Confession

Ok, there was one more thing that the Dr. told me to do that I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure I could actually go through with it. I told the doc that Katelyn wasn't going to sleep until after midnight, sometimes not until 1:30am. He told me I had to do the famous "Let Her Cry". I said, "But she's not tired at all, so she just wants to play, how long am I supposed to let her cry?". He said, "Yes.". He then told me, and this was the kicker, that it was hurting her that I let her stay up because she wasn't getting enough sleep. So he told me it would take 5 days. He said that I had to do it, for myself and her (at least that's what I think he said or maybe that was just in my mind). He told me if I couldn't do it myself, then I was to go out to a movie every night for 5 nights while David did it. So, as I was now pondering the fact that I was hurting my child by letting her stay up, I had new momentum to try the crying. I can't remember which of the past 5 nights was the hardest, but I think she got better each day. I will not lie, I will not tell you it was "no big deal". Because it was. It was horrible. I did it, but it was heartbreaking to hear my baby cry. Knowing that she was sitting up holding on to the side bars like she was in prison... aw... it was painful. But the doctor was right. I had been putting her to be a little earlier each night, and I put her down tonight at 9:43 and she stopped crying at 9:45. TWO minutes! I couldn't believe it. All this time....man, I should have done this a long time ago. And did I tell you she has slept through the night the last THREE nights in a row?? She woke up last night around 2:30, but put herself back to sleep before I could even get to her. So, it is now 10:00 and I'm going to bed.... unbelieveable and wonderful. Good (and I do mean good) night.

Where's Katelyn?

Warning: Turn your volume down before you listen. I was a tad loud. There are no tricks in this video, she hid all by herself.

Her first Park Visit

We went to a small park last night and David took her down the slide and then she was playing peek-a-boo with Mommy behind part of the playground set.

All we can do is try and then try try again

I know that we have swept, mopped and even vacuumed the kitchen floor many times since Katelyn has been crawling in there, but she still managed to find this. I was washing dishes and I heard her cry out in pain (just a little cry) and I looked down and I saw blood. I screamed (just a quiet one) and bent down and found this piece (look at the size of it) of glass in her hand. Poor thing. I took it out of her hand and picked her up and grabbed a towel to get the blood. She started smiling with this huge grin. I guess she was happy she was getting so much attention from Mom and Dad. She has a couple of cuts, but she is fine and was smiling immediately after I picked her up, so another tragedy avoided. Whew!

Expiration Dates

I never thought I would be grateful for expiration dates, but today I am! Last year for our anniversary, David gave me a gift card from Euro Day Spa. The amount was for the equivalent of 2 prenatal massages and he knew I could use the relaxation (isn't he sweet?) . Anyway, of course I was too lazy/sick/tired to ever go. Then, when the baby came, I was still too lazy/busy/tired to go. Lucky for me, they expire one year from date of purchase. So, that day is coming soon, so I knew I needed to make some time and put forth the energy to actually make an appointment. So, this Saturday, I will be pampered for 3 hours at the Spa. I can't wait! I remember going to the Spa with my mom right before I got married and loved it. It's way too expensive, and I know I would never do it for myself, so lucky for me, I have a husband that likes to spoil me :)

9 Month Checkup

Doc says she's doing great. She's 18 lbs 12.5 oz (50%) and 27.5" long (50%). She only had one shot and an anemia check prick, but she took it like a champ and only cried for a moment and was great the rest of the day! Doc said to get her eating regular foods, so last night she had some french fries and cherry italian ice and this morning she had some huckleberry pancakes (we bought the mix in Seattle). Doc said she might sleep through the night if we'd take her outside every day and wear her out. Well, Fay wouldn't let us take her outside last night, so I tried to get her to just crawl around the house as much as possible. She went down (for the 3rd time) at 11:30 and slept until 8am!!! She slept through the night!! Yippee!!

Wakeenah Falls

Oh Deer!

I believe this is Olympic National Park

Hurricane Dave

This was also from our vacation, finally getting the video upload to work.

Portland Full Service

Did you know you can't pump your own gas in Portland? Here's a quick pic of the man who pumped for us.

Katelyn at the Portland Temple

My 2 Favorite People!

I was so busy posting the picture with David blowing a raspberry on Katelyn, I forgot to post this cute one of them both looking at the camera :)

Granddaddy

My dad posted some pictures of Katelyn from yesterday's visit to my parents house for my mom's birthday dinner. Check them out and see if you can figure out what is on her shirt :)
http://bigdaddytom.blogspot.com/

Another Waterfall and Mt. Hood

Multnomah Falls

Here are the pictures we took at Multnomah Falls. We had breakfast at the lodge right next door. I ordered Huckleberry pancakes and a pecan roll. I thought I was ordering a pecan log, the nougat filled treat you usually get at gast stops when you're traveling. But instead he brought out this big cake like roll thing smothered with pecans and melted brown sugar with a big scoop of butter on top. It was heaven on earth. Best mistake I've ever made :)

The Beautiful Wahkeena Falls

Mt. St. Helens

Martha FallsDavid and Katelyn in front of Mt. St. Helens. The clouds are covering the top. It is bigger than it appears. Katelyn is wearing "Mt. Rainier" socks. We didn't bring any socks with us because she never keeps them on, but it was quite chilly so we bought some. She didn't keep them on very long, but long enough.

David's pretty good and taking our own picture, eh?

Mt. Rainier

Here we are in front of Mt. Rainier.

Another picture of Mt. Rainier

This is Katelyn in the car. Is she sleeping or drinking or both or neither?


P. S. Tom Tom is our new best friend!

Olympic National Park

Mount OlympusI used NO zoom when I took this picture. The deer was that close to me. He started to come even closer and I got scared and started to roll up my window and he left. David told me they are herbivores so I had no need to worry... but haven't you seen that youtube video???

My Hero

At this moment we are driving down the mountains out of Olympic National Park. The mountains were breathtaking (we'll post a video soon). We are driving closely behind a little Pontiac Vibe. The reason we are driving closely behind them is that earlier we heard this hard scraping noise. I looked around trying to figure out what it was. It kinda sounded like someone was sawing metal. David told me it was the brakes from the car in front of us. They soon pulled to the side of the road and David said, "Just a minute" to me. I knew he was going to pull off. He is always pulling off to the side of the road to help anyone who looks in need. They looked at us curiously as to why we had stopped too. He explained that he heard a noise. David confirmed and told him it was the brakes and began to explain why it was making that sound and counseled them to call Budget immediately when they got off the mountain to get it checked out or issued a new car. David then offered to them that we would follow them down to make sure they were ok. They were very appreciative and I was just beaming. One of the many reasons I fell in love with this man is his desire to help others. In fact, that's pretty much the whole reason we ended up dating (he went with me to pick up a wheelchair for my dad's friend and told me how he felt about me on the way back..not sure if we would have ever had that talk if he wasn't helping me out that night).

Picture Time!

David and Katelyn in front of the Seattle Temple. David and Katelyn at the place we had lunch today, some "5th Grill" or something. He is trying to give her a raspberry on the cheek and she's trying to escape. :)

Mommy and Katelyn still in the restaurant.



Yes, I know you would never know these were "vacation" pictures since there is no scenery. But these are the pictures I love, just pictures of my little sweet family :)

Boeing

We just finished visiting the Future Flight Museum. We weren't able to go on the Boeing Tour because children under a certain height are not allowed due to safety precautions. I told David he could go without me, but I guess he isn't sick of me enough yet, because he wants to hang out with me and baby :) We are now heading to Olympic National Park. I just looked at it on the map, looks pretty big to me. It will take us a couple of hours to get there, so Katelyn is already asleep and I think I will try to do the same. Have any of you ever been to Red Robin? We got food from there last night and I was trying to be good by not having one of their high calorie drinks, but I told David today that I WANT ONE!!!

So this is why people hate Florida

The weather here is so perfect, it's unbelievable. Most of the day yesterday it was 73. It was so beautiful. I always thought I hated the outdoors, but now I realize it's the heat I hate, not the outdoors. We spent most of the day outdoors yesterday walking around Seattle. It was incredible weather. We even ate outside at a cute little greek place for lunch. We went to Pike's Place and I got to see them throwing the fish to each other at the famous fish market there. I'm sure David will post sometime with more details about the market. He loved the market and wished we had one in Orlando. Katelyn even slept better last night, she only woke up once, so it was a great day and a great night. Today we are headed to the Future Flight Museum and we are trading in "riding the ducks" for Olympic National Park.

Temple

The Temple was under construction (maintenance), so poor Moroni and the steeple were covered in scaffolding. Even the lobby was full of construction materials and a donut or two. I forgot to tell you how yummy breakfast was. I had the Carribean Crepes breakfast. It was two crepes with cream cheese filling with mango and banana slices and topped with caramel and whipped cream. It tasted more like dessert, very tasty. Last night I saw this "Sleepless in Seattle" shirt at the airport and I told David I wanted it as a souvenir. Little did I know that's how I would actually spend my first night in Seattle :) We just went grocery shopping for diapers and food and snacks. David got some cherries too. He wants me to try one, but I prefer the fake maraschino kind. Now we're heading to the Space Needle. Is this a random post or what? We also want to do something called "Ride the Ducks"

Undiagnosed

OK, so I know I'm feeding my husband's belief that I have ADD by posting so much, but having this laptop in the car keeps me from going insane having to sit still so long. We just ate breakfast and are now heading to the Seattle Temple. I'm pretty excited about it. I haven't seen any mountains yet, but know it will only be a matter of time. We are driving on the highway through very tall beautiful greeeen trees. It is a nice drive, especially with Katelyn singing in the background. It was so much fun to have her with us this morning. Her first hotel stay. She didn't sleep well last night (up every 2 hours), so I was delighted that she was in such a good mood this morning. She fell asleep on the way to breakfast, but woke up when we went inside and is still wide awake singing away. She is such a sweet precious gift from God!!

Using #'s as Post Titles is boring.

Last night when we got to the hotel, I pulled out my jammies from the suitcase. They felt damp, but I just figured it was my imagination and the fact that I was so tired that I must be dreaming the rain got everything. Well, when my husband woke up this morning, he confirmed the bad news. He guesses the luggage must have been left out on the tarmack in the pouring rain for some time. He called Southwest to complain and got us some voucher coupons for the future, but that doesn't erase the fact that our hotel room now looks like a laundromat with everything hanging up (we'll use the dryer later if they're still not dry). I hope the electronics are ok :(

Post #4

We finally made it to Seattle. It is 12:48 local time which means we are approaching the 4am EST mark, no wonder we are worn out. I forgot to mention that Katelyn was a gem for her first two plane excursions. I was going to give her a B+ but then I had flashbacks of other children that I have flown next to, so I upgraded her to an A-. She sure kept us busy, no more relaxing on airplanes! She was a bit fussy when we got off the last plane and I had to put her in the car seat, but I gave her Daddy's cell phone and she quieted right down. She is probably fussy because they didn't put her car seat in a plastic bag when we checked it, and it rained and rained, so she is probably freezing sitting in a wet car seat. Poor thing. I put a blanket on her and she seems to be quieting down, hopefully for a quick nap while we drive to the hotel. It has certainly been a long day considering we left our home around noon thirty. David has already commented how pretty it is here (what we can see in the dark) and we already saw the Space Needle from the air and the ground :)

Post #3

Back to not leaving until 10:30 which is a three hour delay. Yikes!! They better get me a crib!

Post #2

As I sit here contemplating what I'm going to write, our "status" has changed 3 times. We are at the Denver Airport and our flight was originally scheduled to leave at 7:40... then we found out our plane was diverted to Colorado Springs due to weather conditions... then we found out it would be a 2 hour delay... then they just came on and said it should leave at 9:00. If all else fails, I'm going to call my friend Dianne and ask to sleep on her couch :)

Trip - Day 1 - Post #1

We made it through ticketing and security without a hitch. I guess baby food doesn't have to be in less than 3 ounce containers thank goodness!! Now we're just chilling at MCO awaiting our 4:00 flight to Denver. Katelyn is happy and ready to go. Daddy is engrossed in Tom Clancy. Mommy is trying to pretend she's not nervous.

Finally I'm posting!

It's amazing how much more "down and out" you feel when you're sick AND you're a Mommy. I'm finally better after a cold that was way stronger than me. I just about only had enough energy to play Guitar Hero :) But I conquered Guitar Hero Expert Level (well, only a couple of songs anyway), so that was exciting for me. This pic is of Daddy thinking it would be fun to put some bloomers on Kate's head. She sure seemed to enjoy it :)