Edible Art

What do you do when you're cooped up in the house for weeks with a new baby, you're not in a happy holiday mood, and you're bored out of your mind?  Grab your toddler and do pudding finger painting of course!! Ok so there might have been more eating than painting being done at some point...

 but Kaylee LOVED it and it definitely helped cheer me up as well. After all, how can you not love getting messy with paint that you can eat when you are done with it?  

When we were almost done, Richard decided that he was too bored with just watching us paint on the table and wanted to get it on the action.  However, he chose a different canvas instead...

I'm sure this is something that we will be doing a lot more often now, especially since Kaylee has already asked me for "more painting?" I highly recommend it if you are stuck inside and looking for something fun to do :)

Lost

Lost: One Giant Helping of Christmas Spirit

You could blame my lack of Christmas Spirit on a lot of things this year.  It could be that I haven't been to one holiday party (they all took place right after McKenna was born) or that it hasn't snowed here at all so it doesn't feel like December yet.  It might be the fact that I skipped our annual tradition of watching The Grinch on Thanksgiving or the fact that I haven't really listened to my favorite Christmas songs (Josh Groban Christmas anyone?). It could be the fact that I got my Christmas shopping done really early and haven't been in all the craziness that happens in stores around this time of year or the fact that I won't get to see the lights on Temple Square this year for the first time...probably ever. You could definitely blame it on the pregnancy hormones still raging through me or the fact that I won't get to be with our families this year on Christmas. But whatever the cause, I have definitely not felt any Christmas cheer so far this year. If anyone finds an extra piece of Christmas Spirit laying around, could you please send it my way? 

1st Outing

The weather here has been fairly nice for December (except for today when we are FINALLY seeing our first flakes of snow!) so on Monday we decided to be brave and take McKenna out for her first adventure. We went back to the Franklin Conservatory to see what they had set up for Christmas. There really isn't much to do there except walk around and look at things, but at least it's somewhere else for Kaylee to run around. And everything was really beautiful:

 They had an exhibit with original drawings from the Grinch cartoon:

an enormous Christmas tree made entirely of poinsettias:

 and a huge display of houses, trains, and characters from a ton of different fairy tales. The main castle in the center is Cinderella's castle and they also had Rapunzel, the old woman in the shoe, Little Red Riding Hood, Pinocchio and a bunch of others I can't remember.

 I have no idea what this was made out of, but it was really cool to see.  The whole thing was spinning and they had two different trains that circled around it as well. I was pretty scared to take McKenna out for the first time, but she was an angel. I have this bad habit of always imaging the worst and so I'm always pleasantly surprised when things go well :) Even though she was a good girl, she always looked extremely bored:

I guess it takes more than a few flowers and lights to impress her!

Quote-a-holic

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE movie quotes.  You know those people who is reminded of a song in any situation?  Well, that is me but with movie quotes.  And apparently I needed more proof that Kaylee is my daughter. She has seen Finding Nemo maybe 3 times in her life and already multiple times this week I have said something that reminded her of a quote from that movie and she would say it. For example, she was about to get into something she shouldn't and I told her if she did it she would be in big trouble. She turned around and said "Get back here right now Nemo. You are in big trouble!" (ok well she didn't say ALL the words, but enough that I knew exactly what she was talking about). That's what Nemo's dad says to him when Nemo swims out to touch the "butt". I couldn't believe she remembered that!  She is most definitely my daughter.  I'm so proud :)

Visitors Part 2

I don't know if you can really call my mom a "visitor" because that implies that she was a guest.  But guests shouldn't work harder than anyone else in the house! And that is definitely what my mom did. We would not have survived the first two weeks without her. Besides entertaining Kaylee and being up at night with McKenna, she cleaned the house, did the grocery shopping, ran errands, did dishes and laundry and spoiled us rotten.  In case you didn't already know, my mom is AMAZING. I think Richard has mentioned this fact about 50 times since she went home :)  But it's ok because it's true! 

 Trip out to the Columbus temple

 "Helping" Grandma make brownies

 Kaylee's two favorite things- books and Grandma

Snuggling with Kenna

We wish she could have stayed even longer and already miss her but I guess she had to get back home to husband sometime....Thanks Mom- you are the best!!!

Visitors Part 1

Seriously, is there anything better than having visitors?!? My brother was able to schedule his visit to time it perfectly with McKenna's arrival and we loved having him here! There aren't many things he loves more than brand-new babies so most of his trip was spent doing his favorite thing:

Scott and Richard were brave and tried a burger from the doughnut shop down the street

Yes- that is two glazed doughnuts in place of normal hamburger buns. Scott went a step further and even got feta cheese on his to make it a little grosser. Ha ha. 

 

Actually I tried some of Richard's and believe it or not it was good!! I could never make it through one on my own but it wasn't disgusting like I thought it would be. They also took Kaylee to COSI which is somewhat like The Discovery Gateway in Salt Lake. There are three levels of fun things to check out but Kaylee was pretty much glued to the slide the whole time:

The rest of Scott's trip was spent chatting, playing games, shopping, and of course snuggling babies. We were so sad to see him go!!

Big Sister

McKenna is one lucky girl to have Kaylee as a big sister. Kaylee is of course having a little bit of an adjustment period no longer being the center of my universe, which probably breaks my heart more than it does hers...but she is very sweet and gentle with baby sister and wants to be involved with everything we do with McKenna. She is a really good helper and wants to do anything from throwing away dirty diapers to pouring water on little toes in the bath. I'm lucky to have such a big girl who loves to help out. And I LOVE having two little princesses!!

Getting her first peek at lil sis

Such a big girl

 I love baby sister!!

McKenna's Appearance

I tried to leave out all the gory details so hopefully anyone who wants to can read about our little angel's birth and not be too grossed out :) 

McKenna is quite the little trickster. For weeks I've been having small occurrences of false labor that would get my hopes up, only to have my contractions stop completely. Then on Sunday morning I woke up with a bad cold and decided I would stay home from church.  In the morning I had pretty regular contractions about 10 minutes apart and Richard asked me if I thought today would be the day. I told him that now would be the worst possible time to go into labor when I was already feeling sick, so of course this time it was the real thing. McKenna must have a good sense of humor to play a trick like that on her mom. My contractions started getting more frequent and intense but I kept expecting them to stop and I really didn't want to drop Kaylee off at someone's house too early, only to come home from the hospital or, even worse, have her there for a really really long time so I kept telling Richard I didn't want to go to the hospital yet.  Finally, he convinced me that we should probably go when I had been having contractions 3-4 minutes apart for about 1 1/2 hours. Our super nice neighbor came and got Kaylee and we got to the hospital a little before 7 pm. I was only dilated to a 3 and so the nurse said they were going to make me walk around for an hour and if I didn't change at all, they would send me home. We started walking around the hospital and my contractions got super intense and at one point I couldn't even make it more than a few steps without doubling over in pain from another one. After checking me again and seeing that I was at a 4, and with my mom's, sister's and my history of progressing really fast, they whisked me into a labor and delivery room so I could get set up and start my epidural.  Because my labor had progressed so fast, I was shaking uncontrollably, which I think was even worse than the contractions.  But I had definitely felt enough. I know a lot of people are anti-epidural but I am so grateful for them! When my epidural kicked in, I was sitting pretty-I didn't feel another thing all night! The midwife came in and broke my water and said she would be back in an hour to check on me.  When they came back and the midwife went to check on me, she got a surprise and saw her head and said, well I guess it's time to push!  Which is exactly what happened with Kaylee. In fact, they said I probably could've had the baby about an hour before if they would've known that I was progressing that fast but since I didn't tell them about any pressure, they had waited. But I just couldn't feel ANYTHING! (thank you epidural!)  It was really weird- it felt like this was not how labor should be at all.  They had me push on 3 contractions and in between each one we were just chatting and laughing and I couldn't feel anything. So after three pushes, McKenna was here.  We are so grateful that she has joined our little family and can't wait to get to know her better!

You Know What I Love?

I love that I can go through 9 months of being uncomfortable and in pain while feeling fat, hot, tired, emotional, etc. (need I go on?) and all of the sudden none of that matters anymore. Suddenly it's all worth it because of this: 

Welcome to the world McKenna!

11/27/11

10:40 PM

7 lbs 14 oz

20.5 inches

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was definitely unusual this year. First of all, it's been fairly warm here (on and off anyway) and we haven't seen a drop of snow so it doesn't even feel like Thanksgiving should be here yet!  And second of all, obviously this is our first Thanksgiving without any family. I thought I was going to have to make a Thanksgiving dinner all for the two of us and was a little stressed about it.  After all, the only thing I've ever made for a real Thanksgiving is rolls! But luckily our AMAZING neighbors rescued us and fixed everything for us! Seriously, they were so incredible- Amber told us that she didn't want me to stress about making dinner since I didn't know if/when I would be heading to the hospital so she took care of everything!! Wow we are so blessed to have nice neighbors who are looking out for us.  They set everything up so nice, definitely five steps above anything we would have been eating off of:

 And usually I am not a huge fan of Thanksgiving foods but this was one of the best Thanksgiving Day dinners I've ever had!  Everything was SO delicious we couldn't stop eating. Which is what Thanksgiving is all about, right?? We couldn't get Kaylee to eat a bite since she was having too much fun playing with this cute girl:

But she had so much fun it didn't matter. 

Thanks Amber and Tyler for making our Thanksgiving great! 

 Hope everyone else had as good of a holiday as we did. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Irony

How is it that I can keep my living room spotless (ok maybe not spotless, but at least de-cluttered) for weeks and then the ONE day that my house is a complete disaster, I have not one but TWO completely unexpected visitors??  I swear it always happens this way. As soon as the second surprise visitor left, I hurried and cleaned up the living room until it was back to normal.  And because it's now clean, that pretty much guarantees that I won't see anyone else for another few weeks. Ha ha

All Grown Up?

I don't know if it's because I have a new baby on the brain or if Kaylee hit a gigantic growth spurt, but lately she has been looking SO BIG and grown up to me!!!  Her hair is long enough to put in two adorable pigtails, she loves to do everything on her own, and we can actually have a conversation in which she usually manages to make me laugh.  I love my big girl but when Daddy brought up our old car seat to get ready for baby's arrival and Kaylee climbed in, it broke my heart a little bit.  When we brought her home from the hospital, you could barely see her drowning in her car seat.  

And now look how big she is!  

 

 I can't even imagine how big she will look next to her tiny little sister (who will hopefully be arriving any day now...).  Each new stage is more fun than the last but sometimes I just wish she could stay tiny and cuddly forever!!

If You Insist

I was purposely not posting a picture of my Halloween costume for a few reasons...but since there are a few people who have wanted to see it, I'll give in. One of my friends did this costume a few years back and I thought it was hilarious. She originally did a Caution Bump sign on her belly but my dad came up with "Under Construction" which I think is even funnier. So I stole his idea and hers, borrowed a toy hat that is too small, plus a vest that is too big and voila! A costume where I finally get to use my huge belly to my advantage :)

Trick or Treat!

I wasn't sure if Kaylee would grasp the concept of Halloween this year.  However, she caught on REALLY fast. It was so cute. We started off by going to all kinds of fun activities with the ward over the weekend:

Trick-or-treating in the church

Fish Pond

Cake Walk

And then finally on Monday, REAL trick-or-treating.  

She said trick or treat at every door, took just one candy, and always said thank you- even without us teaching her all that! And of course, she was the cutest little ballerina ever. 

The next day we walked daddy to the bus stop and Kaylee kept trying to go up to the doors and said "candy?" over and over again.  It was so sad trying to explain to her that it only works like that once a year.

I'm so glad Kaylee was old enough to enjoy Halloween this year! (And glad that she's still too young for a bucket full of candy. I'm sure we can find something else to do with it....)

Pumpkin Fiasco

Since Daddy has a paper due soon, he has pretty much been M.I.A. this week. So by Thursday, Kaylee and I were desperate for something fun to do. I decided to be brave and try carving our pumpkin with just me and my 20 month old. Think I'm crazy? I did too but I was willing to give it a try. 

The calm before the storm.

My favorite part is always scooping out the guts- carving takes way more patience than I have. And Kaylee loved squishing the guts between her toes. 

Disgusting...but it kept her busy and away from the knife I was using so it was perfect.  However, the slipperiness on her toes, her bum, and literally every inch of her body met with the slipperiness of the table and when she reached over to grab more guts, she slid right off the table and landed smack on her forehead before I could even react.Wow- that made me feel like a terrific mom, I tell you what.  But luckily kids seem to bounce back really fast and within two minutes she was asking to get back on the table for more "squish". Don't worry, I took more precautions after that! Here she is after the fall-you can even see the tear streaks on her cheek :(

 You'd think I would also learn that with toddlers, there can be no such thing as small scale. In my head Kaylee was content to sit and play in the bowl with the pumpkin remains.  But in real life, it was strung on the walls, the chairs, the table, the floor, on Kaylee, and all over me. 

 Regardless of this, I actually did have a lot of fun carving with Kaylee. You can tell we were definitely missing the carving expert in our family but it turned out alright for doing it by myself while trying to keep a busy toddler from falling off the table...again.  I'm just glad we both came out of this experience alive :)

Pumpkin Farm

I was so excited about taking Kaylee to a pumpkin farm this year.  We didn't get to go when our R.S. went so we've been trying to find a day for a while.  FINALLY it stopped raining and we went on Tuesday with two girls from my ward and their kids.  However, because it had been raining so much the pumpkin patch was REALLY muddy and they advised us not to make the trip out there because people had been losing their shoes, etc in all the mud. We were going to be brave and make the trip anyway but we got about 10 feet out and realized they weren't lying, it really WAS too muddy so we turned right back around.  Ha ha

I thought they offered a hayride out but apparently they only do that on the weekends...so I was pretty bummed about that. But they did have a bunch of pumpkins already picked so we got one to bring home to daddy and bought a tiny little gourd for Kaylee. 

We then ventured over to the kid area. They had a straw maze and grain boxes to play in. My sister took her son to a straw maze and it was kid size and very fun so I thought that is what it was going to be like.  NOPE- the walls of the maze were big enough for adults and on the floor going through the maze they laid about 4 or 5 inches of very very slippery straw!  Not only did Kaylee slip and fall every other step but I also kept slipping and looked like an idiot trying not to fall.  For a very pregnant woman who already hurts walking normally, this was NOT a good place for me. Every time Kaylee fell, it would make her really mad and she would look down at herself covered in straw, say "dirty", try to brush it off, and finally give up and ask me to hold her.  

There was also a slide in the middle of the straw maze that was a lot faster than I thought it would be and Kaylee hit her head and once again got very upset.  So the "fun" maze ended up being Kaylee sitting on my lap while the other kids played....oh well.  The grain boxes were tons of fun though so that was good. Instead of a sandbox, they have these boxes full of dried corn. Genius idea!  If I can figure out how to re-create it at my house, you better believe Kaylee will have a corn box in the backyard next year :) 

 We ended the day with a doughnut and cider. Definitely not an ideal trip but it was still fun.  And now we have a pumpkin that we need to carve- better get on that soon!  Can you believe Halloween is only a few days away???

First of Many

We are now part of a babysitting swap here in our little apartment complex and I am SO excited about it.  Richard has very little time with us, let alone just with me, and it makes it much easier knowing I will have two whole hours with him to myself every Saturday.  This week we wanted to take advantage of the good weather since we know it won't last much longer.  We went to the Park of Roses, which we have heard is incredible.  I didn't expect there to be any roses left, and there weren't a ton but definitely more than I thought!  It is a GORGEOUS park and it was so fun to walk around and have some alone time with Richard.  We will definitely be heading back next year when all those bushes are full of roses!

 

 

After we got some ice cream and made a quick stop at the store.  Even if we aren't really doing anything I'm so lucky to have an amazing friend to be with.  There is nobody I would rather spend time with!  Hopefully this was the first of many many fun dates to come!!