Sunday, December 22, 2013

December Floods

Now, to switch to non-Audrey-related updates, our basement flooded AGAIN.  We've been having some interesting weather here in Indiana, and we got several inches of rain since Friday morning.  We were at school and then my parents' for Christmas, so it never really occurred to us what was going on weather-wise at home.  When the roads started to flood last night before we left Mom and Dad's, I had a sudden sinking feeling...our basement was going to be an ocean of water when we got back!  It typically floods only once or twice a year and only if the city drains get backed up (it comes up through our basement drain).  

When we got home today after church, we assessed the damage.  Worse than we thought!  Although the water had already drained away and it was beginning to dry, we could tell the the water reached new levels.  We have everything up on pallets at the very least, but even those items got wet.  The worst was a box of books.  Although there were no valuable ones in the box, Kyle hates to waste a good book.  Most of the books were his, but my copies in the box that got wet are duplicates of ones I have at school, so not a big loss, really.  We're attempting to dry things out, though!  Hopefully nothing will stick together too much!


Hanging Out at Home

Since the weather's turned colder, we've loved hanging out together in our snug little house!  Audrey is getting more and more independent and likes to sit up over laying down (exception is her activity mat).  She also likes being carried around so she can see what's going on.

Audrey was in a snuggly mood with Daddy one day last week after school

Reading dinosaur books with Mommy while holding onto our T.Rex toy

Aaaaaaaahhh...Christmas break!  Lounging around in our PJs and watching Netflix!

Love my daddy!

Snow Days!

Over the last two weeks of school, we've had two cancellations and three 3-hour delays.  My favorite part of cancellations and delays is sleeping in, which means we get to enjoy waking Audrey up in the daylight instead of rushing to do it in the dark.  She's always very smiley in the mornings and also very talkative (must take after me instead of her dad!).  I love this face!

Snow day on Monday, December 16th.

Look at those baby blues!

Small smile for mommy :)

Thanks, Jan!

My friend Jan from church made us the most darling baby items for Audrey to wear:  three cute headbands, a pair of shoes, and an owl bib (which I SWEAR I will post a picture of when she wears it!  Adorable!).  The week after we received them, I meticulously dressed Audrey for church so we could wear Jan's handmade items and show her how well they fit.  Jan was so excited and Audrey even cheesed it up by talking to Jan in the hallway and smiled bashfully.  That girl can play anyone if she sets her mind to it!

Outfit assembled!

Check out that headband!  Handmade!  And it matched her onesie perfectly!

These shoes are cute!

My two diaper-changing helpers.  Actually, they just wanted attention since I got out the camera.


Turning 25.

I turned 25 this year.  It was sort of scary the week before it happened because I realized I would soon be closer to 30 than 20.  I think I panicked because it suddenly seemed like life was too short...and I've not really ever had that feeling before.  I told a friend at school about my thoughts, and she cheered me up by telling me that being 30 was way better than being 20 because you know yourself a lot better at 30 than 20.  You're not trying to find your way; you've probably found it and are enjoying it.  After she said that, I realized she was right.  I remember all the trials of being 20, and I don't think I'd ever like to live it again.  I'm much happier now than when I was 20, or 18, or 16, and so on.  And although it's hard to imagine, I'm sure I'll be happier at 30 than now.  I can't picture things being much better than now, though.  Plus, Audrey will be a cute five-year-old instead of a cute baby.  I guess five-year-olds are great, too, though.  Oh well.  Either way, she'll be cute :)

My birthday is December 2nd, and I like that it's a small affair.  What with it being smack in the middle of the holiday season, it's a little stressful to plan anything big.  This year, my birthday was on a Monday (boo!).  Kyle and Audrey bought me a wonderful card and present.  They got me the Pocahontas DVD combo pack, which I was excited about watching with Audrey someday.  

Best of all was the little card that they got me.  I'm paraphrasing what it said, but it went something like..."Mommy, I know you're really busy taking care of me, and I'm really busy loving you."  Of course, the card-writers said it a lot more poetically.  I'm pretty sure I cried a little!  The card was way better than any silly DVD will ever be.  I put the card in my keepsake box in our closet along with all the small things I kept from when Kyle and I dated and from earlier in our marriage.  It will be something I treasure forever.


It's Christmastime Again...

It's a family tradition in our house that we decorate the house for Christmas the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  We change out of our church clothes, put on some Christmas carols, and bring out the boxes!  Kyle assembles the tree and I always fluff and light it (since I'm particular).  He then meticulously decorates the tree while I deck the halls (and the rest of the house) with the other decor.  If I think about it, I might post some pictures of all our decorations.  At least then I would have a picture record of how I decorated this year and take the guesswork out of decorating for next year.  And it would eliminate a lot of where-do-we-usually-put-this-things, too!

Audrey in her Sunday bib while we decorated in the afternoon.

Clean and decorated house!
Another one of my all-time favorites :)

For the Aunties :)

My mother-in-law Michele and sister-in-law Kelsey bought this outfit for Audrey and gave it to me at my Michigan baby shower in July.  The outfit is adorable!  It's a onesie that says "Cute Like My Auntie" and has a little tutu attached to the pants.  This was Audrey's first time wearing the outfit, and it caught us by surprise that it was already getting small (WHY does Audrey grow so quickly?!  Gah!).  So we at least wanted to capture a picture in the outfit in case Kelsey never saw Audrey in the outfit.  Because Kelsey lives in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, it's a rare day that we see her!  

On the plus side, Audrey wore the outfit to my mom and dad's Christmas and my sister Betsy loved the outfit!

Taken on Black Friday 2013 :)

Audrey's First Thanksgiving

I know, I know...it's been a long time posting!  I feel like I take a lot more pictures now, but they just never get added to our files!  Anyway, are you ready for another long string of updates?  My goal for 2014 is to update a little at a time and more frequently instead of these larger bursts.  

Here are some pictures from Thanksgiving this year:


First of all, we stayed at my mom and dad's the Wednesday before (since we were in Portland anyway because of work).  My mom was dying to see what Audrey looked like in my old snowsuit from when I was Audrey's age.  Since I was born in December, I wore this snowsuit from about the time I was born until about March in 1989 when it warmed up.  Two things:  best of all, the character is Cera the Triceratops from Land Before Time (the original one, when they were still good!).  The movie came out the year I was born.  Worst of all, Audrey hated it because it was hot and stuffy and also smelled 25 years old.  Poor girl!


The next day, my sister, brother-in-law, brother's girlfriend, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and two cousins came over for Thanksgiving.  One of my cousins is graduating next semester in nursing and just finished a course in Mother/Baby.  She was very curious to know how my labor and delivery went and loved holding Audrey.  Audrey is crying here, but that does not reflect on her feelings toward Hillary!  From what I remember her saying, Hillary hadn't fed or burped a baby (or at least not for a long time), so Audrey was taking advantage of the hesitancy.  You gotta be bold, girl!


Aside from being burped (which she hates), Audrey did really well with all the noise and being passed around at Thanksgiving.  She also got some down time to play on her activity mat.



My favorite picture of all!  My cousins bought paper pilgrim hats and bonnets for everyone to wear.  Here's my little pilgrim in hers :)


Saturday, November 23, 2013

Saturday mornings

Saturday mornings are wonderful at our house.  The last two weeks I've taken the early morning (about 6 AM) feeding since I needed to pump shortly after anyway.  Poor Kyle is always so sleepy in the mornings, and since I'm usually pooped on Friday nights and he lets me take a nap around dinnertime, I'm really big on letting him sleep a little on Saturday mornings.



After pumping and washing some bottles, this is how I found my two sleepyheads.  They slept until about 10 AM!  It was nice to get some laundry going and get showered when it was still pretty quiet.

After waking up, Daddy and Audrey eat eggs and milk respectively then settle in for their cartoons either in the bedroom or on the living room couch.  Audrey LOVES watching Batman cartoons.  She's mesmerized by the colors on the screen and attentively watches from across the room.  I've tried to get her hooked on Arthur, too, but she's only kinda likes it.  



 Here's a picture from last Saturday of Audrey falling asleep in the afternoon after watching several episodes of Batman.  

Audrey's a lot more chatty and smiley lately, which we both think is wonderful.  I practice saying mama and dada with her, but Kyle wants her first word to be either Batman or nanananananana...so he's working on those with her as well :)


Sunday, November 10, 2013

Embarrassing Audrey

I noticed this weekend that in addition to doing the sweet things like reading with Audrey and watching cartoons, Kyle seems to have a fatherly ambition to make Audrey look ridiculous by "playing" dress-up.  He also likes to squeeze her cheeks while she's napping at church (I had to reprimand him several times to leave her alone today!), make weird faces at her (sometimes when she's sleeping and can't see them anyway), and mimic her attempts to talk to us (so of course she'll NEVER want to talk to us when she gets older!).  I guess that's what dads are for, right?  Embarrassing their children?  Kyle takes it to heart sometimes...particularly lately!


Kyle dressed Audrey up as Superbaby with a receiving blanket for a cape and "flew" her out to me on the couch
Kyle found these headbands in the dollar section at Target on Friday.  Of course, she had to try on both while Kyle snapped the picture!


Poor girl.  I guess although she'll be spoiled, we'll even it out by embarrassing her terribly.  Hope insurance covers counseling!

Christmas in November

Since Kyle's grandparents were heading to Florida for the winter, we decided to go to Indy a day early last weekend to make sure that we were able to spend some time with them and that they got to see Audrey.  They brought Christmas presents for her (they won't come back north until about May)!  It was weird doing Christmas presents and Halloween outfits in November, but hey...we do what we can!















Audrey got this, too...but I forgot to take a picture!

Poor Charlie wanted to help open presents, too...but he got in the way of pictures!
Grandma and Grandpa also bought a stroller and an activity mat for their house, and Audrey loved playing and looking at all the dangly toys on her mat:





What a spoiled little girl!

Halloween 2013

For her first Halloween, Audrey was a banana.  I got the costume at a garage sale for $2.00...what a steal!  Audrey wore her costume on three separate occasions...once for Great-grandma Brenda and Grandma Michele, once for my entire family, and once for Grandpa Gary and her great-grandma Dot and great-grandpa Gerry.  She hated her suit, really.  She'd be happy in it for about two minutes then cry the entire time.  I think it was the hat!  We snapped the pictures as quickly as we could!




Hulking out!  I tried to get a picture of her hat, which said "top banana"



She was the cutest banana I'd ever seen!  I was really sad to pack the costume away in a box, but I keep telling myself that it'll probably come back out for another kid, so I'll see it again!

Also, Audrey loved the candy.  Her bucket (Kyle's old one) was half-full of candy when we left my mom and dad's house.  Audrey had all of it gone by the next evening.  What a piggie! ;)