Tragic news today. K3's love affair with his carseat is officially over. Once beloved by both him and us - slept in, played in, sat in - now despised. How could this be? They had such good times in the past -- just look!:
















































Could there be a happier baby? But those good times are over for good. See for yourself:


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In other good news--oh wait, I mean more terrible news-- K3 has a condition called tortocollis. The doctor confirmed it yesterday. It's when one side of the baby's neck is weaker than the other, usually due to a difficult delivery (it may have been the extreme pushing, cramped birth canal, and forceps, I don't know). This means he has a hard time moving his neck to one side. I think this picture clearly illustrates the problem:
















That's not the right angle for a baby's neck to be. To fix it we have to do neck-stretching physical therapy, which, you guessed it, K3 hates. No, I don't have video. Just watch the carseat video again and instead of a carseat imagine my hands trying to twist his neck a way he doesn't like. You'll get the picture.

Onto good news (you thought we'd never get there)! K3 is making a lot of progress. He can grab toys and shake them:















And he can push himself up and look around (on his good side only, though. . .):














And he likes to hang out on the couch and watch TV:















Also, he can kind of stand up a little and he can kind of sit up by himself. He usually just rolls onto his stomach, though.

And now, the K3 video. He's been making a lot of funny sounds, so I put some clips together. As a warning, nifty transitions and Jack Johnson do not appear in this video.




COMING SOON. . . . . .Grandma Matthews visits K3!!!

Something amazing happened two nights ago. For the first time ever K3 slept 7 1/2 hours in a row! But don’t get too excited. Instead of going to sleep ourselves, me and Kenny dinked on the internet, laid on the couch, watched TV, and ate horrible food for an hour and a half before going to bed. Idiots! So instead of getting 7 ½ hours of bliss-filled, uninterrupted sleep we got less than 5 (aka, the usual). Maybe next time we’ll learn. . .but I doubt it.

Speaking of sleep. . kind of. . .Hurricane Ike made it all the way up to New York last night. Apparently the wind was blowing really really hard, even knocking over trees and such. I say apparently because we both slept through it, so we wouldn’t really know. I guess when you don’t sleep very much at night, that sleep is real, real deep (See paragraph above for more details).

Kenny and I also got new callings as nursery teachers. Kenny thinks that watching 10 toddlers for 2 hours is harder than watching K3 all day. I beg to differ. I think we know who does most of the baby watching around our house (hint: me).

Also, K3 has decided that he now likes music! His favorites are opera, grunge rock, and Jack Johnson.

You may notice the lack of pictures, but in their place I’ve got something very special for you. A video montage of the best K3 moments from the past few weeks, complete with music and transition effects!! It’s a bit long, but I edited it down from 40 minutes, so I’m pretty proud of myself. There may or may not be the following: adorable faces, crying, perplexed looks, and bodily functions (I knew I would hook you with that last one). Enjoy!

The results from the blog-poll are in! And the winner, with an astounding 45% is. . . . . . . .. K3!!! From this point on Kenny, III will be referred to as K3 in all future blog posts. Kenny, Jr. will be simply Kenny. In real life K3 will still be called Kenny. . . .for now.

This labor day we attempted our most exciting day trip yet -- the New York State Fair! We have to admit it was a raging success! Fun times had all around.

The fair was full of many wonders, which included:

A manly man lumberjack making wood sculptures with a chainsaw


A jousting tournament. As you can tell, my pictures of this turned out REALLY good.


Little baby chickens hatching



A sculpture made out of butter AND a sculpture made out of sand.





















Death-defying acrobatics. These were really cool. And these people are CRAZY! One woman did various poses on a ring 30 feet above the ground.



And this OTHER guy ran and jumped around on this crazy rotating spinning hoop thingy. At one point he blindfolded himself and I thought he might not make it! But alas, he's a professional, and he did.

A petting zoo. Most of the animals in the petting zoo were cute and friendly-looking, ie lambs, miniature ponies, llamas. But one. . .just didn't quite fit in.

I wasn't too keen on touching that one. Believe me, it's much uglier in person.

Now that I am not pregnant I also decided to go on a crazy, spinny, possibly unsafe carnival ride. Now tell me this doesn't look exciting.


There was TONS of food there. Me and Kenny pigged out! I ate a funnel cake the size of a football, and Kenny had (besides his lunch) a cherry limeade, two chocolate milks, some of my funnel cake, a 2-foot long dough stick, and a bbq pork sandwich.



I also got a killer sunburn.


A close-up reveals the extent of the damage:



Contrary to the norm, K3 was quite well-behaved at the fair.

Here he was at the jousting tournament:














At the sand sculpture (he wasn't too sure about it:















At the petting zoo:














Hanging out outside at lunch:














And by the hatching chicks. Possibly the cutest picture ever.



















Such a good boy

All in all, a funfilled and exciting day at the fair!


Here are some more K3 pics:


















































And here's a video of K3 kicking a blanket off himself. He's always kicking his legs like crazy and we can't seem to be able to keep a blanket on him!

We just came to the close of a daycation weekend. Friday we went to Walmart - not very exciting. But on Saturday we went to a place called Chittenango Falls. We randomly picked it off of a list of fun things to do around Syracuse, and boy are we glad we did! It's about 30 minutes east of Syracuse and it is BEAUTIFUL!



To get to the falls we had to descend almost 100 feet down a steep and uneven path. Impossible with a 7-week old baby, you say? We say nothing is impossible. . .with our new Snugli carrier! On its test-run at the falls it was a big hit with the baby - he loved it! And we loved that he loved it. It's opened up new possibilities for us including. . . . .

Palmyra New York and the Sacred Grove. After our successful outing on Saturday we thought, why stop there? So on Sunday after church we drove about 70 miles to Palmyra and looked at Joseph Smith's farm and the Sacred Grove. Again, the Snugli worked like a charm, and we enjoyed a nice walk through the grove.

We hoped to be able to take a tour of the place where they first published the Book of Mormon, but the baby was getting cranky -- he had had a long afternoon. We decided to come back when he is a bit older and hopefully cries a lot less!

Kenny2 starts school for real tomorrow. He's taking 12 credits, including the dreaded Budgeting class he missed during the summer. He's also taking Energy, Resources, and Environmental Policy; Statistics; and Managerial Economics. He's nervous, but also excited!

Here are some pictures of the baby we've taken in the past day or two (because we know he's all you care about). We think he may have grown a bunch!




And here's a video of Kenny3 looking at himself in the mirror -- a bit long, but I promise it's worth it!

The baby had an epic night of sleep last night. He slept from 11:30pm until 5:30am. That's 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep -- a new record. And then after feeding him we put him back to sleep at 6:00am and he slept until 9:15am. Kenny2 and I actually woke up on our own. First time in almost seven weeks!


To make this day even better we went to the town of Skaneateles (good luck pronouncing that one), home of lake Skaneateles and historic downtown Skaneateles. First we took in a veiw of the lake. It was beautiful and the water was really clear. Too clear, maybe, because we could see all the crap at the bottom (seaweed, beer cans, etc.) We also ate at a place called Angel Joe's Heavenly Hamburgers. And dangit, those hamburgers were heavenly. Way to go, Joe. The best part of all, though, was that Kenny3 slept the whole time. We had such a good time that we're planning on going back in a few weeks to check out the city museum and creamery. You can expect an equally exciting blog entry then.





And as a bonus, here is a video of Kenny3 from a few days ago. He doesn't know if he is happy or sad --

I have entered the blogosphere. I credit Lindsay Redd (insert married name here) with my introduction.

So today the baby and I got diagnosed with Thrush. It is an infection associated with breastfeeding, and to not go into the too much information category, we'll just leave it at that. If you want to know more you can look it up on Wikipedia. I have to take antibiotics for three weeks and then it should be gone - thank heavens! It's painful! And it may be causing the baby to be more fussy, we hope - we really really hope. Because that means once the antibiotics kick in its happy baby for us, instead of cranky baby who cries all the time. Cross your fingers!