Whitney's Favorite Things

Today will be a blog of some of Whitney's favorite things in the whole wide world.

Whitney loves to yell and she is quite good at it. Here Whitney and Will both yell for the camera. I don't know what to do to get her to stop because whenever we say "no" she just smiles and does it louder and longer. Oh well.

Whitney also loves to play the 'uh-oh' game. All you parents know what I am talking about. Whitney will drop something on the ground and then Will says uh-oh and retrieves it for her. In this case, she dropped a book over and over. But she also likes to do her sippy cup or anything else. I am not so nice and won't get the object for her over and over, so she mostly plays the game with Will.

Whitney loves metal. I guess it is just cold on her gums; I think she is teething again. This time she is chewing on Will's keys. They are her favorite chew toy and she likes them much better than those boring lame teething rings that we use to try to get her to like. But those were just a joke to Whitney.

Whitney also adores reading; she must take after me because I go through a lot of library books. She has become a really good page turner and doesn't rip the books anymore. Instead she points to different objects on the page and I name them. It's quite fun. Whitney is sitting next to her gold bear (decorated with a cute pink shirt, courtesy of Will's creativity)that she likes to squeeze.

Here Whitney is caught in the act of doing one of her favorite things - pulling on the red TV wire. There are three wires for the TV, but only the white and yellow one go into our television, so the red one hangs a little bit. Whitney is always trying to grab it and we are always stopping her. We tried to tape it up higher, but the tape wasn't strong enough to go against the constant pulling of a small child. So now we have a big toy placed in front of the TV so she cannot reach the wire. That is mostly working.

The last thing Whitney loves is her new blocks from her grandma Keeler in Rhode Island. Thanks for the package. Whitney loves knocking over the blocks that I have carefully stacked into a tower; it's fun. I tried to get her to stack them, but she wasn't interested in that yet. Maybe soon.

Whitney is growing up. We got out the 12-month box from storage and exchanged some of her old clothes for some new ones. They are a little big on her, but I don't think it will take long for her to fit into them.

This is her showing off her new kitty outfit. I cannot believe her birthday is coming so soon. My baby is going to be a toddler. We love her so much. Okay, bye.

Valentines Day

We had a wonderful Valentines day here in Cheney; the weather was really nice and we got to spend some time together. Of course, mother nature decided to snow on us today, so I don't know what we are going to get the rest of this week. But even Whitney got into Valentines and gave out Toy Story cards to her other baby friends who live close to us. Here are some pictures from our Valentines yesterday.



Courtney put these on the bathroom mirror Sunday night after Will went to bed so he would be surprised by them in the morning.



I also gave him some doritos and peanut mnms and a scripture notebook. Will saw one at Bimart that he wanted, so I went back and got it for him. Will also got me some wonderful presents.



I loved the pink tulips that look and smell so pretty. I also really like the message in the bottle; Will must have put some time in it so the paper could look officially old. And I will have to use my coupon book to get some chores done by Will. Isn't he great?

We ordered a heart shape pizza from Papa Murphys. There was a coupon for it in our newspaper. And we watched a movie. It was a fun night.



Whitney keeps amazing us everyday as she learns more things. She really likes to be chased around our apartment and we let her 'escape' from us by going under our arms. It is quite a workout crawling around all day, now I know how she feels. Whitney also made me really happy by taking two steps. She let go of our coffee table and took two consecutive steps toward the television. I hope that means she will be walking soon. I guess we better baby proof better. Here are some pictures of her being cute.



Having a purply day. Don't we all need one of those every once in a while? That headband lasted the whole time I was taking pictures and that was it.



Whitney loves her little yellow bear that Ruth and Dana gave her. She has learned what "give kisses" means, so she will give her animals or me and Will kisses when we ask her to. It is more like just leaning her head forward, but it is close.



Here is Whitney in the bath. Don't worry we had two people in the bathroom so one of us could watch her and the other use the camera. We leave the diaper on her while we place her in the bath for a little while so she can splash around and go crazy. She loves taking baths now, a far cry from screaming the entire time just a couple of months ago.



And here is our whole family, courtesy of the home teachers. It took them a couple of tries, but we got a picture with all of us smiling at the same time. And that it quite an accomplishment with a little baby. So we are happy. Hopefully, the snow will stop and spring will officially start. With love from the Keelers in Cheney.

Some New Tricks

We haven't put any new videos of Whitney on the blog lately, so here are two new tricks that Whitney has learned recently.



She has learned to play peek-a-boo and any object will do. It doesn't matter whether it is her shirt or a blanket or anything. So sometimes she ends up flashing her tummy at us. She thinks it is hilarious, so do Will and I. Her other new trick is that she has learned where her head is.



I did it with her a couple of times and then Whitney would put the ring on her head whenever we asked her to. She doesn't quite reach her head, but she is trying. It works with other toys as well. We have a little baby genius on our hands. Now if she could only learn to use the toilet.

We are doing well here in Cheney. The weather is getting warmer and we are really happy about that.

Going to a funeral

Courtney's grandma died last week. She has been living in Pasco with my parents and my grandpa for the past six weeks because her health has been failing. Will and I were there over Thanksgiving when they moved in and we were able to visit during Christmas as well. So I am glad that we were able to spend some time with her. It is never fun to have someone you love die; I will always remember my grandma's smile and her yummy cookies and how they always had ice cream and candybars for the grandchildren. But, I am glad for my knowledge that she is in a better place now and her body's physical limitations are gone. We all went to Idaho for the funeral, even my siblings who live in Utah were able to make it. It was nice being able to be together.



Here we are all just standing around. We stayed up late talking and playing games. It was great of Courtney's dad's uncle to let us use the spare house for a couple of days so we could all be together.



This is Michael, Courtney's older brother, and his wife Allison. And afer the funeral Will takes a little snooze on the makeshift bed.



Conner is beside him playing some video game or another. Here Whitney is probably thinking that she would be so happy if she could only get the cereal out of the bag. But we are too clever for her and ziplocked it extra tight. For some reason, Whitney loves to dump everything on the floor and that cereal would have made a huge mess in this uncle's house.



The funeral ended up being nice. I was able to learn some neat things about my grandma. She had a good life and died peacefully in her sleep.

In other news, Whitney is continuing to get bigger and into more trouble. She likes opening shelves now and sometimes closes them on her fingers. Ouch.



Here she is very happy with her chips holder. I don't know where she finds these things, but I guess little people can fit into little cracks and find little things. I have started to crack down on my cleaning because she gets into everything.



Everyone at church loved Whitney's hat with her green dress. I loved that it kept her hair out of her eyes, which is something we are constantly battling. I refuse to give her a haircut though.



Whitney, like all babies, loves to play the piano. Will and I don't have one. But my parents do and we were there for a couple of hours this past weekend as we were traveling home from the funeral. So Whitney took advantage of the chance to bang on keys and make as loud of noises as possible. It was really cute. Who knew that we were raising a little Mozart.

During my free time while Will is at work and Whitney is napping, I have been working on a couple of projects. One was using our new food deydrator to dry baby food and make fruit leather. I learned that was possible from a friend in the ward and we always have lots of baby food thanks to WIC. It was sort of successful.



We did get delicious fruit leather, but we also got a huge mess and very sticky cheese cloth. I spent a lot of time trying to peel off pieces of fruit leather. So I will not be repeating that anytime soon. But it is tasty.

I am also working on two scrapbooks. I got a lot of scrapbooking stuff for Christmas that I am putting to good use. The first one is our wedding. I know...it's three and a-half years late, but better late than never, right? I am also making one for Whitney. I have about 130 pictures from our wedding that I am using and almost 400 for Whitney, so my projects will take awhile. But I am having lots of fun at it.



So that's our life in Cheney. Most of our snow has melted and we are hoping that it stays that way. Will is enjoying his job and Courtney is enjoying being a stay-at-home mom.

Vancouver Trip #2

All of us went to Dana's mom's house for New Years. She was very nice and invited everyone; she even keeps some toys for her grandchildren so there were lots of toys for Matthew and Anna and Whitney. It was a fun celebration. We ended up sitting on the kid table so we could help Whitney in her highchair, so I hope we weren't too loud for the grown-up table. No one warned me that when you have babies you lose your grown-up status and go back with the kids. Oh well, Matthew, Anna, and Whitney were pretty entertaining. Here are some pictures from that party.



Whitney sat on top of Uncle Dana's shoulders and Anna was on top of Will's for a little baby war. Anna liked being on high and I don't think Whitney really understood the greatness of being on someone's shoulders. But it won't be long before she wants piggy back rides all the time.



This is Whitney with her Uncle Scott; she just barely met him on this trip because they have lived in Japan for the last couple of years. Now Whitney has met all of her aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone. She really liked that turtle toy; something about the string was super fun and she was mad at me when I took it away from her so she could share the toy with her cousin. I tried giving her another toy but that didn't work at all, so much for all those child development experts that claim distraction is the key.



Here everyone is just hanging out playing on the ground. The children played with toys and the adults played games and talked while we waited for New Year. Whitney even made it to her first New Year, but just barely. We kind of forced her to stay awake for the last fifteen minutes of 2010. We even gave her just a small sip of Martinellis to celebrate; she didn't seem to like it too much. And she was completely passed out by like 12:04.



We wanted to make sure to get some family pictures since we had almost everyone in Vancouver. Our camera died after this one picture, so we didn't have a chance to take another one. But it turned out pretty well, as long as you don't care that Whitney's isn't looking.



Here is one more picture as we come out of Sacrament Meeting right before we came home.



It was so great being together with family. I wish that we could see everyone more often and that we lived closer together. I hope everyone did have really awesome holidays and a good start to the year 2011.