Santa

This is the fun time of year as a parent because you get to watch the excitement in your kids eyes as they await Santa to show up at their house. Kaylie is really into Santa and Christmas this year. I was not fully prepared the other night when I read, The Night Before Christmas," to her and she started looking at the pictures and asking me how Santa carries all the toys down the chimney and how he climbs back up, how the reindeer fly, etc. I need to get in full parent mode and begin coming up with wise answers when given such hard questions as those. ha! Jeremy's work had a kids Christmas party on Tues. night. Kaylie was all excited sit on Santa's lap and tell him just what she wanted, and she told me she would smile so I could take her picture. Well as with most kids that sounds great until you get to the big and scary Santa and they freeze and realize they are not as brave as they thought. :) So with the help of daddy we did get a picture of the kids with the Mrs.. I forgot to get Santa in the picture, can you believe that? oops!


Kaylie got a doll to dress up and Landon got a car that makes sounds. They were both excited and have enjoyed playing with their presents.


This is our attempt at a family picture. I was trying to distract Landon from the balloon but he was more interested in trying to figure out why I was hiding it. :)

For all of your Purdue fans out there, Kaylie has learned the Purdue fight song and loves running around the house singing it. How can you not be proud to be a Boiler when you hear this...


Here are some other random pictures from the last week...

Landon looks so big here. Where did my baby go? He is changing so much each day. He continues to enjoy walking, eating big people food, and we just started him on "real" milk so he is enjoying that as well. He is also learning new words. He now says, "all d (all done), and eeee when he wants to eat. He says something that sounds like drink also.

Kaylie contines to love to play with her dolls and is starting to realize that Landon can now play so it's cute to watch them try to play together. She is also really into drawing and doing anything with the arts.

Happy Birthday

This weekend we celebrated Kaylie's 3rd birthday and Landon's 1st birthday. I am not sure where the last 3 years have gone but my babies are growing up too fast! Kaylie's birthday is Dec. 8th and Landon's is Dec. 13th. We try to do them the 1st weekend in Dec. so we can stay as far away from Christmas as possible. Just like the day my babies were born it was snowing and yucky out. Kaylie was born in an 8 inch snow storm closing all the schools for a couple days and the day we brought Landon home from the hospital it was a snow emergency as well. Luckily everyone traveled safely and all of our family was here for the special day. Here are a few pictures. I did 2 cakes because I wanted the kids to each have their own theme and cake to enjoy. Kaylie had a Cinderella party and Landon had a 1st birthday party. Kaylie wanted white cake with purple icing and loved every bite. Landon really enjoyed his cupcake and already has a sweet tooth.

Here are Kaylie and Landon opening presents. Kaylie was really into her birthday and understood exactly what it was about. Landon being 1, just went with the flow and watched and enjoyed the benefits of new toys.
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Of course the kids got plenty of toys to fill our basement and it's not even Christmas yet. Kaylie is enjoying her new clothes, digital camera, easel,doll house,and garden tools. Landon is enjoying is clothes, ride on toy, ball toys, and cars.

Not only will Landon turn 1 on the 13th he also learned how to WALK!! He figured it out and is off to the races. I still find it funny when I walk in another room and he follows me just walking along. It's so cute and I am loving it. It is sure helping my back because he wanted me to walk with him all day. So that is our big news of the week. Here is a little video.

So big!

Well a lot has happened since our last post. Over the past several months I have learned that no child of yours is the same and does not do everything the same time your first child does things, this could be a girl vs. boy thing or the fact that with your first child you have a lot more time to sit and play and with your second one there is not nearly the same amount of time. We have been waiting months now for Landon to move on his own. He showed no interest in crawling but loved to walk and was great at cruising anything that he was standing around. Last week he took 8 steps across the floor so we were sure he was going to walk in the next few weeks. Well after boycotting walking on his own, I decided we were going to have "baby bootcamp," and he was going to learn to walk or crawl. So needless to say the next day he was crawling, sitting up and standing up in his bad all by himself. I was so excited. I know this add more craziness to our day with 2 moving children but this takes away his and my frustration. :) Here is a little video. Don't worry we don't use food to make him crawl. I was just updating the blog and he was eating a snack so it was a good time to get a video real fast! :)


Along with crawling he is also talking a lot more. He now says, "Ma Ma" to me and "Da Da" to Jeremy so he knows who we are, he also says "dae dae" when he sees Daisy our cat and will try to say diaper and other words we say. He is beginning to eat more table food and loves any meat we give him. He polished off 2 chicken nuggets the other day.


We are not loving this cold weather, and getting ready to leave the house takes us another 10 min. to get the kids all bundled up and out the door. Luckily Kaylie is really good about getting her shoes, coat, and hat on herself. We just moved Landon's car seat around so he is much happier now facing the way everyone else is. He just kicks his feet and laughs.


Kaylie is in gymnastics and loving it. This is the one thing she will do completely by herself without me standing by. She loves her teacher. Her favorite thing is the bars so here she is on the bars.


I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. We feel so blessed with what we have and all of our family and friends that we are surrounded by.

Halloween 2008

Here are some pictures from the kids Halloween experience. Kaylie really got into it this year and was loving all the candy she was getting at each house. Landon enjoyed riding around in the wagon looking at all the funny looking kids walking around. It was wonderful weather so we had a great time. It did get cool by the end of the night so we set up a bon fire and hung out in the drive way. Here are some pictures...

Kaylie had fun carving her pumpkin with Daddy. As you can see Daddy found it easier to use the drill on the small parts...







Kaylie and I enjoyed doing crafts during the fall and here are some examples...



Now to the cutest little trick-or-treaters...









This last picture is from our tailgate at the Purdue game this past weekend. We went to the Purdue game with some friends from Chicago. One of the couples have a little boy Nolan who we have already decided will be roomates with Landon. We decided that they could live in a co-ed dorm and Kaylie would be there to watch out and let us know what is going on. Ha! The first picture is Kaylie entertaining the boys with all of her songs.

Disney on Ice and more...

We have continued to stay busy with all of our fall activities. We had a fun weekend last weekend when Kaylie and I got to have a "girls night out" and go see Disney on Ice with one of her friends and his mom. It was so fun to get to spend time with just Kaylie while Landon was getting one on one play time with Grandma (daddy got a night out in Chicago with some friends). We had a lot of fun and Kaylie really enjoyed the show. I went to these shows when I was little so I was excited to take Kaylie and see her excitement.




We passed up the cotton candy but did allow them to get flavored ice.


Landon continues to love to stand up and walk around. I have become Landon's personal walker. We make several laps around the house and yard daily. I discovered 2new teeth that came in today that I didn't even know he was getting. He got his bottom 2 teeth when he was 5 months and has not gotten any new ones until this month the poor kids has gotten 6 new teeth in the last few weeks! He is a trooper! He now has 8 teeth!

Here are a few pictures of our monkey's before bedtime. Landon enjoys pulling himself up to the railing and jumping and of course Kaylie loves to jump along with him.



The kids enjoy being outside, although it is getting a little cold these days. Kaylie loves riding her bike and Landon enjoys "driving his car."



Last night I raked our leaves for Kaylie to jump in. As you can see we don't have very many leaves but she still thought it was a lot of fun.