Daddy Date Day

Baby K and her daddy had a Daddy Date Day last Saturday, while mommy enjoyed a much needed day by myself. Baby K's grandpa has some old tractors and was part of an antique tractor show. Daddy and Baby K had a fun day. Here are some pictures of their day. Daddy took all the pictures so he's not in any of them. opps. :)

Our Sweet Daughter

In my excitement of making this card I wrote "Womack's" rather than "Womacks" - oh well spelling/grammar have never been my strong points.
Enjoy the news and ignore the typos!
Love
the Womacks

We emailed this card to share with family and friends. Before sharing with anyone we wanted to tell our close family first. I sent a copy of this to be printed at the drugstore in the town where my grandma lives (since she doesn't use email) and she went to pick up a new picture of Baby K. When she got there they said they never received an order from me - WHAT?! They have it now but she won't have time to pick it up until 7:30pm TONIGHT! So she still doesn't know.
My husbands parents didn't get the news until late either because their internet was down.
Kind of a blow to our excitement that the people we were most excited to tell couldn't even get to see the announcement when we intended for them to. Good thing the news is still exciting. :)

Thanks for all of the well wishes we have already received. Our children will be 19months apart and I'm sure we are in for a real adventure!

12 month Update

Baby K had her 12mo doctors appointment on September 11th. Here's what we learned.
Weight: 20.5 lbs - 41%
Height: 29.25 inches - 53%

At birth her stats were:
Weight: 6 lbs 3oz - 7%
Height: 19.5 inches - 38%

Lookin' good kid! :)

At this time Baby K has the following skills:
Eating - she can almost out eat me! She LOVES bananas and I am so tired of the smell of bananas, but she loves them.
Cruising - she uses her push toy to walk everywhere, kind of like an elderly lady with a walker only much faster! hee hee - she walks around furniture, holding our hands, etc. We are confident she has what it takes to walk, she is steady on her feet and has great balance but she just isn't that into it right now. Fine by me, she can stay a baby a little longer.
Words & signs -
She signs "More" when she wants something (usually food or drink) and she does occasionally say "Ma" when she signs more...it kind of sounds like "more" w/o the r sound.
Mama & Dada she can say but rarely uses them to get our attention, unless she is desperately trying to refuse a nap & wants to be rescued from the crib.
Up - she says this a lot, and always sticks her bottom lip out at the end of the "p" sound.
Body Parts - When asked she can point to her eyes, ears, mouth and nose.
No Thank You - She shakes her head no, so cute! Usually she does this when we are telling her no, b/c of danger or b/c she wants to play in the dog water (yuck!), not really prime times to giggle at her cute no head shake. So I taught her to shake her head "no" when I ask her to say "No thank you". See learning manners already!
Animal sounds (you can ask her what the following animals say and she will tell you) -
Cow - Moo
Duck - Ack Ack Ack Ack she LOVES to walk around the neighborhood lake watching the ducks, waving to them and Quacking loudly. It makes her mad that she is not allowed to pet them.
Elephant - this is her favorite sound to make! Basically, she spits. :) She presses her lips together & then blows air, it is so cute!
Snake - sssssssss
Gorilla - she says "Ahhhhhh" while lightly beating her chest with her hands.
Dog - she doesn't do this one. Ironically, we have a dog that she loves, we have tried and tried to get her to make the sound but she just stares at us and smiles like we are so silly. Hmmm...well, we probably do look very silly.

Other Loves:
Being with people
Playing with other babies, toddlers, big kids. If you are under 4 ft tall - you're her favorite! LOL
Books - especially opening & closing them, over and over and over again.
Wagon rides - best birthday gift ever. It has a seat belt and she loves to cruise the neighborhood and loves it even more when a neighbor kid will ride in the wagon with her or Baby A. She is certainly a people person!
Kisses - if you ask for a kiss you may not get one, but if you say, "Baby K, I love you!" she will always give a kiss. I guess it's her way of saying, "I love you too." I'm guessing she learned this because mommy & daddy are always saying, I love you, and then kissing her.
Justice - our dog. She lights up when she sees her. She is gentle to pet her and loves feeding her cheerios and dog treats and the occasional table treat if we don't catch it first. She loves to crawl in the dog kennel (I've been washing the blankets in there often b/c I keep finding her tucked in there with the dog or w/o the dog. If our child smells like a dog kennel please let us know. LOL)
In & O*ut - not the burger place, the action. She loves toys that require you to put things in & take things out. She could do this for hours. She loves empty boxes and baskets, she loves helping move laundry from the washer to the dryer - she loves to put things in and take things out, over and over and over again. She does this with the dog kennel too - crawl in, crawl out, crawl in, crawl out.

She has many other loves but this list is long and probably less entertaining to you than it is to her parents. :)

We are grateful to God for a healthy, beautiful, inquisitive, sweet little girl. Thank you for this special blessing. We love her SO much!

It happened today...

Since I was pregnant with Baby K I have been praying that God would shape her into a kind and compassionate person. I pray often that she will also have a gentle spirit and a giving heart.
We met our baby girl a year ago and she has been nothing other than a people person. She loves people, especially children and babies. She loves to hug and when other babies or children are around she will bring them a toy and put it in their face, as if to say, "Do you want to play with this?" I love it!
Today was the first time I ever saw Baby K refuse to share a toy. What?! I couldn't believe my eyes. I knew this day would come but didn't know it would come today.
Baby A is here today, because she always comes to play with us on Tuesdays. Both of the girls were playing on the floor nicely together when Baby A went to play with our new cookie jar shape toy.
Baby K let out a yell as if to say, "HEY!!!! NO!! THATS MINE!" and quickly crawled over to her friend and swiped the shape toy right out of her hand. Then she crawled over and started playing with the toy herself. Anytime Baby A gets anywhere near her toys Baby K yells and steals. We've had a lot of crying and yelling this morning. (all from the babies, of course. Mommy is calm and collected. )
Where is my sweet, sharing, toy sacrificing daughter?
We are working hard to be kind to our friend today. For now there has been no hitting and I'm hoping after nap time that sharing will be appealing again.
Just another sign that Baby K is growing up, forming opinions and that babies are born with a sinful nature.
More parenting, discipling and disciplining are on the horizon.

What is a swing set?

We have been doing a little thinking about swing sets. I don't think we will have one anytime real soon, but we don't have a big tree or a deck to hang a swing from so for now we have to walk down to the park and wait our turn for the baby swing. My wonderful engineer husband would like to design and build the playset our children will play on and in the end I think this will save us some money and we will have the special memory that Daddy made it, not just put it together but actually made it (with the exception of the actual slide and swings that will be attached). I think that sounds like a lot of love and hopefully a lot of hours of family fun time and children using their imaginations and getting some exercise.
Today we decided to drop in a new playground equipment sales place. I will say their products are HIGH quality and better than the kit sets you find at the chain hardware stores. Adam was impressed with the quality as well so you don't have to just take my word for it.
The smallest set, that would actually also be the best fit for our family, is currently "on sale" for $1299, regular $1700. Adam thinks he can build an equivalent set for much less.
The price of their sets pretty much jumps from the simple one we are thinking of to $3000 for the next low end set. And when I say low end I mean LOW LOW LOW end.
Mind you these are advertised as "Residential Playsets"
So in the catalog we find this - the set that costs $48,099 but is currently on sale for $33,349 (I'm sure they didn't want to ask $33,350 because that number might scare people!LOL)It is 32 feet wide and 48 feet long and this particular set is, "the undisputed leader in unbelievable residential play structures."
Unbelievable is right! Check this out... It's kind of like the Noah's Ark of Swing sets; honestly, you could put several Large Animals in this thing!
Now if this seems a little steep for your taste or just flat out too big for your yard, then let's take a look at the step down. You can get this next bundle of fun for the sale price of $25,599 (again, good thing they didn't round that sale price up a dollar, talk about sticker shock!), this is a bargain from the regular price of $37,049.
And I forgot to point out that the install price for the above set is $4,760. The install price for the set I'm about to show you is $3,655. I'm telling you, these are REAL deals people!
Ok, so here's your step down set. It's only 20.5 feet wide and 36.5 feet long.Who needs 4 tube slides in their backyard?! This is nuts people!

Birthday Pictures!

Here are 26 pictures of some 200 plus pictures we have from the past 2 days of celebrating. I have not edited these pictures at all but I'm sure Baby K's cuteness will shine through nonetheless. :)

Saturday afternoon (the day before her actual birthday) we had a big party with friends and family. We had cupcakes and Baby K wore her party OUTFIT! A special thanks to Kendra at Sugarplum Orphans for making a very special hair bow that even had a "jewel" on it! Also a special thanks to Brandi who made the most PERFECT special birthday bracelet (that will get a lot of use b/c Baby K loves it!) and thanks to the Doll family for gifting Baby K with the bracelet; you really should take a look at it in the pictures, sterling sliver w/ a cupcake charm & a rhinestone dangle! TOO CUTE! I got the birthday shirt from the internet and made the skirt for the low price of $4.60! There are so many people to thank for making Baby K's day SO SO Special but for now I will finish the thank you's with a Thanks to Ginger for the great cupcake cake pan! Thanks for loving our little girl, we are blessed with wonderful friends!

So we had yummy cupcakes and opened gifts. The weather could not have been more perfect. After friends left we had dinner with family and spent several hours just playing with Baby K and her new toys. She was LOVING it! I have video of her eating her cake but I'm guessing it will be Wednesday or so before I will get it posted.

Sunday we went to my grandma's house (Baby K's Great Grandma) and had a fun afternoon and evening spending time with my family. We sang Happy Birthday again, since it is actually her birthday, and let her dig into her cake - the GIANT cupcake.

We are so grateful for the blessing of our sweet daughter. Thank you everyone for celebrating with us! Baby K says, "Thank you," and she loves you and would like to blow you a kiss! :)

Party Day

Today is Baby K's bday party. I am busy frosting cupcakes and getting food ready and if I'm lucky I'll get a shower before the big party. :) Pictures will be posted later this weekend.
I spent last night making the cake and cupcakes and used a family favorite chocolate cake recipe that my mom made for us often. She didn't really make it for birthdays but just for a special treat. I think it's kind of special that i'm using it for Baby K's birthday cake.

The other party today is the K-State Party. Wish I could be two places at once. Football season starts today, it's a home game & Bill is back! Oh how I wish I could drive up for the 2nd half, throw on my purple and yell "First Down!" and "Touch Down!" Another day.

Well, I'm off to do more party prep. :)

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! (it's really tomorrow but we will celebrate for days!)