my beautiful little girl

I often blog about the funny, the nuts, the mundane, the medical. But tonight, I am going to blog about the beautiful. My baby girl.

Tonight I walked out the door at quarter to five to go to work. It was a crazy night and I was just glad to be home. Glad to be able to sit down and breathe, for just a minute. After making something to eat, I was relaxing and checking my email when I hear Kaelyn. She is SCREAMING! Now, for the last 3 weeks, we have had an AWESOME sleep schedule and she has been going to bed completely awake. So the mommy in me steps into action with a snuggle blanket and we head into my room where it is quiet, dark, and I have a BIG snuggly blanket with both of our names on it. I try my best to get her calmed down and after half a dozen rounds of "you are my sunshine" she is calm enough to lay down and snuggle up. . . .

. . . And she gets a case of the giggles! She is laughing all the way to her eyes!

And this is where the beauty comes into play. We were laying together, all snuggled up, and the light from the hallway is playing across her face. Shadows on her face and a sparkle in her eyes, she looks like an angel. I don't think we spend enough time enjoying and appreciating the little things. A late night giggle fest, eskimo kisses after nap time, the joy in a toddler's eye when YOU figure out their new word (and thursday is was SHOOOOOE), watching your baby girl seem like such a big girl one minute and the next you see so much of the baby she used to be! How easily I could have been upset, frustrated, or crabby at this late night switcheroo. But all it took was a hug and some giggles to realize that I am SO VERY BLESSED. I took the time to appreciate her for the little miracle she is. The little girl who stole my heart, and made me fall in love with my husband all over again. There is so much beauty in the little things, we just have to take the time to appreciate them, drink them in, and make them a memory!

Go out and enjoy your babies!

Mommabunz and Kaelyn (now peacefully snoring for the last 40 minutes)

first post of 2012

Well, its been a rough week! Kaelyn has been cutting her eye teeth. Thursday and Friday were days of wimpering and fever and not eating much but FINALLY last night the two bottom incisors broke through. She woke up at about 1am just miserable and clingy and I'm guessing the pain of them breaking through is what woke her up. Her fever broke about midnight so we didn't have to take her to urgent care as I was afraid we might have to. Holy cow, she has given us a run for our money lately. Hopefully we will get a little break before her other 2 eye teeth come in. She is so cute though. When she woke up, cried, let me give her some tylenol, chugged her sippy cup, and promptly passed out on my lap on the couch. She sputtered a little and I thought maybe she was going to vomit, but no dice (thank GOD) so I decided it was a better idea to spend the night out on the couch and let Jeremy get a good night sleep. Hopefully he returns the favor for me.

Tonight, Jer had his work Christmas party and Kaelyn got to go over to Auntie J's house and play with Little A and Uncle D. It was a pleasant evening out, even if the food was unhealthy and my stomach didn't cooperate for the later portion of the evening, but we got a pretty cool gift, (snacks, a thermos, a nice hat and 10 bucks) and then Jeremy also won a 50 dollar best buy gift card. Wonder if i can talk him into getting us a printer, FINALLY. I'd love it. lol. Sure beats going to the library to print stuff off or asking Jeremy to print it off at work.

ON a different note, today my dog tried to kill me. hee hee. I saw Kaelyn trying to pull the xbox off of the tv stand so i hollered "no no no kaelyn" and went to hop over our baby gate system, and so did Odin, but he stopped and tripped me, i took down the gate and am now sore and bruised up and banged up. I hurt. All Over.

Time for a tylenol and to hit the hay.

I'll try to post more regularly in the future.

All our love,

Kaelyn and her banged up (and feeling her age) mommy.

xoxoxoxo

Yes Jackie, there IS a blog update

We got back last night from a CRAZY fun 5 day mini vacay to our hometown to spend the holidays with our parents. It went very well, with only a FEW minor hiccups. And by hiccups i mean missed naps, sleeping through church, and eating junk food more than mommy and daddy would have liked.

Kaelyn got lots of VERY NEAT presents and some of the cutest clothes and accessories. Santa was pretty neat and got her a cabbage patch doll. Apparently he remembered that he brought ME one and had to keep tradition going! Her name is Maggie Lola and she has blonde hair! Wooo Hooo! Her auntie got her a stroller that she can't steer worth a darn and ends up running into the wall. She also got LOTS Of puzzles, which is a good thing since she seems to enjoy the 2 she has at home. She got a tea set, a few more dollies (one of which CRIES and drives her daddy up the wall) and her favorite things? WRAPPING PAPER and TISSUE PAPER. It was a hard task to move her from one present to the next. We'd have to take one away and then she'd get fussy so by the end of the day, she was DONE!

Kaelyn got to see ALL of her grandparents (except for my Grandpa S and Grandma C who came earlier in the week before our time off started) but as far as visiting with most of the people on our list, we did fairly good!

We saw an awesome light show set up at a zoo. The local rotary club put it on as a fund raiser event and it was awesome! Except for some cold feet and the worlds worst apple cider EVER, we had a good time.

JUst a quick update for now, I hope to have some pictures up later this week. Kaelyn is waking up so I had better go! It's mommy time!

Later taters~

Boogie and mommy

it's been a long time coming

Holy Smokes!! It's been a long 19 months, and a long 9 months of birth-to-3 coming and helping Kaelyn with her walking/crawling, but the proof is in the pudding! 4 days ago, someone got it in her pretty little head to pull herself up on the foot stool and take off across the living room! We have a walker!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO

We are so super proud of her and she is SOOOO proud of herself!! Smiling and waving and clapping.

She is getting more sure footed by the day. I'd say that she is walking 60% of the time and crawling 40% of the time. If she REALLY wants something, she crawls to get it, but mostly I think that walking is new and a novelty and she hasn't really put 2 and 2 together that it's a quick way and the ONLY way to get around. She's getting better and better every day!

Birth-to-3 was here 3 days before hand and go figure it just took that last little push from those wonderful ladies to put that last piece of the puzzle together. She always does it that way. Her crawling, her using her push toy. She did those all less than a week after their visits!

CLICK HERE TO SEE KAELYN WALKING LIKE A BIG GIRL!

Thanks for your support and Thanks for reading!!

All our love

Lara and Kaelyn

crazy day, crazy week.

So, I just realized that I FAILED to update on my truck breaking down. It was the distributor. Yep. easy peasy fix. Ended back up in the shop because the yahoo new guy at the shop didn't tune up something and it kept stalling. Stop lights, stop signs, you name it. POOF! The truck would die and then roar back to life when I would turn over the ignition. (I guess we were wrong in the assumption that a new part meant it would ALSO be tuned up. But they fixed it up, no problemo.) But anyways, we got it all tuned up and she has now found a new home. As of about 5 minutes ago, she left drip stains on the driveway for the LAST time. We replaced her (and upgraded) with a 2006 pontiac torrent. Bright blue that looks a little purple when the sun/shadows play just right. But don't tell Jeremy. He doesn't like the fact that the Torrent "might" be purple-ish. hahaha. Momma, on the other hand, LOVES it.

Kaelyn had birth to 3 yesterday and they are pretty pleased with her progress. She's taking 3 or 4 steps on her own as of when they were here. But after they left and J and Little A came over, we got her to take 5 or 6 steps all on her own. She was SO PROUD of herself! We had a great play date with them, ordered some pasta from PizzaHut and then ended the night with the husbands coming back with a couch and l oveseat from J's parents. The boys went and took Eunice on her last ride to go pick them up. It's been a crazy few weeks since my last update. Life with a toddler on the brink of full mobility is NUTS! We've been doing great with using the potty, great with walking. The sleep, lately, could use a little work, (last night SUCKED) but other than that, She's an amazing little girl.

I don't often make personal requests, but my Aunt B recently underwent surgery and has been diagnosed with cancer. She will start treatment soon and our family could use any thoughts and positive energy you could throw our way.

Much love and Have a great day,

Lara and Kaelyn

Crazy day today

So, today starts out like any other day. Get up, sit Kaelyn on the potty chair, RUN to the kitchen to put our toast in the toaster and RUN back into the potty for 15 minutes of smelling her "stinky feets" and pointing out her eyes, ears, nose, hair, belly, and previously mentioned STINKY feet. After we take care of "business", we sit down to a breakfast of toast and fruit for Kaelyn, and Cereal and toast for me. We get dressed, play on the floor, potty one more time and get some quality Skype time with my mom. We then get ready to head out to my friend friends house. I KNOW i need to get gas, but I have, according to my gas gauge, between a quarter tank and an empty tank. (1/8th of a tank i guess? I am HORRIBLE at math and even worse at fractions). But as i'm turning the corner to the gas station, my truck chugs and then DIES! So I coast into the gas station assuming that my gas gauge was broken. But that wasn't the REAL problem. I managed to coast to the pumps but I was on the WRONG SIDE! My trucks gas tank is on the DRIVERS SIDE. I managed to pull up with the pump on the passenger side. DOH! So it was so awesome of our family friend, D, to come to the rescue. We managed to maneuver the truck to the proper side of the gas pump and put in 15 bucks in the hopes that it was the problem. but nope. Now my truck WANTS to turn over, but never kicks all the way over. So we call "the car guy" Jake to come and take a look. As it turned out, my truck died less than 5 blocks from the auto shop. He comes, pops the hood, tinkers around, we try to start it with NO SUCCESS.

All the while this is happening, Kaelyn is being a TRUE champ. She had a picnic lunch on my front seat (that is now parked at the auto shop covered in noodles and parmesan cheese) and had a ball pretending to drive.

In the end, we ended up calling Jake's friend to come tow us to the shop. He thought it might be a spark plug or some such easy fix. We left my rusty trusty truck in the capable hands of Jake and the staff at our favorite place to throw money. I swear, we are making them LOTS of money the past 3 or 4 years. lol

We piled the diaper bag and the car seat and the rest of the stuff we would need into our friends jeep and headed to walmart to meet my friend J (D's wife) to print off some pics for our FIRST PAYING CUSTOMER of our hobby business of taking photographs. We were very pleased and hope she and her husband will be too!

We drove around and looked at a few cars and came home to debate dinner. In the end, Jeremy came home and the boys decided that they wanted pizza and us girls (Kaelyn, J, her daughter Little A, and I) were going to load up and go to Perkins for the Kids Eat Free deal. Man oh man, did they get their fill! Kaelyn had a grilled cheese and steamed broccoli and 2 bites of my pancakes AND a sippy of milk and half a sippy of water. Holy Smokes! She got her $4.99 meal for free and it was WELL WORTH IT. usually I just order a little extra and she can share my meal. Both of the girls ate great but the ride home was a little hairy due to the late time and the LONG day. But all in all, it was a decent day, a few stressful snags along the way, but thanks to great friends and an always happy Kaelyn along for the ride, things were half as bad as it could have been. So, since I know J reads this, THANKS SO MUCH!!! You and D (and Little A and her cuteness) are awesome friends and I owe D a sick pack of IPA! Thanks so much for being the awesome friends you are!

Thanks for reading everybody!

Lara and Kaelyn

Walking toy

Kaelyn is REALLY getting close to walking. she is taking 2 or 3 steps at a time and NOW.... She loves to use her walking toy to cruise around the living room! Up until today, she loved to play with it and all of the noisey parts, but she decided to get it in her head to walk with it! Enjoy the video!

Later taters
Lara and Kaelyn