4 Months

Baby Boo,

You are 4 months old today and I can't believe it. This past month has went by so fast and I also think you have changed more this past month than you have in the last 3. Right after you turned 3 months old you started picking up your toys and playing with them. It is so great to see your face light up and see how happy you are when you are playing with your toys! I bought you a seahorse that plays music and glows and you love it! This week we went to Gatlinburg for your great grandma's 75th birthday and you kept doing the silliest thing with your seahorse... as we moved it closer to your face you would open your mouth up as much as you could and shake your head and then try to bite its nose! You kept looking at daddy and I to make sure we were watching and then after you would bite the sea horse's nose you would look at us and laugh!

You have been doing better with your reflux since we switched your meds. It is so nice now not having to make you wait 30 minutes to eat after you take your meds... plus you love the taste of the medicine! It tasted really bad on its own but I mix it with berry flavored Tums and you love it! You pretty much outgrew your car seat this month so we had to get you a bigger one. The weight limit was 30 pounds on the seat but you just seemed so scrunched up in it that it didn't seem comfortable.

Thanksgiving day we started you on solid food and you have done great with that. You will always open up your mouth so that the food doesn't get everywhere. You have liked everything we have fed you except for peas. Last night while we were in Gatlinburg we went to the Dixie Stampede. You did great and sat in grandma's, daddy's and my lap and watched the horses and all of the people who were dressed up. Your grandma took a piece of a biscuit and dipped it in vegetable cream soup and you loved it. She also dipped your pacifier in the soup and you wouldn't spit your pacifier out!

I think one of the biggest things that have changed over this past month is your head control. You have gotten so much better at holding your head up and can now sit in your Bumbo chair without me having to support your head and neck. You are finally pushing up a little bit with your arms when I lay you on your stomach. You do the best holding your head up when I lay you on my stomach because you lift your head all the way up to look at me and smile!

Right after Thanksgiving you also started teething. You have been extra fussy at times and we are going through so much Oragel and Tylenol trying to keep you comfortable. I will be glad when your teeth come in so you wont be in pain but I know I will miss your toothless smile.

I don't have your 4 month measurements just yet, you go next week for your 4 month checkup and shots and I'm excited to see how much you have grown... but at the same time it makes me sad knowing that you're growing so fast. I sit here and hold you sometimes just thinking I'll never get this time back. I know I will miss holding you and watching you stare up at me, I'll miss your little fingers holding onto mine and that big toothless smile. I feel like before I know it you will be all grown up and moving out of the house! But like I say every month, I want to make the best of the time I have now.

Your daddy and I love you more than anything baby girl and we are so lucky to have you!

Love,
Mommy

Checkin out the tree...

So I finally got around to taking Kaylee's picture in front of the Christmas tree. I have been meaning to do it for the past week but she has just been so fussy since she is teething. It was great to see how excited she was the first time I put her right beside the tree... she just sat there and stared at it... I'm sure this time next year she will be trying to take the ornaments off or tear down the tree! So here are the adorable pictures I took!

Ok Kaylee Bug...smile really big for your first picture in front of the tree...

Ok... maybe not that big...
Much better!

She loved laying under the tree and staring at the lights!

And checking out the ornaments...

Daniel bought this cute little figurine for me to give to Kaylee... it's hard to see, but it says "Love You" on the bottom of the momma snowman...or would that be snowwoman?

I found this cute little ornament tree at Target. It's perfect because I like to have just our matching ornaments on the big tree plus I wanted our cute ones to stand out more!

This is the first time Kaylee held one of her presents...

And of course...she tried to open it! I had to pry the bow out of her hand to keep her from ripping it off!

And finally our stockings! Kaylee's grandma bought her first stocking and had her name embroidered on it!

So that's all of the Christmas-y pictures so far... I have been terrible here lately about keeping up with everything that I am wanting to blog about. I want Kaylee and I both to be able to look back at this blog years down the road and remember everything... which is why I stress so much about keeping up with this thing!

I did some Christmas shopping!

I got a little carried away Monday when I got online originally to buy a extra camera to go with our video monitor that we bought before Kaylee was born. Right now the camera is mounted on the wall by her crib... the problem is, at night we put her in her play yard to go to sleep and have to turn the tv in our room down really low so that it doesn't wake her up. So I finally found a extra camera that we can put in our room to keep an eye on her when she is in her play yard and be able to go upstairs and watch tv with the volume turned up loud enough to where we can actually hear it!

So after ordering the camera I was looking around on the Babies R Us website and saw a convertible car seat on sale for $100 off! We have noticed that Kaylee has been getting a little big for her car seat... it says it can hold up to 30 pounds but there is no way that she is going to fit in that thing at 30 pounds when at 16 pounds she is already squished in there! So... I bought this:


I loved the flower design padding and after doing some research it seemed to be a good car seat. The weight limit is 100 pounds so we shouldn't have to worry about buying another seat for a while! Another reason I wanted to go ahead and get this is that while most babies love their car seats, Kaylee doesn't really care for hers. According to the GI doctor and her pediatrician, the angle that she sits at while in her car seat is uncomfortable for a reflux baby... this seat is adjustable and can recline at different angles so we will be able to adjust it to make Kaylee more comfortable.

After buying the car seat I started looking at toys. Something doesn't look right with no presents under our Christmas tree (speaking of which... I really need to take some pictures and post them on here!). So I ordered these toys:

Izzy the Inchworm

Little Fishbowl

Freddie the Firefly

It doesn't look like it from the pictures but the toys are actually pretty big... The inchworm even has little measurement marks on the back of it and is 2 feet long! I just have 2 or 3 more things that I want to get for Kaylee and then my Christmas shopping for her will be done. I just hope I can wait until Christmas to give her the presents Daniel and I got her... I am the world's worst about not waiting until Christmas day to open presents!

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!