When I open the door to her room...

This is what I see! =D

She's sucha little sweetie!!  I love getting her when she wakes up cause she's always in the BEST mood! =D  And now she's always standing up and so excited!!  I can't believe my baybay is getting so big!!

This is the "mama" face =D  She's in the midst of saying it! "Mmmm...ama!"

Haha!  I love how she crinkles her nose when she thinks something is hilarious! =D

She's the best!  

We went to walmart this morning to pick up work supplies and got distracted by all the fun summer stuff!!  They have SO.much.stuff. right now for the lake/pool and I'm getting SO excited!  We couldn't resist but to try out the baybay lake chairs and smelling all the candles in the "outdoor" area =D (And yes - she was having a blast doing all this too ;-p not just me!)  I have my eye on some shovel and bucket sets as well ;-)  I think we'll be going summer shopping asap! =)

Gotta run - work is calling my name ... loudly.

(p.s. I just noticed all the toys in her basket so these must have been taken last week when she was having her independent play time so mommy can shower =)  She doesn't sleep in her crib with 836 toys - promise lol!  And she's been hanging out nakey a lot lately cause it's been roasting and we only have the fan so far .. no big thang, its how we roll, ya know, nakey ;-) )

Rub a dub dub.

Kayders officially loves the big girl bath!  Last weekend we experimented with the big girl bath - and it went great!  She had a blast! =D  She also has this new high pitched squeal, that she got to put to good use in the bath since she was so excited! ;-)

Oh my sweet little munchkin - you are such a cutie! =D  I lof u!!

And I couldn't resist at least one of that little bum.  I just want to squeeze it and eat it and om nom nom!!!!

Whooohoo for the big girl bath!  I'm so sad she's growing up so fast - but it is super fun to be able to play with her and do stuff.  And to see her having fun is great =).  Gah - just don't grow up TOO fast kiddo =(.

Next post - a million easter pictures!  I had to split it up! =)

Before I forget...

I've been thinking of a lot of things I love lately.

• When Kayden is in her bouncer across the living room, and I am writing a blog, and I talk and wave to her, and she gets so excited and bounces extra high.

• When Kayden is so amazed by the pups, and they are so amazed by her.

• When Dominic sings to her and she sometimes stares, which is adorable.  And sometimes smiles, which is adorable.

• When she grabs her froggy down from her hanging carseat, and gets the foot in her mouth, then lets go and the foot vibrates her whole mouth.

• When she lays her head on my chest, which is getting more and more seldom =(.

• When she giggles when you blow in or kiss her neck or tummy.

• When she talks to me.  Or Dominic.  Or Anyone.  Or her toys.

• When her whole face lights up when you go to get her from a nap.

• That she is starting to love to touch things.

• When she surprises herself.

• When she starts to cry(not this part) while she's napping, and you go in to put her suckie back in, and she says (this part) nom..nom...nom nom nom om nom om om nom... noooom  om noom.

• How she can roll over now.

• How she looks up at you when she's on your chest, in her bed, laying down, anywhere.

• How she enjoys doing things with me. (This may just be my imagination but oh well.  No one else likes to spend 2 hours in Hobby Lobby, and then 2 more at Michaels with me.  Kayden does.  As long as she can grab 8475 things.)

• How she gets a kick out of "boo".

• How her face goes "oahhhoo" when you pour water on her belly in the bath.

• How anything is fun if we do it as a family.  Even just laying on the floor.  Who woulda thunk?

• How I have a delish man who cooks delish dinner.

• How Dominic will put Kayden up to his mouth and "eat her like corn on the cob" and she lauuuuughs!  And he says "ommm nom nom, Kayden on da cob Kayden on da cob!"

I'll keep thinking...always.

Christmas Eve with the Kitts/Conns.

Ah.  Christmas Eve.  It was full of many things.  We had decided, long ago, that Christmas Eve would be OUR family day, because we knew the rest of the weekend would be craziness.  So that's what we did, and I'm so glad.  =)  We, of course, put off/were too busy until then to make the Christmas goodies we gave to our family down here.  So, we were super busy running around all day for; last minute ingredients, candles for luminarias, gifts, etc.  Lesson learned, it is wayyy too crazy out there.  We won't be doing that again.

After all the goodies were finished, we got to business--of enjoying our family day.  We set up luminarias together.  Dominic on the roof, I around the driveway and sidewalk, and Kayden on the porch in her new bouncer from Grandma Kreisher for Christmas. =)  It was such a great day out, but started getting a little chilly as we went along, so Kayden got to wear this great hat.

After we got them all set up, we drove around to look at all the lights with our homemade caramel apple cider.  As you can tell, Kayden really payed attention.

Came home to our pretty house.

With our pretty tree.

Kayden finally woke up from her nap, after much anticipation on our parts haha, and opened her first present ever =D  I don't know what she's looking at here, but she was too funny.  All she wanted to do was stuff allllll the wrapping in her mouth.

We got her a cool thing that projects a little movie on the ceiling for when she's going to sleep.  Now that I think about it, I think it's kind of a present to us haha.  (Dominic picked that out, haha.  ;-)  The present I picked out was from Santa.  Just kidding, but seriously.)

I looove these adorable little santa and reindeer pants!

It's your First Christmas?? You don't say...

Dominic...I mean Santa... filled our stockings.  Big bones for the dogs, formula for Kayden, and candy for us. =)

And just a shot of little missy hanging out in her great cradle while we were getting ready for the wild day of Christmas.

Christmas Eve was great.  We decided that we are going to make it a tradition to hang out all day together, look at lights, and open our family presents together on Christmas Eve.  We also are planning on giving her an ornament each year, and when she moves out she will have her own collection started.  =D  This year her ornament is her own "handprint" that we tried to make, but turned out more as a blob. She tried to grab the ornament instead of stamp her hand, but it was hilarious.  And I think is even better than if she had really stamped it haha.  We went to get family photos taken together, and more pictures of her (duh.), but some family members haven't gotten theirs in the mail yet (haha sorry. i'm a slacker, i know.) so I'll have to wait to post those. =)

I love that I have my own family now, and we can choose anything and everything.  We can choose our traditions, our plans, our outfits for family pictures ;-).  It's great.  I am so glad and grateful I have my great little family (including the dogs) and we could all spend Christmas Eve together as a family.  I hope we have many more of these.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Lil miss chompin on her froggy.  She loves this lil guy, we got him for a couple bucks a couple weeks ago and I'm glad we did.  =)  He hangs from her car seat and vibrates when she pulls his feetsies but she likes it more when she can just hold him and eat his feetsies.  She gets them all soggy and it makes the funniest noise when she sucks, sucks, sucks.

We took her to the Dr. yesterday.  Well actually we took her last Thursday but when I got there they said that all the Dr's had left...!?  Who does that?!  They called me the day before to "remind me of my appointment and let me know that I would still have to pay for the visit, in the case that I did not make the appointment."  Oh nice to know, thank you for not letting me know that you were taking the afternoon off to skip through the park.  Just kidding, it may have been an emergency or something of the sort, but I was very frustrated that I had showered, Kayden had a bath, we got all ready, set, fed, napped, and drove all the way down there.  Out of the car, through the building.  And then...back home.  Haha, I know-I'm being a cry-baby about it but I was really irritated.  So irritated that we went yesterday with no bath ;-).  We showed them.  We did change our Dr. though.  We have been four times now, and the Dr. that we had, has only shown up once.  So I just went ahead and switched us over to the Dr. that we have met more anyways -- Dr. Gladwell.  She's great.

Anyway--Kayden's Dr. Update: She weighs 14 lbs. 12 ounces.  My precious chunky monkey.  Everyone likes to call her fat.. and I just don't get it.  And don't like it.  Fat seems so...gross. and mean. and not cute.  Chunky on the other hand.  Oh, so cute!  She's in the 60% for weight..which really means she isn't all that chunky I suppose.  She is 23 3/4 inches long -- 40%.  (Surrrrrprising to me.  Everyone kept saying how loooong her fingers and toes are, and how she is so big.  And the fact that Dominic is her daddy.  I'm just so surprised she's in the bottom half.  But.. we "remeasured" her to the little marks that the nurse makes on the paper, at her head and foot.. and she was much bigger than that.  She must have moved or something..so who knows how big she really is lol.)  And last but not least.. her head. is. 16 1/2 inches.  It's in the 75%!!  Holy crap kid!!  Maybe I'm lucky I got a C-section ;-).

Here's some of her enjoying her beautiful cradle again.  =)  She loves that thing.  She just hangs out in it. Feeeeeeeels the sides.  Looooooks around. ;-)

Wahoooo =).

I like this one cause her arm =) moving so fast cause something is so exciting.

HAHA!  Ohhh man!!  We bought these little glasses when we were pregnant.  We tried them on her when she was a few days old... and clearly they were wayyy too huge then.  Obviously they are still way too huge.  I put these on her again on Sunday and just put the camera back there and took a picture. This is what I got.  Hahahah oh my god.  It kills me.  I guess they should still fit when summer rolls around.. if they aren't still huge! =D  (I better knock on wood, I hope she doesn't outgrow them lol.)

On Sunday we went to Dominic's Stepmom's (Annette) side of the family's house for their Christmas celebration.  They play White Elephant and there's like 30 people, and it is so much fun.  I love it, I can't wait to start traditions with my family.  =) Dominic and I are deciding on them asap!  Here's some of her in Grandpa's lap chewing.. of course.. on her blanket, and "unwrapping" her first present. =) (Which was really Grandpa's.) ;-)

The other day she had woken up from a nap right when I had to get ready to go.  I laid her on the bed with a few toys next to me and she was totally content!  For like 20 minutes!!  Awesome!  She just played with her toes and gibber-gabbered.  We would smile at each other and she would go back to gibber-gabberin and toe grabbin.  Repeat.  She's too funny.  And such a good baby.  Tara told me that you only get one cute baby and one good baby, Kayden is both, so no more.  I think I might have to take that into serious consideration.

The girl rolled over!  On Saturday.  We were all just hanging out on the couch and over she went.  I'm glad Dominic was there for the first one! =)  She also got her first stocking this week.  I will soon be glitter gluing her name on ;-p.   We still have to do her handprint ornament.  We've been busy with decorating the tree, getting back into the swing of things after vacation, laundry etc, not to mention all the everyday stuff.  And I've still been working on way too many crafts.  I have that habit.  I do crafts the same way I do everything.. last minute.  It's ridiculous, but for some reason I can just do it no other way. I'm working on that.

We went to pick out a tree, when we got there we realized that we didn't like them as much and they were outrageously expensive.  And when I say didn't like them as much, we totally knew, we just did.  The fact that the Walmart one's were wrapped up and you had no idea what you're getting, and the one's we were staring at you could see, study, poke, touch, did not stop us from simply knowing that the one we got from Walmart would be beautiful.  Ok I'm joking, we basically walked in, they guy chillin by all the tree's said, "Hey, hows it goin?  Nine bucks a foot tanight 'kay guys."  We looked around.. for like less than a minute.  Said "Five foot tree for $45 bucks, nah we'll go to Walmart."  Haha.  Hey what can ya do.  More Christmas presents. =)  Our tree is, in fact, beautiful.  Just like we knew it would be.  It is beautiful because we decorated it together, with all our combined home-made ornaments.  With a trio tree topper.  A tree topper consisting of;  a weird silver thing, that I'm not even sure is supposed to go on a tree, Dominic's "first home"ornament, and (my favorite) a "best teacher" ornament that was his mama's, our little angel ornament for the top (it is on the tippy-top...we have a weird tree this year, it has many tops haha.)  =D Underneath this weird top of our beautiful tree, we have our little family ornament trio.  We have a "Most Loved Dad", "Mom", and "Baby's 1st Christmas", little snowmen that I got for us, and that I love =).  We put each of ours on a branch, and the baby one on both branches, so they all hang close together.  Cheesy, I know.  But it's so cool.  =)  We also have our ornament - "Today, Tomorrow, Always."  That we picked out our first Christmas living together (last year).  I love that thing too.  Most of the home-made ornaments are from her too.  I'll have to post some soon.  Adorable little penguins made with almonds as the body and popsicle sticks for skies.  I love them.  The other ornaments, Carol and I decorated our first Christmas together.  I crack up at those silly painted things.  We're apparently not the best painters! =D  Well, now that I've explained all the ornaments...I'll decide in 20 years when I come back to read this if that was necessary haha!

Welp, I think that's the update.  I already have more pictures on the camera and am thinking of pictures that I need to take.  But for now..crafts take precedence ;-) .. (Kayden is taking a nap.. and Dominic is playing video games.  This is my life, and I love it =).)

Sweet Thang.

Love this face.

Hanging out in her little hoodie.

Not sure about her hat lol.

Not too much going on.  These are from the past few days just hanging out.  Spent Sunday at Grandpa Kitt's watching football and eating =).  Just counting down the minutes til we can go on vacation on Saturday.  The week can't go fast enough.  I can't wait.  First family vacation.  Cheesecake Factory we're on our way!

Kayden's been working on her sitting and talkin a lot.  She still loves her music crib toy and has been playing with her car seat toys more and more.  She loves to watch the dogs, and they love to watch her, so that works out well lol.  She's getting close to sitting up and crawling it seems like.  I better start making sure there's nothing on the floor.  That should be fun & easy with Dozer constantly taking his toys out of the basket.  She still sucks on her fingers like crazy, and sometimes so hard that she'll gag herself.  Gag or not though, she always manages to get extremmmely drooly.  She also has discovered her toes and loves to try to shove them in her mouth too!

Hope everyone has a good week.  I will hopefully find some time to update before/during our trip in between all the packing/fun.  Anyone have any packing tips with an infant for our travels ;-) ?

Round and Round

Kayden loooves her mobile.  She coos and smiles at it, and I swear sometimes I'm sure she's in there yelling at it telling it to start going again.  She's too funny, she gets so excited once it starts going again!  Only set back:  it only plays for about 3 minutes, which means I'm constantly back in there.  To try to solve this we've recently got a new toy--another music player for her crib that has little animals and plays music/relaxing noises for twenty-five whole minutes!!  We tried it out last nite, and it seemed to keep her entertained.. we think she thought the music was still coming from the mobile--she was not at all interested in the super cool animals moving across the screen, instead she talked to her ladybug friends.  Either way, she was satisfied, as were we. =D

"Well Ms. Ladybug, I ate and then I spit up.  Next I played with mommy, and now I'm here talkin to you =D"

She loves her "next stage" of her little bath tub too.  

And these just cause they're adorable. =)  

I've been slacking on keeping this up to date already.  I told myself I would try to do it every few days at least.  We went to daddy's YAFL game that he coaches on Saturday morning and spent time with Grandma on the sidelines.  Gets us so excited watching how great he is with kids, he's going to be such a fun daddy to play with! =D  

Rock a bye baby.

Grandpa Jerry made her an ammmazing cradle, which unfortunately got a broken bolt on the trip down here when Kayden came, and finally got fixed by my great handy man last week =).  I am so excited we finally get to use it.. and she loves it!

Riley follows her everywhere, always.

Little missy says goo goo! =D She is so much fun to play with now that she interacts.  I'm super bummed-I tried to upload a video of her being adorable but it won't work! Hopefully I will figure it out soon.

We spent Saturday evening at the State Fair.  Indian tacos, watermelon and strawberry juice, and funnel cakes, ohh so perfect!  We walked around and people watched, and enjoyed time out of the house as a family.  Kayden wasn't sure if she necessarily liked it, but she wasn't too fussy at all.  Did much better than I anticipated that's for sure!  It was a great day!  Can't wait until she can eat funnel cakes too. =)