Owen walks and sleeps

Owen started officially walking a few weeks ago and now thinks that walking is the funniest thing ever. He cracks himself up doing his drunken sailor imitation. His personality develops more and more each day and he is turning in to quite the ornery stinker pants!

Kailey-isms

Kids say the funniest things, and Kailey is living up to the saying. Lately, the most hilarious things have been coming out of that child's mouth. Here are a few highlights:

-Toosie came for a visit to celebrate Kailey's birthday. Part of the gift was a real rhinestone crown that Toosie had from her costuming days. There was absolutely no great gift...ever! Toosie had to rig it up with string to fit her head, but once it was able to stay on without holding it, Kailey would spend time gazing at her beautiful self in the mirror. The best was when she delicately leaned on one hand and softly proclaimed to the mirror, "A dream, is a wish your heart makes..."

-If she cuts her hand, she doesn't wear a band-aid, it's a 'bandit.'

-There is a cat living in Kailey's room. NO, not a real one. (Are you kidding me? Spot is the only remotely interesting cat I've ever met, but since the sesame seed horrors of Chi-Chi the cat, I will never, ever be able to recover and own one of my own...yuck!) Anyhow, there is a white cat named Kitty-cat (Original!) living under Kailey's dresser who gets very angry and wakes up when she is too loud. Which, apparently, is quite often. We thought it was Lucifer the cat from Cinderella, but she is quick to point out that it is not Lucifer because he is black and white and her cat is all white.

-Now this is the weird one. She has names for her hands. One hand is, go figure, Princess Hand and the other hand is Dragon Hand. Dragon Hand can be defiant and will often pull her hair to the point where she has to say, "Dragon Hand, stop pulling my hair." Princess Hand is very well behaved and will have chats with her feet that it's not appropriate for them to be on the table. Straaange.

The kid's got imagination!

Happy Birthday Sweet Kailey-Cakes!

Happy, Happy Birthday, sweet girl! It's so hard to believe it's been three years since you made your arrival into this world. It was a long, loooong labor that brought you here, but so very worth every single minute. You are the joy in our lives that made us realize how truly fortunate we are to be called Mommy and Daddy. We love you more and more with each beat of our hearts!

We had an incredible day of fun, food and friends. Our close buddies came over for cupcake decorating (Kailey had, by far, the most sugar and icing on her cupcake), pizza, presents, playroom time and the pinkest cake you ever saw. I did take on the role of Betty Crocker and baked her birthday cake...for the first time ever. Originally, Kailey wanted a green cake, but then changed her mind to a pink cake. I tried to oblige by baking the oooie-gooiest cake I possibly could. Yum!

The only disappointment of the day, as far as Kailey was concerned, was the Santa and her friends, the princesses, couldn't make it. She's a little confused about the whole gifts from Santa for Christmas vs. Birthday issue being that Christmas was just ten days ago. She also couldn't understand why Saturday had to be cleaning day for Cinderella, Snow White and Ariel and that's why they couldn't come to her party. (What am I going to do when these stories don't work anymore?)

Overall, these special days get better and better as the kids get older. Owen finally tasted some cake and absolutely LOVED it! Good boy, he likes his mom's better than any store bought cake! As for Kailey, I think three is going to be a pretty fabulous year!

Where's Owen?

Owen is turning in to quite the adventurous little boy. We're pretty convinced that the reason he spent his first year of life screaming, was because he couldn't move around as freely as he wanted. Now that he's able to explore his environment, he seems to be much happier. We have learned that Owen is terribly quick...yes, we lost him the other day.

We saw him one minute and the next we were searching all over the house until savvy Kailey spotted Owen. Yep, he managed to squeeze himself in between the Christmas tree and the window. While we were all overwrought with fear, he was having a great time.

Gingerbread Houses

A group of us all took our little ones to create gingerbread houses at the local dairy farm, Moomers. Moomers is known around town for the amazing ice cream...it's almost as good as Graeters ice cream, which was a local college favorite. However, Moomers, unlike Graeters comes with real cows for your viewing pleasure.

Anyhow, when we arrived, we were all set with a blank slate of a gingerbread house. While all the other families let their children have fun and create beautiful works of art, I found my OCD kicking into high gear with our house. As you can see, I created neat little rows for Kailey to place like types of candy. She didn't seem to mind and I actually think she preferred it that way. She was very patient and had a great time. She did sneak a few pieces of candy, but that's what it's all about! The culminating moments were a chance to look at the cows and a big cup of homemade ice cream...just what we all want in December!

Holiday Happenings

We have had an amazing holiday season so far! We've kept ourselves very busy between school, cookies, gingerbread houses, sickies (yes, we all got colds...again), and just the usual holiday mayhem. I will try to post as many pictures as possible to update what we've been up to for the past few weeks.

Enjoy!

Okay, okay, we're back!

I'm sorry we've been gone for a while, but it's been a loooong few weeks around here! We were all set to see my entire family for the Thanksgiving holiday, until Kailey came down with bronchitis and pneumonia. While Kailey was on antibiotics, both Owen and I got incredibly sick and were down for the count. It's taken almost two weeks to get over our sickies, but as Paul always says, normal has never felt so good! Needless to say, we didn't make it to Thanksgiving and I'm so very sad about it! I never get to see my nieces because they live in Texas and feel extremely disappointed. I hope everyone understands our absence, but I still feel sad. Anyhow, we have recovered and went to our annual CG Christmas party yesterday. The CG has quite the connections, as Santa flew in via the helicopter. If you look closely, you can see him sitting in the door as it landed. Unfortunately, everyone got quite pelted by the rotor wash kicking up a nice snow cloud. Ooops! Kailey has been asking Santa for 'Beauuuuuutil Shoes' (And yes, she says it just like an intoxicated Anna Nicole Smith at some awards show a few years back). However, once she saw Santa, it took a while to warm up to him, and well, Owen never did warm up to him. Finally, Kailey was brave enough and passed her wishes on to Santa. Only time will tell if Santa was really listening!