One year closer to the big 3-0

Dan is 29 today! Happy birthday babe! I don't know what I would do without you in my world!

9 months


Audrey turned 9 months old last week Saturday. She's now officially been on the outside longer than she was on the inside. This month she FINALLY started sleeping much better. Her naps are a lot longer and she almost always sleeps through the night now. It's about time! She's pulling herself up on anything she can get her hands on right now, but also bumping her head on things in the process. She's a pretty rough and tough girl so most of the time when she bumbs her head it doesn't even phase her. She loves to dance whenever there is music playing, and almost anything makes her smile. It's seriously so easy to make her smile. She's such a little sweetheart and she loves cuddling which is going to make it so hard to not be able to hold her much the first couple weeks after my surgery. She has started saying mama. I don't know if she knows what it means though but when she gets upset she says "mamamamama". We also discovered that she LOVES Curious George. Her cousin Zach has a big stuffed Curious George and Audrey loved it! She kept giving it big hugs. Santa might be bringing her one for Christmas.

She went to the doctor for her 9 month check up yesterday. She's getting so big! She is 19 lbs 11 oz (70th percentile) and she is 29 inches (93rd percentile). She had to get the other half of her flu shot. She didn't even notice when the nurse gave it to her. Didn't even flinch. I was really surprised. The nurse was awesome though and did it really fast.

We got our tree this weekend. I wish I would have brought my camera to the tree farm, I could've gotten some cute pictures. It was so snowy on Saturday, which was great. It made it feel more like Christmas. They had hot chocolate and sledding there too. Owen loved sledding. He wanted me to go down the hill with him the first couple times but after that he went all by himself. He left the sled at the bottom of the hill though everytime so we would have to go back down and get it. The price of trees went up this year, but it was still worth it for the experience. Audrey stayed with my mom. It was too cold and windy and she was getting over a cold.




Here's Owen helping Daddy build a fire before Owen had to go to bed. The tree was so covered with snow, we had to put old paint drop cloths under it to catch all the melting snow.

The tree before decorations

Hanging Audrey's first Christmas ornament that Grandma and Grandpa Baron gave her

Owen was so funny. He helped put the red and silver balls on but he put them all in one spot! Cracked me up!

Owen helping with the star

After

And a couple of Audrey standing up in the pack n play. She's pulling herself up on EVERYTHING now!

Very snowy day here! We got a ton of snow. Both kids are getting over colds (and so am I). We have been going through a lot of Kleenex around here.

We had a great Thanksgiving Day. We went to my Dad and Cindy's house. It was just Dan and me and Owen and Audrey, my Dad and Cindy and my Uncle Dave, Aunt Gaye and cousin Kate. It was fun and the food was great!

Audrey has another new trick. She started pulling herself up, just one step closer to walking! Yikes! She pulled herself up on the coffee table on Thanksgiving and since then I have gone to get her up from a nap and she has been standing up in her crib.

Audrey playing with her cousin Nolan.


They are only 2 1/2 weeks apart and they are becoming good buds already.

8 Months old today

This month Audrey started clapping and crawling. She has two teeth now, on the bottom, and I think the top two may be coming in soon. She is still hardly napping and doesn't sleep real well at night either. I don't know how she gets by on so little sleep. I think she's afraid she is going to miss something. Here is a picture from today: 8 months and I uploaded two videos. A video of her crawling, I think it was a day or two after she started crawling. She is already getting much faster. The other video is Audrey clapping, which is just too cute.

Off she goes!

Audrey is officially crawling. She started crawling on Friday. She has been trying for weeks and she finally got it! She's not very fast yet, but she sure is proud of herself and getting where she wants to go. Her favorite thing is to crawl over to the dog and pull her fur, squealing with delight the whole time. The dog isn't really enjoying it as much as she is. We had to move Owen's train table up to his room. There are too many small parts that she will try to put in her mouth. She's starting to pull up on things now too. She mostly just pulls up onto her knees so far. I video taped her crawling and I will try to upload that at some point. It takes quite awhile to upload those videos.

We had a fun Halloween. Owen had a great time trick-or-treating. He dressed up as a monkey again. The weather was so nice we were able to go to a few more houses this year.

Carving pumpkins

I thought Owen would want the big pumpkin to be his pumpkin and the smaller one to be Audrey's, but he claimed the little one as his pumpkin.

I wasn't going to dress Audrey up at all, but at the last minute I decided to try Owen's old Lion costume on her. It was really big but still looked cute. She'll probably be able to wear it again next year.

Story time with Daddy

Owen has always loved books. One of his favorite things to do is to look at books, and have them read to him. We walk up to library every week now. It's so nice to have a library so close to our house. I'm hoping Audrey will like books as much as Owen. I read them books together before their naps and Audrey has to sit through all the books about trucks and Thomas. She gets bored with those pretty fast. For the most part, she just likes to try to eat the books.

Cutest kids ever:

We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend with my brother Bill, my sister-in law Beth and my nephews. Everyone had a lot of fun, but I could not get a good picture for the life of me!

Bill and my nephew Sam on the hay ride

Owen playing in the piles of hay, he loved this but for some reason his shoes kept falling off.

Pumpkin train

Audrey loved the hay ride the most. She was all smiles the whole ride.

Dan and I could not get the kids to look at the camera or even in our general direction for a picture. The pumpkins were far too fascinating I guess.

Audrey looks like she has GIANT feet. Those shoes are size 6-12 months but her feet only fill about half of them. They kept her feet warm though which was the goal.

All the boys, and Audrey