Halloween

Both Mommy and Kaylee have been feeling really sick all week, so it falls to Dad to post some pictures from Halloween. We wound up buying a costume...for some reason, over the past year, "free" time to do things like sewing costumes has disappeared. I'm not sure why that is, although I blame the change to daylight saving time.

So, here's Kaylee the Good Witch:

It's Peanutbutter Jelly Time!

Birthday Parties...

Well, you only turn One years-old once... don't you?

Kaylee turned one, three times this year. We had one party with her Birthmother and brother; one party with Nana Lucy, the day before her actual birthday; and we had a party on Sunday, with all of Kaylee's family. Almost everyone came to see Kaylee. There was Aunt Beth and Ethan, Grandma and Grandpa Laird, Nana Lucy, Granddad and Miss Gina, and "Great-grandma and grandpa" Feeley and family. We had a whole house full of people. It was great fun. We were missing seven people from our happy little family though. Uncle Pat couldn't make it, because he had to work back in New York and Aunt Pam, Uncle Kevin, Katie and Caleb were back in Illinois with colds and such. We also were missing Great Grandmom and Granddad O'Brien who were in Maryland. We missed them all and we didn't save any cake!

Anyway, we are now over run by an army of dolls of every shape and size, a small library of books, a closet full of clothes (always good!), and some odds and ends like a doll stroller, a cup with Kaylee's name on it, and a birthday train... oh almost forgot the hopping frog and flying screamer monkey. Either way Kaylee made a great haul on her first birthday. Now it's on to thinking about Christmas (by the way Tim don't read this part... it will scare you!)

I am also starting to think about Halloween. Kaylee is probably old enough to go Trick or Treating and she also goes to daycare, so we need a costume. I have several options, so I put a poll at the top of this page, so you could vote on what she should be. It was thought earlier in the year that she would make a great Pebbles Flintstone, but as this means I would have to find the time to make her costume, I don't know if that'll happen.

Last year she was a bunny, but I don't think she's up to hopping anywhere this year, so we'll have to choose something different. Remember if you want to weigh in on the decision, vote!

On being sick and "Working" from home

Kaylee has been sick the past few days. Nothing serious, just a fever and cold like symptoms (that's a nice way of saying chunky snot flowing constantly from her nose). Since I have the option of working from home, I've been staying home with her this week.

Tuesday was great. I got quite a bit of work done during a couple of naps, and Kaylee played pretty well, considering she wasn't feeling well. Jen came home early afternoon and watched her for a little bit while I got some more critical work done.

Today (Thursday) has been great. She's sleeping now, in fact. When she's been playing this morning, she's been in good spirits, other than this 5 packs a day cough she seems to have picked up at the tail end of the cold.

Wednesday....oh, please, God, let me forget about Wednesday. Jen shifted her Wednesday (full day) and Thursday (half day) schedules for the week, since I had to be at the office yesterday afternoon. Kaylee woke up about 7:15, and basically cried straight through until Jen got home at 12:30. She wouldn't nap. She wouldn't eat. She didn't want to be held, but she didn't want to be set down. I rushed a shower as soon as Jen got home, and prayed that Kaylee would be a little better for her.

Jen was on a frantic call to Nana when I got home at 8pm. She got the same treatment I had earlier in the day. Kaylee slept for a grand total of 45 minutes yesterday. By 8pm, she was tired, cranky, and did I mention tired? Put her to bed, though, and she screams till she pukes. We finally got her to go to sleep around 9:30, and then we split up the overnight--I would get up with her until 3am, Jen would get up with her after that.

The night went pretty well, though. We both had to get up with her around midnight--she had completely soaked her pj's and her bed (that "butt straight up in the air" sleeping style of hers has caused more overnight accidents...). Thankfully, once she was changed (and the sheets were changed), she went back down pretty easily. She woke up again about 3:30am; Jen put her blanket back over her and she went back to sleep. I still had to get up, though, to check the basement for an prowler Jen thought she heard (I've never had the chance to wield a Mag-lite like a weapon before)--turns out it was just a door creaking open.

But that was yesterday (and very early this morning). Today is going really well. I think by tomorrow Kaylee will be completely over this thing, too--just in time for Nana to watch her for the day. :)

They say it's your birthday...

Woohoo, Low res pictures and Video!


Present? I thought the paper WAS the present!



Um, what am I supposed to do with this?


What do you mean the table isn't hungry?


Huh, that's not half bad!


Give me a utensil--what do you think I am, a cretin?



That's better--I feel much more civilized. Now let me cram some in my hair.

And finally, when Kaylee was done eating, she found that the cake was also an excellent moisturizer!

Kaylee, don't flush your towel down the toilet!

'nuff said.

For those of you who voted that Kaylee would walk after her first birthday, well :p on you! It's happened, she's decided that she might as well start walking. She's been walking for about two weeks, actually, but she never really seemed to feel any need to walk. So she'd take some steps, stop, and resume crawling.

The past few days she's been walking most places. I've got some video I hope to get to Youtube tonight.

Watermelon Massacre and Fevers

So, I finally had time today to sit down and update the blog. I am so sorry for those of you who have been waiting since my last email about NEW and shiny posts, but school starting, a baby with a fever and being sick, will do it every time!

Anyway, so two weeks ago Kaylee had watermelon for the first time and boy was it yummy! It was so yummy that we thought our foot needed to have some too and I had to end up actually saying, "Kaylee, take that watermelon off of your foot!" She was rubbing her foot with the watermelon. I figure it must have felt good or something, but I'm not going to try it. EWWWW!

When we got finished with the watermelon it looked like Kaylee had just killed something. She had watermelon in her hair, on her face, down her clothes, and her bib was so soaked it looked like blood. So we will call it the Watermelon Massacre! Oh, and yes we had it on our feet, too!

On Saturdays, Kaylee likes going to the farmer's market here in GR. We tend to go early to try to beat the crowd. That and we're up early usually anyway. She loves to look around at all the people and try to grab things off the tables. We usually buy quite a bit of stuff and load up two bags that we take and then the bottom of her stroller with more delicate things that we don't want squashed in the bags. This weekend however we did not get to the market because of fevers.

Kaylee had a real nice one going since Thursday. I got a call at work on Thursday morning from Miss Linda at the daycare. She said that Kaylee had a fever and I needed to come and get her. I guess it's been going around, since they sent 3 kids home on Wednesday with the same thing. So, Friday, we woke up and ate breakfast and Mom waited for Nana instead of Dad, because of an emergency at work and low and behold, not only did we have fever, but spewage as well.

A little secret about me, I can deal with all the dirty diapers in the world, but throw-up doesn't thrill me at all. I hate the stuff and the stuff hates me. We have a mutual dislike of each other. So, Tim came home from work after the crisis was averted and stayed with Kaylee for the day, since classes start tomorrow and I am so NOT ready for them. Thanks Tim!

Anyway, things have calmed down and Kaylee is feeling better. She is spending the night with Nana, so Mommy and Daddy can relax and so that Mommy can get some rest because now she's sick! Thanks Kaylee for sharing!

Anyway, so that's what's been going on here. Sorry for the delay in post, but stay tuned for the next update, you never know it could be video of our girl walking. I did get a little snippet, but it wasn't really all that good (About 5-6 steps with her little Fisher Price popcorn popper). More later...

I've created a sippy cup handing monster...

So, after being beamed in the head by a sippy cup one too many times (it was really quite impressive--she took it in both hands, raised it over her head, and catapulted it right at my nose), we decided to make a concerted effort to train Kaylee to hand us her sippy cup when she was done with it. As with all things parenting, it took a combination of some pre-emptive congratulating (like taking the cup from her during her wind up and praising her) and some good old fashion yelling, but Kaylee now holds her sippy cup out until someone takes it and thanks her for it.

Today we're all in the living room playing, sippy cup on the coffee table. Kaylee picks up the cup and hands it to me. To be consistent, I say "Thank you" and I set it down. She then goes to where I set it down, picks up the sippy cup, and hands it to me. I say thank you, and set it down. She then goes to the sippy cup, picks it up, and--no, wait, it's different--hands it to Jen. Jen says Thank You and puts it down.

I don't know how many times this went on. Got to the point that we were trying to hide the cup from her. :)

People mocked my theories on box parenting

Looks like it works just fine to me.

*tap, tap* Is this thing on?

I guess I have access to write at this blog thingy too. Jen's better at it than I am, so don't expect to see me too often.

Anyway, had a day at home with Kaylee yesterday (my every-other-Monday-work-from-home-day). She had green beans (real, unpulverized green beans) with lunch. She was eating them like she eats Cheerios--she couldn't shovel them in fast enough. We did find a bunch of green bean chunks in her high chair afterwards, though.

We bought a new digital camera as well--a Canon Powershot S3 IS. It does up to 9 minute chunks of high res video (with sound). I doubt we'll be posting a lot of video (about 100MB per minute), but hopefully there will be more pictures.

The Sweetest Days...

Okay, so yesterday was our 8 year anniversary. Tim and I aren't big on gifts for each other, so we decided to skip things all together this year, but when Tim came home from work yesterday, he was carrying two roses, one for me and one for Kaylee. I have the sweetest husband ever!

Kaylee had a major breakthrough today. She took three whole steps, baby ones, mind you, but three steps. I think she just has to realize what she's doing and then she's going to take off on me, like a world class sprinter! Oh, I can so wait for that to happen! It's already hard enough keeping up with her now. I take my eyes off of her for all of 15 seconds and she's sitting on top of the printer playing with all the pretty buttons. One of these days Daddy's going to have Mommy's head over broken equipment...

Well another first today was Kaylee's first time going to a play area. We went to the play area at one of the local malls. Kaylee was enthralled. She loved watching the other kids, following the other kids, and hogging the big bumble bee in the middle of the play area. She doesn't share well yet... we still need to work on that a bit. She was playing Queen of the mountain with some big flowers and she loved crawling all over everything. She started screaming when we wanted to leave. I do hate having to say no to that little, pudgy, face of hers, but those things have to be done.

We also visited the Build-a-Bear Workshop. We got a lovely Triceratops and named it Topsy Roxy. She is green and wonderful and her tail and "ruff" is already chewed on and matted. She's got some very spiffy PJ's that say "Chicks Rule". I thought the PJ's rocked! I'll put up pictures of the two of them at a later date.

Well all else is well on the homestead and Tim is still at softball. He had a double header and then went out for dinner with the team. Me, I'm headed to bed to a nice dose of Sudafed and Benadryl to help my allergy/sinus thing that seems to be hanging on. God bless the nice people who make those two products, because they save lives, well at least mine!

First teeth, first words, and wall climbing... oh my!

Okay, so we've gotten our first word and it has recognized meaning. Dad said over and over when Kaylee wants something from her Daddy. She will also follow Dad around the house saying the same thing over and over. Also we have our first two syllable word too, which was donkey. Don't ask me how she managed it, but it was said on our way to Maryland/New York. Tim and I were talking about Shrek and I said something about Donkey and all of a sudden we hear from the back seat, "Donkey!" It was quite enthusiastic, too.

Our first molars are coming in now and boy are we starting to wish that we had invested in either Ora Gel stock or the teething ring business. I tell you the Motrin company will be making a mint from us in the next few weeks, also we'll be swimming in Ora Gel and balmex... don't ask! Either way we have quite a few harrowing tales from the last few days, including our first time-out. Let's just say that the Princess doesn't like time out or crib solitary confinement without her Leo-pard or blankie.

We also got to order off the menu for her this weekend for the first time at a restaurant! We were so excited. She ate chicken strips, fries, mushrooms (and she liked them!), drank from a big girl cup, and even had some milk. She didn't like the strait milk too much, but it's starting to grow on her. She also had some really yummy banana ice cream on Saturday afternoon. She loved that, especially since it helped her tooth ache!

Kaylee has also become quite the dare devil. She loves to climb stairs. Unfortunately she loves to climb the side of the stairs where there isn't so much to climb, just little bits of wood, so she ends up "rock/wood" climbing the wall to get to the top of the stairs in our house. I let her do this only because if I pulled her down mid-climb she would definitely fall. If I let her do it, she is libel to make it up and she's learned a valuable lesson, she can climb walls like spider man. Oh, what's a mother to do? She also has taken to climbing other things. She will overturn boxes and containers and climb on top of those. She climbs onto our swinging gate to our kitchen and wiggles and laughs. She thinks this is fun. I thinks she gets a kick out of me having heart palpitations and turning white as a ghost and telling her no a million times. Oh, she tries my patience, but I love her!

Well, all is well in the world, as long as I hear my Kaylee playing, it's when I can't hear her that is the problem... speaking of which... KAYLEE! Gotta go!

Our first posting

Well this will be my first posting on our blog. Yes, I do know how to blog! Yes, we do have pictures of Kaylee! and Yes, we do know how to use a computer. I am married to a computer geek you know! Anyway, I decided blogger is a much better way to blog than the other site we had, and way easier to upload pictures to.

Hopefully now that I have someplace to upload them to easily, I will be able to keep up. (Thanks for setting the example Beth! You showoff :) Anyway, I figured I'd bring everyone kind of up to date.

1. Kaylee's adoption was officially finalized on June 13th. We are soooooo happy. No more visits from social workers! WooHoo!

2. We went and visited Maryland and New York. Kaylee got to see her Great-Grandmom and Great-Granddad, as well as cousins, Great-Aunt, Aunt, Uncle, and adopted grandparents (Mr. and Mrs. Hurford). We had so much fun while in Maryland and New York. I became a Godmother. I am so honored by this, so thank you Beth and Patrick and of course little Ethan. I can now talk like the "Godfather" and just say that I am truly the Godmother.

And New York, what a great town. It's big, but not overly intimidating, although since we went to eat at Friday's while there we are ... and I quote... "Losers!" Tim and I actually got yelled at when we got back from our little jaunt to the city because we didn't find anything authentic, but how can you find anything authentic that costs less then your arm and leg at Rockefeller center? Anyway, we saw lots of sights, got Kaylee a stuffed Curious George at the NYFD Store, since she stayed behind and tried out frozen yogurt and sorbet with Aunt Beth, Nana, and Grandma Hurford.

I loved Grand Central Station and the chapel by Ground Zero the best. The chapel was one of my favorites, just because you could sit and you knew that others had sat in the same spots and wept like you and felt the same sense of loss, even if you didn't know anyone personally. It was very moving, and there was one piece of art there that really got me. It was a chalice made of steel from the buildings. It was two towers rising from roots and then it formed a chalice held by God's hands. It was a very moving piece of art. I couldn't get myself to take any pictures there, though, because it was such a sacred place. Tim felt the same, so we just sort of silently walked around. Then the last thing I saw were the Fireman's boots, coat and hat on the remaining pew, and I started crying. It was such a very holy place.

Grand Central Station on the other hand is just cool! It was somewhat confusing, but once you figured it out it was very neat. The first thing I had Tim take a picture of was the clock, where in Madagascar, Melman puts his head through it. I am so Pop culture sometimes! Anyway, the ceiling was great and just the architecture was fabulous.

I can't wait to go back. I miss my sister very much and didn't want to leave on that Monday morning, but didn't have much choice. I guess I'll see her in August, so that's not too far away now.

Well that's about all that's new here. I am still at Aquinas, Tim is still at Home Acres and still busy. Kaylee is teething again and is close to walking. She stands for about 1-5 minutes at a time by herself and will wave around with out falling down. We're just waiting for the first step and then we know we'll be chasing a running girl down. She has about 8 teeth now, but her molars are coming in and oh what fun! I really wish we would have bought stock in Ora gel and teething rings!