It's FINALLY March!  That means Kaylee's half-birthday (she's two and a half now!), spring, sunshine, warmth, melting snow, slush, mud, and longer days ahead!  We are so excited to finally see the beginning of the end of winter!  

It's been a pretty busy month and a half for us!  We had lots of playing outside, a big road trip, lots of learning and talking and new words and experiences, and lots of fun, too!

Here are some of Kaylee's latest adventures...

She loves to dress up in anything she can find.  We still have her hats and mittens from last year, and even though the hat is a little on the small side, she adores it and likes to wear it sometimes while she's playing or watching TV.  She also tries on our tshirts, sweaters, shoes, and anything.  One day she was obsessed with her flip flops and even wore them to bed for her nap.  They were still firmly planted on her feet when she woke up. 

 

 Silly hats with Kaylee

 More silly hats...

 

Trying on Mama's favorite sweater...

Kaylee knows what to do with chocolate!

Kaylee has a huge box of books in the guest room.  These are the story books with paper pages, which I have kept out of reach until now, as she went through a mad paper tearing phase.  The books are still in a box waiting for me to put together her IKEA cubby set.  When she is wandering around looking for something to do, sometimes she goes in the guest room and looks through her books.  Sometimes she can't get close enough to the books and climbs right into the box with them. 

 In her box of books...

Kaylee also LOVES to play with water.  In the tub, the bathroom sink, the kitchen sink, water fountains, etc.  Usually she makes a bit of a mess, but she has so much fun, and it's just water, after all.  She has just started pouring water over from one cup into another, and she likes to "wash dishes" a little, also.

 Playing in the kitchen sink!

Playing UNDER the kitchen sink.  :)

This next group of photos was taken during our big road trip.  Kaylee's Aunt Courtney got married to Uncle Chris in Florida, and we drove down to be at the wedding.  We took our time traveling, enjoying visits with several friends along the way, meeting some of our friends' children for the first time!  Kaylee enjoyed playing with all the kids along the way, exploring lots of shopping malls (great way to run off some steam!) and hotels, and seeing lots of new sights from the car windows.  She's a great traveler - between the toys and books, movies, talking and reciting the alphabet and numbers, and the stops to stretch our legs, she settled right into the routine of long driving days and did really well!

 Who doesn't love McDonald's Playland?

 Visiting the Lincoln Memorial in DC...

 Visiting the National Air and Space Museum...

 Kaylee and Annie...

 Kaylee sitting at a kids table for the very first time.

She mostly spilled their drinks and ate off their plates.

Still learning some manners...  :)  Sorry, James and Lillian!

 Kaylee and Daddy riding the train at the Mall of Georgia...

 Kaylee's first haircut - did not go over well at all!

 Kaylee on her new cot in the closet at one of our hotels.

It was cozy and she liked it in there - she liked pulling the

doors shut and "hiding" from us.

 All of us on top of Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta.

A couple of in-car moments:

Kaylee singing the "I'm so sorry" song from an episode of "Yo Gabba Gabba"...

 

Kaylee reciting her alphabet and counting while we were driving down the road...

 Catching a cat nap in the middle of a hectic day...

 Using a fork to eat her own lunch at Steak & Shake...

 Helping the fork get an orange into her mouth.  :)

This is another skill we're still working on.

 Playing in a canoe in a kiddie play place

at the mall in Gainesville, FL.

 Same play place...

 Seeing a huge statue of an alligator in 

the Oaks Mall in Gatortown!

 Wow, this is a really big gator!

 Posing with Albert and Alberta at UF!

 Kaylee and Daddy at the Swamp!

 Kaylee running in the stadium hallway.

Obviously NOT a game day.  :)

 Kaylee and Daddy playing at Aunt Courtney's.

 Kaylee sporting her cool princess sunglasses!


We enjoyed very good weather for most of the duration of our trip, and when we got home, it was cold and stormy for a couple weeks, so we mostly stayed in, only venturing outside for necessities.  We started climbing the living room gate, we snuggled on the couch together and watched movies,  we tried some new foods, started climbing on some new tables from IKEA, had some baths and bubbles and dressed all warm in jammies and a bath robe, and discovered that somewhere along the way, we had another growth spurt and made a bunch of clothes too short in the arms and legs again, as well as gaining another size in shoes!  It was a very busy month!

 So cute...

 Almost up and over.  Uh oh...

 Cuddled up for family time on the couch.

 Trying to get the last few drops of Mountain Dew...

 Eating homemade fresh guacamole and chips!

 Sitting on the tables from IKEA.

Kaylee has a Fisher Price Barnyard that makes noises when you open doors and touch surfaces.  It has a sloped roof on it.  She also has a little Pinocchio doll that she's a little obsessed with, if you touch his nose, it talks, mostly saying, "I'll NEVER become a real boy..."  On a side note, when she is in a mall play place or at a McDonald's play place or even outside at a park, she LOVES LOVES LOVES to slide down the slides.  The bigger, the better.  Somehow, she concocted this situation in her mind where Pinocchio climbs into the hayloft, escapes out the side window, and slides down the roof.  Saying "WHEEEE!" at the end, just like Kaylee does.  And by the way, she is absolutely hilarious to watch sliding in the mall play places.  She is conditioned to yell "WHEEEE!" at the top of her lungs when she slides down and she is so excited and the other kids sometimes don't know what to make of her.  They either run the other way because she is so loud and boisterous about it, or they form a little "WHEEEE!" flash mob and they all start doing it.  Either way, it's pretty entertaining to watch.  So here's Pinocchio sliding down the barn...

WHEEEE!

 Cutie in her little pink bath robe.  :)

 Princess jammies are getting too short!

Kaylee is growing fast!

One night, at suppertime, I had to leave for an appointment.  Kaylee was already in her chair eating, and after we said goodbye and I left, Ian told me that she kept saying "Bye!" and "Seeya!".  He thought it was cute and tried to capture it on video...

Bye!  Seeya!

Well, this is the conclusion of this latest update... hope you've enjoyed the pictures of movies of our fast-growing little girl.  We're having a blast watching her learn and can't wait to see what adventures we all have together this next month or two!

Until next update!  Bye!  Seeya!

Ian, Georgine, and Kaylee

Sliding!

Today's weather was overcast and mild, and we had a few inches of snow overnight.  Ian took Kaylee outside for her first sliding adventure on our lawn - we have a small hill on the side of the apartment building that flows down onto the next lot (eg. our grassy field where we have campfires!).

As you can clearly tell, Kaylee LOVES being outside, and she loves sliding!

Here's some movie goodness of her sliding:

Potty Training!

So excited!

Today, Kaylee peed on the potty for the very first time!

Lately, she has been trying to (and successful at it) remove her diaper, mostly if it was full. 

We certainly don't blame her.

I first tried sitting her on the potty a while back and she was completely uninterested.

Lately, I have been taking her into the bathroom with me when I go, so she can understand the mechanics of it.

Today, she ripped her diaper off and we had a bit of a mess to contend with.  So we told her that if she wants to take her diaper off, she needs to sit on the potty.  Tonight, I've done it twice (put her on the potty after removing her diaper) and the second time she sat down, she peed!  Yay!

I made a really big deal out of it, changed her into a pull up instead of a diaper - the pull ups are pink and have princesses on them... and I took out two packs of new undies for Kaylee and showed them to her.  She was livid that I wouldn't put them on her right away, but I told her that they were for when she used the potty all the time.  Then I used clothes pins to hang them all up on the curtain on display so she can see them all the time.

So we'll see how this goes.  I need her to communicate with us for this to be successful though.  :)  But I am hoping...

Yay!  So exciting to see our big girl learning new things!

We hope everyone has had a very Merry Christmas and is eagerly anticipating the joys and blessings to come in the New Year in 2011!

It's been a long time between updates here.  It's shocking how fast and busy the pace of life can get.

These first few pictures are some that I got from my mom's collection that she has taken over the past year; sort of a mini year-in-review.  I hope you enjoy the look back as much as we did.  Kaylee has grown and changed SO MUCH in a short year!

 Opening one of her birthday gifts at Nanas.  Kaylee 

is wearing her adorable birthday dress she received 

from Aunt Courtney! (2009)

 Starting to get the hang of ripping the paper off...

 Kaylee LOVES her new Fisher Price barn and animals!

Halloween as Minnie Mouse! (2009)

 Trying on Nana's scarves at Christmas. (2009)

 Modeling Nana's scarf on Valentine's Day.  (2010)

  Kaylee with her helium balloons!  Fun!

In her Antigua shirt and Nana's purple beret 

(is there a Prince song somewhere here?)

 ANOTHER scarf shot.  See a theme here?  (2010)

 A really cute smile.  (summer 2010)

 At the Green Family Reunion 2010.

 Camping at New River Beach.  2010

 Playing with some new beach toys.

 Beach toys and bubbles!

And with this next set of pictures, we come back to the present.  :)  Kaylee has all sorts of hilarious expressions that she usually saves just for us, sometimes for people in authority (like doctors and homeland security agents), but occasionally we capture them in the camera too. 

We still haven't cut Kaylee's hair yet, and the fine baby hair ends like to knit themselves together at night and leave a big snarly mess to comb out in the morning (with the help of a little kids' spray in/leave in conditioner).  On this particular morning, we made her sit through putting in TWO ponytails in back and she made quite a face and yelled at us when we were done.

The crazy morning hair!

 The shirt says it all.

Kaylee has a bunch of big baby legos and frequently uses them to build tall towers.  But occasionally, she uses them as toe warmers.

Building big towers of blocks...

 Lego Block Toes

A month ago, while Daddy was away on a business trip, Mommy got frisky and decided to paint the living room.  She started it near Kaylee's bedtime, doing the taping and wall prep, and painted the first coat while Kaylee was sleeping.  The next morning, while a second coat went on, Kaylee played in her room.  And proceed to empty her entire dresser onto the bedroom floor.  Which was great fun, and extremely messy!  But entirely hilarious.  Oh, if only you all could have seen the pure joy on Kaylee's face as she carefully and deliberately flung each and every item of clothing across the room, higher and farther than the last...  :)

Flinging the clothes...

 The Aftermath of Hurricane Kaylee

 Another development over the last couple of months is that Kaylee no longer regularly takes an afternoon nap (morning naps were given up shortly after her first birthday).  She still needs a little more rest than getting up at 7am and going all day gives her though, and she has started occasionally climbing up onto the loveseat to take a nap.  She also curls up randomly on the floor.  So cute!

 Napping on the love seat with her blankies...

We all went through a big round of sickness in November.  First it started with Kaylee getting a head cold (then Mommy got it - BAD, and Daddy got it too - not too bad)... and once we were all over that, Kaylee got the stomach flu, then Mommy, and then Daddy.  November was a rough month with lots of furniture and rug cleaning and laundry.  We had a day where Kaylee just wanted to lay around (very unusual for her!) and cuddle up on Mommy when she wasn't feeling well...  And Mommy got the worst cold and was sick for two weeks and totally out of commission for about 2-3 days!

Mommy was a soft place to sleep today.

On another note, we have a favorite thrift store in Caribou.  It's called Catholic Charities, and all their proceeds go to support the local food bank.  They get a super super deal on the goods they purchase for the food bank, their food dollars go about four times farther with their suppliers, so it's a really great cause.  Anyhow, all the locals think very highly of them and they usually have little treasures buried here and there in the store.  Recently when I was there, I ran across this little gem: an original Kenner brand Strawberry Shortcake figurine storage album full of figurines.  They looked almost new, and they ALL STILL SMELLED!  I brought it home and cleaned it up, and Kaylee loves them and plays with them almost every day.  She has a couple of the new style Strawberry Shortcake figurines she got in a couple Happy Meals recently to add to the set.

Strawberry Shortcake Treasures

  

Also we got our first snow that stayed, and Kaylee got to get dressed up and go outside to play lots in the last month.  Kaylee loves the snow, and loves playing outside with Daddy.  :)  We got a donut style tube to slide with recently but haven't had a chance to check it out yet, since we had a complete thaw and almost had a green Christmas this year.  We had a blizzard this past week, but there was so much wind, there are bare patches everywhere.  We'll hopefully get a few more inches of snow to fill in the rough patches soon and be able to go sliding. 

 Kaylee and Daddy going out to play!

 Walking around in the snow...

 Playing with the snow.

This year for Halloween, Kaylee received a couple of adorable outfits from the Disney Store from Aunt J and family in Florida.  She dressed up as Mickey Mouse for Halloween this year, and even though it's not Halloween any more, she still has all her dress up stuff available to play with whenever she likes.  This is the first time she had her Nemo costume on... one night we dressed her in it to be silly and she had a great time. 

One other fun place Kaylee loves to go is the McDonald's restaurant in Grand Falls, NB.  They have a HUGE two-storey play place there, tubes and slides and other fun stuff, and she LOVES to climb around and slide and play with the other kids there.  She's always in a good mood while there, full of smiles and laughter.  Here's a few shots from a recent trip there...

 Climbing inside the big tunnel...

 Crawling out the end of the tunnel...

 Big smiles...

 Enjoying some of Nana's ice cream cone...

One day when Kaylee put herself down for a nap in the living room, she had her hands clasped together.  It was so cute, we had to take pictures.  :)

 So sleepy...

 Hands clasped together...

Our friend Kelly has the sweetest dog, Miss Molly, and Molly and Kaylee get along really well together.  One evening when they were visiting, Kaylee decided to feed Molly some Cheerios.  Molly was pretty patient with the whole process, and we got a cute picture...

 Feeding (or teasing) Molly with Cheerios...

This year I set Kaylee's very own tree up in the living room.  Last year she had a small one in her bedroom on top of the large dresser.  I made it Kaylee-safe as far as ornaments go, it was full of pink plastic Christmas balls, pink plastic candy ornaments, Pooh ornaments, Mr. Man and Little Miss ornaments, Disney princess balls, Disney fairies ornaments, and Sesame Street ornaments.  She LOVES it, and almost all the ornaments are off it now...  I got sick of redecorating it every day, so I just started collecting them and telling Kaylee her tree was going to be naked soon if she didn't leave it alone.  :)

 Kaylee with her own Christmas tree.

 Cutie Kaylee

 Happy Smiley Kaylee

 Kaylee rolling her eyes at us.  :)

We also got busy with some Christmas baking this year.  We wanted some fun stuff, so made my grandmother's gingerbread cutout cookies recipe and decorated with royal icing and mini M&M's.

 Gingerbread cookies!

Kaylee had one gift from Aunt J and family in FL that said to open as soon as it arrived.  When she opened it, she found an Advent calendar and a Fisher Price Little People Nativity.  :)  She loves the Nativity and if you push down on the button on top of the creche where the angel is supposed to sit, it plays "Away in a Manger." 

 Kaylee opening her Nativity.

 Can't wait to get it out of the box!

Kaylee has some sock monkeys and a sock frog that she likes to keep all together.  Frequently we find her playing with them in some form or another... like this shot:

Kaylee playing with monkeys!

Kaylee in Daddy's office getting ready to talk on

the phone, got her headset on! 

Kaylee admiring her Nana's Christmas

Tree over in New Denmark, NB. 

Christmas morning was spent at home in Limestone.  Nana and Papa came over early to discover Santa had left Christmas stockings for everyone, and we all opened them before breakfast, which Miss Kelly came up to enjoy with us.  Kaylee started opening her gifts and it took a while to get through them because she kept playing with the paper or the box.  :)  It was a lot of fun...

Opening gifts on Christmas morning...

 Playing with the new Train set!  Thank you 

Aunt J and family...

 Kaylee climbing on the living room gate.

Later on Christmas Day, we all headed over to Plaster Rock to visit Uncle Jeremy and see all the cousins.  We had a beautiful Christmas Turkey Dinner there, and visited with Grammie and Grampy Rioux, cousins Shannon, Emma, David, and Jacob, and played some games and just had a good time together!

 Kaylee coloring.

Shannon's new kitty, Charlie.  Kaylee

kept petting him and loving on him...

Papa, Shanny, Kaylee, and Grampy Rioux

 

The next day, at home... trying one of 

the gingerbread cookies...

And now, the best for last.  Kaylee chatters all the time, but she doesn't talk to us very much unless it's maybe one word she gets out.  However, we know she CAN talk, she just hasn't decided to actually articulate it yet.  She does know her alphabet and can count though... and I finally got a video of it (she has the hiccups, by the way...).  Since the movie is so large, I had to host it on You Tube.  You can find it here:

 

Until next time, we hope you had a wonderful 2010 with many happy memories, and we look forward to a year full of new experiences and fun times in 2011!

Love,

Ian, Georgine, and Kaylee