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!