Christmas 2009

Chelsea was a bit sick Christmas day, but she still had a blast opening all of her gifts.


So pretty! We got most of it on video, so I didn't take that many pictures of her opening everything.


Aww! Holding her baby doll. Look at the face! Poor sick kiddo.


Takin' her lion for a spin. She loved it! She zipped up and down the hallway with it (Dad is putting her house together in the background).


Chelsea's loot! There's a lot more that's not pictured, but I had to move some of it to her bedroom. My living room is full!


So much to play with!


Knock, Knock, anyone home?!

it's been a long time!

We've been slacking on keeping our blog updated. It's been hard to find time to do anything and when we do have extra time, we just want to relax!

Chelsea had her 9 month check up on Monday. She got 2 shots, the second half of her flu shot and another hepatitis shot. She weighs in at 14lbs and 13 oz (2nd percentile!) and 26 inches long (7th percentile!). The doc says she's doing great and she's just going to be petite! We can now start giving her table food. I tried to give her some cut up carrots and spaghetti with a little bit of sauce. She just want to pound it and fling it. So our first try at table foods was unsuccessful.

She's an extremely fast crawler. It's exhausting trying to keep up with her! Ever since she learned to pull herself to a standing position, she's been cruising along EVERYTHING.

Here's a few pics from Halloween. She was the cutest little pirate ever! The costume was custom made by YOURS TRULY! well.. except for the hat, which I purchased at Target from the dollar bin.

bounce till you drop

Chelsea has been refusing to take a nap all day... just wanting to be held. So finally she's playing in her exersaucer for maybe 15 minutes and she passes out. I'm almost afraid to try and move her to the crib..

Munchie update

Our little girl will be 7 months next week! She's growing so fast and we've been told that she's ahead on her development! So far, she can roll over both ways, sit without support, rock back and forth on her hands and knees (which means she will be crawling very soon!) and says "Dada" !!! .. but no "Mama" yet :( She grabs anything she can get her hands on! She loves to smile, but it takes a little more work to get a big laugh out of her. I've found that quacking at her is about the only thing that will make her laugh right now. She's a tough audience.

We found out a few weeks ago that Chelsea has Torticollis. Her head tilts to the right, so we have to do exercises with her twice a day to get the neck muscle to loosen up. She has her second appointment with the physical therapist on Monday. Hopefully, this will be something that can be corrected quickly. I absolutely hate doing the exercises.

Here's a few pics I took today. She loves banging on her drum!

splish splash!

Chelsea had her first swim today. She loved it! Next time, we'll have to get more water toys.

the smiling pig cannot be trusted

I was there the whole time.. I must have blinked and missed something. For the rest of my life, I'll always wonder what the pig said or did. All I know for certain is that no plastic farm animal will ever dare cross Chelsea again.

6 months

Dear Elaina,
January 29 - July 29
Our daughter is 6 months old now. I love you both more than anything. I look forward to the rest of our lives... and to little baby Lorenzo next ;)

I love my dada!

summertime fun

This post goes out to my good friend Jenny. While I was pregnant, Joshua and I were shopping and saw this cute little bear fit. We were looking for a 0-3 month size, hoping she could wear it last winter. They didn't have any in stock.. so we searched on the internet, but couldn't find the size. We gave up looking and I had told Jenny about it and how determined Joshua was to find it. Well... she ended up finding the right size and bought it for little Chelsea! Unfortunately, it didn't fit her last winter because she was so teeny tiny. As I was going through her closet today, I saw it and decided to put her in it! She started smiling and giggling as soon as I started to put it on her! I think she liked how soft and fuzzy it was. Too bad it's not going to fit her this winter. Oh well... thanks anyway Jenny.. BFF FOREVER!

zZZzzzZZZz

Just a little update on the monkey. She's gotten over that nasty virus and is all better. She's back to sleeping through the night (WOOHOO!). Our routine during the week: pick baby up from daycare, go home and play for awhile in the exersaucer or the bouncy, when she's had enough of that - we move to floor time, baby gets bath (every other day), has a little bit of a solid, gets a bottle, watches a little tv with mommy, gets put in crib between 7pm-8pm, wakes up between 5am-6am, gets a bottle, more floor time, plays in bouncy seat or hangs out with daddy while I get ready for work, back to daycare, then we start all over! The weekends are a little more hectic of course. I'm exhausted, I just want to sleep for the next 12 hours or so.

baby blood

We had to take Chelsea to get blood drawn this morning.... NOT COOL. It is hard to hold your baby still and watch that happen. The screams broke my heart... Poor daughter!

Really? C'MON!!!

Poor Chelsea is sick yet again. I had to leave work to pick her up from daycare. She's running a fever and is incredibly cranky. The pediatrician checked her ears, lungs and ran a test for UTI. Everything checked out ok, no infections. It's most likely a virus. All we can do is give her Tylenol and keep her hydrated. She has to be fever free for 24 hours before I can take her back to daycare, so I will be taking off work tomorrow. Poor Chelsea has had it rough for the past 3 months. She's such a good baby and deserves to be WELL!

supermodel

We received the prints of Chelsea's photo shoot today...... BEAUTIFUL!!!

Happy first Father's Day!

Wow!

Our little girl is getting so big! I can't believe she was ever THAT tiny. I was going through all of her old clothes and I came across this tiny preemie onsie. It looks even SMALLER in person. The other onsie is what she is wearing now, which is a 3-6 month. She has tons of clothes that don't fit her anymore, but I will not get rid of them! Well.. not right now anyway. I can't imagine what our storage would look like if I didn't get rid of any of her clothes.














Joshua bought these cute little sandals awhile ago. They finally fit her!

a few pics

Chelsea's first taste of rice cereal.. mmmm!

Cute new bow!

She loves her dragonfly!

Havin' fun in the exersaucer!

Paparazzi

Chelsea had her first photo shoot today. The photographer showed up just in time for Chelsea to show him how extremely loud she can scream. The pictures turned out really cute, even though she was grumpy and did not smile in any of them. The pics will be ready in a few weeks and they'll come back out to our house so we can pick our packages. I can't wait!

I found one!

Happy Anniversary husband!

8

8 years ago we got married..... Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife.

Couldn't find any digital pics from 2001, since our old external hard drive quit working around 2 years ago.. So in honor of 8 years of marriage, here's a picture of one of America's finest citizens giving our love some well deserved props...

sunday night muffin time

Well Elaina's been playing around in Photoshop and Smilebox.... gotta say, I'm diggin the new layout and the special goodies she's created. Right on, wife!

Today Chelsea stayed up way too much and didn't really nap more than a total of about 2 hours since getting up at 5am... so she's been cranky all night. We gave her a bath and she started to relax, then we finally got her to sleep about 9:30. Now Elaina is asleep as well so I'm just kicking back with a tasty banana nut muffin (thanks Mom!) and watching some cartoons. Hopefully she'll get some good sleeping in tonight because I'm off tomorrow all day and would rather get to have some fun with happy Chelsea than hang out with Super-Ultra-Mega-Crabby-Chelsea.

My parents watched Chelsea so Elaina and I could go see Star Trek today, by the way, and it happens to be AWESOME. I enjoyed it quite a bit and really look forward to seeing how it continues... alternate timeline, new stories with familiar characters, cool stuff, nerd nerd nerd, etc.

hooo boy... ok, gotta wrap this up, this muffin ain't gonna eat itself, you know.

Chelsea's scrapbook

Mommy's Day

Joshua got me this cool program for Mother's Day. I can make digital scrapbooks, postcards, slideshows and a bunch of other neat things. Check it out!

wow

Apparently we suck at blogging. No updates since April 20!

Sooo.... since that time, Chelsea has learned karate, how to fly a helicopter, how to play trombone, and can speak fluent Spanish.

There ya go.. Yeah.


Goodnight.

OMG

On Friday, I took Chelsea to the doctor because she seemed extremely congested. We thought she had kicked her cold but it looked like it was coming back. Her pediatrician was not there, so she saw another doc. He checked her lungs, throat, ears and nose and said that everything looked fine and that babies sometimes just get congested with the weather changes. She also had a rash that broke out on her face and he said it was just some irritation. Over the weekend, she just got worse and worse. Mucous pouring out her nose and the most pitiful coughs I have ever heard. Soooo.. we took her back to the doctor today to see her pediatrician and she diagnosed Chelsea with an infection AND eczema. She was prescribed amoxicillin and hydrocortisone ointment for her face. We gave her a warm bath about an hour ago. It seemed to her help her FINALLY fall asleep. Joshua was up all night with her and took care of her all day today. Props to my baby daddy! It was a rough day. The whole time I've been back to work she's been sick. Luckily, I have vacation time and sick time left that I can take. My poor, poor little baby.

Whew!

Baby girl is feeling much better! FINALLY!

fever

Chelsea has a fever. I had to leave work to pick her up from daycare... luckily she's sleeping at the moment, but I imagine she's feeling pretty crummy right now. She had some vaccinations yesterday, and that in combination with her trying to get over a cold has made for a very fussy unhappy sick baby.


Here's hoping she feels better soon... my poor daughter!!

Great!

Chelsea got to meet her Great Grandparents on the Kantola side today. She also got to meet Joshua's Aunt Beth, Uncle Kevin, and Aunt Barb. Thank you to all of them for coming to visit from Michigan and for the nice gifts... Chelsea has loads of new outfits!

Oh... and Joshua's parents and brother were there too, but she sees them all the time, so whatever... :)

hooray

nothing much to say.. Chelsea seems to be feeling a little better today, so here are a couple new pictures Elaina took.

snot

Chelsea is sick. I took her to the pediatrician this morning and confirmed she has a cold. It's at the worst right now and will take about 8 or 9 days for her to get over..... so there's really nothing we can give her, except the occasional infant Tylenol for headache and fever. I feel bad for her, she's super grouchy. Here's a bad, fuzzy picture from my phone...






On another note, I ran out to Walgreens earlier to purchase Kleenex, Toothpaste, random stuff... whatever.... I love that store. They don't have everything, but they have what you need pretty much probably or something close and maybe a cheap little toy you didn't even know you wanted or how about a T-shirt that says MY GRANDMA ROCKS! or something like that. I scored myself some Giant Cheetos tonight.... all I have to say is that I'm pissed nobody thought them up years ago.

day 1

Tomorrow is Chelsea's first day at daycare.... I'm wary and antsy, but I'm sure she'll be fine.


She'd better be.





I love you, daughter.

oh boy

Back to work on Monday, Chelsea goes to daycare starting on Tuesday... :( I'm already starting to feel horrible separation anxiety....

BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!