First time in Wagon

What a beautiful day it has been! We took advantage of the nice weather and went for a walk outside. This was the first time the girls were in the wagon together. It was a lot of fun! As you can see they were excited, too! I love to put them in matching clothes!

Kate Dresses Herself

This is Kate's new obsession! Everyday she will go find some pantyhose and bloomers to put on. I think she thinks the bloomers are underwear. She is kind of missing the point if she puts them over her diaper, but oh well! As you can see she has some trouble putting the pantyhose on at times, too. I obviously do not let her go out like this, but as soon as we get home this is what happens. Kate disappears and either appears looking like this or is asking for help to put on some bloomers and pantyhose. In this picture she is playing in Daddy's sink. This is her other new obsession-washing things! She got a white stool for Christmas and she will take it all over the place to reach things. I will be working at the table and all of a sudden the white stool appears! Kate will say "Help you?" She likes to help wash dishes and cook. On this particular day she was going from sink to sink all over the house dressed like this. It was quite the site! My sister and I always hated pantyhose and still do! I remember coming home from church and taking them off as soon as possible! So I have been taken back by Kate's love for them. We will see if it continues. Anyway, I thought you would all enjoy the picture!

Carly at Nine months

This post is a little past due. It is really more like Carly at nine and a half months.
Since my last write up Carly is crawling everywhere and fast! Over Christmas break she started to really master it and now she is all over the place. I have also started giving her little pieces of cheese now. She really seems to like it when I give her grated cheese, not sliced cheese. We give her a mix of baby food and finger foods. She is getting better and better about eating finger foods. Over the break her other front tooth started coming in. It was funny for awhile that she just had one front tooth on the top. Now both front teeth are about the same length. It makes her look so much older with her little teeth. She also has two more teeth coming in beside her top front teeth. Whoa! It is like you can see what she is going to look like as a little girl. I have been working on sleep training her again because she would wake up about an hour after putting her down at bedtime and would want to be soothed or nursed. So a couple of nights ago I had to make her cry it out some when Kamara was spending the night. Kamara spent the night with me with her girls because Zack was out of town. He went to Big Bend for five nights. It kills me to have Carly cry it out since she doesn’t have another soothing mechanism like a lovie or pacifier. She does like her little blanket, but that is different. Anyway, after about an hour of working on it she fell asleep. Then she slept till 5:00 am. Last night she slept till 4:00 am and then I waited for about 40 minutes till I went in to feed her. I am just going to keep trying to push her to go longer till she makes it till the morning. We are now giving her medicine every other day to see how it goes with her reflux. At her nine month appt. she weighed 18.5 pounds. This puts her between 25-50 percent for her weight. Her length was 50 percent and her head is 75 percent. Her percentage weight has gone down, but they were not concerned. I think a big part of that is the crawling. Most days she still just seems to take one nap unless she cat naps in the car or stroller. I will try to put her down for morning naps, but she doesn’t always seem tired or interested. She will sleep anywhere from an hour to 2.5 hours when she takes one nap. She usually wakes up between 2:00-3:30 pm from her nap and goes to bed between 7-7:30 pm. Then she wakes up around 7:30-8:00 am. She loves to crawl up to me for me to hold her. She will still lay her head on your shoulder if somebody is talking to her and she is being shy. It is precious! She still likes to wave her hands. She is really pretty good about picking up food. However, she also loves dropping food and other objects. I had forgotten how messy it can be when they are first learning to feed themselves! Kate will continue to pick up things for her when Carly is in her booster seat eating. I have to then tell Kate to stop so Carly will stop. It is sweet to see them interacting together. Some times they both get jealous of each other and they are both wanting me to hold them. That can be fun! Carly still does not have much hair. Carly loves to make all kinds of noises now, especially "Da, Da, Da". She is obsessed with climbing on the fireplace. We are always having to move her away from it! A couple of days ago I turned around and saw her standing up holding on a toy all by herself. This was the first time I witnessed her going to a standing position by herself. She was so happy to be standing! She doesn’t really like to be in anything where she is confined anymore. That means that she doesn’t really like the pack and play, exersaucer, or doorway jumper anymore. This makes it hard when I need her to be confined. That also means that I am carrying her in the backpack more often when I am trying to work on something. She is now wearing 12 month clothes. We still have to give her an extra spoon when feeding her so that she has one to play with.
Some of her favorite snacks are ritz crackers and apple slices. I am always trying new foods with her. She is not too crazy about Cheerios yet. I do break up pieces of bread for her for breakfast every day. Since she nurses in the early morning she will usually only nurse off of one side in the late morning. She will nurse again before her nap and sometimes she will nurse off of one side before dinner. Then she nurses again before bedtime. So she nurses about 4 times a day. I continue to work with her on sippy cups but she hasn’t really taken to them too well yet. It is hard to believe that she is getting close to a year now. I know she will continue to change a lot over the next couple of weeks and months. We just love our sweet girls!

This was taken actually on her 9 month birthday. This captures her one top front tooth. You will see in the other pictures that her other top tooth has since come through.

This was taken last week when I turned around and saw that she got to a standing position all by herself. She was so proud!

Carly and Ryleigh having a play date together. They are in awe of each other!

Now that Carly is crawling she likes the play tunnel, too!

Earlier this week I found Carly hiding underneath their desk. She was also snacking on a cracker. She loves to be in the oddest places.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas celebration a couple of weeks ago. Carly also turned nine months old over the break, so I will have to do a write up on her next week. We spread Christmas out over the course of the first week. Our first stop was Shreveport, LA where Zack's sister lives. Lauren had worked so hard to make it a special Christmas at her house. However, on our way there Lauren called and told us that all three of her kids had the flu! They woke up with a fever and after taking them to the doctor discovered that they had the flu. After discussing it together and with our doctors we felt it was best that we did not come. We felt horrible about it, but it was just too risky even with us all having the flu shot. We were only 40 miles away at that point. We were in the car for 6 hours that day. Carly and Kate actually did quite well. Then, two days later we decided to just drive up for the day and surprise everybody but Lauren. We told her so that she could be expecting us. It was a great surprise and totally worth it. The kids no longer had a fever so it seemed safe to come. We got there about 10:30 am and left around 8:00 pm that night. It was great to have even a day as a family and to open up our gifts and celebrate. Lauren had a delicious arrangement of food and their house was so beautiful and festive with all the decorations. Thank you Lauren for all that you did.

Debbie and Lauren

We love how Carly likes to lay her head on our shoulders. She has such a sweet and shyness about her!

Mom Mom and Kate playing together.

What a table!

Yummy!

Our attempt at taking a picture with all the grandkids and grandparents.

We got back into town on December 22 and then woke up on Christmas Eve to find out that Santa decided to leave some toys for Kate and Carly at Nana and Papa's house. So we drove to Grapevine for the day to see what Santa brought. I guess they had been extra good this year! We stayed the whole day to also open up presents with the rest of the Tate family. Here Kate is sharing with Papa some of her treasures!

The three little girls

Our family

I love this picture of Kate and Aubrey!

Zack and me

Me and Kamara

Kate loves this rocking horse! Laci always does such a good job playing with Kate!

That night we came back home so we could wake up and see what Santa brought us at our house, too! Zack reading The Night Before Christmas with the girls.

Santa came to our house, too!

Kate enjoyed playing with Carly's toys,too.

I don't have all my pictures because I got a new camera and the pictures were not uploading. I will have to post some more pictures later. Zack has been saving his money for a smoker to smoke meat and over the break he purchased one! We had some of our college friends over on December 30 and Zack smoked some pulled pork and ribs. They were incredible! He had to get up in the middle of the night to start it. It definitely paid off! We had such a blast. After the kids went to bed at our house we talked and played a game. I laugh more with these people than anybody else! I love these guys!

Here are the guys: Brent, Rod, Chris and Zack

The girls:Merry, Kamara, me and Erika

Merry and Chris

Overall, we had a great Christmas break! We spent the first week traveling and the second week at home. It was so nice to have Zack off work for both weeks. He would take Kate out and I would stay home and get things done with Carly. It was awesome! I look back at 2010 and feel blessed to have our new addition Carly to our family. We also saw God work in so many ways from Ryleigh's survival to Jason's recovery. We are definitely blessed. We look forward to seeing how God continues to bless our life in 2011. Thank you all for you love and support for our family.