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.

Katie's First Thanksgiving!

Ahhh so much to be thankful for. This was Katie's First Thanksgiving and she loved it. She unfortunately couldn't have any turkey at the table with us but she sure loved sitting at her high chair and watching all of us enjoy our meal. She banged her toys and played around and was so patiend the entire meal. She wanted to help me get ready so the night before thanksgiving I put her on the table before I set it and took the cutest photo! She thought it was so funny to sit on the table because I had never put her on a table before. heeheh she is so cute!

We woke up early and had a bath to get nice and clean and dressed in our new turkey day thanksgiving outfit. She was just the cutest. Here is a picture of mommy and Katie before company arrived.


Daddy had woken up and had been working on the turkey all morning and Katie wated to help but she couldn't help cus daddy wouldn't et us in the kitchen ;) He is very particular about his turkey as he should be because it turns out wonderful in the end! Our dinner was delicious and we even had time after to take some photos of the three of us. I even picked one for our christmas card which I ordered after guests had left ;) I'm so excited to send out christmas cards with our new addition to the family... KATIE!!!
Now that thanksgiving has come and gone that only means one thing... CHRISTMAS IS COMING! I am so excited about Katie's first Christmas!!!!!!

2 teeth on their way

We were up for two nights every hour. It was awful!After checking every morning for teeth I can now see two small white speck in her bottom gum. It is so adorable. She hasn't been up more than usual since those two nights but she has started to chew on my fingers and I can feel the sharp edges of the teeth coming up through the gum. Last night I told bri to stick his fingers in her mouth to feel and he hadn't seen them and when she bit down on his finger he was like WOW I FEEL THE TEETH! It was so cute cus he didn't believe me that they were on their way cus he hadn't seen them. ;)
I don't know how long it will take for them to come up so people can see them but I know they are there and she is a drool machine! Now I know what people mean by their babies drool through outfits and have to wear bibs around the house. Katie has started drooling so much I keep a bib on her all day these days!

Up all night...? A TOOTH!

Last night Katie had me up every hour. It was terrible. I had given her tylenol because I have a feeling teeth may be on their way. She is chewing everything, drooling a lot more, and she spit up, which I hear can happen during teething. Although she didn't have the fever or the over fussiness yesterday or the runny noes which I also hear is common for teething but needless to say I gave her the tylenol incase her little gums were hurting.
Tylenol didn't help! EVERY HOUR! I haven't been up every hour since she was a newborn and even then she gave me 2 hours! Sheesh! Although I'm not as tired as I thought I would be today maybe it is because I am so excited!

I usually wake up every morning and the past week have been checking Katie's little mouth to see if any white is showing.... TEETH! This morning I checked and it's not easy to check, Katie isn't a fan of mommy's fingers in her mouth but I didn't see any teeth. As the sun started to go down (4:00 these days!) I checked again because Katie seemed to be over fussy for a baby who was changed, fed, and had nothing in particular to complain about and since she is normally a happy baby this was unusual for her.
I couldn't see at first so I gave Katie my finger which she immediately put in her mouth like everything else(don't worry it was clean!... for those of you who know how I am a clean nut around Katie when it comes to washing your hands!) and I pulled it out with an "ouch!" because she bit me as she always does but this time I felt something... could it be....?? a tooth??
Sure enough I managed to open Katie's mouth just enough to see the little white nub of a tooth on its way! I was so excited I started jumping up and down and when I had a moment alone with Katie later on in the afternoon I even made up a song about Katie and her first tooth on it's way. Ha Ha it was accompanied by a silly dance while waving my arms around! It was a great night.

This was Katie Laughing at me after I did my silly song and dance for her!

Bananas

We have been busy little bees this week. Katie is trying all kinds of stage two combination food like apple, strawberry, banana and apricot with mixed berry which seems to be a favorite of hers but not of mine because it leaves a nice purple stain on everything it touches although everything comes out pretty well in the wash so no worries. This morning we tried a banana when breakfast was done. I chopped a banana and put the pieces on her tray and she picked them up (by the way bananas are slippery little things so it was hard for her to pick them up) and just squished them in her hands. She got one piece in her mouth but the majority got squished in her little hands before making them to her mouth. I ended up putting pieces on my finger and letting her eat them off the tips of my finger. Most that went in just came back out. She didn't really understand how to swallow pieces of something rather than puree food. Because god knows she is a pro at eating puree. She is my little piggy! She loves food!!! I'm not sure how else to give the pieces to her without them squishing. She did start coughing once cus I gave her a piece that was too big which scared me to death of course but she was fine. She worked it out on her own. But YEAHHHHHH for trying something new!

Starting Meats

We have made a bunch of changes this week. I think maybe too many but; we started 3 meals a day, added stage 2 foods, and began meats in her diet. I know that may have been too much change but she is doing pretty well so far. She loves all food. Always has. My little piggy eats pretty much everything. The first two days she only ate 2 meals and didn't want the third but today she ate all three meals and coincidentally followed the same schedual as yesterday. She has never had 2 days in a row with the same schedual. Humm... getting on a schedual??? yeah fat chance! but we are trying! Stage two foods are pretty much the same as stage one except bigger and combinations of a few fruits or veggies and katie seems to like them all.
As far as meats... ugh they grose me out but chicken and rice and turkey and rice have both been a success. Daddy has been feeding her lately because he has been coming home early lately so he can help! Katie gets so excited when Daddy feeds her!

Rolly Polly!

Katie was so cute today. she was rolling over and over and over. She wouldn't stop. She usually rolls once a day or so and sometimes its on accident but today she was rolling off her blanket. It was so adorable. I grabbed my video camera of course to catch it.