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
