Sunday, October 16, 2011

All about our Skallywag...

Our sweet little girl is three today! She started out as Kallibug but has quickly turned into our skallywag. Kalli is one of the sweetest people I know. She loves to tell you thank you and tell you how beautiful you are. She is definitely good for self esteem! Kalli is a very loving little girl and one that cares about the people around her.
She loves princesses and anything super girly! She wears princess dresses all day and loves to wear the crown that goes with them. Kalli is the typical middle child that gets bossed around by her brother, but I think she secretly likes it because when he's at school she just wanders around the house looking lost. She needs her brother to tell her what to do.
Kalli couldn't care less about her little sister and ignores her all day long. She tells me she loves Lexie, but she doesn't really care to be around her. I hope this changes as they get older.
We sure love our little Kalli girl. She's blessed our lives in so many ways and I couldn't love her more. She put us through a lot when she was a baby, with her skull surgery and all, but she's been worth every minute. We couldn't ask for a better daughter. We can't wait to see what amazing things she does with her life as she grows up.
Happy birthday our little skallywag!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Another year at the balloon fiesta...

So once again we ventured to the balloon fiesta. Last year was a bust as they cancelled the event we bought tickets to because of high winds; but we did get to see the awesome fireworks show. But last year none of the morning sessions were cancelled so I thought I would change things up this year and have us attend a morning balloon session. That was a mistake. It was a rainy week and so for three mornings in a row they cancelled the morning sessions. Friday morning we woke up very early and got our family out the door by 5:30. We had hopes that even though it was raining that it would clear up and the balloons would be able to ascend. For two hours we walked around the balloon park and saw nothing. It was pretty miserable. By 8 they started inflating the balloons but wouldn't let them ascend. We saw about 10 balloons before we had to leave and get Lexie home to a warm bed. We'll have to see what disaster next year brings us for the balloon fiesta.
This pretty much sums up how Lexie felt about the whole thing. Although she was a very good baby and didn't fuss. These faces are very deceptive. They complained the WHOLE time until the balloons started inflating, which means they were quiet for a half hour out of the two and half hours we were there. We saw this balloon from the very start to the end. It was interesting watching them get it up. Usually this picture would show hundreds of balloons, as you can see that wasn't the case this morning. But we're glad we saw some balloons and we're also glad we didn't go back on Saturday morning because it was the most crowded I've ever seen the balloon fiesta.
Hopefully next year we have more luck, we're hoping to have some family here, so hopefully the balloon fiesta will have no hitches.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

All about Lexie

Lexie is a funny little girl that has funny little quirks we've never run into before. One of these quirks is that she doesn't laugh. By 3 months, our other 2 children were chuckling at every little thing, especially when they were tickled. At 6.5 months, this little girl still hasn't figured out how to laugh. She'll grunt pleasantly when you tickle her, but that's about all you're going to get. I find it odd but yet amusing that she does this. It also throws those people that we see out and about that try to get her to laugh (or even smile) through a loop. They can't figure it out and they leave feeling a bit resigned for trying to get this girl to laugh. She is also pretty stingy with her smiles. She has the biggest smiles for her mom and her brother; sometimes her dad can luck out. But for the most part, she doesn't smile all that often. This isn't because she's an unhappy child, quite the opposite really. She is just very particular about what requires a smile in her life.
Another quirk we've had to deal with is Lexie's hunger strikes. This has plagued our family for the last 4 months now, and just when we think she's outgrowing this, she pulls another hunger strike on us. In a nutshell, Lexie prefers me (her mom) to feed her. If somebody else tries to feed her (mostly her bottle) she just won't eat. Joe would try to feed her before bed and Lexie would squirm and wiggle around looking for me and would refuse to eat. Often he could get her to eat a few ounces and then hand her off to me to finish up the bottle. This weird phenomenon reared it's ugly head when we got Lexie a babysitter so we could take the older two kids to a late baseball game. I left two bottles for Lexie, totaling 11 ounces (her norm at the time). I expected her to eat all of them. We came home late and found that she had only had one bottle out of the two and that she had only eaten 2 ounces out of that bottle. Sure enough, I went and woke her up to give her a bottle and she ate 6 ounces. Although she pulls this on us, there is no crying or fussing. She just stages a quiet standoff to which she pretty much always gets her way.
We sure love this little girl and her funny little quirks.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

It's that time again...

It was that time again to get our family pictures done. This is something that I like to have on high priority. It's amazing seeing how much our family changes from year to year. We had our friend take them, she has also taken Kalli's one year pictures, family pictures last year and Lexie's newborn pictures. She's quite fantastic and I was incredibly happy with what she got this time.