Kaia's Back from Mexico! :-)

Pictures taken on July 24. Kaia had a great time in Mexico. Everyone she went with got sun burnt except for her. :-) When she first got there, the four girls went and got all their hair put in braids.....yes, her whole head was little braids. It looked really cute. I'll post vacation pictures when I get them from her dad. Kaia swam with dolphins, played on the beach, found shells, and spent 60% of her time in the swimming pool. She says the swimming pools at her hotel were better than the ones in Disneyworld. LOL
Upon her return, her braids were fuzzy and falling out, so we wanted to get them out of her hair. Three and a half hours later, we got them out.....yep, Ron helped. We had to cut some spots so that's why you'll see some short hairs in the pictures. :-) But check out her tan and how cute her hair looks after the braids. LOL I have pictures of her in the braids but I'll post those when I post pics of the girls' new playroom that is FINISHED!!!! :-)

Natalie's Look

Picture taken July 23. Natalie always has her hands on her face (when tired) or her head resting on her arm (like below). I'm always trying to get pictures of it but she is usually in my arms when in this position and I'm unable to take the picture. This time I had Ron get the camera and snap a few. It cracks me up. When we set her in the chair just to look around, she gets into this position. Or when we are carrying her around, she does also. I'll try and get more pics of this because it is really too cute.

Konked out.......

Pics taken July 22. LOL! This kid falls asleep in the most amazing positions. I ran and got my camera when I came home from the store to find her konked in Ron's lap like this! :-)

Cutie Patootie!

Pics taken on July 19. Isn't she just too cute??? I took a whole series of photos of her laying on the quilt made by her ma'ma Brendy. These are two of my favorites. :-)

SUN in Juneau!

Pics taken on July 15. We haven't had a really sunny summer. It has been ok....(kind of) with sun every now and then but not enough for me. Kaia insisted on getting these cute little sunglasses for Natalie at a garage sale. LOL And we had to try them out to say she at least wore them once! Isn't she cute???

This picture below cracks me up! We took pictures with the sun and then also standing in her sun so she could open her eyes. LOL

Just Entertainment?

Ok, so I know NONE of you parents have EVER done this....yeah, right! But Natalie sure is entertainment for us sometimes. People tell us we have three dogs just for the sole purpose of entertainment...but they haven't seen us laugh at Natalie yet. Ok, I'm joking (kind of...). We really are good parents....REALLY! But every night we wake Natalie up (she insists on being in bed at 9:00 or she lets us know her disapproval) for a feeding right before we go to sleep so that she sleeps for a while with a full tummy and we get a long length of sleep. And yes, this works. But....sometimes she just refuses to wake up. Many nights we've "played" with her trying to wake her up. We undress her, make her body move...you know the routine. Well, this night she absolutely refused to wake up. And she was doing such funny and cute things (or rather Ron was doing funny things with her - she makes a great puppet!) that I ran and got my camera. It is never very far away if you haven't been able to tell. I hope the pictures entertain you because it sure worked for us. LOL



We finally gave up and put the poor baby back in her bassinet. But this particular night she continued to sleep for another three hours before waking up. Yeah!! :-)

Look at Kaia! She's Had a BIG Week! :-)

Kaia's been learning how to ride a bike for about three years now. She gave up for quite a long while because she got frustrated. Then she simply had no interest. Until this summer.... I guess six is the age where kids start watching other kids and wanting to do everything they are doing. So this summer when all the neighborhood kids left to go on bike rides, Kaia got left behind. :-( She came in crying more than once. So Ron and I got her bike back out and it didn't take long (just a day or two) before she was cruising on training wheels (yeah.....we kind of had to start over). Then Ron loosened the training wheels to the point where she wasn't even really using them....but we kept them on because they made her feel secure about riding. Then this day below, Kaia was riding her bike and she stopped momentarily to talk to me. While I kept her talking, Ron snuck behind her and took her training wheels off. She didn't even notice! LOL
Then five minutes later after she continued to ride around, she stopped, looked down at one side of her back tire with this confused look. Looked at the other one, and looked back and forth. Then she looked at us standing there innocently in the driveway. LOL She yelled "Mama!!! Ronnie!!!" ROFL! It was sooo funny. We started clapping and cheering and she was ecstatic!!!

Until about five minutes later when someone ran into her with their big wheel......
She cried and cried and I thought she'd bring neighbors out of their houses wondering what was going on. She said "I'm never riding my bike again when other people are around!!!" Have I mentioned she is a very dramatic six year old? :-)
So we had a talk again about what happens in life when you fall down. Five minutes later when we reviewed our talk and I asked her, "What happens when you fall down?" And she said..."You get right back up!" That's my good girl! :-) And that's exactly what she did......look at her go!

Kaia's SECOND Success This Week!

Kaia lost her first tooth two days ago! She is sooo proud! But first...let me tell you the story. :-) Ron and I looked in her mouth to check the tooth and see how it was doing. It has been loose for over a month and we thought she would have lost it long ago. But she has been avoiding using the tooth at all to eat, so it has just hung in there. But this day when we checked it, it was just hanging there. We didn't want her to lose it that night while sleeping and swallow it. She has a special little alligator shaped box that her Nana bought her that says "My first tooth" on it and so losing it would have been a big disapointment to her. So, we convinced her it was time to pull it out. :-) At first she was excited! So above you see this semi-nervous smile on her face. She is wiggling it and the thought of losing it and getting a dollar from the tooth fairy makes her giggle.
Then she starts to get nervous. She was scared of it hurting and she didn't want it to bleed. She doesnt like the smell of blood. LOL
Then sigh....the trauma starts. She gets really upset because by now 20 minutes has passed and she's had time to think about it.
Ron talks to her and tries to show her how to do it. She wants to do it herself and we were fine with that. Besides....by this time she wouldn't let us touch her mouth. LOL Saliva started making everything slippery so we gave her a tissue and told her to use that to grab her tooth. That didn't work either. By this time we were all getting frustrated but Ron and I were trying not to show Kaia we were laughing and rolling our eyes.

So then we tried string..... We told her that we'd put the string around her tooth but then let her do the pulling. Well, her little tongue couldn't stay out of the way and kept pushing the string right back off the tooth when we got it on.

We had to quit our efforts because Nana was flying in for a couple of days from being on vacation (she wanted to see Kaia before Kaia left for a trip to Mexico with her dad). Kaia decided she wanted her Nana to pull her tooth because "Nana was gentle and we weren't". ROFL! But by this time we were fine with that. Whatever got that stubborn tooth out. We couldn't figure out what was holding it in. It was just hanging there!SUCCESS!!! Nana was able to pull Kaia's tooth and guess what? Just like we told Kaia, she didn't even feel it! Kaia put her tooth in her little alligator box and put it near her pillow with a note saying:

New Layouts :-)

Zebra Natalie

Old Navy sure has changed its style of clothing for kids and babies. They have really gone hip and trendy. For adults and girls, that's good. But for babies? I guess I'll have to get used to it. It took me a whole hour to get used to this zebra one piece. LOL But only because Natalie looks soo cute in it! What do you think? ;-)

Pictures of Natalie Smiling

I've taken some more pictures of Natalie.......ok, more than some. A gazillion......really! LOL You'd laugh if you saw how many pictures I take of the girls. But when taking pictures of kids, you get one good one for every 10 pics that you snap. Anyway, I now have more pictures of Natalie smiling.....but the one below is still my FAVORITE! :-)