A week of firsts!

My first party! Our good friend, Abby Kate, had her 1st birthday party last week. It was so much fun, Mommy and Daddy have already started planning by big 1st bash!

The thumb sucking isn't necessarily a first, but this it such a perfect shot it had to be posted!

Mommy's a monogramming fool! My dress, burp cloth, and even my diaper cover!

Abby Kate getting ready to blow out her candle. What a cute (and tasty) cake!

I had such a good time, but boy was I tired. I fell asleep as soon as I got in the car.

Another shot of me and Pooh. I'll be bigger than him before you know it!

The progression of a roll.... First set your sights on a toy, then reach for said toy, then....

flip yourself over and wonder what just happened!

My first St. Patrick's day. I traded out my usual pink for some green and then spent some quality time with Daddy.

My first attempt at "solid" food. OK, nothing solid about this rice cereal stuff, but I did get some practice in with the spoon! Notice how much ended up on my chin and bib. I don't know how anyone gets anything accomplished this way! A couple of drops may have found their way to my tummy, but not enough to fill me up!

This isn't a first, just a fun! Miss Claire and Miss Kel Kel loving on me at dinner last week. I love you guys!!!

Bows, Mommy, Bows!

Mustn't forget the bows for my precious bald baby girl! In some of these pictures she looks like a beautiful baby boy! Oh well, she comes by it honestly as I didn't have any hair until I was almost 3! Mom said people were always complimenting her on her little quarterback!

And mommy said I wouldn't have blonde hair....

Ella Kate had her 4 month check up last week and did really well! She had 3 shots and one oral vaccine. Those shots were pretty bad, but she only cried for a couple of minutes, nothing like at her 2 month check up. Here are her stats:

Weight: 13.6 lbs (46%)

Height: 24.25 in (45%)

Head Circumference: 40.9cm (~50%)

Oh yeah, and today she rolled over from tummy to back! It really freaked her out, so I don't know if she'll be doing it again any time soon, but it is progress!

Look, FEET!!!

Newest development: feet! Ella Kate found her feet last week, and it's been non stop fun ever since! I can see that we'll be having a real problem with socks, though. She'll follow after her daddy and have lots of single socks floating around!

PS Hi Elizabeth, Lori, and Rhonda! It was great to see you today, thanks for following our precious angel on the blog, it makes me smile :)

Busy Week

Snow on Tuesday

This is as much snow as we could expect here in Knoxville. I realized that it's seriously more than we've had in the last 5 years b/c Abbey had never seen snow. It was cute how she very carefully placed each paw.

Wednesday night, date night!

For my 30th birthday gift Melissa said she'd give us a free night of babysitting. It's only been 3 months, but we finally took her up on it. We went out for sushi, which I hadn't had since before I got pregnant, and a movie, Vantage Point. It was so nice to get out for 4 whole hours by ourselves. Thanks, Mel, you're the greatest!

Thursday: Mother Goose with George and Mel

So here are Ella Kate and George at Mother Goose. They have so much fun doing their songs and listening to stories. Ella Kate had a whole "conversation" with George at one point, I wonder if they understand each other? Check the shot of them holding hands, it's a little blurry, but it was so cute!

The Weekend: Ella Kate's first road trip!

We went to Memphis to meet Baby Julianna and visit with Kristen, Phil, and Chase. For her first road trip she did great! She slept most of the way to Nashville, then we stopped to stretch our legs and feed her, and she slept most of the way on to Memphis! We worried that she'd be up all night, but she slept all the way through!

In my mind EK is the same size she was the day she was born, but put her next to 2 week old Julianna and she looks all grown up! EK may be about 8 times as old as Ju Ju right now, but soon they'll be the best of friends!

Daddy playing w/ EK on Saturday am. I think they were making a tent out of the covers.

We took a trip out to Kristen's parents farm and while loading everyone into the new mini van we put the girls down in the bed of Phil's truck. We just thought that was a classic shot, one day they'll look back and laugh at this!

And right before we left to head back to Knoxville we got a shot w/ Chase and EK. Chase was a little sick over the weekend, turns out he had a sinus infection, so we couldn't let him play with the babies. He was so sweet, though, walking around saying "Baby Ju Ju" and "bless you, Ella Kate" (b/c EK sneezes all the time!). He's such a well behaved little boy! And he definitely keeps us entertained; plastic hot dog, anyone? Thanks for a fun weekend, K, P, C, and JuJu! Sure wish you guys lived a little closer, that drive will wear you out!

I am Ella Kate, Ella Kate is me!

Sunday morning with Daddy :)

It's been a couple of weeks....

Weekend with Gama and Aunt Katey and Ella Kate's new best friend is born!

My mom and her sister, Aunt Katey, came for a long weekend. We had a great time. Ella Kate got her love tank filled up to overflowing and the rest of us filled up our tummies! We didn't do anything too exciting, but it was wonderful to have them visit.

Ella Kate is ready to start walking, ok, maybe not quite yet, but she "stands" really well. She "talks" a whole lot and is getting to be cuddly, too. She's in a "hold me" mood, so having extra cuddle bunnies around was helpful.

We got a jumperoo for our little wiggle worm since she tries to "jumperoo" all over us. It's so fun to watch her! She's not quite tall enough yet, so I put a pillow under her feet and that seems to work. Watch her little feet go, maybe she'll be a runner, too!

Oh, and how can we forget Miss JuJu? Ella Kate's newest best friend, Julianna Mae, was born last Friday. I told you Kristen was having a girl! I used to consider Kristen a really good friend until I heard she pushed less than one time!!! I mean, really, who does that? You know how they say count to 10 as you push during the contraction? Kristen got to 4 and they said stop! For such a small girl, she's a regular birthing machine!!! JuJu (as Chase, her big brother, calls her) was almost the same size as Ella Kate, so it will be fun to watch them grow up together!

Knoxville Zoo!

With this unusually warm weather (75 degrees today!) we just had to get outside. Melissa and her boys invited us to join them for an afternoon at the zoo. We had such a good time that we will definitely be getting a membership soon. Chris was jealous and says that if the weather is good he wants to go this weekend!

So these are the Mancini boys with Ella Kate. John will be 3 in May and George will be 1, also in May. These are two boys that we won't mind Ella Kate hanging out with!

John was excited to be at the Zoo-- he was climbing all over everything! My favorite, I wish I had a shot of it, was John saying to the monkeys "Hi Blue Monkeys!" It was so matter of fact, like "Blue Monkeys" were their names.

Mel is probably my "oldest friend," not necessarily my first one, but the one I've kept the longest. We met as freshman in college and just clicked right away. By the end of our freshman year people would call us Kat and Mel interchangeably-- we'd respond to either name! We lived together sophomore and junior years and have so many crazy and fun memories. Since neither of us is from TN we never ever would have imagined both of us ending up here, much less living in the same city! We literally live 10 minutes from each other! Now that we both have kids (obviously Mel got a head start on that one!) we will have so much fun watching them play and grow together.

Just behind Mel on the friendship time line are Nicole, Amy-Chris, and Shannon. When they said, in our freshman orientation, that these are the friends we'd keep for life I'm sure we all rolled our eyes. Who knew that 12 years later we'd all still be so close?! We've shared so many life changes- jobs, houses, pets, marriages, deaths and births-- I'm blessed to have such amazing friends in my life!

EKV's First Superbowl Sunday

You may recognize Meg from EK's first few pictures. I've already contracted her as Ella Kate's future babysitter! She's only 8 right now, but I can tell she's gonna be a great babysitter soon.

Seth's lap seems to be one of EK's favorite places. She fit in that nook perfectly and just sat there contently and observed.

Sweet Miss Lacey

Lacey is our sweet loveable floppy dog and our "first born." We assumed she'd be the one who mothered the baby and would hover and be protective. We were surprised to learn that Abbey was more in tune with our new addition and Lacey kinda shirked away. This is one of the first shots of Lacey lounging so close, and calmly, near Ella Kate. She did try to lick EK once before and EK cried. I don't think she cried b/c of Lacey, it was just a coincidence (as I've said before, EK doesn't discriminate about who she'll cry for!), but it made Lacey stay away. Finally she seems to be warming up to the new little human in the house!

This is a shot of EK so tuckered out on her rainforest play mat that she actually fell asleep! I let her sleep there for as long as she would (maybe 15 min)-- as my friend Sarah says, "let sleeping babies lie!"

On a fun baby note: I'm pretty sure she's eliminated the last feeding of the night, usually around 10ish. Three times last week she fought us during that feeding and I was complaing about it to Kristen who said "maybe she's not hungry." Hmmm.... wonder why we couldn't come up with that on our own! So at her suggestion we didn't try to force that feeding, and since last Friday EK's skipped it and slept until the middle of the night (around 2 or 3 am) feeding. Then the amazing happened last night: we fed her at 6:30 and put her down around 8:30 and she slept all the way until 5:30 am! I'm curious to see if it was a one time thing or if it happens again.

I forgot to mention that two of Ella Kate's best girlfriends were born 3 weeks ago! Bree Simpson was born to Shay and Brian, and Lila Hagan was born to Maria and Carr. Up to this point most of my friends have had little boys, so girls are a new and fun development. One more may arrive next week when Kristen's secon baby is born. I'm convinced it's a girl, but you can go to her website and post your own opinion!