Week 14: September 12th-18th

This week started off with a rough week for mommy.

I had a headache and was achy for about 4 days along with a clogged milk duct. I was taking warm baths and doing everything I could find that I read to try to help.  That Saturday, the 12th, I woke up drenched in sweat and felt even worse. It hurt to even walk. By Saturday night, I had chills. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. I started googling since Colt was at work. It hadn't dawned on me that it could be mastitis but I'm pretty positive that's what it was. Colt ended up picking me up a prescription on his way home and a day or two later, I felt better. It was awful. Feeling like you have the flu while trying to take care of a newborn do not go hand in hand. 

She discovered her hands around this week. I also realized that I couldn't just leave her laying on the couch anymore. She rolled from her back to her front while laying on the couch.

September 12th
I guess Colt was taking a picture because the bed was just a little full!

This sweetie turned 3 months old.

It was obviously a rough day!

Lucky loved and still loves Kinley's blankets.

September 13th

Kinley definitely liked to be talked to and have attention! I love this little video of her. 

This baby loved to watch some TV

September 14th

Sweet baby

Kinley working

September 16th

She loves when you sing to her... even though I can't sing. 

September 17th

I loved this little outfit.

September 18th

Lucky cuddling with Kinley.

Week 13: September 5th-11th

Oh my! Kinley has grown SO MUCH since September. I guess that's expected given it's been 8 months!

Daddy was off for the weekend on the 5th and 6th so he got to hang out with us.

September 5th

September 6th 

Dressed up for the Cowboy game

I started back to work that week. It didn't matter if I tried to get up early for work or if I waited because when I got up, she got up too. 

September 7th

This is how we worked most of the time. I think she got used to sleeping right up against me which made it so I couldn't put her down.

 September 8th

Sweet smile

September 9th

More working with mom

 Afternoon stroll

September 11th

Hanging out on our tummy in the crib

Here are some videos from our week too:

Kinley on her activity mat

Daddy filming Kinley swinging

Kinley smiling during the Cowboy game. 

This is a cute one!

Kinley giving out more smiles.

11 months

Kinley turned 11 months old yesterday. It's bittersweet because in just one short month, which I know will fly by, she will be 1 year old... Absolutely crazy!

 

She has started to try to let go of things when she's standing and she can balance for a while now before she falls. She can also slowly stand up from a squat position and stand on her own for a while before she falls down. She's always got skinned up knees and scratches from crawling and getting into everything. She's starting to use her knees to try to climb on things now too... or she'll just go head first over me or the dogs to get what she wants!

By my scale at home yesterday she weighed 21.6 lbs. She graduated to size 4 diapers just a couple weeks ago. She could still wear size 3, but we were starting to have too many accidents so we went up. She wears mostly 18 month clothes. She can still wear a few 12 months but not too much. She even has a couple of 24 month old tops now. Her sandals that she wears are a size 2. We bought her her first pair of Nike's the other day, and while the size 3 would've probably fit her perfect, Colt made me get the size 4 so they would last longer. They fit her with a little room to grow.

She now has 4 teeth that are completely in. Her top right came in at the end of April and three days later, I noticed that the top left was in as well. I think she's starting to work on another one up top too. She eats pretty much everything unless I think it may be too spicy. She LOVES food. She also loves juice. I usually only let her have juice once a day and it's usually first thing in the morning. As soon as she sees me get it out of the fridge, she gets so excited and starts kicking her feet back and forth while she's sitting on the ground. Just this past week, we started trying to give her regular milk to see if she could handle it. Of course she loves it and guzzles it down! So far, we haven't noticed any reactions so we'll keep giving it to her a little and I may try to start replacing a feeding with it soon.

She's pretty much 100% in her crib now unless we just have a bad night. She's been doing pretty good lately. I've been only having to get up once or so a night and every once in a while NOT ANY!! She'll wake up and I'll let her cry and she'll go right back down by herself in a few minutes. I wouldn't call it a routine quite yet  though because just the other night, we had one of the worst nights we've had in a while and were up all night long again! However, we were at Colt's mom's that night and she was out of her routine and her normal sleeping spot. She naps two times a day. Usually she'll take a nap around 11 or so and then she'll nap again around 4 or so. She naps in her crib. Here lately she's been napping at least an hour, sometimes two that first nap. Then her afternoon nap is usually about an hour most days. I say that.... but then sometimes she'll still wake up as soon as I put her down and not go back to sleep unless I sit there and hold her! Most days we are good about napping on our own though!

She still is saying dada. She is waving and saying "hey" and "hi." She has the cutest voice when she says either one. We haven't gotten her to say "bye" yet. It's always "hey" or "hi." She says what we think is her version of mama, but it's more like "ma, ma, ma, ma." She never just does the "ma" two times. She jabbers all the time, especially in the mornings or when she has a full tummy.

Here are a few more tidbits:

• She still loves to have her tummy tickled by your face.
• She still loves the house alarm and getting water out of the fridge.
• She loves the WATER. We've had her in a hot tub I guess three times now, and she LOVES it along with still loving her baths. She bathes with me a lot of the time now. Since she kept climbing in anyways, I just let her play at my feet while I shower, then I wash her.
• She loves watching the dogs out of the back door. She also loves touching either one of them when they will let her. She got a kick out of playing with Alex's tail the other night.
• Her new thing is playing with the blinds in the living room and opening and closing them. It's something Colt started with her so whenever she's on the couch with you, she thinks she has to do it.
• She still loves "Peek a Boo" and "Where's Kinley?" She has started to raise a toy or blanket herself and hide behind it, then pull it off. She's also started to peek around you or furniture to play peek a boo on her own.
• She still has an obsession with trying to get to the dog bowls in the laundry room. She still loves the Tupperware drawer. Just this last week, Colt put childlocks on all of our cabinets. The morning after he put them on, she tried to open the cabinet and got SO MAD when she couldn't get it open. It was one of her first little fits.
• She got a little temper and threw a fit with her dad this past week too! She grabbed his phone and put it in her mouth. When he told her no and took it from her, she cried. He gave it back and she put it in her mouth again so he told her no and took it back. When he was letting her have it back, she yanked it out of his hand and went "ugh." It was so funny. You try not to laugh, but she was definitely showing some attitude. When he took it back that time though, she cried uncontrollably. You could tell that he had hurt her feelings.
• A lot of the times when she wakes up in the morning, she'll just sit in her crib for a while and play (most of the time she's actually pooping). Those mornings when she doesn't wake up crying, she gets so excited when she sees me walk in the door and immediately wants to be picked up.
• She LOVES brushing her teeth. Colt thought it would wear off, but so far she STILL loves it. If she even sees the toothbrush, she's all smiles! After I do the initial brush though, she definitely wants to do it herself.
• She has started to lick at the water in the tub or dip her hands in and drink it. She's also taken her rinse cup and turned it up a few times to drink while in the tub.
• She loves playing with my earrings. I usually wear little studs, and she will put her hand on my face and turn my head to look for them. She turned Dede's face the other day to look for her earrings too.
• She definitely know what "No" or "No, ma'am" means. While she usually stops, she will get a big grin whenever she hears no and see how much she can get away with. 
• She also loves taking laundry out of the washer or dryer for me and throwing it on the floor. Along those same lines, she likes to open and clean out drawers in her room and our room. Her favorites are her drawer with wash rags in it, her drawer with all her bottoms and my sock or pajama drawer.
• She had started to really like drinking out of our cups and she does a pretty good job!

She is definitely a full-time job, but she is just getting cuter and even more fun. Her personality is the best (most days)!!

Lately

I now have little hope of getting caught up and getting all of Kinley's pictures on here BEFORE her 1st birthday :( Sorry Kinley... one day... I definitely take plenty of pictures though!

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Colt was supposed to have a light schedule on Admin the month of April but it felt like we were just as busy as ever with very little downtime. I was working towards the April tax deadline. I thought after that, I would get a breather but that hasn't happened quite yet. It seems like we've been in the car and on the go nonstop. 

The weekend before the tax deadline we went to Austin for two nights for Bryce and Pam's wedding. 

That same weekend, Colt's grandma, Molly, fell and broke her hip. Once in the hospital, she was unresponsive. She was pretty fragile and not in good health before the fall. We made a quick overnight trip the night of the tax deadline so that Colt could go up to the hospital. Once they leveled her sodium out, she seemed to be getting better and was able to talk to family members, but then she went downhill fast. I think she just wasn't strong enough to recover. She didn't want to be on feeding tubes or anything like that. She ended up passing away that Saturday night.

We were already planning on making a trip down to Tyler to check out the area for a potential job for Colt and visit my family so we spent Saturday and night with Colt's family. Sunday morning since the family was going to be preparing for Molly's funeral, we went ahead and went on with our plans of visiting Tyler. 

The drive to Tyler was short, but after looking at multiple neighborhoods and the area and then driving from there to my parents, I think we were in the car for a total of 8 hours! We took a break for lunch at Chuy's, and we also took breaks walking around the grocery store and letting Kinley crawl around in a house that was being built. Poor Kinley was a trooper though and did so good! That's a long time in a carseat! 

We stayed Sunday and Monday night with my parents. My nephew, Jacob and Bailey and Cohen came over to visit on Sunday night. Heath and Jennifer brought the boys over to visit on Monday night. My parents got a kick out of Kinley, especially her waving and saying "hey" and "hi." 

Tuesday morning we got up and headed back to Forney. Molly's funeral was that afternoon. After the funeral, we just hung out at Dede and David's the rest of the night. We got up and headed home on Wednesday morning. 

We spent Wednesday at home and then we were on the go again! Since Colt was on "vacation" that week, we tried to cram in time to visit Waco and check out neighborhoods and the area there too. Thursday Matt rode around with us to look at neighborhoods, and then we met up with Whitney for a short little hike at Cameron Park and then Magnolia Market. Believe it or not, as close as we live, it was our first time going. 

We actually ended up going BACK on Friday to check out the area of China Spring a little more after we did a little more looking online. We thought it would be a quick trip, but it ended up being another full day of looking around. Since then, we've been back again too. That's a lot of time in the car and Kinley did awesome for all of it! She also started to sleep better this past week! YAY!! Hopefully this doesn't jinx it!

On one of our trips to Waco, on the way home, the person in front of us hit a tire in the road and it flew up and landed on the hood of my new car.  Now my brand new car needs to be repaired and the damage is more than the deductible... so that's fun! Since I'm so far behind, I haven't blogged about my new car. I got a new Jeep Grand Cherokee a month of two ago. It's the first brand new car that I've ever owned for myself ... and now it's already been wrecked!

Now that we are in May, Colt is back in the department. I don't see other things slowing down either because it seems like we have something planned every weekend. Colt has a bachelor party, he's in Gerald and Allison's wedding, I'm helping host a going away party for a friend and a baby shower for another friend. Then I'm also trying to plan Kinley's first birthday because it will be here before we know it! Crazy how fast time flies!! Now that she seems to be sleeping better though... maybe... just maybe... I'll find time to get on here again! 

9 month update

Before I continue on with "regular programming," I wanted to do a little 9 month update since our little gremlin turned 9 months old yesterday! These months have really flown by, and I can't believe she's already 9 months old. When I was going to bed last night, I got a tad bit emotional just thinking about how thankful I am that she made me a mommy! It's a crazy kind of love. I am trying to soak up every minute. There are lots of times when I just keep holding her when she falls asleep.  Also, even when I'm tired, there is just something special about how she needs me and how no matter what is wrong, I can make it better for her. When I stumble to her room in the middle of the night and she's waiting on me, it's a good feeling. I just wish she would be still and cuddle with me every once in a while still! When she is awake, she is going nonstop. At 8 months, she was just starting to crawl and was doing more of an army crawl. Pretty much right after she turned 8 months, she started full blown crawling and now she is fast! She gets from one end of the house to the other about as quick as I can. She is also pulling up to everything and walking alongside couches and other things. She'll let go but quickly falls down. We had a few bruises when she first started pulling up but she's starting to have less and less falls. She started pulling up at the end of February. I was working one day and looked up at the monitor and she was standing up in her crib. We quickly realized we had to move her mattress down so she wouldn't fall out. Some days I'm exhausted from chasing her, and she's not even walking yet! 

We haven't had her 9 month check up yet, but by our scales at home, she is just about 20.6 lbs. She is still in size 3 diapers. She wears mostly 12 month and 18 month clothes. All of her 12 months are starting to get a little snug, and she's been wearing a lot of 18 month tops for a while now. 

She has two teeth on bottom. She got her first one a few days before she turned 8 months. Her second one came through not too long ago. She is eating a ton now. Sometimes we will eat for about an hour or so before she's done. Just in the past week or two, I moved her to her big highchair because we were outgrowing the bumbo. I've started giving her pretty much whatever we are eating or at least a variation of it. It's mainly veggies, but I've also started crumbling up hamburger meat, chicken, and turkey too and she loves it. She tries to feed herself the finger foods and is getting good at it. She misses her mouth quite a bit because the pieces are still so small she can't keep up with it. The dogs of course are a fan of her eating more real food. They sit under her and wait. Then Alex cleans her highchair seat when she's done. She loves the extra attention from the dogs. Little does she know, they just want her food! Before she started eating all these foods, about a month ago, she was still being pretty funny when she ate. She would make the funniest faces. When we started doing mashed potatoes and stuff like that, she would make awful faces and gag. We have some of the funniest videos. I think it was the texture, and I also think she realized it got laughs and started doing it just to make us laugh! She eventually just stopped one day. Now she wants everything and isn't dramatic about it! Recently, she's also started helping me eat my cereal in the morning. She's like a little bird and wants to try everything. She also loves her sippy cup with water. She holds her sippy cup like a champ now. As long as she doesn't have to turn it up to high to get the water out, she can do it herself most of the time. I quit pumping completely a while back and she just breastfeeds now. Since we aren't cleaning bottles and pump parts as much, I went ahead and put up the bottle rack that was out in our kitchen just this past week. Colt noticed and after asking where it was said I guess we don't really need it anymore she's getting so big.

I'm not going to brag too much on her sleep yet but we've had a breakthrough and some record nights here lately! It could just be a fluke so we'll see if it becomes a routine. We have been still waking up every 3-4 hours, and then just a week or two ago, it was every hour or two again about 4 nights in a row. I think that bad stretch was probably her second tooth coming through. However, a few nights ago (on March 8th to be exact... I was so excited I wrote it down) she finally slept what I would call through the night! She slept from 10pm-2am. Then she went back to bed from 2am-9:30am. Colt woke me up saying, "Where is Kinley? It's 9:00!" I felt like a new person. I asked Colt if he could imagine being one of those parents that have babies that sleep great from day 1?!!  She's been sleeping pretty good since then too and only waking up once, maybe twice a night. This morning, I did have a mom fail though. Colt got home from work at like 7am and heard her crying frantically like she was scared. He thought something had happened to me so he checked on me and then grabbed her. I was just sound asleep. The baby monitor had went dead and I hadn't heard a thing! I had been up with her at 1am but there's no telling how long she had been crying. She's not a quitter when it comes to crying so she could've been crying for hours! She starts out every night in her crib now and stays there most of the time. Sometimes I bring her back to bed and let her finish the night or morning in our bed, especially if I'm tired. She naps two or three times a day and they are getting shorter. Today, for example, she just took a couple of cat naps that only lasted about 20 minutes or so. Usually she'll take at least one hour one though which is one of the times I try to logon and work.  She naps in her crib, unless I am being lazy and just want to hold her. 

She started saying dada. Colt said she is more making the noise of dada and not really saying it to him but it definitely counts. She has sounded like she's screaming mama in the past but I wouldn't count it as a first word. She is loud though and "talks" all the time. She has the cutest and sweetest little personality. She is happy the majority of the time when she's awake. She has the BEST smile and she has the BEST giggles. Baby giggles have got to be one of the best things ever! 

Here are a few of the things that she loves:

• She loves blowing bubbles on my face, on my legs, you name it.
• She giggles so loud whenever you tickle her tummy with your face, even if you just act like you are about to. 
• She loves when I set the house alarm or disarm it. 
• She loves when I get water out of the fridge. 
• She loves bath time.  She just recently found her reflection in the cleanout in the tub and loves looking at herself while in the bath. She's going to love playing in a little swimming pool this summer.
• She loves letting the dogs out the back door and back in. 
• She absolutely LOVES when I sing to her. Her current favorite is "I'm a Little Teapot." She can be crying and I can start singing it and she immediately starts smiling. 
• She loves playing "Peek a Boo" and "Where's Kinley?" She will laugh hysterically. 
• She loves the Baby Channel. I know people think baby's don't really watch TV but she will stop what she is doing and give the TV her undivided attention. She just watches and smiles and laughs. She's done this for a few months now. She love the "Peek a Boo, I See You" song," "Shushybye Baby," "Harry the Bunny".. pretty much any little catchy song on the TV. You should hear Colt sing "Harry the Bunny!"
• She likes people watching, whether we are at the park or at the grocery store. 
• She loves being tossed in the air and roughhoused. She likes anything that you would think would scare her so maybe we'll have a little daredevil on our hands.
• She moves fast when she wants something. She also gets really excited and starts breathing hard and fast. It's super cute. It also seems like she gets a really big grin on her face when she's getting into something she shouldn't be. She goes straight for remotes and phones. She tries to go for the dog bowls. We moved the dog bowls to the laundry room to keep her out of them when she started moving, but I have to be careful and remember to close the door. If she even gets a glance of them, she books it.
• Before she was super mobile, I would just leave her in the floor in the bathroom while I showered. She loved crawling over to the shower curtain and pulling it back to see me (and get wet). We don't play that game as much now that I don't trust her as much to be out there by herself. Now I usually bathe after she's asleep. 
• She loves getting into the tupperware lid drawer already. 
• We have went to a few Mommy and Baby Bootcamp workouts and she's been great. Mommy gets a workout. She is one of the older babies there so mommy has a 20 lb. weight while the other moms have a light newborn! She also tries to get away from the workout mat during tummy time because she's beyond beyond tummy time! 

I never really understood it when I heard mom's say how fast time went until now. These have been the fastest and most special 9 months ever!

Week 12: August 29th-September 4th

By week 12, Kinley was smiling and starting to coo more and more. She would scoot on her tummy while pushing her legs against me. I would put her on the ottoman a lot and just let her push and scoot. She wasn't rolling completely over, but when I would put her on her back, she would roll to her side. At 12 weeks she weighed 12.8 lbs. Mama weighed 119. We went ahead and moved up from Size 1 to Size 2 diapers. If I remember correctly, during the trip to my parents this week, we had blowouts on the trip there and the trip home and had to wash the carseat cover and the whole works! That could be what prompted me to move up a size! 

Colt was going to be working and sleeping a lot the whole weekend, and I was getting ready to start back to work so I made the trip by myself to visit my parents. It was a long trip alone with a newborn and included a few stops for diaper changes and feeding sessions.  I think I ended up staying three nights.  My mom, actually both of my parents, wanted me to just stay all week... or really just move in with them! There were a ton of visitors while we were at my parents. My dad still wasn't really holding Kinley at this point (she was still breakable) but he was giving her kisses. My mom made the comment that she fell in love with Kinley while we were there. When I left, she text me how quiet it was without me and her little angel and how much she already missed us. 

I think Daddy missed us while we were gone too though! Colt told me it was weird without us and that it didn't feel right. I sent him a pic of Kinley the first day we were at my parents. On day 2, he text me and asked where his pic was?! He didn't miss me, he missed Kinley!

August 29th

My mom had this little napper at her house from when Logan was a baby that we pulled out and put together. 

August 30th 

My parents rocking chairs are seriously the best!

In this picture, she really looks like Colt's baby pictures to me. 

August 31st

Blondie

Kinley and Giggy

September 2nd

Back home on our activity mat

and helping mom in the kitchen

September 3rd

I love this pic! 

Smiling baby and sleeping Alex

Text messages to Colt while he was at work... Notice it was 2:20 in the morning!

September 4th

She slept better and longer on her tummy. Daddy didn't like it, but I let her.

Now at almost 9 months old, I am constantly chasing her around the house and she is going 24/7 when she's awake. It makes me miss these newborn days of sleeping and cuddling. I thought they were hard days then, but now I'm thinking maybe they were pretty easy. I guess they were just a different type of hard. We were definitely sleep deprived and not getting a lot other than holding her done. Now I'm sleep deprived and then on the go all day! It's so worth it though, both stages. 

Here are a few videos from our week. 

Week 11: August 22nd-28th

I thought her sleep was getting better at this point. She liked to sleep in our bed. As long as she could wake up and see me, she would usually go right back to sleep. She liked to sleep on her side more than on her back. 

August 23rd - A text I sent to Colt while he was working one night. It wasn't common for her to sleep on her own, especially in her bassinet. 

August 24th - Colt had got off at 7 that morning. We hung out in bed with him for a little while before starting our day. He was working several night shifts so he would sleep during the day. 

This was the first time that I felt like she was really smiling "at me." I caught it on video and of course, it got sent to the grandmas.  She was also starting to coo a little bit more. 

August 26th - I was up with Kinley (evidently at 3 in the morning) and I ordered a scale on Amazon. I suddenly got this text from Colt! Haha. He gets alerted when anything is ordered on our Amazon account. He has never "let" me have a scale in our house because he didn't want me to weigh myself all the time or ever worry about my weight.  We DID keep the scale and I weigh Kinley ever so often to have a general idea of what she weighs between doctors appointments. 

Sleeping baby

and sleeping dogs!

Dede came to stay the night. We went out to dinner at Meg's while she was here. 

Here are some cute pics that Dede took of Kinley and some of her first smiles. 

August 28th

Some more videos of Kinley wanting to be held on the 26th and her sweet little cries. I'll probably go back and try to delete some of these videos and filter them out later on when I have time, but for now, I'm just putting them up.