How many photos?

In creating the year-end review page pictured below, I had a chance to go through lots and lots of photos.

Just for grins and giggles, I checked to see how many pictures we've taken this year. Are you ready?

We took 7604 digital pictures this year.

And 6461 of them were of Kylie. (and she's just eight months old).

Holy Moly Batman!

I am getting better at weeding through and deleting photos on the sd card before downloading them to my trusty iPhoto.

But my goodness that seems like a lot of photos. Thank heavens for digital cameras!

Here's that year-end review scrapbook page I mentioned:

Sunny day

Thank you to everyone who commented about bread (from the last post). It was really helpful!

On December 20th, we had one of those rare days in Portland where the sun comes out.

I threw open all the blinds in Kylie's room and grabbed my camera and clicked away. Natural sunlight makes all the difference in photos. I have soooo many favorites from that day and here are a few.





I love how blue her eyes are in this one.










Sorry if I slowed your internet connection way down just now but I love these photos.

I'm really missing the sun this winter in Portland. Seems like this year is grayer and colder than the previous years. And I'm itching for the spring so that we can go to the playground and the zoo and such.

Our light bill is going to be huge because I have all the lights in the house turned on all the time. And the house still seems so dark to me. So I sit in front of my lovely, light-filled Mac and a I scrapbook pages like this.



And like this: (for close ups click here and here.)

Progress on crawling

Well Kylie is up on her elbows and knees and moving forward. She's getting that belly off the ground. She still rolls when she wants to get somewhere fast. But she's learning that crawling is the best way to go forward.

I'm holding off calling it an "official" crawl because she's not on her hands yet and because she only will inch one or two knees forward before flopping back down.

But we are so very tickled with this progress.

As soon as she's really up and moving, we'll post a video of her.

**Here's a question for you: Do you feed your little one bread? And if so, is it whole wheat bread or toast or bagels or something else?

Lastly, here's a scrapbook page.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.

It snowed for about two hours. And it was one of those beautiful snowfalls with big, fat flakes rapidly falling down. Kylie was entranced by the snow.







Yesterday I was feeling around in Kylie's mouth and felt where a tooth (or maybe even two bottom teeth) were breaking through. So we have lots of Christmas pictures where Kylie is sucking on her fingers (as usual). She was really good natured for a teething baby. We did have to go for a drive this afternoon because she had trouble settling down. Don't you know our nearby Starbucks was open on Christmas--got to love Portland!

Anyway, back to Christmas. Karen and I had bought presents for Kylie that we didn't show to one another. So it was fun to open those presents as well as our own. Kylie got a kick out of watching our faces light up when we saw what was under the wrapping paper. She did enjoy playing with her stocking.



And she seemed happy about what she got....or just happy in general.


I had planned on setting up the tripod and figuring out the timer on our camera to get some family photos but that didn't happen. So we'll just have to make do with individual shots like these:









We hope you had a great Christmas as well. We love you.
Karen and Wendy and Kylie

Merry Christmas

Scrapbook Mojo

Last weekend I made these two pages that will be displayed on the left and right-hand pages of our scrapbook.





And I was pleased with them.

Then I hit a creative wall. I created Kylie's 8 month milestone pages and I hated the finished product. I went ahead and finished the spread thinking that I would either like it better the next day or would think of a way to improve it.

Nope. I don't hate it anymore but I'm not pleased with it either. So at some point, I'll be doing that spread again.

Then I moved on to Kylie's great picture with Santa. Again, nothing I did felt right. Trying to work on the page was like slugging through mud. So I trashed it and started over.

Have you ever had that creatively blocked feeling? It's not fun. Makes me want to pout and eat chocolate and ice cream and knit like crazy. (I did manage to get quite a bit of the sleeve to my Retrograde sweater knitted).

This is the Santa page I came up with it.

It's far from perfect but at least I'm pleased with it. Finding that background paper was a real win and helped things along. And hopefully, I've got my scrapping mojo back.

We'll see. Wish me luck!

Fun at our house

For the past few nights, we've been giving Kylie a few items from her Christmas stocking.

Tonight it was a pink rubber duckie.

And a hungry caterpillar.

You love it when Momma blows raspberries.

You love it more when you fly through the air.

A safe landing

My two girls are so much fun.

Priceless

POOR LITTLE MUNCHKIN! She's just barely holding in an all-out scream.

How horrible is it that instead of feeling sympathy for my little girl....I laugh out loud every time I look at this picture?

Eight months old

Dearest Kylie,

This month has really flown! Here are some of the ways you have grown this month.

Your first word was “Mama”. You said mama for the first time on November 1st when you were six months old. Since then, you say it to us all the time. It’s so delightful to have you look at us and say this special word.

You can repeat “bye-bye” when we say it to you and you’ve started waving an arm when we wave to you. You can pucker your lips and suck in your cheeks to give us air kisses. You hold up your arms when you are ready to be picked up.

During playtime, you roll from one toy to another quite quickly. You examine your toys more thoroughly and pass them back and forth between your hands. You’ve become very interested in the furniture in your room. You like to roll to your crib, dresser or the wall and slap them with your hands and feet.

We read you many books throughout the day. You know exactly where to put your fingers on your touch-and-feel books. You like to help turn the pages of your board books.

You enjoy four meals a day. You like to feed yourself fruit-cup pieces from a bowl adhered to your tray. We’ve added stage 3 meals like pasta primavera to your diet along with cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, pasta and diced apples. You like to drop bits of food on the floor and then lean over in your high chair to see where it has landed.

You take all your naps in your crib—no more swing. You take three naps a day and each nap lasts around an hour.

You weigh 16 pounds, 8 ounces which is an increase of 1 pound 2 ounces. You wear 6-9 month or 9 month clothes.

Happy Birthday Darling Girl!

What a foodie!

Kylie insists on feeding herself finger foods at every meal. She loves to eat her food out of one of those suction bowls that adheres to her highchair tray. And you won't believe how much food Kylie is eating these days. Here's an example:

Breakfast - around 7:00am
I feed her a gerber 3.5 oz fruit & granola mix.
She feeds herself one quarter of a banana chopped into little pieces and a few cherrios.

Lunch - around 10:45am
I feed her 3oz of a gerber "3rd food" meal like pasta primavera or broccoli and cheese.
1/2 of an american cheese slice.
She feeds herself 4oz of a fruit cup like diced pears, peaches or apples.

Snack - around 1:30pm
I feed her a gerber 3.5 oz fruit blend like apple-blueberry.
I also feed her two tablespoons of small curd cottage cheese.
She feeds herself another 4oz of a fruit cup.

Dinner- around 4:00pm
I feed her 3oz of a gerber "3rd food" meal
She feeds herself bits of mashed potato and pieces of green beans or carrots
1/2 of an american cheese slice.
I feed her 2.5 oz of a fruit like prunes or bananas or applesauce
She feeds herself some more diced fruit.

Wow!! We're so lucky that she likes everything. I hope our luck holds.

Kylie drinks water from her sippy cup at every meal. Sometimes we hold the cup for her and other times she holds it herself.

We've bought one of those floor protector pads that sits under her high chair to make it easier to clean up her dropped foods. We also recently got one of those long-sleeved meshy bibs that looks more like a artist smock. Even with rolling her sleeves up to her shoulders, she was managing to get herself quite dirty during mealtime so this smock has helped alot.

And we've learned at the end of a meal to carry her from her high chair and set her on the countertop near the sink to wipe her hands and mouth with wet paper towels. She hates baby wipes for this kind of cleaning. And actually I don't blame her--the baby wipes leave a funny tasting residue on your fingers and mouth.

Just thought I would share a part of our feeding adventures with you! And now, here's a Kylie picture!
Kylie says, "Do you have food? If so, I'm coming to get you!"

Photo Friday 12/14

Christmas wrapping

Today, while Karen was away at work, I received the last Christmas items I had ordered online. I was even able to unbox them and then add the boxes to today's recycling garbage pick-up so that all evidence of where I had shopped was removed.

Don't you love it when the doorbell rings and you know it's a delivery. It makes me run down the stairs with excitement. This freaks my cats out and sends them scurrying which adds to the fun.

While Kylie was napping, I wrapped Christmas presents in record-breaking time. Each year I plan on wrapping beautiful Christmas presents. You know the kind with the hidden tape and the tight paper that lines up perfectly and beautiful ribbon and bows.

This year, yet again, my wrapped presents look like a child wrapped them. I always get in such a hurry! It's like my old drill coach is behind me with a stopwatch screaming, "Hurray up, dang you! Faster, faster!"

So my lovely presents end up looking like crap. I take solace in the fact that soon the wrapping paper will be torn away and that hopefully no one will remember my yucky wrapping job. (But don't you always remember that person who sent you a beautifully wrapped present? Don't you secretly hate that person?)

Anyway, here is yet ANOTHER scrapbook page. I'm on such a roll with these lately. I think the paper is so fun! I purchased it at one of my favorite digital stores, Sweet Shoppe Designs.

The story, which is hard to read in such a small online picture, is how the song that plays on Kylie's Leap Frog Spin & Sing Alphabet Zoo wheel is stuck in my head.



Have a great weekend everyone!

Bye

Kylie is having a banner week for talking to us. First she blew a kiss, then she signed "all done", and today she said, "Bye, bye".

Today, as Karen was leaving Kylie's nursery she said to Kylie, "Bye, bye!"

Kylie smiled and said, "Bye, bye".

Karen said it again and Kylie smiled and whispered "Bye, bye" again. We don't care that she's probably just mimicking us--we think it is just adorable.

I took some pictures today but none of them came out worth anything. Kylie's still sick; I'm still sick; no good pictures.

I did scrapbook the story of how Kylie likes to wake me at 4:30 in the morning sometimes (like this morning) if anyone is interested.

All done

I'm pretty sure that Kylie signaled "All done" in sign language at the end of her dinner time last night. So cool!

"All done" is the one sign we've done consistently. This makes me want to sign more with her. Particularly the sign for milk (aka formula) since Kylie gets irritated when I offer her a bottle and she doesn't want it.

We are feeling much better from our colds. Still a bit snarky but better.

I don't know if it was the cold medicine or being housebound for several days, but I bought five ornaments at Hallmark yesterday. And I went in only to buy cards. And we already had purchased our series ornaments.

All the ornaments just looked so pretty and I went a bit overboard.

Karen and I started our relationship without any Christmas ornaments (long story there). For the past five Christmases, we've purchased ornaments together. The previous four Christmases we've had to fill the tree with colored balls to flesh it out. This year, we decided to keep the tree very simple and only use our special ornaments. I think it is quite pretty! (I can hear you Mom. I can hear you in my head saying, "Actually, it's quite bare".) Sshhhh. Be quiet.

Part of the joy we receive from our Christmas tree is watching our cat Chloe. Chloe LOVES the tree. It is her tree fort and she spends lots of time under it. Her favorite activity is to run from the tree, up the stairs, back down the stairs to the safety of the tree fort. This is done very loudly all throughout the day.

Chloe is jealous of her tree and will send away any intruders.


Kylie thinks that was quite rude.

Special ornament

I made this scrapbook page tonight to tell the story of this special Christmas ornament.


I know some of you have emailed me and expressed an interest in scrapbooking. I just thought I would share that I'm actually working on two books. One is strictly for Kylie's monthly milestones. The other is for everything else. I've loosely labeled the other book as the "2007 book" but as you can see in this post, their are some stories that have happened before 2007 that I want to capture as well.

I've been enjoying Ali Edwards Life Artist book about scrapbooking. I like her ideas about capturing stories and not worrying about the order of it all.

Anyway, here's a picture I took of Kylie before she caught her cold. The picture makes me laugh. I can't think of a proper caption for it though. Any thoughts?

Christmas trees and kisses

Kylie and I both came down with colds this weekend. But Karen and I got our Christmas tree up nonetheless. It was so worth it to see Kylie's face when she first saw her tree.



There are more Kylie and tree pictures here. Go check them out--they are so sweet!

On Saturday night, all three of us were in Kylie's room playing before her bedtime. Kylie was nestled on Karen's lap. As I left the room to go draw Kylie's bath, I turned at the door and made an extravagant kiss face. And Kylie blew me one back! She sucked in her cheeks, puckered her lips and made the smacking sound. I blew another kiss and Kylie blew me one again.

Karen and I both looked at each other with goofy grins and watery eyes. I tell you, the littlest things about living with Kylie can touch me so deeply.

The only downer of this weekend (other than our awful colds) is that three of our Christmas cards were returned for insufficient postage. The cards aren't weirdly sized or heavy or anything. I'm really worried that all 50 of our cards are going to come back to us, thus negating the fact that I got them in the mail the first week of December. Cross your fingers that the other cards go on to their destinations!

As for project Monday, I finished this 12 x 24 spread Sunday night. Click here for a closer look.


And I finished the body of my Retrograde sweater. On to the sleeves!

I hope each of you had a wonderful weekend!

Meet you at the door

First of all, let me reassure you that Karen, Kylie and I weren't adversely affected by the storms in Oregon. We are safe and sound.... thank heavens.

Secondly, I wanted to post a quick picture of the doodlebug.

And lastly, to share a laugh with you. Around once a week, we have a nanny come to the house to babysit Kylie for four hours. I use this time to run errands or to sit at my neighborhood Starbucks and slowly sip some coffee and enjoy some baby-free time. Our nanny is a gem and she and Kylie are good together.

I can always tell the minute I walk in the door what kind of day it has been for the nanny. If I walk in and she's upstairs playing with Kylie in her nursery, it's been a good day. If I walk in the door and the nanny is standing there with her coat already on and her purse on her arm---not so good.

Today was one of those days she met me at the door. Seems like the doodlebug refused to take her afternoon nap. Kylie wasn't overly fussy, she was just wide awake. And the nanny was ready to hit the road before the melt downs began.

Smart lady!

Photo Fun

Kylie was really happy today. And that makes for a good day for me!

I noticed a few new things today. She held her bottle by herself today. I know a lot of babies do this much earlier, but Kylie has been content to just lay in my arms and let me feed her. Today, she grabbed and tipped her bottle herself.

And she reached up on her toychest shelf to get to a doll that she wanted to play with during our playtime. The whole "object permanence" thing has also started to kick in. If she drops a toy while I'm holding her, she'll lean over and look for it.

She holds out her arms when she's ready for me to pick her up.

And she's eating cottage cheese and loving it!

I had Kylie loaded in the car, ready to go to Gymboree this afternoon. I drove to the nearby interstate and was shocked to see that traffic was at a standstill. There were "delays due to flooding" signs up as well. In the three years we've lived in Portland, there has never been flooding that has affected us.

So we turned around, came back home, and I played with Kylie and the camera instead. Here you go!

Big Eyes, Big Belly


Blowing Raspberries


Look Mommy, Lint!


Finally, a smile


And an even bigger smile!