15 Month Checkup

Today, I took Kaitlyn to her 15 month checkup. Everything checked out fine and she is now 23lbs. 5 oz. and 31in. tall which is just above normal. As usual, the worst part of the "well baby" checkup were the shots. This time, she had to get three shots and for the first time, she knew they were coming.

As soon as we got into the exam room, Kaitlyn started to get fussy and wanted out (she was knocking on the door and trying to pull the handle). When the doctor came in and started the exam, Kaitlyn lost it and started bawling. I had to hold her so the doctor could finish the checkup. When the nurse came in with the shots and I had to lay Kaitlyn on the table, she cried the entire time. After the shots were administered and I was able to pick her back up, she almost immediately stopped crying. I guess this will be the status quo going forward - the build-up is always worse than the actual event.

Not Too Sick To Party

When Kaitlyn got up on Saturday morning, we could tell she wasn't feeling well. Her eyes were red, she sounded stuffy and she sneezed quite a bit. We pretty much stayed home all day and took care of a sick baby. She was a trooper, but she had a rough night Saturday night waking up every couple of hours - it's tough to sleep with a stuffy nose.

On Sunday morning, she seemed better, but tired. We had a lazy morning, an early nap and lots of snuggles. That afternoon, we went to Mindy's (daughter of Michelle - our friend and babysitter) 5th birthday party. Maybe it was the distraction of other kids, but Kaitlyn looked much better. She spent her time playing in the bounce house, pushing a maraca in the stroller, staring at Noah playing his video games and sliding down a kiddie slide in the backyard (she could climb the stairs, position herself on the slide and take the plunge all by herself).

A funny moment came when she saw a banana on the counter and made it known that she wanted it. So, I got it, opened it and decided to see what she would do if I just let her eat it straight out of the peel without cutting it up. She was certainly up to the challenge as she opened her mouth as wide as she could and took a huge bite - her cheeks were even bigger than normal, if you can imagine. She ate the entire banana like that, so I wonder why we've been wasting our time cutting up the fruit. Well, the banana must have worked its magic because she slept the entire night without waking up last night and looked like she felt much better this morning.

A New Perspective

Over the past couple of months, we've noticed that Kaitlyn's backward facing car seat has been getting smaller (she can't possibly be getting bigger), so it was time to get a forward facing car seat. Last night, we got the new car seat and Kaitlyn had fun sitting in it in the house as I adjusted it to the proper settings. This morning was the big day as I drove Kaitlyn to daycare in her new car seat for the first time.

When I first strapped her in, she looked at me like she was getting away with something and couldn't believe I was actually going to let her sit like that. As we were driving, she looked all around the car discovering things she hadn't seen while staring at the back seat her whole life. I looked back several times and she was just happy as can be looking outside, talking and moving to the music. The only time she made what I would consider an unhappy noise was when I took her out of the seat when we reached our destination - I guess she liked it.

Geysers and Swings and Bears (oh my!)

Each weekend, we typically go for a walk one of the mornings. We used to have a set route that we would follow each time, but a couple of weeks ago, we switched it up and started walking a different route that went by a park with a nice play structure. We let Kaitlyn out of the stroller and she had a great time - she especially liked the swings. On Saturday, we went back to the park and brought the camera this time. Kaitlyn had a blast on the slides, swings and stairs. After about 45 minutes it was time to move on, but Kaitlyn did not want to leave - we'll be back next week...

On Sunday, we went to a Build-A-Bear birthday party for Kaitlyn's friend Brandon (6). I had never built a bear before and it was fun to pick out the animal (we chose a fluffy bunny), watch it get stuffed, insert a heart, pick out clothes (we chose a Disney Princess shirt and denim skirt) and name it (Hugs) - all in about 1 hour. Kaitlyn enjoyed watching the stuffing float around in a huge tumbler, but she mostly wanted to sit at the computer used for registering your bear and push all the keys on the keyboard. What can I say, she's a child of the computer age.

After that, the birthday party moved to Mistlin Sports Park in Ripon. The park is huge (it's the same place that hosted the hot air balloon festival a couple of weeks back), but the most fun area for kids is the water feature where they can get wet and play with the geysers that shoot out of the ground. Kaitlyn had fun playing with the small geysers and running around on the grass. She even ate some pizza (sorry Andrew, apparently only 2 teeth are required to eat pizza ;-) and cake. Brandon and all the other kids looked like they had a blast and I'm sure there were some tired kids that night. Kaitlyn was exhausted and went to bed super early - Shawnna and I weren't far behind.

Having a Ball

On Saturday, Shawnna had a Wildtree tasting party. She had a pretty good turnout with family and friends showing up to taste the products from her new venture. Kaitlyn didn’t mind that there were a bunch of people in her house especially since she slept through most of it. Saturday must have been a growing day because all she wanted to do was eat and sleep. Grandma & Grandpa Pride came to the tasting party and stayed late to watch Kaitlyn while Shawnna and I had a date night.

We ended up going to the Tracy Dry Bean Festival to see Megan Slankard play a concert. She is from Tracy and has gone on to record 3 albums, tour around the world and make Tracy proud. It was a pretty hot day at the festival, but Megan played great and it was definitely worth the price of admission ;-) After that, we went to Famous Dave's for an awesome BBQ dinner. Then, we headed home just as Kaitlyn was falling asleep for the night.

On Sunday, we didn't have any plans and were just going to hang around at home, but decided to go visit Dan, Kelley, Andrew and Alyssa instead. Alyssa is now 6 weeks old and doing great. While she's still not very mobile, she can definitely track things with her eyes and she has a pretty good grip. Kaitlyn payed attention to her sparingly, but she mostly wanted to just explore the house and play with anything she could get her hands on. We ate lunch, watched the 49ers game (it's going to be another long season) and had a "ball war" with Andrew (he's 6 and throwing squishy balls at each other is certainly fun). It was good to see everyone and Kaitlyn enjoyed a nice nap on the way home.

Fun, Sun and a Bunch of Hot Air

Labor Day weekend was a pretty busy one for us this year. On Saturday, we headed to Woodward Reservoir with friends Phil & Char, Brandon (6) and Addison (3 mos.). We arrived at about 1pm, launched Phil's boat and ate lunch on the shore before Phil, Brandon and I headed out on the boat to cruise around the reservoir and wakeboard. The weather was warm, but not too hot and the cool water temperature was perfect. The water was a little choppy by the time I started wakeboarding, but I was still able to get several good runs in before calling it a day. It wasn't as crowded as I had seen it in the past, so we were able to get the boat up to a decent speed and didn't have to worry too much about other boats or jet skis.

We headed back to shore to meet up with the girls who were just hanging out under the canopy. Kaitlyn had never been in a relatively large body of water before, so I decided to give it a go and brought her in with me. At first, she clung onto me very tightly, but after she got her feet wet, she realized it was just like a really big bathtub and started to kick. As I lowered her in further, she splashed with her hands, kicked with her feet and even tried blowing bubbles with her mouth a couple of times. We spent about 15-20 minutes in the water and she had a ball.

At about 5pm, we decided it was time to start heading back, so Phil and I got the boat back on the trailer and started to wipe it down. As we were finishing, I heard a ssssssss sound and looked at Phil who was crouching next to the boat trailer tire which had a crack in the valve stem and air was rushing out (apparently, the towel must have caught on the stem and broke it). At that point, there wasn't much we could do except watch the tire go flat. There was no spare, so we called all the tire places in Oakdale (they were all closed) and AAA (they couldn't help). We ended up getting Char's dad (who lives in Tracy, 45 min away) to pick up a tire locally and drive it to Woodward so we could change it. While we waited, I picked up pizza for dinner then we changed the tire and were ready to leave just after 8pm - all adventures have to come to an end, eventually...;-)

On Sunday, we went to the Ripon Hot Air Balloon Festival in the morning. There were several hot air balloons (inflated, but tethered to the ground), a helicopter, vendors, clowns, games, crafts, etc. Kaitlyn had fun walking around, watching the clowns goofing off and trying to touch everything she could. For a small town festival, it was very well done and I'm sure we'll be back next year (maybe early enough for the pancake breakfast).

In the afternoon, we went to a birthday party for Stephanie (2) and Emma (7) Andersen. Their mom, Becky, went to high school with Shawnna and is now a labor and delivery nurse in Tracy. In fact, she was the nurse who helped deliver Kaitlyn. The party was like looking into our future which included lots of little girls running around, playing dolls, jumping in the bounce house, crying about who knows what, and just general chaos - it was a lot of fun! Kaitlyn spent her time exploring the house, playing with all the fun toys, sliding down the slide in the backyard and I even gave her some ice cream (don't tell mommy).

After all of the excitement of the weekend, we decided that Monday (Labor Day) would be a day of relaxation and laziness. To prove the point, we left Kaitlyn in her jammies all day - no joke :-) We spent the whole day at home playing various games and spent a fair amount of time in the front and backyard exploring. We blew bubbles for the first time and filled Kaitlyn's infant bathtub up with plastic balls for her to play in (picture above and video below). It was a good way to wind down a busy weekend.