Thankful

I realize I haven't been posting here as often, and I'd really like to blog more mostly because I love going back and reading, but life is BUSY! Holidays are here, which means at night after Kate goes to bed and I finish picking up a bit and getting stuff ready for work the next day (and Brett helps so much!), I mentally juggle whether I should decorate the tree that we got today, go through 2,000 recent pictures, work on a Christmas card, order gifts, blog, put away piles of clean clothes, or....SLEEP! 

And speaking of sleep....at 15.5 months old, my sweet Kate FINALLY slept through the night consistently! I don't want to jinx myself, but it's been 10 days straight so I think we're in a pattern. Praise the Lord. Actually, that probably deserved a post all to itself. Moving on :)

During the day we're working, and awake time and weekends we are constantly playing with and chasing Kate. I wouldn't have it any other way. She is the most amazing baby girl and I absolutely love watching her little mind go. These days, she gives hugs and kisses, loves books, tells the dogs "no no," tells us/points to exactly whats she wants to eat, talks (babbles) in paragraphs with so much emotion, has about 20 words, is OBSESSED with Elmo (I know), and wants to be outside pretty much all the hours of daylight.

Out the back door with Daddy, straight to the orange trees every time.

Nothing makes her happier than picking a tangerine, sharing it with us (so we can pick out the seeds), and getting covered in sticky juice and then dirt! She probably changes clothes 5 times a day on the weekends.

You see those little curls at the back? Oh my precious.

You see her wet shirt? Because she insisted on running through the hose and cracking up when Daddy was watering plants. 

It's Thanksgiving weekend, so "Cott Cott" and "Eremy" (as Kate says) were both home. She is super excited to have some more playmates!

She stays busy with books, and can even point out certain pictures (dog, shoe, baby, banana, bird, etc).

She'll pick out a book, hand it to us, and crawl into our lap. And my heart melts into a puddle.

She makes animal sounds for tiger, cow, bird, duck, monkey, elephant, fish and is really getting the hang of the Gator chomp!

Probably because she got lots of practice as the GATORS BEAT FSU today!!

Go USC?!

So that was a completely random post, but I started going through lots of pictures and decided to do a little catch up on here. There is SO much more that we've done and I know I can't get caught up on all of it, so I'll just try to post fun little things when I can!

 I'm going to sleep now...an hour late. See? I try to do a little post and then I keep adding pictures...

Maybe that Christmas tree will decorate itself.

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful. We are so grateful for our family, friends, health, careers, home, pets, football :) and MOST of all, our Kate Elizabeth. She turned 16 months on Thanksgiving....that day we celebrated the most incredible 16 months of our lives. 

How did we get so lucky?

The rest of our trip

Like I promised, here is a photo recap of the rest of our great little trip.

From Jacksonville, we headed to Hilton Head, SC to see Jay and Laura and their great new home! We were only there one night, but that was long enough for Kate to fall in love with Laura (and their sweet dog, Murphy).

When we got there, the boys went to hit some golf balls and Laura and I took Kate to the pool and playground at their little neighborhood common area. She had lots of fun, and maybe if she wasn't sleep deprived, she would have sat in her stroller (or even stayed on my hip) on the long walk back home. But why do that when there was alligator infested marsh to explore??

Sunrise view off their back porch the next morning. So pretty and different from southeast Florida!

Laura and Jay went to work, and we left shortly after when Kate was ready to nap and drove to Savannah to go to Ian and Lauren's.

She was SO happy to wake up and walk in a house with a playmate, a dog, and toys galore! And I was pretty excited for a baby proof home where miss Kate could run free ;)

Every time Aubrey (17 months) sat here, Kate (15 months) really wanted to sit and cuddle with her :)

Then we went to their park where Aubrey taught Kate how to slide all by herself!

Silly Kate - she has SO much personality!

Aunt Lynne came by to visit too

Kate pretty much RUNS everywhere she goes now. She is not cautious and falls often :( That's just her. Then, at the park she was the youngest and had lots of other big kids to keep up with, so of course, she ran and tripped on that stupid mulch and kept falling. At one point, we looked over and her eye was puffy with a scrape from the mulch and she hadn't even cried! So we tried to take it easy after that...

Kate has this chair at home and by the end of the trip, taught Aubrey how you're really supposed to sit on it ;) Sorry Lauren!

They played so well together and even started sharing their snacks and kisses!

Woke up to chilly weather, but they still want to play at the water table :)

Sweet Aubrey

The next day we went downtown and had to take some pictures at our fountain (where we got engaged) at Forsyth park. I promise that rainbow on the left is really in the picture! Didn't even notice until we put them on the computer

And she's off!

More time on slides!

The 6 of us - we can't wait for many, many more memories together! I just know these baby girls will grow up close.

Down by the river

Such good daddies

And then we got to see Laura one more time! She works in downtown Savannah, so after we STUFFED ourselves at the Lady and Son's buffet (Paula Deen's restaurant. Enough said), we met up with her while the little ones danced in front of a dinner crowd to live music. I promise, that happened...and it was as cute as you are imagining :)

Of course those are just a few pictures, but if you're still reading this then that's probably enough for now! I'll try to post again soon because so many fun things are happening!

The zoo

Hi to anyone who still reads this :) We're still here, having lots of fun with Kate. She'll be 15 months tomorrow - what a great age this is! We are settled back at home after a fun road trip and I was going to do a post for the whole trip, but now I realize how many pictures we took so I'll start with the first part of the trip :) We met the whole fam damily in Jacksonville at Scotty's new house and we went to the zoo while we were there! I LOVE zoos, and now that we have Kate, there is always good reason to visit one!

This was at Scotty's house - ALLLL she wanted to do was run in the yard with the dogs!

And her huge shirt? She's 15 months, so I've bought 18-24 months clothes and they're so big on her! She's growing taller but not "thicker." If you saw how much she moves, you'd understand :)

Unplanned stripes

Kate LOVES to look at birds, and even does a high pitched sound to imitate them!

Big girl just wanted to walk everywhere, not be carried. Once she's out of the stroller, there's no going back in the stroller in the same "outing" but Pop Pop insisted she get out because she couldn't see the animals :)

So excited to see those animals (which to Kate, everything was "dog")

Sharing a snow cone, but look at those curls!

She'd "sniff" at the animals to get them to come closer

Her first carousel ride and she loved it!

So much fun! As long as we plan our outings around naps (so she can nap at home or in the car) we can go lots of places! She's never napped in the stroller, but can pretty easily skip the second nap if we're busy. In fact, she'd probably skip all sleep if it were up to her!

I'll be back with pictures from the rest of our trip!

Cheeezzzzze

This is a from a couple of weeks ago...

Don't mind that she looks a bit scraggly :) This was the tail end of her bout of roseola.

Needless to say, Kate thinks cheese should be a part of every meal!

Sick baby

It happened. My poor baby had her first fever and it was just pitiful. She pretty much had constant fever for 2.5 days, 103 at its highest, 100.8 at the lowest with Tylenol/Ibuprofen rotated every 3 hours. With medicine, she actually was in decent spirits, just no appetite and wouldn't be put down. Turned out to be a viral exanthem like I suspected (seeing lots of it at work) - roseola. Her fever broke night before last, then yesterday the classic rash started. She's almost back to her playful self, and we're still working on eating - allllll she wants is "chzzzz" (cheese) and even turned down Chickfila nuggets. What?!

This was last night - the rash has tripled since then but doesn't bother her!

Of course this messed with her sleep habits - it's always 1 step forward, 18 steps back with her in the sleep department. One day, my sweet girl will sleep 11 hours straight at night like all my patients brag about!

The day before she got sick sporting her "ponytail!"

One of my all time fave pics. She loves my parents' piano - it was my Granddad's, and it has a player in it so Kate walks over to it, bounces her knees and bobs her head, waiting for us to turn it on. When we're tired, we may or may not hide because she really wants to be held and dance fast ;)

Last night we went to our friends' house to watch the Gators BEAT Tennessee! Don't ask me any details about the game - we've got a busy toddler on our hands! Kate LOVED exploring at their house, especially trying to get her hands on the cat (she's never seen one!) I just know we won, and that something really exciting happened towards the end once we were back home when I was trying to put Kate to sleep and Daddy screamed like we won the jackpot lotto cheered reallllly loud. Of course Kate didn't want to go to sleep, Daddy was all crazy in the living room! 

Her new thing is that she loves to walk around, holding TWO people's hands.

 

Start 'em young, raise 'em right :)