New Updates!

I am a terrible blogger lately. It seems I am either too busy or just too exhausted to keep up with all the things I used to do prior to Acen arriving. (Sigh). Another reason I have been bad about updating the family blog is because I post all of the great pics I take of Acen from my phone directly to Facebook.

Here are some updates on the McKeons!

1) Frank went on a fishing trip up to my dad's cabin for a week and had a great time!

2) Acen is going to be 6 months old August 12th! It's just unimaginable to me...I don't know where the time has gone!

3) Acen is FINALLY rolling over from his back to his stomach. At some point I was pretty sure he was going to skip it all together! :)

4) We are looking forward to a trip up to Minnesota in September to meet our new nephew, Sam!! He is set to make his debut ANY DAY now and it will be the first time my sisters and I have all of our children together at the same time. I smell PHOTO OPs!!! :)

5) Acen is doing AWESOME with food and now we're working on introducing sippy cups of water! He really gets the concept but lacks the strength just yet to be able to tip it back to his mouth. He does, however, understand how to grab it and its' purpose. I'm glad he already understands and when he's ready, it'll come easily I'm sure!

Speaking of food, I have been making all of Ace's baby food using only fresh fruits and vegetables. So far he has had bananas, apples, prunes, peaches, kiwi, blueberries, pineapple, nectarines, sweet potatos, squash, plums, carrots, green beans, corn, zucchini and more! The corn, squash, carrots, and zuchinni were all from Frank's garden, too!! :) Next up are cherries, mangos, papayas and red potatos!!

6) Acen is very close to sitting up on his own. He can do it on his own without assistance for a little while but it all depends on how engaged he is with a toy in front of him. I'd like to think he is only weeks away from being able to do this on his own.

7) Finally, Frank is gone for 2 weeks for some military training (A.T.) so I'm not looking forward to that. It's hard on Acen and I but unfortunately it's not like he has a choice. We're going to miss him while he's gone!!

Our new patio!

We have been working a lot on landscaping the new house with a ton of trees, bushes, replacing the mulch with river rock and now we just completed phase one of our patio! We chose pavers for the patio and it looks BEAUTIFUL but we're not done with it yet. We still have to activate the fireplace (it's a gas turn-key), have five columns/posts to be built on the patio and of course...we need grass! I hope to have sod by July but we have a decent-sized yard so it'll be expensive. We're completing the project in phases as we can afford it but for now, it's beautiful and we had our first guests over last night only an hour after the nice gentlemen had finished up :) After dinner we sat outside in the breeze and had a bottle of wine and it was great. I can't wait until the entire project is complete!

Acen Updates

Not that I was ever in contention for it but I have definitely lost the "Mother of the Year" award as I have been TERRIBLE about updating all my loved ones on all the neat things Acen has been up to! We've been so crazy busy with work, getting caught up around our home, a big new house project (major landscaping and the addition of a patio outside), a marriage retreat (AMAZING!) and of course...having so much fun with Acen!

Here are just a few updates on how our little man is doing and what he's been up to:

1) He is no longer sleeping through the nights. The Gods are punishing me for the first three months where he slept through the night when he really shouldn't have been yet. I am working on letting him cry it out so we can fix his little "internal timer" gone wrong.

2) He is eating foods now! We introduced rice cereal about two weeks ago. On Father's Day, we introduced foods. We went with prunes since Ace is so irregular, as he typically only has a BM every 3-4 days (poor guy!). He did great!! Last night he was actually grabbing my hand and forcing it to his mouth, wanting to feed himself! :) Too cute. I've made a bunch of homemade baby food including applesauce, green beans, carrots and potatoes and put them into the freezer. Next week we're trying green beans!! :)



3) Speaking of number 3, he is very independent. When taking bottles he grabs them now and likes to hold them himself.

4) He still really enjoys bath time....we can be melting down for bedtime, put him in the tub and he's happy instantly. However, getting him out of the tub, dry, lotioned up, jammies on and into his sleep sack is rough!! :)


5) He is doing GREAT at school! All the teachers are so wonderful to him and I am IN LOVE with his main teacher, Ms. Terri! She does such neat things with the children. Just because they are babies doesn't mean they aren't capable of learning new things and participating in activities and she totally agrees--he does art projects, water play, they read books together, she has him do a lot of tummy time and she's introducing sign language to him and his "friends." I LOVE HER and she is SO GOOD TO HIM. You can truly tell he is loved at school. Ms. Terri takes a lot of great pictures of him in his classroom for me and Frank to see and take home, too! :)

6) Acen rolls over from his stomach to his back like crazy but is just now showing signs of rolling from back to stomach. It appears that he's just not that interested in it yet. Oh well. It'll come.


7) He is a skinny peanut!! (surprise, surprise). Poor guy is growing like a weed but his progress weight-wise is slow (only in the 25th percentile). The doctor says he is beautiful and healthy and totally fine but it still makes me feel bad :(

8) We are TRYING to introduce reading a book to him each night before his bedtime but we're having a little trouble with this since he already starts melting down at 7pm which is typically only a little while after we get home from work each night. So taking him up even 10 minutes earlier seems to be the next logical step. The nights we have been able to get a book in he really seems to enjoy it and likes looking at the colors and being read to.

We're looking forward to the rest of the summer which of course still includes loving on Acen, work, a family-friendly 4th of July and then a Labor Day trip up to Minnesota to meet our new nephew, Sam, who is making his arrival in August! Can't wait!!!