Update:

I want to start recording some of my kids favorites so I have record of them and this is the best place. So here we go:

Whitney: (almost) 11 months

Favorite foods: Bananas, Blueberries, Grapes, Waffles, Mashed Potatoes and of course Cookies and NURSING! loves Nursing. Never takes a bottle   :( which is super hard for me to go anywhere.

Favorite Toys: I think this would just be “the game room” Whenever she is downstairs, we have a gate on the stairs and the gate comes off, she is so quick to head to the stairs and go up to play with all the toys up there. If ever she is grumpy and we head up there her mood completely changes. I love it.

Favorite things: She LOVES her blankie, Kaitlyn

Things she says: Ma Ma, Da Da, Nigh’ (Night) Hey, Hi – Night was her first word and it was as clear as day when she 1st said it.

Things she does: She crawls super fast. I never remember Kate crawling this fast, but then again she really seemed to not crawl very long, but she is really starting to cruise.

You have 3 1/2 teeth.

She loves to stand along things and go on her tip toes. Super cute!

She loves to cuddle. Which we love. She has taken a few steps but it will prob still be awhile till she is walking. Which is OK. I love her crawling.

She blows kisses and says MUAHH! Started kissing dad when he gets home from work.

Hates to lay flat on the floor to change her Diaper. tries and succeeds at sitting up without rolling to side.

She is awesome in her car seat and I am going to be sad when we put her in a bigger one. I can grocery shop forever if she is in it, but if I try to sit her in the cart she last up to 20 mins top. Even in the car carts. :(

Sleeping Habits: She slept from 6:45pm-6:45am NEVER WAKING ONCE for such a long time. Then she got sick and we traveled and now we are at her getting up 2-4 times a night. Which I decided has to stop. So last night I let her cry it out. Which was SUPER hard but worked so well with Kaitlyn. So I am hoping that a few more nights of this and we will be back to normal.

Takes a great Morning nap 9am-11:30am or 12, and one more at 2-4:30pm Bed by 7-7:30pm.

Whitney, you are such a joy and a light in our life. You seem so smart and I love the little things you do to try to make me laugh daily. You are my cuddle bug, trooper with Kaitlyn loving on you and I can’t wait to get to know you more and more through the years!!!

 

Not walking yet but still wants to play

 

 

 

The weather for awhile was not too horrible and so we were outside a lot playing in front of our house. Kaitlyn gets to run around and play with all the other kids and Whitney just seems like she wants to go too. So Alma got a great idea to put her in her walker and let her run around! She loved it! She looks so funny outside running around and trying to go everywhere! I guess she needs some incentive to start walking. She did take 3 steps from me to Alma today without holding on to anything, twice. So maybe she is getting closer!!

I am totally that Mom who…

 

…loves to dress my girls alike. We all try to match for church too. Even Alma matches his Tie. I love it. But I must be honest, they don’t have a lot of the same exact clothes. Mainly because Whitney gets everything Handed down to her. But I love dressing my girls alike if I can. Even if we all wear the same colors. The other day I was at the store and I had dressed in purple and put Whitney in purple, and as I was getting Kate dressed, I thought… well since I subconsciously dressed us in purple I might as well put her in purple too. So we were all matching as we grocery shopped. We even got a few comments about it. I might as well do it now before they get too old and don’t want to match me anymore. 

I love watching my girls interact. Kaitlyn has gotten to the point where she LOVES Whitney. When Whitney was first born, she was small and didn’t do much, so I don’t think Kate noticed her much, but now that Whitney is everywhere and a lot more fun, Kaitlyn can not keep her hands off of her. Sometimes she just gets so excited to see Whitney that she is almost like she can not contain the love and it almost comes out like she is about to hurt her. She just sees her and gets this look like, WHITNEY!!!! I JUST WANNA SQUEEZE YOU!!!!! It is cute but sometime I have to tell her to give Whitney some space and not touch her so much and she always responds with, But MOM! I just love WHITNEY SOOO MUCH! It is cute, but sometimes hard for me. She just wants to hug on her all the time. Whitney is a good sport about it. She loves Kaitlyn so much! They just laugh and play all the time. Her face really lights up when she sees Kate. It is so fun to see them together.  Who knows, maybe Whitney will be bigger than Kate one day and get to Hug her tons and love on her lots!!

Well, they are starting to look more like sisters to me. At first they seemed so different, but even with their differences, they look like sisters to me. I love being able to cuddle up with these girls whenever I want.

I did want to mention a few differences between them two. (More for my record) I love that even though I had another girl, they are totally their own separate people. Love it! Alma and I decided that Kate is a lot like me and Whitney is a lot like him. No wonder they get along so well. ;)

Kate was scared of the vacuum. Whitney loves it! And by loves it I mean giggles and chases it where ever it goes.

Kaitlyn would eat anything. Whitney has a little more picky taste.

Kaitlyn never threw food on the floor when eating. Gravity is Whitneys favorite game.

Kaitlyn could not walk soon enough. Whitney is very content with how well crawling is working out for her.

Kaitlyn did not love to sleep. Whitney does so well and takes great naps.

Kate had no hair. Whitney has hair.

Kate didn’t get her 1st tooth till about 11 months. Whitney was about 7.

Kate babbled a lot, she has always been so social and talks all the time!  Whitney is more of an observer. But she does seem to have a pretty good sense of humor when she does make noise, like she is trying to make us laugh.

Kate loved binkies. Whitney loves her thumb.

Kaitlyn was not a huge fan of the car. Whitney does so well in the car.

Kate loved everybody super outgoing and was not a Mommas girl. Whitney is a total Mommas girl and has Stranger Danger!

Kate loved to sleep on her tummy. Whitney is always on her left side. ( I never find her on her tummy)

I love your differences and your similarities girls! You are such a delight to be a Mom to!

Alma went out of “Town”

A few weeks ago Alma had a National Training for one week. He went to Dallas last year and they flew him out. People from everywhere gather for this training. New York, Chicago, Arizona. This year we found out that Alma was going 6 miles away from us and staying in a hotel. So we decided we would come visit him and go out to eat. Ironically, he was closer to us then when he works but we barely saw him that week. But he did get off early on Friday, so that made our weekend longer. The girls loved the Hotel. Kaitlyn kept asking us if we could stay there forever. We wanted to spend the night and brought all of our stuff but Whitney had a melt down after we were all trying to go to sleep and after 2 hours of screaming home seemed pretty nice… so I decided to just take us girls home.

C is for Cookie

Don’t you love how when you give kids something… Candy, sandwich, cookie, popsicle and they are so messy with it. I eat the same thing as them and I don’t get it all over me. But I am starting to wonder if you can’t truly enjoy it unless it is all over you when you are done. I sometime have a hard time letting them be messy but I am working on just letting them dive in, make a mess and clean them up later. I guess in life, we need to not worry about some of these little things. I feel like I need to let loose with letting things get messy. There are many little things that matter. Keeping on top of my childrens’ manners and discipline of course, But things that don’t hurt anyone… like getting super messy while eating or playing with dried up play dough even though Mom KNOWS it will be all over the table and floor in tons of pieces…  I need to remember to let my kids be kids and get messy. Play with sidewalk chalk and bubbles…

(Oh bubbles. They drive me nuts with how messy they are. Watching kids try to blow bubbles and dip the wands in the jar… well, lets just say my OCD really comes out.)

So here is one of my new years resolution, Remember to let my kids be kids. Even if I have to clean up a mess at the end. It is easier to let them have fun and clean later than trying to keep them clean while they are doing it. I have found in the end we both have a lot more fun when we just let our hair down and get messy.  Have I really forgotten what it was like to be a kid? I guess I just need to remind myself sometimes.

Makes my Heart Melt

I can’t tell you how much I love these two girls together. I am sure many Moms hearts have melted when they walk a room and see their kids are playing together or cuddling. It is the best thing in the world.  Family is so important. I love my family of 4 and I am so excited for the adventures that lie ahead of us.

Mmmmm… Mashed Potatoes!

 

The other night we were eating dinner and I put a scoop of Mashed Potatoes in front of Whitney on her high chair and walked to the Kitchen to get something done. Seconds later she had her fists full and covered all over. She loved it. I had not let her just go at it with Mashed Potatoes before but since then I have and it is the cutest and messiest thing ever! I love it! She loved it too! 

 

New Years Eve

 

What a great New Years Eve we had. We decided to throw a get together at our place and we had TONS of yummy food and great friends and neighbors! It was such a blast. It was such a fun time and the weather was actually humid, so we were not all freezing.

 

We did Fireworks, which there were a ton all around our house at Mid-night. Like you would not believe. We put the kids to bed and all came outside and played games and sat around a fire. It was such a fun night and it reminded me of what it was like to stay up past 10:23pm. Which, I think is harder the older we get. But we love having such great friends to Party with. Hope you brought the New Year in with sTyLe… we felt like we did.

Evolution of our Game Room

 

So when we first moved into our house we had our game room like this:

 

 Then we moved that couch and rug into our sitting room and made the game room like this:

(I liked this because it was more room to play and not so much big bulky furniture… but it looked sad)

So for Christmas I worked on some crafts bought a few things to make it look like this:

The pink kitchen was the girls big gift this year and the bean bags were mine :)

I do like the look of a rug, so maybe sometime in the future… who knows when, I will get a rug for the game room floor and maybe a curtain. I don’t know why but painting scares me so badly. Picking a color, painting it and having it be all over the room for awhile. Big decision because I love to change and rearrange things. You can’t easily rearrange or change paint in a room. But maybe I will get the guts to paint this game room. But for now this to me looks better. Seems more like a play room then a toy dump. There are a few more things I would love to add and so through time and saving money I will work on it more. But this is a start.

Whitney is a trooper…

We have been so busy lately with everything. The other day I put Whitney in her car seat so we could get ready to go and as I am gathering up things Kaitlyn says to me, “Mom, Whitney is asleep” I had just put her in there and I could not believe that she would have fallen asleep that fast. She usually sleeps well in the car. Anyway, I walked over and this is how she was. Her feet are always up whenever I check on her, in her crib and carseat. Anyway, she is a trooper. She doesn’t complain when we are going non-stop. She just makes due. Sweet baby girl. ALMOST 9 MONTHS! Crazy.