Taegan is 4!!!!

Taegan Mckenna,

Happy Birthday sweet girl! We can't believe that you are 4 and how fast these last 4 years have gone. Your Daddy and I were talking before we went to bed last night about the day you were born and how excited and nervous we were to meet you. That day didn't go like any of us planned, but you recovered fine and are doing great now! We are in awe of all that you can do, all that you have accomplished, all that you are aware of and willing to do, and we can't believe you are ours!!!! Forever!!! In our eyes you are so smart and so advanced for your age. You keep us on our toes and have a very stubborn streak-but we should have expected that with our own personalities!!! This year was the first year we started some traditions with you and we can't wait to keep them up. You also got to do your very first friend party-that was so much fun. Here are some pictures from your 4th birthday. We love you to the moon and back baby girl.

 Balloons hanging from the door-new tradition!

 Opening her presents first thing in the morning from us.

 Her birthday sign.

 Such a pretty, pretty girl!

 All ready for her friends to come over.

 Having fun playing in her room.

 Letting her friends help her open her presents.

 Her loot from her friends.

 Family party-letting cousin Ayla help her.

 Opening her American Girl doll, McKenna!!!

 Ready to blow out the candles while we sing to her.

 Striking a pose with Mommy.

 Sweet Daddy's Girl.

The Birthday Girl after everyone was gone-wound up!!!

Branson trip

Last Friday morning we loaded up a rented mini-van and headed to Branson with my parents! We were so excited to get there and stay at the water park that we bought a groupon for and have fun at Silver Dollar City. The kids did great in the car and we made it there in just a little over four hours. We stopped just outside Springfield and ate at Lamberts before getting into Branson. I must say that food was FANTASTIC. Taegan loved putting her hands in the air to catch a roll and we all loved the food-even Laekan who ate his first kids meal. That boy LOVES to eat! 

Talking to us and drinking his milk.

Little Miss Thing smiling for me!

When we arrived at the Water Park Hotel we quickly realized it wasn't quite what we had in mind for our fun weekend. The water park was very small and Justin and I didn't even get wet when we went there with Taegan. While we were with Taegan at the water park Dad was reserving another room at another hotel. We let Laekan nap and when he was awake we loaded back up and headed to our new hotel-Chateau on the Lake.  It was a great hotel, had a children's area to play at and an indoor pool that Taegan loved. 

This is the view from our balcony-Table Rock Lake.

Saturday morning we woke up and headed to Silver Dollar City. I was so excited for Taegan to be able to ride all the rides and was hoping she would be tall enough for a roller coaster or two. She rode every ride in the kid area(most rides 2-3 times) and then rode Fire in the Hole with Justin and I. This is a coaster in the dark and she wasn't sure about it at all. In fact she was almost in tears and then it ended. We will work up to the big ones!!!

Holding her hands up on the ladybugs!

So proud of herself on the Butterflies-all by herself!

Saturday night we went out for Justin's birthday-HAPPY BIRTHDAY HONEY! We love you SO much. After dinner Justin, Dad, and Taegan headed to ride go carts while Mom, Laekan, and I went shopping at the outlets! To say she had fun would be an understatement. She had a ball and can't wait to ride more of them in Colorado with Daddy because he is SO fast!!! I am so glad she had fun and it was such a special time for those two on his birthday. 

He was trying to do a self-picture of them since I asked for pictures of them!

The track that they drove on-she LOVED it.


We had a great trip and the kids did great in the car. Now when can I have a vacation to sit and recover from this vacation?!

Day 2 of being a big boy...

Laekan is being such a BIG boy about this bottle situation...oh wait-there is NO bottle. Yes-you read that right. Yesterday was an earth shattering day. He woke up from his afternoon nap and decided that the sippy was okay and he just went with it! I had a visit and he was home with Justin, and he had to refill the cup!!! That is huge and he didn't throw a fit about it at all. There were times when he was crying and I think that is just trying to adjust to the change, but he did great. We had planned on giving him his bottle before bed, but he was doing so well with the sippy that we just kept with that. He drank over 10 ounces yesterday of milk, plus water and some juice/water mix. His naps were the same and he slept all night like normal!

I hope you can read the excitement in my words because this is huge! He is such a big boy. I was worried he might wake up this morning and decide to protest the sippy. Nope-I walked in to get him up this morning with a cup of milk and he went right to town. I got him up changed him and he drank while I changed him and then I took both of my kiddos down to the kitchen table and fed them breakfast together! WOW-that was a bit surreal as well. Now he is a little boy:( I am torn between my emotions of being happy he is growing up and that he did this so well and being sad that he isn't my little baby again.

Eating together and "talking" while they ate! So fun to watch them!
Drinking to finish off his meal!! So proud of him.


He did awesome all morning today, napped well this morning, ate lunch awesome, and as of afternoon nap he had 4 ounces down! He had a rough afternoon nap and the afternoon and evening was a bit rough. He cried if we weren't with him and doing anything with him. He would drink, cry, play, cry, and start all over! He ate dinner great, cried some more, played a lot, and then about 6:45 drank quite a bit. I gave him a bath and knew he would want his bottle right after-and he cried. I read him a book and then he played with Justin and Taegan for a bit while I showered. He drank a ton while I showered and I would say he drank between 10-12 ounces again today. No bottles today either. I have packed them up for the garage sale!!!!

They are with Grandma Becky tomorrow while I have training and I hope he continues on this great path!

11 months...

Laekan Harper- Can you believe that you are one short month away from being one?! Slow down time because I need this month to last twice as long. You battled an ear infection and fever virus for a week this past week and boy are we glad you are back to normal. You love to laugh and continue to show us how fast you are growing up! We love you to the moon and back and I am trying to wrap my mind around that fact that the next time I write one of these you will be ONE! Here is what you are up to right now:

*You are wearing size 3 diapers for day and night.
*You are wearing 12 month clothes across the board. 18 month is too big.
*Same sleeping schedule and napping schedule
*Today we took away your bottle and replaced it with a sippy and milk...you are rocking it
*You are eating all table food and feeding yourself completely.
*We are still working on the sign "more" and have introduced "all done".
*You will say ma-ma, da-da, and you will yell mo when you want more food!
*You are pullling up like a mad man and would rather we standing then crawling.
*No steps yet, not even cruising. I am sure it will be soon.
*You have two more teeth on the top. You now have 7!!!
*You figured out the straw today and actually drank quite a bit of milk out of that cup.
*You are starting to interact with Taegan and love laughing at her.
*You will stiffen your back, grunt and squeal real loud, hold your breath, and then laugh.
*We absolutely LOVE your personality and you even have a way of "talking back" to us when we tell you no.

Big boy-he did great at this picture session. It was just him and I .

Such a cute, sneaky little smile!

Love this little man.

And just like that he was done...but he is still a cutie.

Laekan we love you SO much!!! We can't wait to celebrate your first birthday with you soon.

The journey to being a big boy begins...

Justin and I know we want Laekan off the bottle by the time he is one and we also knew that we would need to start soon transitioning him to a sippy cup so he could get the hang of it. We have been offering the sippy cup for months now and he will play with it, but shows no other interest in actually doing anything with it! I had looked back at Taegan's calendar and went back to read blog posts from then and we decided to start when he turned 11 months-which is today!(11 month post coming later tonight). I had thought about taking away the bottle for one meal a day and slowly replacing the bottle with the cup. After reading back over things and thinking them through again we decided to go cold turkey.

We are taking away all day bottles and using the sippy cup, but we will give him his bottle after his bath. I'm just not sure he is totally ready to be done with the bed time bottle. We are going straight to whole milk with all of it. I wasn't sure that I wanted to do milk in the bottle-but I don't want to go back and forth between formula and milk. So all milk it is! I remember with Taegan it took her a few days to get the hang of and taste of the milk-we even ended up adding strawberry flavoring to it. We are prepared for a battle and will stay strong, even though it will be super hard.

This morning when he woke up we came down to the kitchen, got seated in the high chair like normal and I handed him the cup...
This is right after he threw it.
This is what he did when I tried again...
And this is him shoving it away.


This is what I expected. He ate breakfast like a champ, ended up taking three drinks from the cup and then was down to play. He would come back to the cup as he was playing, take a small sip and go back to playing. He is making a horrible face when he tries it. I gave him another sippy cup of half water and half juice. He ended up taking a few drinks of that as well. Napped great this morning and then was up to play before lunch.

Lunch-NIGHTMARE! He wouldn't eat or drink. Cried and threw a major fit. I tried 3 different cups and he threw them all. I took him out of his chair, let him play and he kept crying. At one point he just grabbed his blankie and laid down. I got my lunch and he took interest in my cup. It had a straw and he hadn't mastered a straw yet...until today!!! He chugged my water, ate my milk granola bar with me, and then ate half my turkey from my sandwich. I found a cup with a straw for him, poured his milk in and he took 4 big gulps. We are making progress. Fingers crossed nap goes like normal.

To be continued:)

Easter 2012

Easter this year was rough! Laekan had been sick since Tuesday with a fever, I took him in Thursday to discover an ear infection, and he didn't kick the fever until Easter morning after sleeping 13 hours. He had been clingy and cranky and not a happy boy most of the week. The hard part is that we had an Easter party Saturday night-that we took him too because it was just family and he was not very fun. Sunday morning Taegan and I went to church while Justin stayed home with Laekan, then we did our Easter egg hunt here at home and headed to my parents for another egg hunt and lunch. By the time lunch rolled around Taegan as spent from all the parties and things we had done and she was in meltdown mode! We headed home, took long naps, and woke up refreshed and spent the evening playing together.

Here is a picture overload of our Easter...

So cute together!

She LOVED hunting this year.

Being silly with her Easter bunny ears she made at her gymnastics Easter party.

Coloring eggs with Mommy while Laekan napped. We used Kool-aid this year!!!

All done-so proud of herself.

Taegan and cousin Ayla before their Easter egg hunt at Grandma Becky's.

On the run finding as many as she could.

Laekan's basket from the Easter Bunny.

Taegan's basket.

All ready for church-so grown up.

Screeching and talking to us!

This is his new thing-he stiffens up and grunts real loud! Then laughs.

Daddy and Laekan finding eggs here at home.

Sorting out all the goodies from the eggs in the backyard.

Laekan crawling to find one at my parent's house.

Trying to get a cute picture of them together-not much luck.

A family picture. These are priceless even if they aren't perfect!

Being silly

Watching the kids interact and play together has got to be one of the best parts of my day! I love that he is getting to an age where he wants to be where Taegan is and do what she is doing. Taegan even wants to play with him and spend time with him. This has actually been a bit of an issue with her wanting to play with his toys and actually taking them away because she thinks they should be hers. We are working on the fact that she has WAY more stuff to play with and she doesn't need to be taking his toys. Sharing is a hard lesson to learn!


This is Taegan's small Crayola table that she uses to color and have picnics on-he decided one morning he wanted to sit on it upside down and Taegan thought it would be fun to push him!!!

Then of course she wanted to try-and he just chewed on the leg instead of pushing her!!!

Playing together at the mall play area-getting both to look at the same time is a minor workout.

Big boy playing on his own. He thought he was something else being in there alone.

Strike a pose!