New Tricks

So the girl loves her "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", nothing wrong with that. She only really likes the beginning and the end of the show when they sing and she will stop dead in her tracks, as seen above, and start bouncing. Also note that she has been standing on her own for about a week and she's already cool with only holding on with one hand; I'm not so sure I'm "cool" with it but I guess that's the mom coming out in me.
This is her newest toy, a music table. My friend Amy and I were talking about what our daughters were up too, her daughter Lauren is about 6 weeks older than Katie, and it became abundantly clear in the midst of the conversation that we had no age appropriate toys for Katie; we were letting her pull herself up and play on the coffee table. (I'm a bad Mommy!) So Katie and I made a mad dash for Target and bought this play table and a walk behind toy that converts into a car that she can sit on and push along with her feet. Phew, it's hard work keeping that little chicky busy. I think she likes the table, but we will have to wait for the other toy, Daddy is going to put that one together!

Katie

Just two pictures of Katie I took this morning, the dress is cute but she really can't get her crawl on so we took it off, oh well it was cute while it lasted!

She did it!!

KATIE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!!

Kate went to bed at 6:30pm and woke at 5:30am, no midnight fussing at all!! I can't believe it, all that and she cut a tooth yesterday, go figure? It took 9 months for this day so I'm going to enjoy every second, now we work on nap time...............

Crying It Out....

Let me begin by saying that the "crying it out" method seems to be working, but it is in no way for the weak at heart.

Saturday night Katie went to bed around 6:45pm, she would have gone to bed earlier but she threw up as Nat was giving her a bottle. Lovely. She dumped all of her cereal, yogurt and bottle on herself and Nat and was so tired that she barely could eat any more; she basically fell asleep with a bottle in her mouth. What a great way to start an evening.

At 10:30pm Katie woke up and promptly began screaming her face off, it was horrible. Nat took a blanket and moved into the upstairs playroom which is next to Katie bedroom so we could turn the monitor off and maybe I could sleep. Not even close. She was belting it out and I was getting nauseous, I had to turn on the TV to drown her out and that didn't work so well. After about 30 minutes Nat came back into our bedroom and I could tell he didn't enjoy this anymore than I did, we both hated listening to her scream and decided that the next morning we were going out and buying a video monitor so we could at least see her and know that she was ok.

By about 11:15am she was calming down and so were we, although neither of us could sleep. We just kind of sat there talking about how many naps and Aleve we would have to take in order to survive the next day. By about midnight I think everybody in the house was back to sleep but Katie was back awake around 4:30am and I didn't have the heart to listen to her freak out again so I went in and got her. Sunday was a long day, Nat slept in a bit (until about 6:30am) and I did get a nap. (Don't ask how many Aleve we took?!)

Sunday afternoon we went to Target and bought a video monitor and Nat came home and set it up immediatly.

Last night Katie went to bed, with a full stomach, and slept until exactly 2am. She was up for about 45 minutes, but insted of screaming she fidgeted around her crib. She turned her mobile on and I thought she fell asleep to the music, but when I went over to her room to put a blanket on her she was making noises again so I quickly aborted my mission. Watching her was funny, I kept calling it Katie TV; she would crawl from one end of the crib to the other, stand up and bounce around and then colapse with her thumb in her mouth. By 3am she was back to sleep with little fanfare, I think Nat even fell asleep before she did.

At 5:05am she woke up again and although I was happy it wasn't 4:30am I was still really tired from the past two nights of craziness. I went over to her room to get her up and as I turned the doornob I noticed that it was quiet so I scurried back to our bedroom and turned on the video monitor and lo and behold she was back to sleep. YAY! I crawled back in bed and Katie slept until 6:15am and man did I need that.

It's now 7:30am and we are watching Playhouse Disney and she is playing with a wooden spoon and kicking the recliner. What a nut. Well that is the "crying it out" report from here. We are moving in a positive direction, I think, but it is not easy or fun. I really hope she starts sleeping through the night very soon, for all three of our sakes, but in the meantime she is getting faster, stronger and bigger every day and I LOVE her. Ok she's trying to climb her jumperoo, gotta go.....

Fun Saturday Morning

This was a banner morning for the Burt's, Katie made it through til' morning without an overnight visit from Mom or Dad!! YAY!! Now before we go celebrating Katie's new found sleeping ability let me just add that we had to listen to her cry it out for about 45 minutes at 2:15am before she fell back to sleep, then the cat had a cry it out session around 4am. All in all not bad, pathetic that it isn't bad, but we have learned to live on little sleep. I'll let you all know how she does tonight, now that she's mobile it's a whole new ballgame and we don't know any of the rules.

Babysitting Ben....

Today Katie, my Mom and I played with our friend Ben Sheets, isn't he adorable! Luckily he is in a "Bob The Builder" stage because we have a ton of construction going on in our neighborhood and man did he love it. Too bad it was stinking hot outside and Suzi couldn't hang too long.

Just A Funny

Everyone in the family comments on how Katie and her Dad have the same facial expressions so I thought this picture might help prove our point. Strange, eh?

9 Months Old!!

I almost can't believe it myself, she is 9 months old!! How fast time flies. We had her 9 month checkup this morning and she weighed in at 19 lbs. 3.5 oz. and measured 28.5 inches tall. (50th percentile for weight and just abover 75th for height) Just to put everything in to perspective she was 4 lbs. 6 oz. and birth and 18 inches tall, not even near the growth charts, not even close. So our little miracle continues to grow and learn on schedule, what a blessing. Now if she could just learn to sleep..................

Guess Who Is Standing?

Finally, pictures!!!

We are all moved in and mostly unpacked, but still no camera cord. Nat had to run out and buy a new converter drive for me in part because the cord is still missing and secondly because I kept bugging him about it! Katie is on the move, literaly, beginning to crawl, pull up on furniture and roll from one end of the room to another. She is also working on a tooth and it is bugging the crap out of her. She turns 9 months old on Wednesday so she will be visiting the doctor for a check-up and a shot. (Yes, only one!)
My parents had been on vacation for the whole moving period, you heard that correctly they left me for 3 weeks, and returned last Sunday. This is the kilt they bought for Katie in Scotland, how cute. It's a size 2 so we hope it will fit sometime this spring.

More Katie....

Sorry no pictures.....

We are all moved in!!!

We love the house, it's nice and big and for once we don't have to listen to an adjoining neighbor running up and down the stairs. The cat seems to have great hiding places because we can never find her during the day, it's about midnight before she feels the need to make her presence known. (We are ready to lock her in the basement!!) Katie has adjusted pretty well to the move, she's been taking two good naps in her crib during the day and is asleep around 6:30pm at night. Sure she's still getting up at 5:30am and also around 1am to eat, but around here that's still good. We are still working on locating the cord that connects the camera to the computer, it's probably in a box labeled "Misc." so we won't find it for a while, but I'll keep looking. Ok well I will pass some new house and Katie pictures on as soon as I find the camera cord, until then picture a happy family living with tons of boxes!!! LOVE, SUZI

MOVING!!!

Sorry, no pictures today, Nat packed the cord that plugs the camera into the computer so who knows where it is right now; we have a lot of "junk" boxes! I just wanted to let you all know that moving day is Thursday, Friday we sell this place and buy the new place and Saturday is when everything gets delivered; needless to say I will be out of touch for a few days and will be sore from moving for another few days. We are changing phone numbers so if you didn't get the new digits let me know and I will send it to you. Also I was fooling around with the format of this blog and I think you can now comment on posts, without registering (what a pain), by clicking on the envelope logo underneath each post. Try it out, I'm too lazy to see if I did it correctly; maybe later! Ok well that's it from Jacobus, next post will be from our brand new digs. Send good vibes my way, moving is never fun and it's extra awesome when you do it with an 8 month old baby while your parents are in Greece, I'll get them back later..................Have a good week!!!

Almost Done!!!

Well here she is, the new house is almost done. They laid down the sod yesterday and planted some trees and shrubery (is that the right spelling?). In one week we will be the proud owners and I for one can't wait to get there!!!

Crawling progress??

Ok, so she's cute in the first picture but check out her lack of skill in the next two shots. I don't know if she's getting this crawling thing at all, in fact she looks pretty darn confused about the whole thing in the last picture. Recognize that face (NAT)!!!

Swimming at the Lauer's

My little swimmer!! Everytime my friend Amy's parents go on vacation they give us free reign of their pool, not like we couldn't pop in whenever we wanted any other time, but we take them up on it because we have a little fish baby. This Saturday evening we took a little dip before dinner time and went sans bathing suit because we are lazy and naked babies are cuter. She LOVED it and was yawning while swimming and didn't want to leave. We LOVE the Lauer's, not just because they have a pool, but because they love us and they have a pool. There is a difference!!
Look at her go, where are the 2024 Olympics?

More Feet..........

We still don't understand why she likes to gnaw on feet...........

Two More Cute Katie.

I just thought these were too cute so I had to share!!

New Accessories!

I just thought these were too cute!!! I found little barettes for Katie's hair and so far they are staying in, they're so tiny it's almost hard to manipulate them. Anyhow we are in heavy packing mode so there might be some lags in picture posting, I'll try to keep on top of it. Oh and Katie turned 8 months old this past Sunday, she was 18 lbs. 1.5 oz. and 27 inches (that's my measurements so give or take on that). Hope everyone is having a good week!!!

She Likes Ice Cream.......

Today was Nat's company picnic and Aunt Shannon decided that she would see if Katie liked her ice cream; ummm, yea she did! That's my girl!!

Vertical Katie!

Today Katie sat up on her own for the first time!! It came as a bit of a shock since Nat and I layed her on her back on her play mat and turned around and she was sitting. Hum... Pretty cool! She still is working on crawling, but her new favorite things are rolling across the room and standing in front of the coffee table. She LOVES standing. As long as she is propped against something she will stand forever but the second she decides she's done you better be there to catch her because she goes straight down.

Jacobus Parade

This was our entry, look at all of the lovely patriotic decor. Did we win, NO!! We were robbed by a cute little girl in a motorized Jeep, she was really cute(dang it) and had blonde ringlets, so I didn't feel too badly!! Katie enjoyed looking at all of the other kids and the flags and streamers blowing in the wind, really all of the kids had fun and all looked cute, but we of course had the superstar!!!

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy 4th of July everybody!! I hope you all have a great day stuffing yourselves with hog dogs and washing it down with fireworks! God Bless America!!!