Kaitlyn's 1st Christmas

We flew up to Lodi to spend Christmas with our families. We did a ton of running back and forth between houses, but in the end we were able to spend time with both our immediate families as well as my extended family on both my mom and dad's side. Here's a bunch of pictures of Kaitlyn from our trip.


Our family together on Christmas Day

Cousin Mark with Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn getting hugs from her 2nd cousin Brayden while being held by aunt Linda

Kaitlyn with her dad

It looks like Kaitlyn is the only one who knew to look at the camera!

Grandma Harper with Kaitlyn and Gideon

Kaitlyn with her cousins on Christmas Eve

Me and Debbie with our little ones

Kaitlyn and Sam

Kaitlyn with her Aunt Kate

Kaitlyn with her Aunt Heidi

Kaitlyn hanging out under our tree

A family Christmas photo.....sorry, didn't get the cards out this year!

Babysitter update

Kaitlyn was great for the babysitter and slept the whole time except for when she was woken up to eat. Pretty easy cash for the babysitter and a relaxing, enjoyable night out for us.

Babysitter

Well it was bound to happen sooner than later, we hired a babysitter. Team Lodi (Heidi, April, and Charise) is throwing a Christmas party at their house Friday night. We were planning on bringing her along with us and just putting her on Heidi's bed to go to sleep for the night. Today we decided that it would just be easier to hire a babysitter to come to our place and let her sleep in her crib as she normally does. Heidi has done lots of babysitting for us so far, but nobody outside of family has watched her. Hopefully all goes well and it frees us up to relax and enjoy some holiday cheer.

My new do

I saw my friend Eileen the other day and she noted that my hair looked really long. I replied, "yes it is, because when you have a baby it's rather impossible to get your hair cut." She totally understood what I was talking about and let me know that she had not gotten her hair cut since Justin was born (7 months)! A few days later we came to the agreement to watch each other's kids so that we could get our hair done for the holidays. Monday was my appointment. I wanted to go short because Kaitlyn is at the age where she grabs my hair then subsequently gets her fingers tangled up in my mop. I also wanted bangs since I was already being 'daring' going short, I might as well go all the way and get bangs. I know it's not too daring to most, but to me I feel like it's a big change. Overall, I like it. Hopefully it will grow out nicely because I'm not sure when the next time I'll have a chance to get it cut again!

These aren't your mom's cloth diapers

.....but I still could not handle them for more than a day. My friend, Natalie, loaned me her set of Bum Genius brand cloth diapers. She used them with their daughter and liked them. She said she did not have a problem with blow-outs or leaks and it saved her a lot of money. The thought of free diapers sounded appealing, however I was skeptical about them holding in the goods. I figured I'd give it a try.

I will say that, to my surprise, they did not leak and held a good sized poo. However I could not handle the idea of taking off a dirty diaper and saving it for later. What I also did not like was that it was a hassle to get the liner inserts inside the cover and I also didn't like how they looked bulky under Kaitlyn's clothes. She's big as it is so adding a bulky diaper did not help the issue of her clothes already fitting tight.

I'm probably just a bit too lazy to do the whole cloth diaper thing, so I washed them all last night and I will be giving them back to Natalie ASAP!

The stats are in

I took Kaitlyn to the doctor today for her well baby 4 month check up. Her doctor told us that she is the size of a 6 month old! I guess there's something good in her milk. Here are the stats:

Weight 15 lb 12.5oz (95%)
Length 26.5" (97+%)
Head 16" (50%)

playing on the bed

Now that Becky has gone back to work, I get the luxury of playing full time parent Friday through Sunday. In our playtime I found that Kaitlyn loves the queen size bed, and gets excited when we play games on it. The best part about the games shown on the video is seeing Kaitlyn's anticipation of getting tickled by daddy!

Check out the video.

Little bundle of joy

I'm pretty sure I've fallen more in love with my little daughter this week. I can't put my finger on it, but it sure feels great.

*This picture is in appreciation for our new zoo passes and my hands-down favorite animals there.

Goodby swaddle, hello PJ's

We decided that we were overdue to wean Kaitlyn out of her swaddling wrap. We been either using a blanket or a swaddling wrap with velcro (or both at once!) pretty much ever since birth. She has slept so well this way that we've been hesitant to have her sleep without being swaddled. She has outgrown the wrap and her coordination with her hands is better now so she won't accidentally swat herself with her hands. Thus, to both her grandmother's delight, we've done away with the swaddle starting 2 nights ago. It turns out that Sam and I may have been more attached to the swaddle than Kaitlyn. We've had 2 straight nights of continuous sleep (9 hours), the same as she slept with the wrap. The only difference we see is that during her daytime naps, she seems unable to put herself back to sleep after waking during the middle of the nap. This has led to a challenge of getting her through her nap without waking up our whole building.

After a short time away....

Due to traveling and then coming back to work a ton, blogging has taken a side seat....but I'm back! Sam, Kaitlyn, and I went up to San Jose for the weekend to attend a wedding. Since Sam was the best man, I mostly had Kaitlyn duty all to myself. This turned into a bigger challenge that I would have thought. She was out of her routine and we were crammed into a hotel room. Needless to say, I forgot the camera (as well as some other essential items) in the hotel room for the wedding....no pictures :( We got back to San Diego and I worked all week except had Thanksgiving Day off. We had family in town all week as well as hosting both of our families for Thanksgiving dinner. Add that to having Kaitlyn waking up 4 times on Saturday night (very uncommon for her....teething maybe....or maybe just a bad night...) and you have yourself one tired mom. Here are a few pictures we got from Thanksgiving Day.

I think this is our first family photo since the hospital room.

The Marks family

Kaitlyn with her great grandma Frazier and her cousin Gideon

My sister, Kaitlyn, mom and me