Petting Snoopy

I was in the kitchen tonight and I heard Kaitlyn in the living room giggling. This is what I found:

New Adventures in the Backyard

Now that the weather is warmer, we spend time out in the backyard most days. Here she is running around while Eric was grilling.

Love the Park!

Kaitlyn has really started to love playing on the playground. She climbs to the top and hangs out and is not afraid to go down any of the slides (yikes!). Here she is watching the big kids on the swings while she sits up high.


I'm not sure what this is. Pouty face, but I'm not sure why!

But I think this look says it all!

Just Chillin' With Dad

Mom was at happy hour on St. Patrick's Day, but dad and Kaitlyn were chillin' and having a good time at home! Isn't she so stylish in her jeans?!?!

Pics of Kaitlyn and Mommy

Ok, we are so bad about taking pictures of us with Kaitlyn! These are a few weeks old, but I'm excited to finally have some pictures of us to share!


When Kaitlyn sees the flash from our cellphone cameras, she squints. I figured I would go with it. By the way, here is a good pic demonstrating that she didn't get her nice olive skin tone from me!

Bigz is Big Fun!

On Saturday, we went to Bigz Burger Joint. They have a large play area for kids so we headed there for an early dinner. The place was packed! Kaitlyn loved running around with the big kids. She wasn't afraid of anything! I, however, got creamed by some kid playing in a semi-organized soccer game. He wasn't watching where he was going! Luckily Kaitlyn didn't get hit!

This little boy was in love! Once he set his eyes on Kaitlyn, he started following her around! Man, we are in trouble!

And here she is afterwards - saying, come on Mom! Can I go back out there?!?

First Trip to the Children's Museum

On Friday, I took some time off work and Kaitlyn and I went to the Children's Museum downtown with Amy, Layton, Becky, Marshall and Daylon. What a day! Kaitlyn really liked playing with the balls. I think we'll need to get some for the house!

Then we went upstairs to the Airplane. Big surprise - her favorite part of that was the stairs! But she did enjoy looking at herself in the mirror.

After that, she found the full stairs and went all the way down (it was a ton of stairs - at least 1 1/2 flights)! She was on a mission!

Yup - it was back to the balls! She really loved that exhibit!

After that, we went downstairs where they had an HEB market set up. The kiddos could go down the aisles and load up their baskets with items and then ring them up on the cash register. The best part here, was Kaitlyn pushed the cart a few feet! That was the first time I've seen her push something.

Kaitlyn picked up a can of tuna and walked all over the floor with it. The kid finds the strangest things to play with!

She then carried her can of tuna over to the life-size chess board. She was so cute walking up to the pieces. They were just as tall as her! You could tell she thought it was a little weird - she kinda pushed the pieces a bit to see what would happen.

We tried to pose for a picture. She didn't want me to stop her from running around, so the picture was a bit blurry.

We then went to the toddler area, which had to be my favorite part. It is for kids from 0-3 years old. Shoes come off and there was a fixed area where she could just run around and play. At last we could relax and just watch them play. Kaitlyn really liked pushing the buttons on this bubble exhibit. The button lit up, which was her favorite. Actually though, you could change what the water looked like! But she didn't care about that.

They had some "funny mirrors" which made things look wacky. Kaitlyn spent a lot of time in that area. Can you see her expression in the mirror! Happy girl!

And here she is with a ball, trying to give the ball to the "baby" in the mirror! That was so cute!

And the big development was that she went down the slide all by herself! She would walk/crawl and up and go down all on her own. (She kinda scooted down, but that works too!)

Awesome, exciting, exhausting day! We weren't even out of the parking garage yet and she was out! Mom felt the same way. I went to sleep at 9pm that night and slept until 9:30 the next morning! She wore me out!

Déjà vu

Man, last night was reminiscent of the first couple months of Kaitlyn's life. We put her down at 7 to go to sleep. She didn't go to sleep but was content to just play in her bed. Around 9, she was crying and really upset so I decided to go in and check on her. It turns out that the battery in her music box died, so I changed it. I went ahead and changed her diaper and put her back in bed. She calmed down, but didn't go to sleep.

Eric and I were in bed by 10 (pathetic, I know!) and Eric agreed to stay up until she fell asleep. At 11, she still wasn't asleep so he put her in the swing. We haven't used that much lately. The last time was when she was sick but before that we hadn't used it for months! She fell asleep in the swing and he was able to move her to her crib. And she went to sleep!

Something woke me up at 4. It turns out, she was crying and up in her bed. So I went in and tried changing her diaper again. This time I noticed she was cold. I felt horrible. The temperature had dropped and our heater didn't come on. She wasn't dressed warmly enough. So I changed her, adjusted the temperature and put her in the swing. She fell asleep. I didn't have Eric's luck though, so when I went to move her to the bed she woke up and started standing again.

I waited until 6 and decided to give her a bottle. She drank it and I put her back in bed. She cried but I decided to let her cry it out. I didn't want her up at 6 am! She finally fell asleep and slept until 9 am. Ugh, what a night! How did we used to do this all of the time?

This is Therapy?

So far, the occupational therapy has led us to Kaitlyn having sensory processing issues. She was a mix of sensory seeking and sensory avoiding behaviors/tendencies. Ashley, our OT, has given us some interesting things to try to help "ground" and "organize" her. Ironically, most of it is just silly rough-housing! Here are a few:

- Squishing and smooshing her
- Pulling on her arms, legs to stretch the joints
- Turning her upside down (no wonder she has always loved that!)
- Allowing her to "crash" down onto the couch

So we continue to do these things, as well as playing with food and getting messy. Friday is her speech evaluation.