All About The Baby

Who happens to be 15 1/2 months old already! Miss Kaia Rose has been walking for a few weeks now, but I find I can hardly remember her before she was walking. That made me incredibly sad. They change so fast & unless it's documented all the cuteness becomes a distant memory (if I'm lucky.)

So I'm going to make you suffer through a post where I document some things. Like the smoochy smoochy milestone. She makes this incredibly cute smooching noise & then juts her chin out towards the person she wants to kiss. However if you try to instigate the kiss you will more than likely be pushed away & then laughed at. An example follows. This video cracks me up for some reason.

What else? Although I'd rather only nurse her once or twice a day when she walks up to me signing milk with this huge, adorable smile I usually give in. I'm kind of a pushover that way.

Oh, and she can find me anywhere I might happen to be in the house. Even if I'm in the bathroom with the door closed it's not long before she's pounding on the door. Even if she didn't see me go in there. Speaking of pounding on the door, her baby talk & door pounding was my alarm clock today. It was the sweetest thing. What's that Kaia? You want some milk? Sure come on in, your wish is my command.

We haven't had many fits of naughtiness yet. I kinda hope that starts soon or I fear she may end up a bit spoiled!

Busy Winter Days

As my post title indicates, we've been busy. Here are some of the things we've been doing the past 14 days.

Helping my mom move. You can't really tell how teeny her old house was in this photo, but you can see how packed full boxes it was. Yep, our big fat family of five added to the chaos & confusion by staying there the night before the big move. Actually it went pretty well, considering.

Ayla and some of her friends after their holiday concert. I have a couple of videos also. I'll get to them later.

My hair after soaking in the hot tub during a snow storm!

I tried to do a photo shoot with the baby one Sunday. I wasn't too happy with the results, but thought this one was cute in a kind of goofy way. Not cute enough to send out to people though. Sigh..... I'm starting to think she'll be 2 before I ever get that accomplished!

Just Because She's Cute

I'm in love with this photo taken by Auntie Julie. I hope it made you smile!

Family Portrait Attempt Number 500 Or So

This one is OK, but we obviously weren't dressed for a family photo & you can tell how extremely tired I was on Thanksgiving day. We had spent Wednesday night at a friend's house and Miss Kaia decided to stage a sleep strike about 2 hours after we went to bed (quite late of course).

This is OK, but we were all laughing at the silliness of Uncle Walter & some of our smiles (OK, just mine) are a bit too big. Plus I don't really like Kaia's hand in her mouth.

Here is a sample of what all the rest were like. Basically the only good thing you can say is that we were all in the same place at the same time.

Moving on. We went to Duluth last weekend and spent a beautiful Saturday at the zoo. Here Ayla is about to totally freak out, because there is a llama right behind her. It's putting it mildly when I say she's not an animal lover.

Kaia however is completely unafraid of any animal. So there you go, a minor update. Please share your opinions about the quality of our family photos.

Awww, Aren't They So Sweet And Innocent?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Just kidding. Kinda. Consider this. Technically it is possible to have four children aged 3 and under if you throw one set of twins into the mix. *Shudder* Yesterday went fine, but there is no way I could handle this on a regular basis. Daycare moms and parents of multiples are saints in my eyes. Heck I'll say if you have four or more kids you're a saint. Three every day is most definitely my limit. It's good to know our limits, right?

Okay, I have the whole double chin thing going on here, but I decided to quit being so vain & post this photo anyway. I do love the moment it captured even if I do look every bit of my age! This I can handle. Relaxing with my girls after the twins went home.

Random Shots

We've been hit with some sort of flu bug. It has moved slowly from one child to the next. Ayla missed school on Thursday & Friday last week. Of course the weather happened to beautiful, but we were stuck inside. Monday was another lovely day so we went for a walk when the kiddos got home. Ayla kept telling me her tummy hurt, but I chose to ignore her as she is a quite dramatic child. Shortly after this photo was taken Ayla fell asleep on the couch. It was 4:30. She slept through all our normal chaos only getting up to go to bed. Hmmmm, guess she really wasn't feeling well.

Here's the kiddos on Halloween. Can you tell which kid was dealing with the flu in this photo? We didn't end up trick-or-treating which was fine by me. It was cold & who wants to deal with 3 kids & 3 bags of candy anyway?

Not a great photo, but I just love the fact that a nearly naked baby was involved in the process.

Too cute for words. This was at the Kindergarten parade.

Communication

I have photos of pumpkin carving, cookie decorating & cute kids dressed as a hockey player, princess & frog. But, I really don't feel like posting them for no other reason than it feels a bit redundant at this point in time.

So instead I'm going to make like a mommy blogger and brag about my baby. Really, I don't know if it's bragging or not. I'm just excited & feel like sharing. Kaia is finally starting to use baby signs. This morning when I got her out of bed the first thing she did was make the sign for eat. Just a few minutes ago I was in the kitchen thinking I'd unload the dishwasher & then put her to bed. Just as I was getting started Kaia crawled over to me, sat up & made the sign for milk!! Yesterday she would have crawled over to me & started crying. I'd have picked her up & figured out that she wanted to have milk & bed, but this was so much better. No crying & by making that sign I knew for sure what was going on inside that little brain. My baby is growing up!

Driving Myself Crazy

It's good enough. I think I will have to take the baby to a studio though. It has been hard for me to get photos of a one year old outside. She's always wandering off & eating dirt. Which is kind of cute, but not exactly what I had in mind.

Do Over?

Micah was freezing so I didn't get very many photos of him. These are my two favorites, but I don't love either one. Shall we try again?

Insane

Help Choose Please

I like all three of these, but I'm not sure which would be a good school photo. Please advise.

Apathetic

Or lazy or something. With blogging, not with living life. We've been busy. Too busy to even take pictures of most of the things we've been doing. I've also decided to try an experiment this month. I'm not turning my computer on until after lunch. It's amazing what I've been accomplishing by 9:00 every morning. Our bedroom has been a junk room since Kaia was born. She slept with us for a long time & we had all the baby paraphernalia hogging up our bedroom space. But, she's been out of our room for a while. And, she's one. That means our bedroom has been a disaster zone for at least a year! Guess what? After one week of less computer time our bedroom is almost done. Even my closet!

One thing I tried to accomplish this past week was Ayla's kindergarten photo. It was a repeat of last year. Man, you'd think I was torturing the kid! The following photo is my favorite & it's out of focus. I'm blaming my crappy camera & my wiggle worm of a daughter. The kids have the next two days off of school so we'll try some outside ones. If it isn't raining that is.

Micah's latest thing is bunny ears. It's kind of cute, but he has ruined a fair amount of photos this way. Including the family photo I had someone snap of us recently.

Here are a couple more snapshots of Kaia. She's still such a little sweetie. If she's awake and we need to be outside she is more than happy to join us in the stroller. As long as she has some chickens to look at she's content for quite a while!

Hope everyone is enjoying October. It's the best month of the year!

One More

I have tons of photos from the past few weeks. But, lucky you the computer was really slow yesterday & so I didn't post everything I wanted to. However, I just had to post this one today, because I really love it. Auntie Jenny & the kids picked apples & then they made a crisp. As you can see, even Kaia helped!

The Past Couple Of Weeks

Been picking lots of produce.

Been losing teeth.

Out for breakfast with Michelle & Don. This is becoming an annual tradition for us!

The pink ladies. When you are 5 it's really easy to make friends. All it took for these four was to realize they were all dressed in pink. They ran around all morning holding hands and making sure everyone noticed they were wearing pink.

Our lovely AND delicious tomatoes. Fresh sliced tomatoes sprinkled with sea salt is a staple this time of year.

On her birthday she enjoyed supper & cupcakes with Auntie Julie & Auntie Jenny.

This is not a very clear photo of Auntie Jenny, but it's all I got. How lame am I? We only see her about once a year! Anyway, she was instrumental in helping to get everything together for Kaia's birthday party. The day ended up crazy with a few unforeseen complications. One was the fact that Craig's truck broke down on Friday night. Another was that for the first time this season Micah had a soccer game that ended at 1pm, which also happened to be the start time of the party. A third (good) complication is that we finally sold our gas fireplace that very morning. Just in time to pay for the truck repair bill. How come we're always left treading water & not moving ahead? I guess it's better than drowning.

A beautiful day for the party. Aren't the colors so pretty? Melanie & Traleigh even happened to match the decor!

Getting cranky. Quick, lets open presents.

Our new one year old!

Tired, So Very Tired

I think the above title applies to everyone in my little family right now. Life has been busy these past few weeks. Good, but busy. We had Micah's first days of school. Followed by a short visit from my high school buddy Michelle and her dear little family. After that Ayla's first day of school. Then we had labor day weekend with no plans. I was so looking forward to some down time at home. Time to relax a bit & get to the chores that I felt had to get done before Kaia's upcoming birthday party. It started off great (according to my plans I mean). Then my husband decided he needed fall off of a shed roof. By some amazing miracle he landed just right and has no broken bones. We thought maybe he could heal quickly and go right back to work, but then decided he better not rush it. So, we very suddenly decided he should use his last week of vacation. If he was using his last week of vacation we should go to one of our church conventions. We packed up in record time & headed off to 4 days of spiritual relaxation and restoration. Notice I said spiritual and not natural. It is so hard to make a one year old sleep away from home. Especially when the lights in the sleeping quarters don't go off until 10pm! We got home yesterday afternoon & my mom arrived shortly afterwards. Somehow we all managed to get up and see the kids off on their bus this morning.

Ayla left quite a bit more subdued than she did the first few mornings of school. I think it had something to do with the fact that she got on the wrong bus on Wednesday afternoon. Somehow no one noticed this. Not any of the bus drivers or teachers or people that are supposed to be making sure the Kindergartners get where they are supposed to go. Not even her brother who rides her bus noticed she wasn't there. But Ayla being Ayla made it quite loud & clear when she realized what happened. The bus was able to turn around & take her home. She arrived here right on time, but was a tad (understatement of the year) upset that it wasn't on the right bus. The waterworks didn't stop for quite some time.

Anyway, she survived & slowly got on her bus this morning. The baby survived her days of very little sleep. She has been sleeping like mad since we got home. My husband survived his fall which is something that I can't be thankful enough for. He goes back to work tomorrow. Now I just have to unpack and clean and prepare for my baby's first birthday party. I'm not sure if I can survive the fact that her first year is almost gone. Snap. Just like that.

A Week Of Firsts

First morning to see Micah off.

First time we met Michelle's baby Myah.

The first time I've ever seen a green apple latte. This was Michelle's daughter Sonia's creation. And no, we didn't try it!

The first time to pack 2 lunches.

Ayla's first day of Kindergarten.

Not really a first that I can think of, but just had to post this anyway. Isn't she cute?!

First glimpse of the bus!!

Here it comes.

Ayla's first bus ride.