Christmas morning!

merry christmas to my sweet little angel!

Christmas eve was wonderful. now for christmas morning. what a special thing. Katie's first christmas! She was up early and couldn't wait to see her toys. not that she knew what was going on but... she knew something was up because i was so excited! I hope she inherits my love for chrsitmas! I get so excited this time of year! nana and poppie came over and i think nana was more excited than anyone.
we plopped katie down infront of the tree and took a bunch of photos of her with all her gifts. it was so cute.
katie loved all her presants expecially her car.
katie did great. she stayed awake during the entire christmas morning but when she crashed... she crashed! she was so tired. and after some rocking katie fell asleep for a late afternoon nap and when she woke up it was time for both sets of grandparents to come over for dinner.



I love hosting holiday dinners. setting the table, getting out the good china and silver, and lovely centerpieces. i love entertaining but its so darn hard with a baby so i love when the holidays come around. its an excuse to throw a party ;)

Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful christmas eve at my folks house with katie and Beaumont (their dog) he is a standard poodle which i always grew up with but since he is still a puppy we haven't been able to introduce him to katie much cus he still jumps on people but now that katie is a little bigger we decided to let the two of them meet. it was such a hassle taking all the stuff over to my parents house for dinner. i can't believe a baby needs so much stuff. we had to take her high chair, an exersaucer in case she needed some time alone but without Beaumont all over over, her diaper bag, toy bag, christmas presents , goodness our car was full and only to go somewhere for dinner.
It was a wonderful evening. Beaumont did great with katie and no one was as nervous as bri about their meet up. when bri was in the kitchen i let beau get close and give her a little kissy!
she thought it was hilarious. which was a good thing cus bri almost had a heart attack when it happened!
she was such a good girl and her favorite toy of the night was given to her by by little brother (her uncle bill)they were so cute. he held her and they played with it for like 20 minutes. she is too cute with him and they don't get to see each other often cus he is at school so when he is home i love getting them together so cute looking at each other.
bri walked away with 2 new golf clubs and i got some beautiful clothes and some much needed mommy items.
mom and dad LOVED their photo book. i'm so glad because i worked sooooooo hard on it!

all in all we had a lovely time with a beautiful table set for the queen ;) thanks mom!
the night ended with my dad reading katie the night before christmas from the same book my grandma (katie's great grandma!) read to me on my first christmas. it was a very special moment.
when we got home instead of going to bed and waiting for santa katie had a burst of energy and daddy stayed up to play with her while mommy got ready for christmas the next day! once she was asleep daddy got her toys put together!

Katie's visit with santa!

waiting for santa!


we waited until the last weekend before christmas to go see santa with katie and i originally wanted to take her to the mall because these days the mall santas are so darn good but we ended up waiting and i found out when my old neighborhood was having santa come visit and we took her then.
it was only fitting because i remember being little and going to sit on santa's lap in my neighborhood circle with all the kids that lived close so it was great to come back to a familiar place with a little history and introduce katie to santa there.
i was honestly a little nervous that she would cry because most infants do but when santa came she just looked at him and said ehh no biggie.


when i put her on his lap she looked at me and gave me one whimper not knowing what was going on but after that she just sat there and tugged on his beard (which could have been catastrophic to the other kids if katie had pulled too hard but she is so gentle it wasn't a problem) we got some great photos.


when we were done i shed a tear because i was so proud of her for not being scared. i truly can't believe how big she is getting and how wonderful a baby i have . i am so lucky.


we snapped this family photo before we left and it turned out so great it could be one of my favorites.

Katie's first snow!

telling me what she thinks of this huge snowsuit!

her first peak!
katie looking outside in her snowsuit. getting ready to go outside!
first sight of snow!





all snuggled up and warm!
December 16th we got our first little snow storm of the season. it wasn't very much but katie had never seen snow so it was so special for me to take her outside and look at it, fel it, touch it, i even let her taste it. but surprisingly she didn't have much interest. she looked at me jumping around showing her the snow like i was a crazy person. as if snow was on the ground all the time. o well maybe next snow storm she will get it. i did take some great photos. i even called my neighbor over to take some pics of us in the snow for the first time ;)
the next day it was a little colder and there was still snow on the ground so i bundled her back up (this time in 2 layers) and took her on her first sled ride! nana got her the sled and we went to a neighbors house to drop off some holiday goodies. she had a ball!

Christmas party

WE had out first Christmas party in years cus last year i was preggo and wasn't entertaining... little did i know it would be harder to entertain with a baby than to entertain while pregnant. all the things i thought that were harder while pregnant seem so easy now that i have a baby. things are ten times harder with katie but its all worth it most definitely!
the party was a success that is until it was time for katie to go to bed. poor thing she was teething so badly that when i went to put her down she screamed her head off. her room is on the other side of the House so not one of the 16 people we had in the house heard her which was nice but i felt so bad leaving her in there. i didn't realize it was her teeth that were bothering her until se had screamed it out for a lot longer than normal. Brian ended up going in there and rocking her to sleep cus i had tried and tried and there were still tons of people at our house. i ended up kicking people out around 9ish and thinking... sheesh we really have to let katie start crying it out once this teething thing is over cus she needs to learn to put herself to sleep so in times like this we can just put her down and she can put herself to sleep.

oh the party was great. it was so nice to see old friends and some new ones.
here is a photo of katie with her godparents. always nice to get them all together.



everyone brought something and ohhhhhhhh it was all soo good. we had TONS of food! i ate holiday food for a week after!

this is only one of the tables! we had a whole table full of dessert too!

crawling??not yet!

Katie's bottom two teeth are about a quarter through. she still is having rough nights and even days when her teeth are hurting her. I hope this isn't something that is going to last until all her teeth are in! Bri and I put our tree up this past weekend and its so beautiful. It was so huge we had to cut the top off once we got it in the house cus it scratched the ceiling. Hello Magic Eraser! Works like a charm. I am scurrying around the house to get it ready and decorated for our Christmas party on Sat. It's not easy to get a house ready for a party when you have a baby. Don't say "do it when she is napping" cus my baby still doesn't sleep through the night so when she naps... i nap.
Katie is getting ready to crawl. I don't know how long it will be but she just recently started rocking back and forth on all fours. She has learned to go from sitting to all fours but then falls forward, either on her head (i catch her 99% of the time, don't worry) or her hands and legs go out from under her. She can't figure out how to stay up there long enough to move forward. She isn't sleeping well, worse than usual. She won't nap for more than 45 minutes in the morning... TOPS and in the afternoon she naps for an hour or 2. But I really have to work at getting her to sleep. Someone yesterday told me that babies minds can only handle one thing at a time. When your baby is trying to learn how to crawl her brain is only focused on that. Crawl, Crawl,Crawl. So it is hard to do anything else like sleep because their brain is just focused on learning that one task. Makes sense to me. Katie hasn't been eating well this past week either. Maybe along that same theory, she can't concentrate on anything but learning to crawl. Who knows whats going on in her cute little head. I do know one thing, She is like a sponge. She is learning so much every day and I love watching her do so.
Katie is saying MaMa more clearly all the time. She still babbles mamamamama but the number of distinct MA MA's is increasing each day. Every time it makes me melt. Today for instance I was frustrated because I had been trying to put her down for an hour and she wouldn't' go to sleep so i put her in the car seat and i was going to go for a drive to get her to sleep and as I'm buckling her in, (annoyed may i add) she looked at me and said straight to my face, MAMA and I melted. Almost started crying. Took her out of the car seat and said what the hell I don't care if you nap you are just too stinking cute! Not the best mommy thing to do but it was so adorable.
I can't wait for her to learn to crawl however I do love that fact that I can put her somewhere and know she will stay there. However that isn't true anymore either. She is rolling over so much I put katie somewhere and come back and she is on the other side of the room. Not crawling... but I definitely can't leave her alone anymore and expect her to be 100% safe and in the same place I left her. I can't imagine what its going to be like when she can get from one room in the house to the other! YIKES!!!!

mamamama

For the past few days katie has really been experimenting with her voice as the books tell me a baby this age should be. she is too cute. she alternates with me and bri when she is screeching. we screech (or scream really) back after she does it and we can do it back and forth a dozen times. its adorable but hard to catch on video cus she always gets distracted. in the past few days she has also started babbling "mamamamama" which is too cute. who knows if she really knows she is saying MA MA or not but it makes me feel good knowing she is hearing and understanding a word enough to know how to repeat it.
But tonight Brian was in her bedroom around bedtime winding down and i walked in and she gave me the biggest smile when i walked into the door and said very clearly MA MA. Well, as clear and pronounced as I have ever heard her. It could have just been the start of a babble but she didn't continue so it was so special and I take it as her knowing it means Me ;)

Her teeth are coming through really well. I can see them sometimes if she gives me a big grin. Bottom two teeth came at the same time and are still about neck and neck as far as which will be completely up first. I didn't know they came in two's.

We went in for her second flu shot on her 7 month birthday and she is weighing 18 lbs which is right on track. I read that after 6 months the weight gain drops from 1.5 lbs a month to 3/4 a lb and at her 6 month check up she was 17lbs 12 oz and her 8 month was 18 lbs. so she is doing great. The doctor didn't seem to mind that she wasn't crawling yet. She is working on it so hard i think. she rolls all over the place from one end of the room to the other but can't seem to figure out how to crawl. she has the right stance down, propped up on her hands ready to go but she can't figure out her legs. O well it will come when she is ready.