Shopping!

The day after Valentines Day, Daniel, Kaylee & I met up with Kay & Libby to go shopping at Babies R Us and Concord Mills. Before we went shopping Daniel, Kaylee & I went to our favorite restaurant in Concord, On the Border! Kaylee was a good baby and sat in the booth with us eating her cookies that her Grandma got her for Valentines Day.

Kaylee Bug & Daddy

After eating we met up with Kay & Libby @ Babies R Us. We bought Kaylee some sippy cups, paci's, a bigger baby tub and a adorable swimsuit & sunhat! After Babies R Us we went over to Concord mills mall. Kaylee was in such a good mood the whole day and loved riding around in her stroller. Just before we left she started to get fussy because she was hungry, but as soon as her Daddy picked her up, she was happy again!

She was either happy because her Daddy was holding her or happy because we were standing in line to buy her more clothes!

After we got home and got Kaylee to bed I decided to lay everything out. I had bought so many clothes that I couldn't even remember what all I had bought! So maybe I went a little overboard... but there were so many cute summer clothes!

It took forever to get the tags off of all of the clothes. I like the Jumping Beans brand of shirts that I bought from Kohl's because the only tag they have is a sticker...so much easier to get off than the regular tags!

I'm glad we were able to stock up on clothes for Kaylee. Most of the things I bought were summer clothes in 12 month size. I will be glad when it warms up outside so that she can wear all of her new clothes!

Catching up....Standing up!

I admit...I've been terrible at keeping up with the blog these last few weeks. I've got 4 or 5 posts that I'm working on to get caught up and hope to have them finished up by tomorrow night. One of them is Kaylee's 1st Valentines post...it's only 2 weeks late...that's not so bad...right?

One of the main reasons I haven't been able to post is for the past 3 weeks Daniel has been out of town Thursday-Sunday and I'm pretty much in survival mode on those days. Then the rest of the week I'm not really sure what I do instead of blogging...but I can just never get motivated to think long enough to make complete sentences!

But anywho... Kaylee is changing so much in so many different ways these days. She has learned how to pull herself up! I can lay her on her back and she will put herself up to sitting and then straight to standing up. She has been doing this since just before Valentines Day but has gotten much better at it over the past week or so. The only problem is once she stands up, she doesn't want me to hold her hands anymore...she hasn't figured out the balance part so I can't let go of her and she usually will just keep pulling away from my hands until I lean her back so that she will sit back down.

She is also getting better at rolling over from her back to her stomach. She has even figured out how to roll over on her changing table. I'm not to happy about this because she tried to roll over while I'm changing her diaper. I took these pictures today... I changed her diaper and let her lay on her changing table for a few minutes while I picked up some things in her room. When I turned around, this is what I saw...

She loves this decorative pillowcase that I put on the wall... apparently she wanted to get a closer look at the black sheep!

She still hasn't really figured out how to get from her stomach to her back, but when she does, I'm in trouble!

6 Months!

I can't believe my little bug is 6 months old! As fast as the past 6 months have went by, I know that before I know it we will be throwing your first birthday party! I'm a couple of days behind on getting this posted because we have been so busy these past few days. Our biggest accomplishment over the past month has been getting you back on a sleeping routine. You have went from taking 30 minute naps with us holding you to taking 1-3 hour naps on your own in your playyard! Here's what else you have been up to the past month:

• You are in size 3 diapers... we are still using the Pampers Cruisers Premium but have started using the Target brand diapers during the day while we are at home (they are 1/2 the price and work just as good... but they have blue & green polka dots on them that show through your clothes... so they aren't great to wear when we go out somewhere)


• You take 32oz of formula everyday (one 8oz bottle and four 6oz bottles... we are trying to get that to just four 8oz bottles)


• You are in 9 month clothes now... there are some 6 month sleep n plays that still fit but are getting tight (I will be putting those up this weekend)


• Like I wrote in my last post, you are learning to roll over. You have pretty much figured out how to roll from your back to your stomach, but still can't quite figure out how to go from your stomach to your back.


• You can sit up on your own for a few seconds and then you will fall over. You think it's funny when you fall backwards while laying on our bed!


• You have been getting better and better at standing up. I sometimes think you will stand on your own (while holding onto something) before you figure out how to crawl! I can stand you up on our bed sometimes and you will hold onto my shirt and stand there without me holding onto you!


• We found out this past month that you are allergic to apples. That was the only problem you had with the stage 1 foods. We started you on stage 2 foods right at 6 months so over the next few weeks you will be trying some new foods and hopefully apples will be the only thing you are allergic to.


• You still love to constantly try to suck on your toes!


• The biggest change I have seen in you over this past month is your personality. You have become so talkative and are such a silly little girl! Just like last month, you love your jumper and you are constantly bouncing a talking/screaming. Just over the past few days you have also started trying to blow bubbles, but you end up just drooling everywhere! You seem to be smiling and laughing more and more everyday and that's something I can never get enough of!

You are still growing as fast as ever. Here are your measurements from your 6 month checkup:

Weight: 20 lbs 8 oz

Height: 26 1/2 in.

(I think you are actually a little longer than this because when the measurement was taken, you didn't want to lay flat on the measurement chart)

Head Measurement: 47 cm

(Your head was still measuring off the chart and actually spiked a little from your last checkup. The doctor decided that if the measurement doesn't start to level off at your 9 month appointment, you will need to have a CT scan done to make sure nothing is wrong)

You are the sweetest little girl and your smile is something I can always count on to cheer me up! I love you so much baby girl!

Just a few things

I will be doing Kaylee's 6 month post Friday but I just wanted to do a post today just because this is something that deserves its own post... Kaylee is finally back to taking long naps...by herself!!! It's amazing how much her mood has changed. She is such a happy baby now and does the cutest things! It's great to know that after screwing up her routine, we got her back on track. It was hard...but definitely worth it.

We started off by trying the Baby Whisperer method, but feeding Kaylee every 4 hours caused her to start waking up earlier in the morning because she was so hungry. So now we don't really have a set schedule, but it works for us. Yesterday after sleeping for 3 hours (which seems like forever compared to the 30 minute naps that I have gotten used to), I had to wake her up because she needed her meds and the long nap was going to throw off her eating schedule which would mean bad news for us the next morning.

She took a nap earlier for a hour and 30 minutes and for the life of me, I don't know how. It is VERY windy here today... as in constant 25mph winds, gusting up to 45mph! It is so noisy in our bedroom where she is sleeping and her playyard is right beside 3 windows so that makes it even louder. But I'm not complaining, it's nice to get a break and be able to clean up the house a little bit.

Another thing that I have been excited about is, Kaylee finally rolled over by herself!!! She has done it before when she was in her crib and using her foot to push herself over, but this past weekend (February 7th...note to self to put that in the baby book...) she was laying on her stomach and just rolled right over! She kept trying to do it again but never could quite get it.

I'm sure within the next month she will start rolling all over the place and I won't be able to keep up with her. Well that is all for this post. Hopefully she will cooperate with me Friday so that I can do the 6 month post. And just because a post wouldn't be complete without a little cuteness, here's a couple of pics!

My 2 favorite people :)

She looks surprised...lol

MaMa Blog Hop!

Sarah over @ My Life as MaMa has started up a MaMa Blog Hop! When I'm not playing with my little monster, I love reading other mama's blogs. Even if I don't know these ladies in person, I like reading their blogs and I have came across several ideas as far as activities to do with Kaylee and ways of preserving memories of her first months, not to mention these blogs are great for a good laugh every now and then!

So go on over to Sarah's page if your a mommy blogger and add your blog to her list!

I want my baby back!

So I had to go to Target today to pick up some formula for Kaylee she was completely out. We are using the Up & Up Brand and somehow 75% of the time that I go to buy formula they are sold out. They always have all of the other brands and all of the other variations of the Up & Up formula... but never the regular formula. Seriously... if you see that you're always selling out of this one particular item... ORDER MORE! The stuff has a shelf life of 2 years so it's not like it's going to go bad. But anywho... I went over to the clothes section to see what all they had. As soon as I get our tax refund I'm going to be doing some major clothes shopping since I need to get 9 month winter clothes and I also want to go ahead and buy 12 month summer clothes.

The idea of buying 12 month size clothes alone makes me sad. Even though Kaylee will probably be around 9 months old when the 12 month clothes start to fit, it's just one more thing that reminds me of how she is getting older. I found this cute outfit that I plan on getting for her. At the front of the rack there was the Newborn size. And then, all the way at the back, was the 12 month size.

Look at the difference in size! I wanted to cry. This time last year I was pregnant, and though I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl just yet, I would look at all the newborn sized clothes thinking of what I would buy once we found out what I was having. And now, a year later, I am preparing to buy 12 month clothes for my 6 month old baby :( I wish she was little again, but at the same time she has just gotten so cute here lately! Her smile is the sweetest thing ever. It seems like as days go by her smile gets bigger and bigger!

She has also been doing better with her naps. Even though we are only finishing up day 2 of our mission to get her to take naps in her crib, she is doing great. Today she took 3 naps in her crib. Two 30 minute naps and 1 almost 2 hour nap! It's not easy, and it involves a lot of fussing and picking her up and putting her back down, but she is slowly catching on. The first time I attempted to get her to nap in her crib it was a hour and 15 minutes of me picking her up and putting her back down... with no nap. This morning it took Daniel 45 minutes and then this afternoon it took me 20 minutes to get her to sleep. So we are making progress!

Next week she has her 6 month checkup. I'm excited to see what her measurements are. I also need to make an appointment to have her 6 month pictures taken. We decided to do professional pictures at 1 week, 6 months, 1 year and then possibly once a year after that. I have her 1 week pictures framed and on the wall in our living room. When Kaylee gets fussy I walk around with her and show her the pictures. At the time I thought she was such a big baby, but looking back at those pictures now all I can think of is how small she was. Funny how things change!

Snowed in and getting on a routine

The weatherman was actually right... we got snow... and a lot of it! It started Friday night and didn't completely stop until later in the day on Saturday. We ended up with 10 inches... 13 inches in some spots along with just a little bit of ice. This was Kaylee's 2nd big snow... lucky girl... 2 big snows in less than 6 months! It was so cold outside that we didn't take her out for long. I bundled her up with a long sleeve onesie, 2 pairs of pants (one with the little feet in them), socks and her fuzzy sweater!

She wanted to try to eat the snow...

I don't know if she liked it or not though...

I love this picture... it looks like we abandoned her in the snow lol
Little snow baby!

I threw some snow towards her!

Last year when I was pregnant I bought the book, "The Baby Whisperer" with the plans on reading it before Kaylee was born. I kept putting off reading it and then eventually lost the book. I have been looking for it for the past month or so and Daniel finally found it for me yesterday morning in Kaylee's nightstand... go figure. Up until last November Kaylee had been doing good at taking naps. She was taking a 3-4 hour nap twice a day when she was around 2-3 months old, then it went to one 4 hour midday nap at 3 months. Every time she would take a nap she would usually fall asleep in my arms and then I would either lay her in our bed or on the couch without waking her up. The beginning of November she started having problems with her midday nap. It got shorter and shorter and then disappeared all together. I think at first it was caused by her reflux not being under control and then the problem was made worse by Daddy being home all day which threw our routine off track.

After a few weeks of Daniel being home Kaylee had turned into a Daddy's girl and was spoiled. She would only take a nap if one of us were holding her. Things have just continued to get worse with her naps. They are very unpredictable and usually only last 30-45 minutes after struggling with her to get her to fall asleep. Something had to change because neither one of us can get anything done during the days because we are either feeding her, playing with her or trying to get her to go to sleep. She has also been a lot grumpier because of being overtired during the day. After reading The Baby Whisperer yesterday I decided I would start the struggle of getting her on a routine today. The book suggests a routine called EASY... Eat, Activity, Sleep and Your time.

The first attempt at getting her to take a nap in her crib this morning was a DISASTER! I put her down at 10:20 and after doing the Pick Up/Put Down method for a hour and 15 minutes it was time for her to eat again... and she still hadn't taken a nap. I was exhausted but stuck to the plan and fed her and let her play. After playing for only a hour I saw her yawn! Great, I did what the book said and saw the first sign of her being sleepy! I ran over to her, grabbed her paci, picked her up out of her bouncer and ran up stairs to put her in her crib. As soon as I laid her down I left the room and closed the door. By the time I took 2 steps to the bonus room and turned the monitor on... SHE WAS ASLEEP!!! I was so excited... this is the first time that she has taken a nap in her crib in several months! Of course, the nap only lasted 30 minutes as usual but at least she fell asleep in her crib. She has been awake for almost 20 minutes now and is still just laying there looking around. It is so hard to stick to the plan and not give up on the Pick Up/Put Down but if it means taking naps on her own and less fussiness during the day, not to mention the fact that I have a little peace and quiet every now and then, then I'm will to do whatever it takes.

I know she was happier when we were on our own little schedule... I was too! She really is a east baby and I'm so lucky for that. She just needs her mamma to get it together and give her a little help. And surprise surprise... she just put herself back to sleep. Ahh... sleep...