Full of Thanks

This fall is flying by, and it's hard for me to believe it's already Thanksgiving! Our little family of 3 has a lot to be thankful for this year. Kate is moving and shaking everywhere! She's a busy girl, running all over the house, and her language skills are just taking off. She's doing a great job with her signs (we do some baby sign language with her) and she's saying a new word practically every day now. Today's new word was "poo." :) Gotta love that.
I'm enjoying my work at the hospital, and feel like I (finally!) have a reasonable work/life balance. I actually picked up my knitting needles this past week and started a little neck warmer for myself. It may take me 3 months to get it done, but at least I'm knitting!
Todd's been slowly chipping away at the house. He's re-siding it and enclosing our porch by himself. It's tough to find time to work on it now with the weather so miserable out, but it's getting done..and looks fantastic! I'm so impressed with his handiwork. He's also had some time to work on his artwork and currently has some pieces showing at a shop in Kirkland for their artwalk.

But there's one other thing that our little family is most, incredibly thankful for this Thanksgiving...and it is that we are expecting another baby! I am 11 weeks pregnant, due June 13th, 2010. As many of you know, Todd and I had a challenging time getting pregnant with Kate, and are overjoyed that we were able to have a spontaneous pregnancy for baby #2. Kate and her younger sibling will be about 21 months apart. Life will definately be busy, but I think it will be fun to have kids close in age like that. 2 under 2. Yikes! :)

I hope this holiday season finds you well.

Enjoy some recent pics.
Much love,
Julie

Happy First Birthday!

Happy Birthday, our sweet Kate Scarlett!

It is so hard to believe that our little baby is now one year old! She is such a delightful little girl.

She brings us so much joy, love and happiness, and we are excited to see what this next year holds for us.

Love,
Julie

First Fever

Poor baby. She woke up yesterday in the middle of the night crying, and super hot. Her temp was 102.3, and all day stayed between 100-102. We gave her some tylenol and offered lots of water and nursing, especially since she didn't want to eat much. She doesn't have any other symptoms like cold, or GI stuff...just was a bit more fussy and clingy than normal.
Today she woke up crying at 3am and her temp was 104.3. Poor thing was so hot! Still no other symptoms, so I brought her in to the doctor this morning. They made sure her ears were fine, and checked her urine for infection--which came back normal. So he said to keep doing what we were doing--fluids, rest, tylenol as needed for comfort. If she's still got a fever on Thursday, or she gets much worse, then we'll bring her back in.

My poor Kate. We're missing our last new-parents group today, which she loves, but that's just the way it goes. Hopefully she'll start feeling better soon. She has her first day of "preschool" (really just a new co-op playgroup) on Wednesday, but has to be fever free for 24 hours to be able to go. And--her FIRST birthday is also on Wednesday! So we'll see how she does. Obviously, the most important thing is for her to be feeling better!

I'll keep you posted on how she's doing! This is the first time she's really been sick, so Todd and I are feeling a bit anxious, but I think she's going to be just fine.

Love,
Julie

11 months

How is it possible that our little baby is almost 1 years old?! She's becoming more toddler-esque and less baby every day.

She enjoys eating lots of foods now. Macaroni and cheese seems to be her favorite. :) Lots of cheese and yogurt. Egg on toast, tuna sandwich (although I think more ended up on the floor than in her tummy!), and avocado are other foods she's trying. And cheerios. Lots of cheerios. :) She's also had a few sips of a fizzy fruit drink, and a couple bites of cookie and loves those treats! It will be fun to see her with a big piece of cake at her birthday.

She's still close to walking. Spending time standing by herself, and she's taken a couple steps by herself. I thought she'd be walking by her birthday, but we'll see. She's pretty fast crawling and loves it when we chase her around the house.

She's starting signing a little bit too. She does "all done" and every now and then I get the "milk" sign. I think she tried signing "more" this week, but I'm not positive that's what I saw. She loves to point and gets her point across with that most of the time. She points to EVERYTHING and says "s-da" which we think is "what's that?" So cute!

I can't believe that she's almost 1!

Here are some new pictures of her looking super cute (as always!).

Leave us a message when you check out these cute pics!

Lots of love,
Todd, Julie and Kate

10 1/2 months!

This summer is flying by as quickly as our little girl is growing! She's a busy girl, crawling everywhere, trying to find lots of mischief. Just this week, she's started to try to stand up without holding onto anything. She kind of bounces up from a sitting position to a half standing, and then plops back down on her bum. It's fun to watch her try to figure it out! She likes to be standing, cruising around the furniture, and is wishing she could walk by herself. I don't think that will be too far off now!

She loves to play in the water. We've been going to the different wading pools in seattle, and she's really enjoyed it. She'll crawl around in it, sit in it, and even bends over and puts her face in the water! She just loves the water.

She's very vocal, with lots of babbling. Occasionally she'll say "bye bye," and earlier this week she said "all done" and "hi baby," although I'm not sure that it's anything more than mimicry right now. There's also lots of mama's and dada's which is fun to hear.

She's a happy girl, and likes to laugh and smile. She's started giving lots of kisses and cuddles, (although sometimes she's too busy to cuddle!), but when it happens, it makes her mom and dad just melt. It's so hard to believe she's almost a year!

I'll work on getting pictures up soon...

Love,
Julie

"Ba, bye!"

Today Kate and I were at the UW participating in a research study. It was her 7th visit for this study in the past 2 weeks, and every time that I leave with her, I wave and say "say bye-bye Barbara" (Barbara is the researcher). Well today I did the same thing, and after I said "say bye bye," Kate waved and said "ba-bye." I looked at Barbara and said, did she just say "bye bye?!" She agreed! I wasn't expecting to hear words yet, and so it took me by surprise! I guess it just really shows that Todd and I are raising a genius. :) We tried to get her to say it again, but of course, Kate wouldn't say anything more.

How amazing!

I'm so in love with her!

Julie

9 1/2 months!

It is so amazing to see the number of motor skills our daughter has acquired in one month! From 6-8 months, she was sitting up by herself, and just starting to pull herself up if the circumstances were right (low enough table, positioned just right). And then from 8-9 months, she's just taken off! She's rolling way more than she used to, crawling, pulling herself up on everything, & cruising around the furniture (still slowly thankfully!). It's really remarkable to see how everything comes together. So now we have a very busy little girl, crawling around the house, chasing us down, and having us chase her down! :)

I was at my parents house in Cle Elum on Sunday and had put Kate down for a nap in the back bedroom. We were out on the deck enjoying the sunshine and some iced tea, and were keeping an ear out for baby Kate noises. After an hour or so, I started to hear some noises, so I went inside to go get her. I opened the door, and there she was! She'd pushed the door open from the bedroom, crawled out and down the hall, and was in the entryway, looking around for the action! It was so funny!

She's been really into dogs lately too. If we're out for a walk and she sees a dog (even a block or two away), her whole little body starts shaking with excitement. "ooh, ooh, ooh!" she exclaims. We saw Sue & Ryan's 2 dogs on Sunday and Kate was so very excited. She was chasing them around the house and was so happy when they gave her kisses. At first when they kissed her, she had this look like, "what in the world was that?!" and then it quickly turned into, "I loved it!". The only time she wasn't sure about them, was when doggie Mackenzie found Kate's binky and had it in her mouth as she was walking around the house. So funny, but Kate was feeling a little jealous that she didn't have the binky! :)

And now some exciting news...although technically this should belong in the 9-10 month post...Kate has 2 teeth! She got her first one a week ago Monday, and then the second one popped through this past Sunday. So 2 in one week. Both bottoms. She's been doing pretty good with them; not too fussy, but definitely a drool monster. Sleep was a little tough this week, and Todd and I caved and let her come into bed with us a little too often. It started when she was waking at 5am, but over the week she slowly inched that time up earlier and earlier. It's so nice to cuddle in bed, but she's a bit of a roller/tosser in bed and none of us were getting good sleep. So last night we had our first cry-it-out session. It wasn't too bad...it ended up being about 45 minutes of crying including the times when I would go into the room to lay her back down and try to calm her down. She finally fell asleep and slept until the morning. Needless to say her eyes are a bit puffy today, but hopefully we're on the right track. Since I'm working tomorrow, Todd's on duty with it tonight.

Eating is getting fun. She's really not that into the pureed foods, or maybe it's just that she doesn't like to be spoon-fed anymore, but she's doing great with finger foods. She's addicted to the cheerios, and enjoys bits of pork, chicken, fruits, and some veggies. At her nine month dr appt she weighed 17 lbs 1 oz, which follows the her growth curve nicely.

She's been such a fun, happy baby. Lots of smiles and laughs, waving, bouncing, crawling. We've gone to the wading pool a couple times this week and she adores it. She loves to see the other kids and play and splash in the water. She is such a great kid!

More pictures to enjoy:










Visiting with Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa






Kate checking out baby Josie!


What's so exciting with babies? I've got my cheerios, and that's all that I need.


Fun at the wading pool

Moab Pictures

We just got back from Moab this week and had a great time! I don't have much time to talk about it now, but I know what you really want is more pictures, so here you go! Maybe we'll put the rest of them on picassa, but for now, enjoy these!

By the way, Kate now has forward motion! She doesn't quite crawl on her hands and knees, and it's not really a true commando crawl, but she kind of "worms" it. She reaches forward with her arms and pulls herself forward as she kicks with her legs. As I'm writing this, she just wormed it from one side of the room to the other so that she could get into her toy box!

And she's also waving hi and bye! Not sure if she knows what it means, but she likes to do it! Just now, she's playing in her toy box and looked up at me, smiled and waved! So cute!