A Trip to the Aboretum

We went to the Morton Aboretum today. There were lots of pretty trees and fall colors but not as many as we thought there would be. They have scarecrows set up around a lake and we had fun walking around the lake and looking at the different scarecrows. Here's a picture of Dad's favorite one, the Blues Brother Scarecrow! Kayla's trip there was her first one riding in the car facing forward. Her legs are getting long enough that we thought she was getting cramped facing the seat. Lately Kayla hasn't been sleeping through the night. When we went on Monday to the doctor for Kayla's 15 month check-up the doctor said it was probably just seperation anxiety. She wants to sleep in the bed with Mom and Dad, even if it isn't that comfortable for any of us!

So many happenings! :-)

Ok, so we're still terrible about posting on here..sue us! But really, we are bad. No promises to get better either. But on to the updating.

Our little one has been full of wonder as of late. Her few steps have become actual movement across a room-walking! Yeah for Kayla! She has also mastered crawling up the stairs, stopping while walking and picking things up, etc...etc....She still resorts to crawling most of the time to actually get around, but she's walking more and more everday. She keeps amazing us with all of her progress!

Still not so keen on the talking yet though. She signs some, and loves to say Dada..no Mama though :-( She waves hi and bye and also tries to say hi and bye as well. It's so cute-all the strangers think so ;-) She has a tendency to way at every single person at the grocery store! LOL.

We can't believe how fast time is flying. It's already October! Christmas will be here before you know it! Ah! At least we have her shopping done..not much else though yet :-( But first up is Halloween, which most of you probably know is huge in Kyle's book. After much ado, we've finally picked out her Halloween costumes. As you can see, she gets to be two things! Captain America (cause Daddy says) and an Elephant (cause I say) :-) But she will be soo cute in them! We're planning on taking her to several fall events at which to wear them, as well as trick or treating some on Halloween. Yes, I know she's little, but it will still be fun, even if we just go around the block :-) Right now my parents are at Disneyworld and hopefully will be bringing back an adorable Micky mouse trick or treat pumpkin for her to use...oh how fun time is becoming!

We have more pictures and video to post, but I'll try and do that later. That's all for now!

The Best Present!

10 years ago today I met my husband for the first time..happy anniversary of sorts to us :-) We didn't end up doing much to celebrate today since Kayla and I have both been sick. We went to the outlet mall for a bit this morning and Kyle's mom and sisters then came over for a little while this afternoon. And while they were here Kayla decided to give us the biggest present of all-she took her first steps!!! We were SOOO excited...too much so that I think we scared Kayla as she proceeded to sceam and cry for a few moments afterwards. Poor girl! Since then she has done it several more times. Never more than two or three steps, but still! She'll be off and running in no time!

Thank goodness for nontoxic crayons!

It's been awhile since we've posted I know. Nothing exciting has happened recently, just the everyday stuff of raising a little one I guess. Recently we have found that Kayla does not want to go to bed when Dad's home. If I'm at work Mom has no problem putting her down but when I'm home in the evening she refused to go to sleep. We figure she see's Mom all day everyday but Dad has to go to work all the time so she doesn't want to go to sleep when I'm around. Cute, but not a lot of fun! This Sunday morning Mom and Dad were reading the paper and Kayla was playing on the floor with her crayons. She's never shown any interest in putting them in her mouth and is pretty much past the everything goes in my mouth stage but when we looked down there she was, watching the TV with the orange crayon in her little fist and the nice, new point was a chewed, drooling blunt end! We pulled what we could out of her mouth, which she protested loudly, and had orange colored teeth for the next several minutes. Mom assured me that crayons were nontoxic which made me feel a little less guilty about not paying closer attention to Kayla! No pictures, we were too busy pulling crayon out of her mouth!

One Year Pictures

We had Kayla's pictures taken by Audrey again for her one year pictures. Kayla wasn't being overly cooperative that day, but some still came out well :-) Here are a few...

One Year Stats

Our little one truly is a little one. We took her to her 12 month well visit on Friday and learned that she is beautiful and healthy and a perfect little girl...despite being just that-little! She is only 28 1/4 inches tall (19th percentile), weighs only 19.8 lbs (25th percentile), and had a head circumference of 18 inches (66th percentile). We can't turn her front facing yet even if we had wanted to. So luckily a lot of her clothes will still work for fall...otherwise we'd have to go get tons of new stuff! Better figure out a way to make her grow...LOL! Not really..she will when she wants, or maybe she'll just always stay tiny. Either way is fine :-) We still love her tons!!!

Birthday Girl!!!

I can't believe she's 1 already!! Oh, did that year go fast! We had a party here at the house for her the weekend before her birthday..Everyone seemed to have fun I think! Kayla was sooo good with everyone, which was somewhat of a shocker since she tends to take a bit to warm up to people. And with everyone here at once, I was not expecting her to like it much, but she was a total ham the whole time pretty much and let most people hold her :-) She loved opening her presents, but was way more interested in the pretty ribbons and tissue paper than the gifts themselves...guess she just needed a roll of ribbon and pack of paper!! LOL! She was a little hesitant with her cupcake, but once I got her into it she started stuffing it in her mouth. She's not one to overly like being messy (such a girl!), so she wasn't a crazy mess by the end. Still, a good time was had by all! On Sunday then, we went with Kyle's family and my parents to the Rainforest Cafe in Woodfield. I wanted to take her somewhere fun for a birthday dinner, and we thought she'd like everything to see and hear there. She enjoyed, except when the thunder and lightening storm would go off...then she'd start crying and want to be held. She hasn't been like that with real storms though yet, so I guess we'll see when the next big storm rolls through! On Tuesday, on her actual birthday, we spent the day at the Zoo with my mom. It was a perfect day for it and Kayla had a great time :-) I couldn't decide what to do for the day, but was glad we picked that. Next year I can't believe she'll be old enough to start telling us what she wants!! Oh how time does fly!

Too much to write...

Since there is soo much that has been going on, I'll post a few blogs all at once :-) Let's start with the 4th of July weekend...It was sooo darn cold for July!! But anyhoos...We decided to go to see Fireworks on Friday night since Kyle had to work early on Sunday and we didn't want to be out late on Saturday night really. We ended up going out to meet my parents in Oakbrook and watch the fireworks from a parking lot near by. We had a lot of fun hanging out and Kayla was even awake for the fireworks!! However, she truly could have cared less. She'd occassionally glance at them, but had entirely more fun watching the traffic and other people around..such a silly girl! Here's an adorable pic from that day!

Standing!

OK, so I guess it really is true that once they decide they are ready, they sure get going! Today, it was deciding to pull herself up to standing. She's only doing it in her crib so far, but I bet that will quickly change. Everytime she was in her crib for a nap, or while I was getting stuff in her room, or whatever, she would pull herself up! It was too darn cute, of course I had to tape it..so here you all go!

Crawling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this has been a busy week around here! Kayla has decided, all of a sudden, to start doing things! She is starting to feed herself with a fork if you put the food on it and hand it to her, crawl around (on her belly), and cruise the furniture some with only a little assistance!! Oh what fun we are having :-) It is sooo cool to see her start to master these things. We were waiting forever it seems, but she's finally starting to decide she's ready!

New Teeth

Not the greatest picture, but you can see all four of her teeth now! The other two top teeth are still working on coming in. The bad part is she has now started to grind her teeth some. I think she is just still trying to figure them out and whatnot, but still!! Need to find great teething things. As with so many other things, she seems to be crazy picky on those as well!

Walking..well, sort of!

You so can't tell in this picture, but Kayla has actually started to walk in her walker!! It is soo darn cute! She started a couple days ago actually taking steps and going forward on her own. She does need a little coaxing at times on our end (banging two toys together that she wants to get her to come to you , etc) but she is doing sooo well!! She walks when you hold on to her hands too, and stands up when holding on to something. She refuses to crawl, so I really think now that she will be walking before she crawls, if she ever does!

Teething and the rest of it all

Since my last post, we've all been sick :-( Kayla and I were worse than Kyle, who got it just at the end. Just a bad cold/cough but still no fun. And unfortunatly Kayla's still not completely better as her cold is still present, compounded by cutting all four of her top front teeth!! I am thinking that the runny nose, etc may not be so much from her cold as from her teething. She has gotten terribly fussy, but I probably would be too if all of my teeth were coming in at once! The front right one has broken through and the the other three are right there...hopefully they'll come soon so that she can get some relief (as can we!). She's still not crawling or walking, but is totally getting there. She'll "walk" when you hold her hands now, she holds onto things and stands on her own, she has started to pull herself up, and she gets on her hands and knees and rocks some then falls down and rolls over usually. So hopefully one day soon we'll have a mover. Not sure why I am hoping for this, but I am :-) As to the rest of of our lives, Kyle has just started at the Lowe's here in Aurora. He LOVES being closer to home, but is not loving the store itself. It is horribly broken right now. Hopefully it will get better soon-or he won't be any fun! I'm still staying home taking care of Kayla, but am starting to look around for a job as I need to get back to work. Praying it all works out. Oh, and the most fun right now is that we've started planning Kayla's first birthday! I can't believe she's almost one!!!! Where did it go?? Well here's a picture from our Disney vacation...finally a whole family pic!!

A Whole Ton of Firsts!!

It's been FOREVER since we've updated on here...we've been super busy! Since we last wrote, Kayla has gone on her first train ride, been to her first Cub's game, been on her first plane ride, been to Disney World (!!) for the first time, and gotten her first haircut (on Main St. USA)! I'm sure there were tons of other firsts too, but those are the one's that currently come to mind. I am currently exhausted as we just got back from Disney a couple hours ago, and for those who have been, one does not come back rested from a Disney vacation! I need a vacation now from my vacation. Unfortunately it was amazingly better weather here than in Florida this week as it rained-or rather poured/delouged all week pretty much, but we still managed to have some fun. It's off to bed for me for now, but here are some pics till I get more time to update!

Family Day

We had a fun filled family day last Friday. We went to the store to return one of the car seats we had bought for Kayla because I had decided I didn't like it (we had two of them, we kept one for when she's bigger) and wanted to get a different one, which I have since ordered. Just hope it's as great as I think it is. We splurged and purchased a Britax Boulevard in the adorable Madison print. Britax are the best seats out there on the market, and the boulevard has true side impact protection which sold us on it. Can't wait for it to get here! It will allow us to keep Kayla rearfacing for a while still too which is great since they are sooo much safer rear facing. Anyhoos, enough about our great purchase and back to our family day! After shopping, Kyle and I picked up some sandwhiches and we all went to the park for a family picnic. I brought Kayla's bumbo because I figured it would be easier to feed her in it than just sitting on the ground or one of us holding her. We had a great time! Kayla was sooo distracted by all of the action-the people walking/running/biking/etc around the lake, the dog's walking by, the cars driving by, the birds flying around, the wind...she didn't know what to think! It was too cute. After our picnic we went home so she could take a nap and we could relax. Then later we all went for a walk and to the park. Kayla wasn't so sure of the park yet. She is still a little little I think. But overall, we had a great day!

9 month well visit

Kayla had her 9 moth well visit today. Again, the doctor said she is "lovely" :-) We tend to agree! I am exhausted today, so I'll just update you all with her stats and then head off to bed. She weighs 19 lbs (50th percentile), is 27 inches long (30th percentile), and her head measures 17 5/8th inches (70th percentile). So yep, she's short and chubby and has a big head :-P LOL All is well with her!

New kicks!

We finally bought Kayla a real pair of shoes. And nope, she is not even any kind of mobile yet. But I figured that she would soon be spending more time out and about in her stroller, or the cart at the store, or simply being carried, and that she should have something more than socks on her feet. So cute little pink tennies it was :-) Now on to figuring out the best shoes for learning to walk. So many options!!

Fun Filled Easter Weekend

We had a fun filled weekend away for Easter. We went down to visit my in-laws in Oneida. We left Friday afternoon after waiting for Auntie Mindy to come so she could go down with us. Kayla seemed to enjoy seeing everyone and having everyone play with her Friday and Saturday :-) Saturday afternoon we drove over to Monmouth and got to see the campus for the first time in QUITE a while. It was so fun to show it to Kayla. Kyle told her that if the college didn't exist than neither would she..which is soo true since we met there. We spent Easter day at Kyle's grandparents. Kayla was not having much of the company there. She was playing the stranger danger game. I felt so bad! Everyone wanted to hold her but Kayla would just scream and want us. Oh well, maybe next time. The pictures are of us at the campus and of our little Easter Bunny!

Opening Day

Kayla was all decked out for the Cubs' Opening Day. This was the first time she wore her Cubs outfit and she was very interested in the crinkling noise it made when she moved. Unfortunately the game didn't start until 6pm so she was asleep by the time the Cubs won 4-2. Kayla and Mom are going to see Nana today and I'm off to work so that's all for now!

A Big First!!

Kayla stood up by herself for the first time today!!! Kayla and I (Dad) were sitting on the floor facing each other and I was holding her hands to keep her steady when she just decided to stand up!!! I was so shocked I just sat there with my mouth open instead of congratulating her. We immediately ran upstairs to show Mom who was sick in bed and of course she didn't do it again. She started to once or twice but thought better of it. Here's a picture of her from the other day standing with the assistance of her Lowe's racer. It works much better on the tile than on carpet but she only goes backwards! She pushes off with her feet and can't figure out the whole walking forward thing yet. We'll let you all know when she does!

Giving Mom a Fix

We felt the need to get an early start on Halloween this year..LOL! Really though, we bought this last year around then simply because it was just too cute. It seemed like a good cuddly outfit too to wear on Sunday during the crazy snow storm. It also is great in getting us into the Disney mood. Not that I need any help in that category. For those that don't know, we are going to Disneyworld in May. Yep, taking our then 10 month old..and nope, we're not insane. My parents are taking us and my brother and his wife for a week. It will be Jay and Meg's first trip...and of course Kayla's! It will be our third trip now. So excited to share the "World" with them :-) Yep, I am a little OCD when it comes to all things Disney these days. But anyhoos...so the little one was "helping" mom get into the spirt by being a tiny little Eeyore! I was even cuter from behind if that's possible cause it has a little Eeyore tale too! Too bad it will be too darn hot to actually wear this at Disney...oh well, she has an entire Disney wardrobe for then already!!

But onto other wonderful Kayla news-she went to bed entirely on her own tonight! I am soo thrilled! She sleeps through the night these days (which is WONDERFUL!) but we had still been putting her to bed (bottle, rocking, etc...) She totally could put herself to sleep when she wanted to, but that was never really at bed time. But I decided she needed to start. So tonight when she started getting tired I put her in her crib and tucked her in. She cried for like 30 seconds and then was sound asleep. Hopefully we're on to a new trend!

Kayla's New Ride

Check out Kayla's new ride-lol!! We needed a good umbrella fold stroller for Disney and decided on this. She seems to like it :) It pushes soooo easily, Mom loves it too! We'll be able to use it tons, hopefully until we no longer need a stroller! I will still love my large Graco for the mall and things because of the huge basket and ability to hang bags on it, but her Maclaren will be great for trips to the Zoo, the park, etc, where we want the ease!

First "Dr's" Visit

On Monday, we had to take Kayla for her fist doctor's visit outside of her baby well visits. I had noticed while getting her changed that she had a bump on her left eyelid. It didn't seem to bother her any but being an over cautious first time parent, I called her doctor's office anyway just to ask about it. Having had styes in my eyes often, I thought this was what it was, but wanted to be sure. And the office did as well, especially since we don't want to mess around with little one's eyes, so they had us bring her in. And yep, indeed the baby has a stye. Which apparently is totally not common for baby's and the doctor seemed rather shocked about it. But she said that usually the little one's don't have very many eyelashes yet so that's usually why. For any who have seen Kayla, you know she definately breaks this rule as her eyelashes are incredibly long and people are jealous. But guess she wanted to be different. Poor little girl. She so doesn't seem to notice or care, so I guess that's good. We are supposed to try and put a warm washcloth on it when we can and keep an eye on it..lol. And it might take 3-12 WEEKS to clear up. Glad I know that..or else I'd probably start freaking out! Besides that, she's just great! Still no crawling, but she's starting to really show an interest in moving about...so we shall see..keep your fingers crossed!!!

Advancing Right Along

As you can see, sitting up is just about mastered :-) And the last several nights she has totally slept through the night! It's sooo nice. However, we seem to be more tired than we were getting up during the night?? Lol. Now if she can only figure out the whole locomotion thing, we'll be good to go. But then again, I love not having her mobile yet ;-) Both looking forward to and dreading when that day comes. This week, the new thing is talking. Well, not talking in real english words, but "talking" in baby language. Not just making noises, but it seems like she is indeed trying to carry on an entire conversation. It is just too cute! Now only if we figured out how to understand "baby"?!

A great present :-)

Just a quick up-date :-) As you see in this pic, our little one can now mostly sit on her own-she looks so proud in this picture! She's been trying for a while, and just about has it mastered. She still tips over from time to time, but she can do it for the most part :-) And last night she gave her parents a very nice gift-an entire night of sleep!! She slept through the ENTIRE night-a first for her!! So yeah :-) Those are our updates for today.

Happenings this month

It's been a somewhat exciting month for us. After her first tooth another one came in right next to it about a week later. We have yet to see anymore though. We didn't have a very romatic Valentine's Day as we spent the whole day moving Mindy into her new apartment. It was still a good day because we got to see the whole family. Kayla, Carla and my mom all stayed at the apartment while the rest of us loaded up most of the furniture. The picture of Kayla in her Bumbo is taken on the floor of Mindy's apartment. Not that you can tell anything about the apartment from the picture except there's new carpet. Here's another picture of her in her "Valentine's Day outfit" that she didn't wear on V-Day but still looked cute. Well gotta get going for now!

First Tooth!

Kayla got her first tooth today! She doesn't seem to know what to make of it. It's on her bottom right. As you can tell, I am super excited about this...but so not looking forward now to the entire teething process :-( We shall see how this goes. Other than that, not much else going on here. I enjoyed "my day" yesterday :-) I'm so old now-lol!

Becoming a Girl

It's been a while since we've written...we're terrible with this. But here it is-update: Kayla is changing more and more every day! She really seems to be coming into her own.

As I type this she is bouncing away in her jumperoo, "talking" up a storm and making a very large racket. She now knows how to get her way, how to roll across the floor (!!), and as her Daddy says, she has girl hair :-) It has gotten so long in front that it is in her eyes, so as you see we now can put it up and out or her face with bands or clips, hence the "girl" hair. She's eating all sorts of new foods now too and seems to be loving it. So far we're only feeding her organic, but I don't have unrealistic hopes of keeping that up forever as we ourselves don't eat that way in the least. But for our little girl we can do it for now. She just had Chicken and Sweet potatoes for dinner and that seemed to be a huge hit. The things you eat when you're little :-) I don't even want to begin to think about all the crazy things she'll probably "eat" over the next few years-lol! Anyhoos, it's off for family time before Kyle heads off to work. Have a great day everyone-we'll try and post again soon!

6 month check-up

Our little girl is growing up..well, maybe not really "up" but you get the idea :-) We took her today for her six month check up, and this time she was upgraded to gorgeous from lovely-lol! She did so well-we couldn't believe it. Of course she hollared when she got shot, but who wouldn't?? So for the stats: 16 lbs 3.2 oz (54%) , 25 inches long (25%) , and a head circumferance of 16 7/8 inches (34%). She fussed up a storm when going to bed tonight, but that is more than likely due to the shots, especially since our appointment was the last one of the day at 4:45. We get to feed her more though-breakfast and dinner now :-) And we have to be mean-well not mean I guess, but tough..and I am so not. We have to just let her be at night so she learns to sleep better all the time...Kyle may have to chain me to the bed :-( Anyhoos-time for bed for me-last night was so not a fun night with the little one. I hope tonight is better..we shall see.

Weather Woes

Our little one is getting sooo big!! We can't believe how the time is flying..she'll be six months old in just a few days! Today we started her on baby fruits as we have officially made it through all of the veggies. When we go to her doctor's appointment on Friday the doctor will go over a food plan for her so we'll see what that entails. Hopefully the weather will improve by then, lol :-) We are a little done being couped up in the house. I keep wanting to take her out and do more things now that she's getting to that fun stage, but the weather is being far from cooperative. I don't want to trudge out in this mess with the little one. Silly winter..Spring needs to just get here already. Unfortunately, however, we have several months until that happens :-( So until then we'll just have to figure out how to have fun indoors. I think we'll need some more baby toys, but don't tell Kyle that. He thinks we have too many already. I told him this is nothing-we'll be swimming in stuff soon. Now if only we could get that bigger house...anyone know the winning lotto numbers??!!

Night and Day of Firsts

Wednesday night was a first for us that we hope will be repeated often in the near future. We put Kayla down around 6pm and she woke up about 8pm so we fed her a bottle and she fell back asleep for almost 9 hours! When we woke up and realized it was almost morning our first thoughts were of course, is she okay?! After making sure she was we then relaxed and told her she needed to do that from now on! :-) Thursday morning we took her to her first story time at the local library. It was about a half hour of singing songs and reading 8 word books. No real stories but hey when the age range is 1-12 months you don't really expect a long attention span. Story time was at 10am, right around Kayla's nap time but she stayed awake until the last song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. They shut the lights off and between that and the song she was down for the count. When the lights were turned back on everyone there thought it was the cutest thing that it had put her to sleep. We were just glad she had made it through most of it. We will definitely be going back every Thursday!

Rolling Rolling Rolling

Thought you'd all like to see :-)

Holiday Happenings

We LOVE this one...I took it sitting behind her in Kyle's mom's van...oh how I miss that van now. We so need a new baby equipped vehicle...someday :-(.

Doesn't she so look like she's watching the game?? LOL-just had to share this one.

We've had a busy holiday season around here. We had many family celebrations and were blessed all around. We have also had many more baby momements. Kayla now rolls over-at the most bizare times :-) She still doesn't get the cause and effect of it all and only goes from her back to her stomach, but she's starting to get the idea. She also is starting to sleep through the night, but is again random with this. She slept for almost 8 hours one night, then the next was up literally almost every hour..oh how we don't understand. The joys of having a baby ;-) She's getting so big now-when we go to the doctor in two weeks we'll know exactly how big she is. She's also started fussing terribly when she's going to bed-as she's doing right now. So off I go for the time being...we'll try and write more later!