1 Thing I have learned from Kaylee

Among the MANY MANY things Kaylee has taught me in her 19 short months of being with us, there is one that I would like to share with you today.

***Never smell your piggies while you are sitting on the potty***

Let me explain! So our little angel has discovered the fun in smelling things, especially feet (which we call piggies). She will smell your feet and then wave her hand in front of her nose, telling you that your feet stink! She will smell anything and says it stinks! I dont think that she is actually "smelling," but anyways it is quite funny. She never leaves anyone in the room out when she decides to start smelling piggies. She will smell everyones, EVEN Tahoe's. This posed quite a challenge to her when her aunt Mary took her to the park the other day, Mary said she became overwhelmed with all the piggies she had to go around smelling. HAHA Mary said it was quite embarrassing for her!
When you add her love of smelling piggies to her sitting on the potty, it spells disaster! She will try to smell them while balanced on the big girl toilet. Keep in mind she has never used one of those little seats you put on top of the toilet, the ones made so little butts dont fall in. And she has insisted for the past 6 months or so to hold herself on the potty. I am no longer allowed to assist her, except for helping her up and down. So as i am waiting for her to do her business i notice that she is about to smell her piggies. She reaches down with her hand to grab her foot and starts pulling it towards her face. If you can imagine how this looks...she has lost all her support from one side of her body, and has no where to fall but in the toilet. So instead of smelling her feet she decided to dip her butt in the water. This is not the only time she has attempted this crazy feit, she tries often, and is bound and determined to figure out how to do it successfully.

So in case you didnt know and ever wanted to try to smell your piggies while sitting on the potty, DONT!

A look at our little Bambino

Here is the latest ultrasound picture of our little one (sorry, i know it is kind of blurry)

You can see the little "arm buds" if you look closely. That was kind of a funny story. When I was getting my ultrasound, I was asking the tech a bunch of questions. I said "Oh are those the arms?" She sort of took a deep breath and sighed a little sigh and said "No those are the arm buds." I was laughing on the inside.

A much needed break

As most of you already know I am pregnant again. You can always see how far along I am by looking at the pregnancy widget I added to the top right of my blog. I will be adding other fun things to go with my pregnancy as time goes by.

Anyways, I have been laid up with morning sickness (or as in my case "ALL FREAKING DAY sickness"). At least I can safely say that it is not as bad as it was when I was pregnant with Kaylee. I have found a comfy spot on the couch that i like to call home and pretty much stay there all day. I try to only get up when needed, in fear of getting sick everywhere. Things that fall into the "as needed" category include: Tahoe being attacked by his loving sister, eating time for Kaylee (which always makes me sick to smell the food), Kaylee's potty breaks, my potty breaks, any suspicious noises coming from the other room alerting me that she is getting into some sort of trouble. I, being such an active person, am having a lot of guilt and stress piling up from being so dang lazy. I hate that Kaylee has seen me basically inactive for the past couple of weeks. So I decided to muster up enough energy to take her outside the other day to go put a piece of mail in the mail box. And to my surprise after being outside for 15 minutes I wasn't feeling too bad. I decided that Kaylee and I both needed a break from the boredom we have been subjected to. So I went down to our shop and got out the little swimming pool I had bought a few years ago. It was really dirty, but nothing that good ol' vinegar can't handle. So after it was sparkling clean, I decided to fill it up and go for a dip. Out here in the country we are on well water. And if that means nothing to you, think about getting into water that came from about 150 feet down, IT IS FREEZING! I didnt have time to let it warm up in the sun, because it was getting close to nap time. So our only choice was to jump on in. She had so much fun, we are going to try and get outside more often, maybe my morning sickness will die down a bit so I can enjoy more times like these with Kaylee.

check out the pictures in the slideshow above

Newest Accomplishments

Kaylee has been MIGHTY busy these days! She has been hard at work trying to "grow up" as fast as possible. She has added many things to her list of accomplishments over the past few weeks including:

1. Pulling/ climbing up to see what is on the counter (she can actually get her chin to the top of the counter)

2. Opening doors (time for more child proofing),

3. Feeding herself with a fork (not perfect, but definitely improving)

4. Sitting through an entire book (quite a feat for this "busy bee")

5. Going from 2 naps a day down to 1

6. Going to sit on the potty by herself when she has to go to the bathroom (not the big one in the bathroom, her little potty)

7. Attempting to climb out of her crib (hopefully we are a LONG way away from totally mastering this skill)

8. And last but certainly not least climbing the rock wall on her climber!

YES you read correctly! Santa got her a climber for Christmas, which we keep inside. She mastered the slide the first day. She was able to go up the stairs by herself a few months later. And now she is 18 months old and has figured out how to climb the rock wall. I, I mean Santa, purposefully picked out a climber that could "grow" with her and that would hold more than one child comfortably. There are 2 sides (one small and one large) that have a rock wall. When the stairs are just not challenging enough children can climb one of these walls. I never imagined that an 18 month old would figure out, all by herself, how to scale the smaller version of the rock wall. I attempted to catch this unbelievable feat on video but had to frantically get the camera ready and then film it while trying to support her in case she fell. So see for yourself how this little girl did it. Remember NO ONE has ever showed her how to do this, nor has she ever seen a bigger kid climb it. I just want to know how she figured out that the wall was made for climbing.

sorry for my annoying commentary during the video, I could not believe what I was seeing

Puerto Vallarta - Bus Adventure

My stories of Mexico would not be complete with out my little bus adventure story. Let me start by saying that I was completely comfortable taking the much cheaper version of transportation and had done so successfully many times before this little outing.

I think my mom and dad were out on an all day excursion this particular day, so Kaylee and I went by ourselves to visit the others at their hotel in town. I had gotten there on the bus and thought nothing about taking the bus home. Well apparently I had gotten on the wrong bus by accident. Obviously, I mean who would get on the wrong bus on purpose?!? So by the time I realized my mistake it was too late and I had no idea what to do except wait. I kept saying to myself we have to start back towards civilization soon! But we just kept heading out farther and farther away and father up the mountain. So after being on the bus for nearly 50 minutes the lady in front of me turned around and said "donde _____?" (I only caught the first word) And all I could remember from high school Spanish was that she said where, donde means where. I told her I was going to the marina. She laughed then turned to the bus driver and said something to which he laughed. I was like "thanks guys, as if I am not already upset enough, just go ahead and laugh at me too." About 100 yards up the road if that is was you call the washed away dirt path that we were driving on, the bus driver flagged down a bus going the opposite direction and stoped next to it. He said something to the driver and motioned for me to get off so I did and got on the other bus. Somewhat relieved that I would be headed back to civilization, I was even more relieved when I saw an American couple on the bus with me. So after about another 40 minutes we pulled out from the middle of nowhere and onto a paved road, we were less than 5 minutes from where we needed to go. The bus driver made an unscheduled stop to let us off about 1 mile away from our resort. So instead of getting on another bus to take us straight to our resort we decided to hoof it. The other couple was staying in the resort next to ours. They told me of there little adventure on the bus that day too so I didn't feel quite as bad at least I wasn't the only one. But they had each other and all I had was my baby which I was scared to death for. As scared as I was, i felt somewhat safer having her with me. I learned that day that Mexicans really respect mothers and I thought that having her with me made it better. So when I finally made it into the room all I wanted to do was cry and throw up. But my parents were still not back from their trip and Kaylee was dying for dinner so I didn't have time to get upset. I thought that after my ride through the "other side of PV" I would not be able to ride the bus again. But I quickly recovered and rode the bus many more times I just made sure that it was the marina bus! And through all that one of kaylee's shoes had come off and got lost. It was one of my most favorite pairs too. But I was most thankful for the mei tai carrier Bethany let me borrow for the trip it was a life saver during this bus ride!

Airplanes Airplanes Everywhere

I taught Kaylee a few months ago how to fly like an airplane. We spread our arms out wide and soar around the house (or outside) making airplane noises. These airplane sounds are more like a hiss, "Ssssssshhhsssssshhsss". We fly like airplanes at random times and laugh at each other in the process. She even learned that when we are outside and she hears an airplane she looks up and starts to fly like it. I didn't teach her that! Anyways, the point of my story is yesterday and Wednesday we have had some storms in our area with some thunder. When Kaylee hears the thunder and noises outside she thinks it is an airplane and begins making the noises and flying around. It is so funny to watch! She has two toy airplanes and enjoys flying them around the house too. She is going to love learning about what her daddy does at work when she gets older.

Puerto Vallarta - The Food

Our internet has been going crazy for the past couple of days now,

and I have finally gotten a chance to use it when it is working.

So i decided to write a little bit more about our trip to Mexico.

I guess I will start with the food. When we arrived we went straight to our resort , dropped off our luggage, and then got something to eat at the restaurant in our resort. Good food but pricey. I was taught the most important thing I have ever learned about Mexican food that day. (Well it is important and really interesting to me, and others with a gluten sensitivity.) Quesadillas are traditionally made out of CORN tortillas NOT flour! They are not like the stiff , but "soft" corn tortillas you buy here. They have the exact same consistency as the flour ones and they are soft, chewy, and irresistible. I thought I had stepped into heaven! They said that Americans are the ones that started using flour, and in Mexico you can ask for them either way but almost everywhere serves them with corn. Let me just tell you I could hold my own with those little puppies, eating upwards of 8 at a meal along with other food. Now before you freak out about that number remember they are about 6 inches wide (smaller than the fajita tortillas you can get here). But either way I was impressed by my appetite. And Kaylee even ate 2 1/2 at one meal. Like mother like daughter. There was a quesadilla stand at our restaurant with a lady hand making the tortillas and then you pick your ingredients for her to put in them for you. I asked her if she could come to our room to be my private chef, but I think there was a bit of a language barrier there. So decided I would have taken her home in my suitcase if she would have fit.......man those things were good!
Overall I did not have too much trouble with the food like I had anticipated. I don't think I ever ate any gluten, well at least not enough to make me hurt or anything. So that was really nice! Monday we just kind of hung out close to our resort went swimming and then went to a local restaurant called PiPi's. It was fabulous! We had a great time watching Kaylee sneak bites from the guacamole that was made at our table......Yum! She was dipping every bite into it and sometimes she would just dip it and then lick it off and dip again. My little Mexican baby! I can't seem to remember a bad exprience with food the entire trip! Every place we went we had great food and great service! The service in Mexico is unmatched! They are awesome! I mean there is not a restaurant i have ever been to that even compares to the service we received there. My favorite restaurant was Barcelona Tappas but PiPi's (which I went to twice) was a close second.

(I have pictures to that go with this posting but I have to get them off my moms computer, so i will add them as soon as I can)

I am still alive

I promise I have not forgotten about my blog!

I know it had been nearly a month since my last post and I still have not told you guys anything about our trip. I am still in the process of loading the 640+ pictures that we took onto the computer and then on to the various websites I need to share them with everyone. But i promise that I will add more as soon as possible, for now here are a few...

Crista was a BEAUTIFUL bride!

Chillin`in PV

As most of you know I have been in Puerto Vallarta Mexico for the past 8 days. My parents, Kaylee, and I came down here last Sunday, and have enjoyed it so far. It seems like it has gone by so quickly. Actually Kaylee and my parents left this morning. They had a REALLY early flight, so we decided it was best to say good-bye to Kaylee last night before going to bed. We didn't see the point in waking up to say good-bye this morning just to have her burst into tears as mom and dad took her away. She has been VERY clingy to me these days! So needless to say I am very sad to have her gone, but hope that the 8 days to come will be filled with other exciting and adventurous things.
So far, we have been pretty booked up with wedding get togethers.....Wednesday night was the party at a private Villa (friends rented a place that Richard Nixon stayed in, amazing!) this night included a private fireworks show off the balcony, Thursday night was the bachelorette party, Friday morning the bridesmaids gathering including manicures, Friday evening the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner all i can say is YUM! and Saturday the wedding and reception, Sunday the Father`s day brunch. So now that all of that is over and most of the guests have left we have decided to fill our days with a variety of excursions and sitting by the pool soaking up the sun when it peaks out from behind the clouds. The weather here has not been the best, but we have tried to make the best of it. It is much like Memphis, just not as hot or humid. Tonight we are going on a dinner cruise with the Irish Group and some others that are still here, so we are looking forward to that.
I just wanted to write a quick post on today, but there is MUCH more to come, including pictures from this momentous vacation.

Ready for MEXICO!

As most of you know i tend to freak out when preparing for a big trip. Well this one is NO different! There are so many things to do, and remember, errands to run, and packing. I am always so overwhelmed. But i thought i would take a break from the madness and get a few pictures of my little Mexican Cutie who is SOOOO ready to spend all her free time in the water. This will probably be my last post for awhile, not sure if i will be able to post on vacation or not, but rest assured that i will share LOTS and LOTS of details and pictures when we return.