Christmas Eve 2013

We finally moved into our new house about a month ago, so we were excited to invite our family over for Christmas Eve.  We went to the 5pm children's church service and then had dinner and some presents at our house afterwards.  Brady was one excited little boy.  He still didn't quite grasp the concept of what was going on.  Every time I would ask him if Santa was going to come see him he would say, "No, baby's sick." haha!  Him and Katelyn both got sick the last week of school so I guess he thought Santa surely would not want to come by our house and risk getting sick :).

We loved having everyone come to our house, and Brady and Katelyn certainly enjoyed it too.  We were especially happy to have my brother, Dustin, staying with us.  Brady is officially obsessed with his "Dus-in".  He CONSTANTLY wants to play with him, sit on his lap, have him pick him up.  I asked if he wanted me to make his lunch one day, "No momma, Dus-in make my lunch."  "Dus-in fly on airplane!"  He does let Dustin sleep in for a while, but then he wants to go get in bed with him and watch "choo choo" (also known as The Polar Express).  We are all going to miss him terribly when he heads back to the West Coast.

Making our annual Christmas Eve sugar cookies.

Our family of 4 :).

Brady giving Katelyn a kiss.

The girls!

He was pretty excited about the fire hat Coco got him.

He loves his umbrella from Gigi and Geno.

His piano from Nanna and Papa!

Riley getting some love from Geno.

His slippers from Nanna and Papa that he must put on every day now as soon as he wakes up :).

My beautiful mom and Grandma.

My mom and her fiancé, Bill. 

My adorable grandparents.

My love :).

Two of my favorite guys.

Santa came!!!

KVD 7 months old

Katelyn is 7 months old!  This little girl has stolen all of our hearts, and we just fall more in love with her everyday.  She has the sweetest personality, but she can be feisty too.  She has gotten really grabby lately.  If you leave something anywhere near her reach (phone, remote control, computer) she will get it, and it will go directly in her mouth!  She also tries to grab Brady and take stuff from him which is pretty funny.  "Baby get me momma!"  Her favorite things are sitting on the floor playing, her exersaucer, bath time, eating solid food, and being held.  She has started banging things together.  Her hand eye coordination has really improved.  You can tell she really wants to crawl, but she is not there yet.

She is wearing mostly size 12 month clothes and size 3 diapers.  She has a bottle in the morning, then solid food anywhere from 30-45 minutes later, a bottle mid-morning, solids for lunch, a bottle mid-afternoon, solids for dinner, and a bottle before bed.  She rarely finishes her bottles any more and really seems to prefer the solids.  I am no longer breast feeding.  I wasn't really planning on stopping this soon, but it just kind of happened.  It became too hard to keep up with at work and as soon as I stopped pumping there I pretty much just dried up.  Like I said, she really prefers the solids over the milk anyway.  I haven't tried the sippy cup yet, but I will do that any day now.

She is a great sleeper.  At home she goes down around 9am for her morning nap and that can last anywhere from 30 minutes-2 hours, and then she takes another nap after lunch anywhere from 45 minutes- 2 hours typically.  At school she still only sleeps about 30 minutes the whole day.  She usually takes another little nap around 3pm-5pm.  That is usually her longest nap of the day which I am trying to get her on a better schedule of sleeping longer in the middle of the day.  She goes to bed about 7pm and wakes up around 7am.

I didn't really take any 7 months pictures, but I did happen to take these.

KVD 6 months old

Katelyn is 6 months old!  That is halfway to a year....how can that be??  She is still such a happy, sweet baby.  She hardly ever fusses and just goes with the flow all the time.  You can tell she just loves her big brother (and he loves her) which makes me just melt.  When she sees you she just lights up with the biggest grin.  She is really into kicking her feet now.  Those things are always moving!  Waldo just bought her a bouncy exersaucer, and she loves it!  Instead of bouncing she kind of rocks back and forth like she is galloping on a horse.  It is so funny.  I tell her "giddy up Katelyn!" and she will start rocking that thing.  She is getting really good at sitting up, and she always wants to sit up.  If you lay her down she will do crunches to try and sit up.  You still have to sit right with her, because she will topple over sometimes.  The girl does not roll over.  I don't know what it is, but she just has no interest in rolling around.  I feel like Brady was the same way.  Until he was really crawling around, he didn't do much rolling either.

She has done really well in the nursery, and I think she really enjoys it there.  Her teachers are all super sweet, and she gives them big smiles when we get there in the morning.  She still isn't doing very well napping there.  She will only sleep maybe 30-45 minutes once or twice a day.  She ALWAYS falls asleep in her car seat on the ride home, and sometimes she will sleep until I wake her up around 6, because I don't want her to be up all night.  I am still mostly breastfeeding (or giving her pumped bottles), but she gets one formula bottle a day since I was not producing enough to keep up with her demand.  I am very proud of myself for making it to 6 months of breastfeeding.  Everything after is just a bonus in my mind, but I don't have any plans of weening her any time soon.  I will just keep nursing her as long as my body will allow (By this I mean up to 12 months...I'm not one of these mothers who will breastfeed my child until they are 5 just to clarify.) She nurses or gets a bottle every 4 hours now, and we have started giving her solid food for breakfast and dinner as well.  I usually do rice cereal mixed with a fruit for breakfast, and about 4oz of veggies at night.  So far she loves everything she has tried.  She is doing great sleeping at night.  She usually goes to bed between 7-7:30 pm and wakes up between 6:30-7am.

She is wearing size 9 or 12 months clothes and size 3 diapers.  She still has her pretty dark blue eyes.

Each month that passes it makes me sad that she is growing so fast, but I am also excited to see the new milestones that are soon to come.  She is showing more of her personality everyday, and I just love it.  Brady still calls her "baby" most of the time, but sometimes he will say "hey hen".  They already have their little sibling bickering going on, and it makes me laugh.  "Baby touch me mama!"  But, really he just loves to do anything for her.  If she drops her toy, "my get it!"  He really is the sweetest big brother.  We sure are blessed with two of the most precious children I could have ever wished for.

Can you tell I'm dying for her to have some hair? :) 

Brady wanted in on the pictures :).

My little pumpkins

I am so mad that I did not get any pictures of Brady and Katelyn at the pumpkin patch.  I THOUGHT we were going to a pumpkin patch, but it turned out it was just a fall festival with a pumpkin store.  It was a big disappointment other than the petting zoo that made it somewhat worth the trip.  I tried to get some cute pictures, but they weren't really in the posing for pictures mood :(.  They looked cute anyway in their matching pumpkin outfits.

Halloween was so fun this year.  Brady was really excited about trick or treating.  I don't know if he had any idea what we were going to do, but he seemed excited about it!  He went as Elmo of course, and Katelyn was our adorable little ladybug.

My ladybug at school.

The pumpkin fruit cups I made for Brady's class.

Katelyn and Nanna

Our family :)

My two most precious trick or treaters!

Look at that smile- love her!!

His favorite thing to do.  He has actually lost his driver's license due to melt down issues in the car, but we made an exception for Halloween.

"Uncle" Dave gave us lots of candy!

SC State Fair 2013

It wouldn't be fall in Columbia without a trip the State Fair!  We took Brady last year, but obviously he was too little to really do anything.  This year he just missed the height cutoff to go on the rides by himself which meant we got to ride along, yippee.  I think he really enjoyed it though.  I would say he was cautiously excited to ride the few rides we did ride.  I like that he is not a dare devil, makes me feel a little bit more at ease!

Riding the cars with mommy!

The swings!

"Put your hands in the air!"

Riding the boat with daddy.

Walking through the fun house.

Riding the Farris Wheel.

Sharing an elephant ear, my personal favorite fair food :).

Love these 2!

Checking out the animals.

His first pony ride!  He loved it if you can't tell.