in July we went to Spokane to hear my brother Clay's mission homecoming talk. My nice aunt Brooke and my cousin Ethan let Kade and I drive over with them and he wasn't a pretty good little trooper, only had to stop once to stretch his legs. While we were there we got to go to my parents friends lake cabin on Loon Lake and ride my parents jet ski's. Kade had never been swimming before and he didn't have a swimming suit, so he just went nakey. 

Kade had a great time splashing in the waves with Great aunt brooke. (he even liked it when he had to get all the way in the water and clean the sand from all his unmentionable areas)

The next day we went to Cour De: Alene and walked around the shops and had lunch, poor kade was such a good sport even though it was a very very hot day. Poor little guy what sweating bullets but he stayed happy. 

He did get tired out and took a nap in the park in the nice warm heat. Everyone walking by window shopping stopped to look at him sleeping cause he looked so funny and cute laying with his little leggies crossed taking a snooze on the grass. 

We all went to my parents Brentwood ward picnic and Kade continued to be a good spot even though it was so so hot and pretty miserable outside. 

Riley taught a few people in the ward a thing or two about watermelon eating contests. 

The following day we went up to Greenbluff and saw a nice Cherry festival and picked cherries. Kade got to pretend to drive a tractor which he thought was great great fun. 

And my parents and I thought this looked like an excellent planking opportunity. haha 

After a fun fun trip Kade and I rode with Aunt Brooke and Ethan back home. Just in time for Daddy's birthday the next day. Clay gave en excellent homecoming talk that not only had a great spirit but it really was a good demonstration of his fun cheerful personality and I think that a lot of people in the ward enjoyed it as well. 

Uncle Clay has returned!

My younger brother clay has been on a mission for the church for the last two years, so he hasn't got to meet baby Kade yet. Andy and Kade and I went to Spokane to see him come home and get off the plane. 

Baby Kade waiting for his uncle in his little mission bib. :)

So good to see him.

Uncle is so fun!

Uncle Riley is so fun too. Kade love listening to Rileys silly sounds.

Cute Cute nakey Kade man was so hot and Grandpa at Grami's house that he just wanted to play nakey on their cool tile floor, (the only cool place in the house).