Happy 1st Birthday!

Today was Kaylee's 1st birthday! I'll update the blog once we get back to NC. So little time while we're here in CA.

Photo shoot at Grandpa's!

My friend Raquel owns Life Stages Photography and she came up to my dad's house today to take Kaylee's 1 year pictures. Of course Kaylee zonked out for a nap just before Raquel arrived so we chatted for a bit, while Kaylee had a 30 minute power nap. Then I woke her up and we did a quick session before she realized she was still tired. Kaylee was a trooper and happy as could be! Here are a few!

My dad built this stool in his 7th grade woodshop class!

Natural Bridges

We went to Santa Cruz today to put Kaylee's feet in the Pacific Ocean. She had a blast, loved the wind in her face, and even enjoyed the freezing cold water as it came up over her feet!

Brrrrr....it was COLD and WINDY!!

Oops! I cut John's head out of the family portrait! :)

Super Kaylee!

Kaylee ate half of a large chicken salad sandwich from Togo's!

Happy Father's Day!!

I knew from the moment I met John that he would be a wonderful father and he is more than I could have ever imagined. Kaylee is a very lucky girl to have him for a daddy and I still thank God every day for bringing us such an amazing man.


And here's a little tribute to our dads.

Need a florist??

Mandy and Liv have started a florist business and are for hire! They do amazing work and definitely have the eyes for floral design! Check out their blog! We Like Flowers

Party Time!!

Kaylee has a store bought party dress but I just had to make her another one too. :) I am so excited for her to wear this!! She's asleep right now otherwise she'd be modeling it in the pictures. I still need buttons for the back. I'll get those when we go into town tomorrow for church.

"swimming"

We were given a blow-up baby pool as a shower gift last year but it said 18+ months on the package so I had put it away. Turns out it was small enough I could have been using it for a bathtub this entire time! It is such a cute little pool, called The Tadpole. ha! She had a blast splashing, filling up the cups and pouring water out of the cups. Thanks Carolina!!

We don't have a bathtub in this house (well, the master bath has a jacuzzi but that's not very practical for a baby) so Kaylee takes showers. She's great at showers but I do hope that we can get the tub put in her bathroom so she can be the quintessential kid, playing with toys in the tub, taking pictures with her hair shampooed into a mohawk, etc. For now, I may be using this pool as her "tub"!

Parks 2 days in a row!

Today Kaylee and I made the trek down to Aberdeen to see John at work and then headed to a lovely park in downtown Southern Pines. It was a picture perfect park, in my opinion. Two play structures: 1 for big kids, 1 for little kids. A lot of nicely mowed green grass, sandboxes, and picnic tables. It was time to nurse Kaylee so I looked for a bench out of sight of the dad's playing with their kids, but no bench was out of sight or even slightly hidden. No matter what bench you sat on, you could see every aspect of the play structures. My first thought was "who didn't put a bench to allow for some privacy?!" but then I quickly realized that the layout of the park was pure genius from a parent's point of view! I was very impressed. So we went home instead. Yes, I know I could have nursed at the park, but Kaylee is so easily distracted these days that it would have been difficult anyways.

She enjoyed the bucket swings again today.

Happy Memorial Day!

After church today we went back to the park with the buckets swings (the one we tried on Mother's Day). Kaylee loved the swings! It was too hot outside to stay long, but we had fun for a little while.



Caution watching this...the camera-man got a little artsy with the camera!

31 days shy of 1 year

Okay, okay...it's really 32 days...this staying at home thing has really started to mess with my internal calendar! On the 22nd I thought it was the 26th, yesterday (wednesday) I swore it was Friday, and today as I started this blog I really thought it was the 28th. So I'm going to go ahead and finish the "11 month celebration" blog post and hopefully no one will read it until tomorrow. ;) I really need to get out more.

Happy 11 months Kaylee! Next month at this time we'll be in California celebrating her 1 year birthday! This month we've spent a lot of time indoors because of the darn weather. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm, rain rain rain, and next week is the start to hurricane season...awesome. Today is beautiful though and I think we'll take advantage of it and drive the 45 minutes to a nice park.

So what has Kaylee been up to lately?

She transitioned effortlessly from 3-4 naps per day to two 2-hour naps. I can't even tell you when it happened. I think it just happened one day. She has made her own schedule and sticks to it on her own.

• Wakes up between 7:30-8
• Eats breakfast at 8:30
• Nap 10-12
• Lunch at 1:00
• Nap 2:30-4:30
• Dinner at 5:30
• Bedtime at 7:30.

Everything is pretty much on the dot. In fact I don't need a clock most of the time! We spend the rest of the day reading books, cuddling, and dancing to music (video below). Watch carefully at the 6-8 second marks for the hair blowing.

She does the inch worm move and rolling to get places, but still no real crawling. I blame myself for this. Kaylee spends A LOT of time on my lap because she is a cuddler and I absolutely love it! She has all the pieces of crawling down, we just need to the put them together.

So I have had to set a goal for myself to actually "put her down". I also need to have more play dates. Poor kid doesn't realize that other babies are crawling, and thinks that mommy crawling around on the floor is just plain hilarious. So hopefully I'll have a better crawling update in just a week or two now that I have "a plan".

But what she lacks in the crawling department she has made up for everywhere else!

She is starting to use a spoon and fork correctly. It's hit or miss whether the food actually makes it into her mouth, but she has the action down pretty good. She eats whatever we're eating for dinner, and the nights we eat things she can't have yet (like pizza) she has leftovers. Her favorites are any type of meat (chicken, beef, pork, turkey), rice, and broccoli. And twice a day she has her staple of oatmeal with either applesauce or pear juice mixed in. I have been teaching Kaylee a few Sign Language signs like "more", "all done" and "hungry/eat". When she's done eating I say and sign "all done" and I inadvertently taught the dogs that this means "okay, come clean up the floor". Here they are waiting patiently for their "sign".

She is great at drinking from a regular cup and loves water bottles.

This was at Jordan Lake with our neighbors/friends.

She says "babababa...", "mama" and "dada" but not to us quite yet. I'm pretty sure that she says "bye bye" (ba ba) when she really does mean bye-bye though. She loves to wave. She hasn't figured out how to talk into the phone yet, but she waves to daddy when he talks to her through the phone. Does anyone else hear "i love you" at the 10 second mark? haha

We celebrated my first Mother's Day. After church we went to a park so Kaylee could try out the bucket swings, but she slept the entire time so we just took a stroll around the park.

It is difficult to catch a picture of Kaylee focusing on the camera anymore, especially if there isn't anyone behind it doing a song and dance act to keep her attention. So for our recent self-family portrait we gave up trying to look a the camera too.

And last but not least, just because I think it's a cute picture...another trip to Starbucks. I shared my pumpkin loaf with Kaylee which she loved, but I think she preferred the bag.

(I made this bow too!)