Snow Day!

We had an awesome snow storm here on Thursday. Drew came home from work early so we took Kathryn out to play in the snow. It hasn't snowed very much here this winter and we had never taken her out when it had, so we were excited for her to experience it. She seemed kind of confused and very cold, but had fun. So here are some pictures of us and our little snow angel...
Since we found out how much Kathryn likes exersaucers when we were in Dallas, we started to look for one for her. I found one on Craig's List that is almost brand new and was pretty cheap, so she has been having a lot of fun in it. She gets so excited in it, it was hard to get a picture of her that wasn't blurry. Here's about the best I could do...
We also took Kathryn in to get weighed on Friday and she had gained a pound since last Tuesday, so it looks like her new diet is working :) Yea!

Kathryn's New Weight-Gain Diet

As you probably know, Kathryn is definitely on the petite side. We joke about having given her a complex because ever since we found out we were having a baby we've called her "Tiny". However, for a while we have been a little concerned about how small she is. She has always eaten regularly and well (at least we thought so) and has been developing normally in every other way, so we figured she was fine. She was only 11 lbs (3rd percentile) at her 4 month check-up but her doctor wasn't overly concerned about it, so we thought it was okay. Well, she had her 6 month check-up on Tuesday and had only gained 1 ounce since her 4 month check-up! I was really surprised because I thought she had gained at least some weight over the past two months. Needless to say, her doctor was surprised and concerned as well. She had me feed Kathryn there and then we weighed her again to see how much she ate. She only ate about 4 oz, so the doctor said she was probably just not getting enough to eat. But just to make sure nothing else was wrong, she sent us over to The Children's Hospital to get her blood and urine tested. This made for a rough day for Kathryn because she had already gotten 4 shots at the doctors office and then had to get poked 3 times in the heel to fill the 3 vials of blood they needed. She was quite a trooper though, and even smiled for a picture to show off her cool stickers the nurse at the hospital gave her.
Our doctor called back on Wednesday and told us that the tests came back normal so that was a relief. This meant that Kathryn's lack of weight gain is most likely because she's not getting enough to eat. I feel really bad because I've always thought she was eating well and enough (she usually stays on for 30 or 40 minutes) and she's always seemed satisfied when she's done, but I guess I'm not making enough milk. So I've started supplementing with formula at every other feeding and we'll go in sometime next week to check her weight again. She's been taking the bottles well, so hopefully we can plump her up in no time. If only we all could have this problem :)

Our trip to Texas!

A few months ago we found a great deal on plane tickets to Dallas, so we jumped on the chance to go visit family. My sister and her family just moved to Dallas and Drew's brother and his family live in Houston. Drew was able to stay for a week and then Kat and I came home a few days after him. We had a lot of fun and Kathryn enjoyed hanging out with her cousins. While we were in Dallas we went downtown with Sarah, Mark and Adriana for an afternoon. We had fun walking around and we also toured the 6th Floor Museum (where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from).
The next few days with them we had a lot of fun mini golfing, flying kites, going to a glass blowing shop, playing games, and just hanging out.

All of us at the botanical garden in Grapevine...also a great place to fly kites :)

Kathryn had a lot of fun with Adriana and they were fascinated by each other. They have a couple of matching outfits, so it was fun to dress them as twins...

While we were in Texas, Drew made sure that Kathryn didn't get out of practice with her great talent of balancing on his hand. She loves it and is really good at it (well I guess Drew gets a lot of the credit) :)

We spent a few days in Houston with Drew's brother and family. We got to see their 2 oldest boys, Clayton and Isaac, in their school program about Texas, for "Go Texas Day". Clayton sure knows how to shake his little booty in the chicken dance :) They also took us downtown to see the aquarium. It was really cool and fun to ride the train through the shark tunnel. They took us to dinner there as well. The food was so good, but eating seafood in an aquarium was a bit strange :)

Drew, Isaac, and Brigham in the sting ray tank

It was really fun to see all of them again. Kathryn and Clayton formed an instant bond which was really cute. He was so sweet with her and she loved anything he did to entertain her -especially peek-a-boo.

Kathryn and Clayton

Kathryn with Brigham, Clayton, and Isaac

While we were in Houston, my sister and her husband closed on their house. So after Drew went back to Colorado I helped them move in. It was fun to get to see their new house and Kathryn and Adriana loved having more time to play together. Adriana showed Kathryn the ropes on her exersaucer, which Kathryn absolutely loved.
My parents also came to help and it was really fun to get to see them again...
Kathryn did a great job with all of the traveling (until she threw up all over the place on the last leg of our flight home--I'm just glad no one was sitting next to us!) Here she is, as happy as can be, in Denver before we flew out.
It was a great vacation and so nice to have some warmer weather for most of the time we were there. I even got to come home to a clean apartment thanks to my sweet husband. :) Thank you, Sarah, Mark, Adriana, Nathan, Emily, Clayton, Isaac, and Brigham for the great time! We miss you!

Drew's Birthday!

Drew's birthday was January 27th and we had a lot of fun celebrating it. It was his golden birthday (he turned 27 on the 27th), so I tried to make it extra fun. To start out the day, I made crepes and gave him breakfast in bed. Then while he was at work, I got him 27 "gold" (really yellow, but oh well) balloons, 27 Krispie Kreme mini donuts (he took them to work the next day so we wouldn't eat them all :), filled a little treasure box with gold Rolos, and made him a candy bar card. For presents, Kathryn and I gave him some shirts, gloves, and The Office DVD board game.

For dinner, Drew wanted to get food from Whole Foods, so we got some BBQ, mac and cheese, and some really fancy and delicious desserts. It was all really good.
That Friday was one of our friend's birthday, so we decided to get a group together to go bowling and celebrate both birthdays. The bowling alley was in a shady part of town, but we all had a really fun time.
Check out Drew's good form...
Kathryn even got in on the fun...
The evening really wore her out, too. The next day she took two long naps (2 and 4 hours)!

So it was a fun week of celebrating. Happy Birthday Drew!

Baby Noises

Anyone who has spent time around babies knows that one of the cutest things on this earth is a little baby when they start making little noises. Now granted this is probably ten times as cute when the child is your own and so I don't expect you all to enjoy it quite as much as I do, but Kathryn has been very vocal lately and I thought you might like to listen. Emily took a short video the other day to capture some of Kat's new talent. It's only about 60 seconds, make sure you watch until the end because the last noise is definitely the best one. Enjoy.

December and Christmas Vacation!

Sorry it's taken me awhile to get this post up, but I'm still trying to get back in the swing of things. December was a fun month for us. At the beginning of the month we went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert which was so good. Unfortunately you weren't supposed to take pictures, so we can't give you an idea of how awesome it was, but we do highly recommend it. We also went to Drew's work Christmas party which was fun and had good food :) I also got my hair cut and highlighted. It had been a long time, so it was fun to finally do something different. I wasn't going to post a picture of it, but Kathryn just looked so cute in this one and was actually smiling (lately when we try to get her to smile for the camera, she just starts studying the camera and is so distracted she won't smile for us), so I just had to :)

For Christmas we were able to go to my parents house in Cedar Falls, IA for about 10 days. Unfortunately Drew was sick and/or working for most of the time we were in there, so it wasn't exactly his favorite vacation, but he hung in there. We had a great time with my family and friends. Six of the nine kids in my family were there with their families, so it was really fun for us all to spend time together. Kathryn had a great time too. Here are some pictures...

My mom is so good at getting Kathryn to sleep on her shoulder. She did this several times while we were there and it was so cute.

All of the cousins that were in Iowa for Christmas.

While we were in Iowa, my sister-in-law, Sarah, did a photo shoot of Kathryn for us. She did such a good job and it's hard not to post all of the cute pictures she took, but here are some of them...

During the photo shoot, Kathryn rolled over for the first time! It was most likely because she was mostly naked and tummy-down on a cold table, but still, it was pretty cool to get a picture of it...

(Disclaimer: Even though you can see her ribs so clearly in this picture, be assured that Kathryn gets plenty to eat. Just look at her cute little pot-belly in the other pictures :)

On our way home, there was a sign on the freeway for a place called Drew's Chocolates in a little town called Dexter, IA. With how much Drew loves chocolate, how could we pass that up?! So we stopped and got some tasty chocolates and truffles, and of course a picture...


Kathryn is 4 months old today and is growing and developing so fast. She likes to put everything in her mouth and her neck and legs are so strong. She has also been sleeping 8-12 hours almost every night since we were in Seattle for Thanksgiving (which was when she started sleeping in a different room from us)!!! Is is so nice to get more sleep and she looks so cute sleeping in her crib. Alright, well, sorry this was so long, but I hope you enjoyed the pictures even if you didn't read it all :) HAPPY NEW YEAR!

SEA-TOWN

Well I wrote the following post nearly three weeks ago but I just now am posting it so it is a little out dated. I'm in Iowa right now and hopefully it won't be February before we post about Christmas, but no promises. Enjoy the Thanksgiving post.

I LOVE SEATTLE! I should probably clarify that though I do truly love the city Seattle, when I refer to Seattle I am more referring to the Eastside and my great hometown of Bellevue. Emily and I had a chance to go to my home for the Thanksgiving holiday and it was great. After moving to Denver this past June I thought it might be a while until we made it back up to Seattle but about a month ago that changed.
A brief background may be in order. My parents were going to come out with my little sister and meet baby Kathryn on Halloween. But a week before the visit my Mother had a bad fall and they had to cancel the trip. My mom has MS which has really effected her balance. She was heading upstairs and to go to bed and she lost her balance and fell. I could easily fill a quite a bit of space with the roller coaster of events that has happened since then but I will just give a condensed version. She went to the emergency room and and they found that she had blood on her brain and and was suffering from seizures. They weren't sure how bad it was but after a couple days she started slowly improving and things where looking better. But she had developed a very bad case of pneumonia so before the neurological issues could be addressed her respiratory problems took over. Things got very bad and she was put on a ventilator and feeding tubes. She started again to improve and they took out the ventilator but she quickly got worse again and they had to put her back on the ventilator and feeding tubes and eventually did a tracheotomy to make it easier on her to breath. In the picture I am attaching of the "two Kathryns" below you can see the trach. At this point my Mom couldn't move most of her body and thought the doctors were hopeful she would make a full recovery things were still really scary. At some point during this time we decided we would make a trip up to Seattle for thanksgiving though we had previously planned on just hanging out in Denver.
By the time we go to Seattle my mom was doing a lot better and even improved a good amount the 10 days we were there. She has been in the hospital over six weeks and spent around 4 of those in ICU. But she is now on a rehab floor and they are hoping for a discharge by Christmas. They took the trach out the last day we were there and she is now walking the halls with the aid of a walker (albeit rather slowly). She still has a long way to go but she has done great and prayers have been answered. She loved seeing her namesake and just keeps talking about her "tiny" grandchild. (Update, My mom is doing well and is scheduled to come home December the 29th)
Though my mom was the focal point of our trip, the chance to see other family members was great. My older sister Sara and her husband Eric were there with their two boys and my little sister Becca was there as well. We had a lot of fun and it was just awesome hanging out with everyone. I really miss Mario Kart on the Wii. It was a bit strange but I can't remember a vacation or trip where I felt as sad leaving as I did this time. I think it may have something to do with this being the first time I had a career job to return to, but who knows. So that was our trip and it was great. Time for the pictures! (Since I am in Iowa and most of our pictures are on our home computer in Denver, you'll have to live with these few that I have on my work computer)