Busy Birthday Weekend

On Saturday Kaitlynn and I went to Courtney's 1st birthday party. The decorations were adorable and we had a great time! She even had a super cute tutu and got a new wagon that the 3 girls had a lot of fun with...especially Kaitlynn! In fact, I'm now wondering if we should have gotten one her her birthday, too. She was the only one who stayed sitting down (without being buckled!) and I think she would have ridden around all afternoon if we would have let her!

Trying out all of Courtney's new gifts just to make sure they'll be fun enough for her! That's what friends are supposed to do, right??
The big birthday girl walking all by herself!!
This cake is delicious!
Here we go ladies
The escapee!


This is one of her newest facial expressions...wrinkled up nose, closed eyes and all 6 teeth showing!
It's taken us a year but we have "just enough" hair to stick a little bow in. It takes some effort to get it in, but it's so darn cute!
CHEESE!
She now puts her telephone up to her ear (or back of the head!) and says "hi"
She's friendly enough to say "hi" to her remote, too!
Here's our big girl drinking her milk. She will ONLY drink it out of the sippy cup with the straw. Thankfully her babysitter figured that out for us last week. I was a little worried that the couple of times I attempted to have her try milk in her normal sippy cup she wanted NOTHING to do with it. The straw seems to be working for now...whatever!

Today, Kaitlynn and I drove up to visit Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ryan. We went to church, out to lunch and then back to their house for an afternoon nap. They can't come to the party next weekend so she got to open some early gifts. Just like at Courtney's party, the tissue paper was a hit! She got some adorable plaid shorts, shirt, musical book and even a caterpillar to hook on her stroller that does all kinds of fun things! It was great practice for next weekend. Thanks Ryan and Sarah!

Lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings with Aunt Sarah
Wow! This tissue paper is a good time.
Yes-We tried another bow today. Check out the tiny sprig of hair sticking up!
Yeah for birthdays!

New Videos

Hi everyone! I've been able to capture a few adorable videos of Kaitlynn in the past couple of weeks that I wanted to share with you. We are just having so much fun with her! It truly seems like she is learning something new each and every day. We are anxiously getting ready for her birthday next weekend. Can you believe it's almost been a year!?!

11 Months, Ugly Sweaters and House Painting

Ms. Kaitlynn is now 11 months old. I am so excited for this next month because she really seems to be doing new things each day! I've of course started planning her birthday party and we are looking forward to that special day, too!

Last night we went over to Lindsey and Todd's house for an Ugly Sweater party to celebrate Todd's birthday. We didn't get to stay too long because Kaitlynn and Daddy both have early bed times now but we had a good time seeing everyone.

Courtney let Kaitlynn borrow a sweater for the evening. She's such a nice friend!
Check out Courtney's adorable hair bow! She even showed us how she can take a few steps all on her own...adorable!
Here's the birthday boy in his monogrammed golfing vest.
"Aunt" Lindsey even had a cute puppet to entertain the girls with. Although, their favorite activity of the night was chewing on the ice cubes!
Yum Yum!
I always think it's funny that as soon as they sit down they each grab the other girl's toy and put it in their mouth. Kaitlynn has her ball and Courtney has our rattle!
So sweet! Matt was holding her while I made a bottle the other night and when I came back in the living room this is how I found them.
I still want to do something different on this wall , such as a new picture or something but I haven't found annything yet. That darn phone jack is just not in a good place!
I also painted the wall our fireplace is on in the living room the same tan color as on the one kitchen wall. I know I took a picture of that but I can't find it on the computer for some reason. I'll add it later if I find it. Thanks again to all of our family that helped out with painting and with watching Kaitlynn while I painted. We couldn't have done it without you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We were lucky this year to get to spend Valentine's Day with Grammy and Grandpa Sewing. Matt had to work that day and Grandpa went to do a ride along with him. That left us girls to spend the day together! When Kaitlynn and I got up we had sweet cards and flowers waiting for us from Matt. I got pink tulips (my favorite!) and he got Kaitlynn an adorable little plant for her room and a Snow White card.

After Kaitlynn opened her little gift from us, which was a Leap Frog farm animal magnetic thing for the fridge, Grammy made us blueberry pancakes. Kaitlynn thought those were delicious!

Hee hee! I just love her cheesy smiles!
As you can see she LOVED the pancakes. Notice her left had is always full of food just in case of an emergency! (If you look really closely you can even see some hair sticking up on her head. It may only be a little but to me it has grown a TON!)

That afternoon I painted our living room wall while Kaitlynn played with Grammy. We obviously had to take down the big mirror above the fireplace so that I could paint and she had a great time playing with that other little girl she could see!

Doesn't she just look too cute in that little skirt!
On Sunday, Grammy discovered that Miss Kaitlynn can walk pretty well know with her little push toy. Just a couple of weeks ago she could only go a couple of steps. Now she's truckin' all over the place! Here are a couple of videos of her showing off her new skills. It won't be long until she's doing it on her own.

Cute Videos

Here a couple of adorable videos that I took yesterday and tonight. You can definitely see her new cheezy smile! We are just having so much fun with her every day. Although, as she's learning new things she is also quickly learning how to get into trouble! For example: I've now learned to not leave her in a room by herself for any amount of time. In a matter of 2 minutes she managed to crawl to the other side of her room, pull up on a little table and somehow got down a little bracelet her nurse made her at the hospital. It had Kaitlynn Nicole spelled out in little beads. Let's just say that there are only 4 letters left! I'm pretty sure she ate some, Tucker also helped himself to a few and the rest may have fallen down the heat register!







Here are the letters I made for Joanne and Jarred's new baby, Olivia! She's due on May 3rd and I can't wait for her to be born! It's not the best picture but I think they turned out pretty cute.

10 1/2 Months

Alright...I know I am way overdue on updating this. I'll give you a brief update on what all Kaitlynn has been doing lately and I think you'll see how busy we've been!

10 1/2 Months old:
-Crawling EVERYWHERE!
-Pulling up to stand on anything that she possibly can

-Waving Bye Bye
-Clapping
-She talks and chatters all the time (I wonder who she gets that from!?!)

-After a lot of hard work (and sleepless nights!) the last couple of weeks she now has 6 teeth
4 on top and 2 on the bottom

-2 weeks ago while Grammy and Grandpa Sewing were visiting she broke out in an awful rash and was so uncomfortable we almost took her to the emergency room that Friday night. Thankfully after a small dose of Benadryl she was able to settle down and sleep all night

-She loves it when Daddy hangs her upside down and getting tickled!

-She is "dancing" every time she hears music and sometimes the music must just be playing in her head! It's really more of a head bop! I need to try to get it on video...pretty darn cute!

-Last week she had her first official ear infection after a couple of pretty scary days of fevers. I guess we should be thankful that it took 10 months before she had one.

-Grandma and Grandpa Hardie, Ryan and Sarah came to visit last weekend. They helped us paint our kitchen. We're still getting used to the color but we do love it! During all the commotion of painting, etc. the gate across the top of our steps didn't get put back on and Ms. Kaitlynn managed to roll ALL the way down. Thankfully, other than a little bump on her head she was ok. I think it "hurt" mommy and daddy more then her!


Here she is with Grandpa Ken. She loves him but he has to take off his hat and glasses when he holds her. Otherwise she just stares at him the whole time!
Doesn't she look cute in Uncle Ryan's hat?? It's the Cubs of corse!
This was right before Grandma and Grandpa left to go back to Iowa. You can kind of see the new kitchen color behind them. I'll have to post pictures of that later.
A few weeks ago all 3 of my favorite people were snuggling on the couch together!

One night we went over to Dana and Dan's house. This was the first time that the girls were big enough to kind of interact together. They had a fun time playing with Courtney's new kitchen!
Ms. Kaitlynn was a little grouchy that evening so we let her have her pacifier. Then the game of the night was Courtney following her around trying to get the pacifier. This happened to be one of the attempts that worked!!
Too cute!
Kaitlynn loved to taste all of Courtney's fun books and toys. They were delicious!