Nicknames

Just the other day I realized something... we have way too many nicknames for Kaylee. I don't know if this is normal (I'd like to think that it is and that most parents have many nicknames for their babies) or if Daniel and I are just 'nickname kind of people.' I mean, we even have several nicknames for our dogs, Liza and Remi. I'm sure a few of the nicknames might stick around for a while and there will be some that we forget about, so I thought I would make a list of all of Kaylee's nicknames that we have called her!

It all started out with 'Peanut.' When we saw her for the first time at 9 weeks on the ultrasound she was so tiny and looked like a little peanut. When she was born she wasn't very small (9 pounds) so Peanut didn't really seem like it fit her anymore... Then somehow we came up with Kaylee Bug which is sometimes turned into:

• K Bugs
• K Buggy
• Boo Bug
• Baby Boo
• and at times she is 'Little Monster'

No matter what nicknames we give her over the years she will always be our 'baby girl.'

What nicknames do you have for your baby?

Catching Up After Thanksgiving

Whew...what a week! We had Thanksgiving at our house this year and everyone from my side of the family was able to come up. Tuesday night Kaylee's great uncle Bubba came up to stay with us. Wednesday we got up and went to lunch at Cracker Barrel before going to Target to do some shopping. The rest of the day we pretty much hung out around the house and finished cleaning up before everyone got here.

Thanksgiving morning Kaylee was so excited to see everyone that she woke up at 3:30 am! Daniel laid down on the couch with her until around 7:00 when I got up to take care of her while he went back to sleep. After feeding her and giving her her meds I started cooking chocolate pies for our Thanksgiving dinner. Kaylee's grandpa and uncle Quinten got to the house around 8:00 am and played with her while I finished up cooking. My mom and grandma arrived around noon and started cooking. Christen came over around 1:00 pm and we finally ate lunch around 2:00. Kaylee had her own little Thanksgiving dinner... she had her first solid food! We fed her some pears and she loved them! I was surprised that she actually opened her mouth for the spoon and didn't spit the food out everywhere.

After we recovered from our food coma Daniel, Christen and I went to go pick out a Christmas tree. When we got back home we decorated the tree and finished putting out our Christmas decorations before going to bed. The next morning I was up at 4 am to go shopping with my mom while Daniel stayed home with Kaylee. Mom bought Kaylee her Christmas dress from Macys and I can't wait for her to be able to wear it!

We also went to Target where mom bought Kaylee's early Christmas present... a activity jumper. Even thought it's not Christmas yet she went ahead and gave it to Kaylee so that she could play in it. So far she loves it!

Her feet barely reach the ground so we had to put a blanket under her so that she could push off of it

While at Target I also bought Kaylee more clothes and a few new toys for her to play with. She has really been a handful for the past few days because she started teething. She is always wanting to chew on something and there are times when even the Orajel doesn't help. When that happens we usually have to sit down with a glass of really cold water and keep dipping her pacifier in it. It has been so nice having my family here and being able to get a break from Kaylee. Friday and Saturday night Daniel and I were able to go out to eat supper by ourselves and could actually eat at the same time instead of taking turns holding Kaylee while the other one would eat! Of course, Kaylee was spoiled by her great grandma who rocked her to sleep several times!This morning mom and grandma went back home and it was back to just the 3 of us! Kaylee and Daniel took a nap on the couch after lunch for several hours while I got caught up on a few things that I haven't had a chance to get around to. Kaylee has been in a pretty good mood tonight but still has her moments when her teeth are hurting her. I took these pictures earlier tonight when she just kept smiling and laughing. I just love her little stockings!

Her shirt was soaked in drool!

There's my happy baby!

So that was our Thanksgiving week/weekend... I have so much to be thankful for this year... a beautiful little baby girl, our family, friends, my blogging friends and so much more!

My early Christmas present!

Today I went to Best Buy to get my early Christmas Present... I had been wanting a photo and video editing software and finally decided on the Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 combo. I even got lucky and caught it on sale for 50% off @ BestBuy.com! I'm slowly learning the features of each program but had to share my first 2 edited pictures! I have always loved black and white pictures that have a little color added in so that was the first thing I wanted to figure out how to do! I think the second picture is my favorite. It was fairly easy to edit these pictures so I am excited to see what else the program can do!

Kaylee's Christmas Tree

Back at the beginning of November I went to Target and saw these cute little Christmas tree kits. It came with the little pot and 5 seeds to grow your own Christmas tree! We planted the seeds on November 7th, and two weeks later (on the 21st) this is what they looked like:

Only 2 of the 5 seeds actually came up but that's better than nothing! The plan is to plant them separately in bigger pots once they get a little bigger and then eventually plant them outside until they are big enough to actually be our Christmas tree one year. I will try to get updated pictures within the next week to put on here... it has been a week since I took this picture (I'm so behind on blogging!) and the trees are already much bigger!

The day before Thanksgiving, Great Uncle Bubba bought and decorated this Christmas tree to go in Kaylee's room.
She loves staring at the shiny ornaments and the pink lights that are on the tree. Hopefully sometime this weekend I can get pictures of the rest of the Christmas decorations that we have put up!

little kaylee bug

my little kaylee bug is not so little after all, she seems like she is growing up to quick. she already seems to be ahead of her age by a couple of months. its like when did she grow so fast, i know it did not happen over night but it sure seems like she did. she keeps getting more cuute as every day goes by and every day it seems like she discovers something new. just the other day her little sounds she use to make got alot louder, i think she discovered that she can change the the tone of her cute little voice, but we still dont have any clue as to what she is saying but its so cute cause you dont know what kind of sound she will make next. i feel so bad for her, i dont know if its the fact that her voice has just got louder but when she cries now its horrible sounding and it seems as if she is just in so much pain or if she is just that much fussier, but we did find out today that she is starting to have a few teeth come in so it wont be to much longer that she will be a little snaggle toothed baby till they all come in. i cant wait for all that to happen, its not gonna be fun for any of us. just this week she got to have her first thanksgiving, she was a little fussy all day but once it was time for us to eat she calmed down while we all got to sit down and enjoy thanksgiving dinner, i think she was sitting there wanting to eat atleast one of everything. she has become quite the little pig, she has got a huge gut that is gonna take her forever to work off. here lately she has been picking up her little toys when we put her in her little chair and of course they are all directed straight to her mouth, she is gonna eat us out of everything i just know it. lol but that little baby girl no matter what she does every day she fills up a little piece of my heart and she gets wrapped around my finger more and more. im really going to enjoy playing with her and introducing her to all kinds of different things as she grows older.

What a week!

Last week was been one of those that makes you wonder what's next... it started out with Daniel losing his job Tuesday... then on Wednesday after having stomach pains since Monday night I took him to the ER where we found out he had appendicitis and had to have surgery at 10:00 that night to remove his appendix. This was one of those times where I especially hate being so far away from family. After dropping him off at the hospital I rushed home with Kaylee. Thank goodness Christen was able to leave work and come stay with her. I went back to the hospital to stay with Daniel for a little while before finding out it would be a while before they would be able to do the surgery (it was only 1:00 when we got to the ER). After sitting there for a while I had to rush back home again to give Kaylee her night time meds and get some things together to bring back to the hospital.

Just when I finished feeding Kaylee and got her to fall asleep Daniel sent me a text message saying he was going to have the surgery soon. I ran and jumped in the car trying to make it back to the hospital before they took him back but I got there about 5 minutes too late. Mom made it to our house around 1:30 am to stay with Kaylee so that Christen could go home. I had planned on going back home that night after Daniel fell asleep but I ended up staying at the hospital with him until they let him go home around lunch time on Thursday.

When Daniel and I got home Thursday afternoon Kaylee was asleep. Mom had told me that she had been playing with her toys. I have been trying to get her to play with her toys for what seems like forever. She would never grab or swing at them and usually after only a few minutes of them being in front of her she would start crying until I took them away... so of course, I didn't believe her. When Kaylee woke up from her nap we put her in her chair and gave her a toy. I couldn't believe it...she picked it up and tried to put it in her mouth! I was only gone for a day and she had grown up a little more!

Playing with her toy!

Today while cleaning up her room I put her in the glider to watch me clean while she played with her toys. She did great! It seems like only a few weeks ago she would fall to one side or the other every few seconds but she sat there for about 30 minutes and never fell over! I can already tell she is going to be a handful once she starts crawling. Anything her hands touch usually goes in her mouth. Last night we went to Olive Garden for supper and after I finished eating I sat her in my lap and held a piece of a breadstick in front of her. First she grabbed my hands and pulled them to her mouth to chew on the bread, but when she figured out that I wasn't going to let go of it she tried to take the bread out of my hand. We will slowly be starting her on solids next month. I'm excited to see how that goes but paranoid at the same time because I know how easily she gets choked! My little girl is growing up so fast :(

A Miracle in a Box

The past few weeks have been pretty rough for Kaylee. Her reflux has been getting worse and I started to realize that the Prevacid was no longer keeping things under control. Things have gone downhill quick since the Prevacid stopped working. Kaylee went from having four 6oz bottles per day to five 8oz bottles per day... there was actually a day where she had six bottles for a total of 48oz in one day! She also completely quick taking naps during the day unless someone was holding her, and even then the naps wouldn't last long. What we finally figured out was that she was eating more because the formula was coating her throat which was hurting from the acid burning it... and she could never get comfortable enough to take naps during the day because of the reflux.

Today I took her to see her pediatrician. They weighed her before we saw the doctor and she weighed 16lbs 1oz! Kaylee bug is a little chunky monkey! So after talking to her doctor, we decided it was time to try a different medicine. Luckily her doctor agreed to prescribe Zegerid. It's a medicine that she had never prescribed before but was willing to try it because I have heard a lot of good things from people who are giving their babies Zegerid. She told me that if this works for Kaylee she will try it on some of her other patients.

This...is a miracle in a box!

I mean seriously... we should've switched to this A LOT sooner! I gave her her the Zegerid for her midday dose of medicine and within a few minutes she was back to her old self! And on top of that she was hungry and we didn't have to wait 30 minutes before she could eat! After she ate she played with her toys and then we layed her down in bed and she took at 3 hour nap! She hasn't done that in 2-3 weeks!

I really hope this is the end of the medicine rollercoaster we have been on... I don't think I can handle having to go back to making her wait 30 minutes between medicine and food... but whatever we have to do to keep her comfortable is worth it... it's so nice to have our happy little girl back!

3 Months

Little Monster,

Another month has went by and you are still growing just as fast as ever! In fact, I think you have been going through a growth spurt these past few days. You have been extra fussy and have actually went a few days without taking a nap during the day. You have also been eating a lot more. We had to increase your bottles to 8 oz because you were still hungry after finishing off the 6 oz's that we were giving you. You had been eating 24-30 oz's per day and after switching to 8 oz's you will eat 32 oz's per day. I'm hoping we can go back to the 6 oz bottles once you finish up this growth spurt because if not we are going to go broke trying to pay for your formula and the thickening gel!

Before your growth spurt you had been doing even better sleeping at night. You would sleep anywhere from 10 to almost 12 hours straight at night. Hopefully you will go back to doing that soon. Today you seemed more like yourself... you and I went to Concord to see your Uncle Quinten play basketball and to see your Grandma and Grandpa. It was the first time in several days that you weren't fussy all day. Daddy had to leave a day earlier than normal to go to Arizona so it was nice to get out of the house to make the day go by faster. Tonight you were so tired and fell asleep in my arms while I was talking to you and it was only 7:45 pm (you usually go to sleep at 9:00).

You are continuing to get better at holding your head up and just the other day you started to slowly play with your toys on your playmat. I also noticed that you have outgrown your 3 month clothes already so Daddy and I took you to the mall last night to buy some bigger clothes for you. It's crazy but you are actually getting better at saying "momma!" There are times when you are crying that you even say it and won't stop crying until whoever is holding you hands you to me. I love knowing that you want me to hold you to make you feel better but I worry that when your Daddy and I have someone else babysit you, you will be fussy because I am leaving. Even though you like me to hold you, you also love seeing your Daddy when he comes home from work! Last week you were pretty much fussy all day but when Daddy got home you would instantly cheer up and smile.

You have had a rough month with us trying to figure out the reflux problem. We finally got the dosage right on your meds but then you started getting headaches. First it was only once a week, then a couple each week, then one a day and then it got to where you were having several per day. Unfortunately that is one of the side effects of the medicine you are taking. After you had went a week without spitting up we decided to slowly start cutting back on your meds to help with the headaches. Right now we are at 20mg/day and it seems to slowly be helping with your headaches. The bad part is you are spitting up and getting choked again, but at least when you spit up you don't cry so I think the meds are still keeping the acid down. Last night you got choked 4 times in a row while I was trying to change your diaper and get you dressed. It's a terrible choice to have to make... either I cut back on your meds to keep you from being miserable with headaches and have you get choked and spit up more often or go back to the 30mg/day and deal with the constant headaches but not have to worry about you getting choked as much. It just kills me to see how scared you are when you get choked but even though I know you can't understand me I always remind you that I'm always going to be there when you get choked and need help.

It's hard sometimes to keep from wishing you would hurry up and hopefully grow out of this reflux problem but that is one thing I promised myself I would never do. I already miss you being just a week old but as you get older you just keep doing more things that make me smile everyday. Even if I'm tired in the mornings when you wake up it makes it all worth it when I pick you up and lay you on the bed to change your diaper and you always give me the biggest smile! I realized just the other day that I don't think there has been a day that has went by since you were born that I haven't smiled and I'm sure that will be the case for a long time. I love you so much Kaylee Bug and I look forward to enjoying the months to come no matter what happens with your reflux problem. I know one day everything will be fine and we won't have to deal with the medicine or getting choked anymore!

Love,

Mommy

happy birthday kaylee bug!

well its not really kaylees birthday but she did turn 3 months old yesterday. it seems like it has not really been 3 months since she showed her pretty little face and joined our little world, but when you look at her and see how far along she has come, and all the times that she has been fussy it makes it seem like its been longer than 3 months just because this little baby girl can wear you ouy so easy sometimes. but she cant help the fact that she is fussy sometimes cause we dont know what is wrong with her and there are times we figure out what is wrong and other times we dont.

a few weeks ago we took some pictures of kaylee on our motorcycles and i was sitting behind her holding onto her and i was just thinking i cant wait till she is big enough to atleast be able to ride the dirt bike with me. i hope she even will want to ride, she might not even wanna ever do that kinda thing but oh well i wont force her into anything. no matter what she chooses to do in life she will always be a daddys girl and ill be involved in everything she does.

the past few weeks have been kinda long for us because we tried to cut back on her medicine and i dont kno if its that or if she has just not been feeling good but she has been wearing mommy out in the afternoons while im at work, so when i get home i take kaylee and i tell mandy to do whatever she wants for the rest of the night. i have been trying different things to try to calm her down and one of the things i have found which i could not be any more happy about is i carry her out in the garage and put her in her little vibrating seat and she will just sit there and look around at all the different pretty shiny coloorfull objects in the garage and smile, i see where she gets it cause i am the same way. she loves to sit and watch me work on my rc cars and she always laughs and smiles when i make any kind of noise with them. she seems very interested in them so hopefully that will be something she is interested in when she gets older,i hope. but the times that she is to fussy to even go to the garage with me i end up just sitting on the couch and talk to her and wait for her to fall asleep in my arms, which i can never get enough of that. i just hope she still wants me to hold onto her when she gets older.

we love our little kaylee bug so much and even tho things have been a little rough here lately i could never trade the time we get to spend together for anything, except for a little more time with my wife. but all in all i love being her daddy and i always will.

Kaylee and the motorcycles

I realized it had been a while since we had taken any pictures of Kaylee so Daniel and I decided to get some new pictures of Kaylee on the motorcycles. We have a picture of her on the streetbike back when she was a month old so it's been a while since we have taken a picture of her on it. I sometimes wonder what she is going to be like when she gets older and what kinds of things she is going to like to do. I have always liked riding dirtbikes and like to go for rides on the streetbike with Daniel but who knows, Kaylee could be the complete opposite and when she gets older wonder why we took pictures of her on the bikes.

She couldn't quite reach the handlebars...

And her legs need to be a little longer...
"I'm not too sure about this..."

I can't believe I got her to look at the camera!

Kaylee and Daddy

Getting caught up...

Since the last time I wrote on here quite a few things have happened. But first, before I forget, here are Kaylee's measurements from her 2 month checkup:

• Height: 23 1/2 inches
• Weight: 13 lbs 10 oz
• Head Measurement: 42 cm

Somehow I completely forgot to put this in my 2 month letter and I know if I don't put it on here I'll end up losing the paper from the doctor's office and won't remember any of the info.

So anyways... first of all, time is flying by! I can't believe it's already November! It was towards the end of last November that I found out I was pregnant and now a year later Kaylee bug is almost 3 months old. Last Thursday I took Kaylee to Wake Forest to have her upper GI study done. I thought it would be somewhat similar to her swallow study where she just drinks formula with barium mixed in, and then they would take the xray pictures and that would be it. I was wrong... no one told me that because she has to have her formula thickened to keep from aspirating that they would have to put a tube down her nose to feed her the barium. I kept asking them if there was any way around using the tube but they said it was the only way it could be done because the barium is so thin. They told me I could wait outside while they put the tube in but as much as I wanted to, I didn't want to leave Kaylee there by herself. They laid her on her back on a wooden board and strapped her down from her feet all the way up to her forehead with her arms up by her head. When they tried to put the tube in her nose it took the guy 3 times to get it in the right way. It just killed me to hear Kaylee scream the whole 15 minutes it took them to do everything. The whole time she squeezed my fingers as tight as she could. I don't know how I did it, but I managed not to completely lose it... I figured Kaylee was already upset and me crying as much as she was wouldn't help anything.

After the study the doctor told me that everything looked fine so at least we got some good news. We had an hour to kill before our appointment to meet with Kaylee's pediatrician so I stopped to get some breakfast and then just drove around so that Kaylee would fall asleep. Kaylee has been doing better with her reflux and actually went a week without spitting up or getting choked but has been having problems with the Prevacid giving her headaches. Since she has been doing a little better we decided to try to slowly cut back on the Prevacid to see if it helps with the headaches and to see if we can slowly get her off the medicine. The problem is, just like it took 2 weeks for the medicine to build up in her system, it also takes 2 weeks for the medicine levels to adjust to the change... so it's going to be a slow process trying to back off the meds, especially since she was on 30mg/day and we are cutting out 5mg at a time but so far so good!

Saturday was Kaylee's first Halloween but unfortunately she had a earache and was very fussy so we didn't get to dress her up. But oh well... there's always next year. Something that I meant to write about a few weeks ago is Kaylee's first word... yes... I know she is only 2 months and actually the first time she said it was right before she turned 2 months old. I have won! Her first word was "momma"... well, it doesn't really sound like that... it's more like "maaa maaa" but who cares! The first time she said it was when we went back home to Tennessee a few weeks ago and even though I wasn't the only one who heard it I thought that somehow we were all just hearing things... I mean come on... she was 1 month old! But over the past 2 weeks she has been saying it more and more everyday. I will sit on the couch and talk to her and if she is in one of her talkative moods she will repeat me when I say momma :) I know she doesn't know what it means and it's just her copying me but it's so cute to hear her say it!

This past week she has become much more active. She sits in her little rocking/vibrating chair and will start kicking as hard as she can. It's the cutest thing because she gets this really mad look on her face when she starts to kick and then starts throwing her arms around. Once she finishes kicking she will talk to herself for a little bit and then start again. Last week I bought her a pink Bumbo seat...

She loves this thing! I bought it hoping it would help her strengthen her neck since she went a month not being able to have tummy time because she would spit up everytime we laid her down. It seems to be working after a week she has went to having to have me hold my hand behind her head to keep it from falling back to being able to hold her head up on her own with very little help. I don't know what it is about the seat but she just sits there and smiles and laughs at me everytime I put her in it.

She is also starting to notice her feet and hands more. After about a week of sitting around staring at her hands she has started to grab at her feet. Today was the first time that she was actually able to grab them but it's fun watching her try. She is even doing better with sleeping at night. She now sleeps 9-10 hours straight! Daniel and I are so spoiled! I will post more recent pictures either later today or tomorrow. Yesterday Daniel and I got some pictures of her on his street bike and of her on my dirt bike. She was so cute!