Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Larkyn, Larkyn who do you see?

I am making every attempt possible to get Larkyn to say Mama, so I created a book for her with many of our family members and her daycare family! This book will hopefully help Larkyn continue to put names with faces. With most of our family out of town I'm hoping she will begin to learn the names of family members and people she comes in contact with every day! Could be just the teacher in me...but hopefully she makes the connection and can begin using names as we Skype!


(Please don't be too dissapointed if you are not in the book:)...we only had 20 pages to work with this time!--Hope you understand!)

Larkyn, Larkyn who do you see?

Click here to view this photo book larger

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Fun with friends...

With all of the basement work going on Larkyn has been lucky to have a couple friends come over to play. Thursday night Anna joined us for dinner and some playtime while her dad helped haul Sheetrock to the basement. Anna is 2 1/2 and enjoys playing with "Baby Larkyn". Larkyn loved to be right by Anna's side and continued to watch her as she walked from place to place.

Anna is a great story teller and read many books to us!

She also gave Larkyn a ride on her car!

Saturday morning Lily joined us while her dad helped put up the Sheetrock. Lily is 9 months old. I definitely got a glimpse at what it is like to have two children...two children around the same age at that! It was quite interesting at first because Larkyn didn't like that my attention was split between the two of them. She wanted to be right in the mix of things and did not want Lily to be anywhere near me. At one point I picked up Lily, and Larkyn clung to my leg crying. I then had two baby girls in my arms. This is when I thought, "This could be a long couple of hours!"

It did get easier! Once they were both in high chairs I was able to keep them happy with their breakfast. It was a balancing act however, feeding cereal to them both, cutting bananas, and making sure there were enough O's to satisfy.

After breakfast I even managed to get both diapers changed and both of them down for a nap. They slept for an hour and 15 minutes (even with the drilling, sawing and pounding). When they woke up Lily's mom was here!
"It was a good morning!"


Basement progress...

It was a big week and weekend for the basement. We ordered our Sheetrock which was delivered on one of the coldest days of the year! Luckily we have wonderful friends and neighbors that were willing to brave the cold and help haul the Sheetrock into the basement. As they pulled the first sheet in and started down the stairs we had a big dilemma...it didn't fit! After brainstorming all possible solutions of getting down to the basement they decided it had to be cut. Shea began cutting the boards outside as Scott, Scott, Chad and Pat took trip after trip in with the boards. It only took 2 1/2 hours to cut and haul the Sheetrock to the basement:)


93 sheets...

The Sheetrock Crew...minus Chad

Early Saturday morning Shea, Kunze and Pitz began putting up the Sheetrock starting with the bedroom.

Mike and Tom joined the crew around/after lunch and they put up quite a bit on the ceiling.


Living room

The bedroom is pretty close to being closed in!
The living room from the other way...

Here are pictures of how our basement has progressed over the past few months...






Click here to view these pictures larger

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Larkyn Kate is 10 months old...

It is hard to believe that our little baby girl is already 10 months and looks like she could be a toddler! What happened to the little baby we once snuggled with for more than 10 seconds!? Larkyn is a ball of energy and loves to move. She rarely sits still for more than a second or two at a time. Larkyn is enjoying eating new foods, walking and playing with new toys, and exploring new things (cupboards, drawers, steps, rooms, etc). Some of Larkyn's latest developments include climbing stairs, new sounds--"f" "t" and "vroom" when driving around little cups or cars, unpacking drawers and cupboards, dancing, standing without holding on (she drops after 5 seconds:)), and "singing" the ABC's with her learning table or one of us singing. Her favorite part is HIJK! She is also a very good helper around the house as she "helps" with the dishwasher and sorting and folding laundry.
Some of Larkyn's new foods this month include; tator tot casserole, oranges, yogurt with raspberries and blueberries, yogurt drops, crackers, cheese, pizza, and sausage. Her diapers have been quite stinky and sticky lately so we are going to hold off on the yogurt for awhile and see if that helps.

Larkyn's other favorites are included in the "Larkyn's Favorite Things" blog post below. (Her favorite things are WAY cooler than Oprah's:))

"I've had enough of this...I'm out of here!"

"Oh, a book! I love to read!"

"Done with that! Here I come MAMA! Oh wait...I don't say that word yet!"

"Hey Giraffe! You just keep getting smaller and smaller each month. Or am I getting bigger?"

The sign is now removed and placed up above on the picture frame on the wall. It didn't have a chance after Larkyn spotted it!

"Yay tractors!"

I quickly realized all I have to do is start laughing hysterically and she would soon catch on. Emily and Grace do it every morning and have her belly laughing in seconds. It worked really well for pictures even on a "Crabby Abby" night!

This was our attempt at measuring and getting a picture...not good! Still roughly 28 inches long, but thinning out a bit!
"What are you going to do about it?"

"Why don't you start measuring me standing up?" Hmm..Larkyn...you are a smart little girl!

"Not just another pretty face...":)
.

Larkyn's Favorite Things...


BATHS...
Larkyn still enjoys taking a bath and loves to kick and splash. She is interested in playing with more toys during bath time too. We go back and forth between keeping her in her small tub and the big girl tub. It is a lot easier to wash her up when she is in her small tub...less space for her to move and crawl around away from us! Larkyn takes bath every other night as part of her bed time routine. She is just like her daddy when comes to taking a relaxing bath (shower) before going to bed!

THE DISHWASHER...
Larkyn is quite the helper when it comes to chores around the house. Any time the dishwasher opens she comes flying over from anywhere on the main level of our house. We have to distract her from another part of the kitchen when we want to load any dishes because she just has to "help". We do let her help with some of her bowls and plates, as well as closing up the dishwasher when we are all done. She will be loading and unloading the dishwasher in no time!


LAUNDRY...
I guess we are just lucky to have a little girl who loves to learn and do what we do! Larkyn's way of "helping" with laundry consists of pulling EVERYTHING out of the basket and then slowly, if we are lucky, putting it back in. She will occasionally hold up an article of clothing to give us to fold. Larkyn is also really good at finding the socks and pulling those out of the basket, which is actually very helpful!


DRAWERS...
Larkyn loves to open and close drawers. She stands up and pulls out each of the drawers and unloads all of the contents on to the floor. Some of her favorite drawers include the washcloth and towel drawer seen below, Shea's running clothes drawer, and my pajama pants drawer. We use to spend quite a bit of time picking up all of the towels and putting them back into the drawer just for her to pull them all out again! After folding and refolding towels 800 times we finally decided to move some toys into the bottom drawer with a few of "Larkyn's towels". She still "unpacks" her drawer but we no longer have to fold towels every night!

She looks guilty...
STAIRS...
Larkyn has found the stairs! We actually brought her over to the stairs one day as we were going up to get her ready for bed. She climbed up one step, then another, then another and before we knew it she was at the top looking back at us like..."Well it's about time you let me do this!" We do have a gate at the bottom of the stairs but it sits back a little bit on the first step. Larkyn has now figured out how to climb up the first step and stand on it while holding onto the gate. She is such a little monkey!


STANDING...
Larkyn loves standing against this wall in our house. It is the one wall she will pull herself up on and push back to stand on her own. I tried to get a picture of her doing it but of course when I went to grab the camera she started to squat down. She will walk from this wall to our computer desk chair to the pantry and then get down and skedaddle over to the kitchen cupboards. In this picture she is holding her socks which she had just taken off minutes before!



BARE FEET...
As mentioned above, one of Larkyn's newest things in the past few weeks is being barefoot! Any chance she gets Larkyn loves to take off her socks. If we put socks on her in the morning before daycare they are usually off within minutes of playing on the floor before we go. She loves to have her feet on things or digging into us when she is on our lap. We now pull her highchair right up to the table when she is eating and instead of resting her feet down below she will fold her toes over the top of the table and often times pushes herself back! I don't know if this is a phase or something we should get use to with not wanting her shoes and socks on!!
However, I did read somewhere that it is good for babies to be barefoot to strengthen their feet to get them ready for walking.


TUPPERWARE...
The Tupperware cupboard is one of Larkyn's favorite spots in the kitchen besides the towel drawer. Anytime we are in the kitchen she is right there with us and taking out her things. She loves to pull out the drawer and take everything off. Larkyn has started to try to put the plates and bowls back in but doesn't get more than one back and then stops! Her latest thing to do with the bowls is bringing them up to her mouth like she is drinking from them or turn them upside down and "drive" them around the floor making a "vroom" sound!
PANCAKES...

Larkyn LOVES pancakes! That is really all I can say. We can't get them on her tray fast enough!


REMOTES...
Larkyn loves anything with buttons. Phones, remotes, computers, etc. The scary thing is she knows that the remote goes to the TV and looks at it while pushing buttons. We have gone to our DVR listings and will see random shows that she has decided to record too! Though she doesn't watch too much TV, she does enjoy watching football (especially the Packers) and the Young and the Restless! There is something about the Y&R song that catches her ear every time it is on!


BASKETBALL...
Larkyn got a couple basketball hoops for Christmas and I'm not sure who loves them more...Larkyn or Mommy and Daddy?:) We have spent many nights shooting hoops and having contests while Larkyn watches, cheers and rebounds! We have also been working with her in putting the ball in the hoop and cheering. She now drops the ball through the net and claps! Larkyn is also trying to dribble--throwing the ball down and flapping her arms:) We will need to teach her appropriate ways and places to throw the basketballs. Last weekend at church Larkyn threw a plastic cup and hit the guy in front of us in the head! This weekend we brought books to church:)



PIGTAILS???:)

Not quite sure this is one of her favorites, but was very fun for Mommy! The cute little swirl in her hair when she was born is no longer cute! We are talking about quite a cowlick...poor girl!


Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year's Day 2011...

We spent New Year's Day cheering on the Wisconsin Badgers in the big BCS Rose Bowl game against TCU. Unfortunately we didn't cheer loud enough because the #5 Badgers fell to the #3 Horned Frogs:( It was a sad day in our house but we are very thankful the Green Bay Packers are still in the playoffs for at least one more week...


That tongue of hers just never stays in her mouth. Like father...like daughter!


"Go Badgers! Yay, Badgers!"


There's that tongue again!