11th Hour/Week and 1st Easter all rolled into 1

When I found out my due date was in January I was so excited that in her first year of life my baby would get to experience all the holidays – or more accurately – I’d be able to dress her up for all the holidays in her first year.  I sorta skipped Valentines – I think she did wear pink but I didn’t get her a “my first valentines” onsie. I got the “Kiss Me I’m Irish” onsie for St. Patty’s day, and now she’s worn her first Easter dress.

It wasn’t anything fancy, and I’m going to try to make sure she wears it again, but it was a dress all the same. And even though she didn’t know what was going on really we made an Easter basket out of the stuff her Grandma (Rita) and Great Grandma sent her. A short video is posted in Picasa. We opened Easter eggs full of candy, money, and jokes and showed her the bunnies we had around the house. Oh man, we forgot to read her Cliffords First Easter. Oh well – I’ve read it to her a 100 times already, along with Coudory’s First Thanksgiving since it doesn’t really matter right now. :-) Anyway, next year when she can walk we’ll attempt to “hide” the eggs and (of course) help her look for them. :-)

The great-grandparents and Nana were in town this week. That’s right, my mom has decided to be Nana. The great grandparents were absolutely in love with Ms. Kayla. Every time she smiled or tried to laugh they had a blast. And even when she wasn’t they still wanted to hold her and cuddle her and push her in the stroller all the time. We went to Victoria Gardens the first day they were here and had lunch at P.F. Changs. That was the first time she was in an actual restaurant… Chick-Fil-A doesn’t really count. :-) Luckily, she slept through half of our lunch there but when she woke up she was nice and quiet and quite content to sit on my lap and look around at everything. We also had her picture taken with the Easter bunny. At this point smiling on command isn’t possible so it’s not the best picture in the world but it works.

On Saturday we walked around Claremont and went out to lunch downtown there. It’s such a nice town and the weather was decent so it was a nice little Saturday.

And Sunday evening, after the Great Grandparents left, we opened up Kayla's Easter baskets and Nana took Kayla for a walk.  Pretty low key Easter day but we had fun and it wore Kayla out.  :-)

For dinner we went to Olive Garden for dinner! I point out the eating because she has yet to eat out with just Eric and I because we weren’t quite sure if she’d be good. But she either sits and looks around at everything or sleeps through the event so maybe we’ll venture out more. But we’ll have to do it early because we went to Olive Garden around 6:30pm and she slept until we got home at 8 – she normally goes to bed around 8 or 8:30 … so she didn’t go to bed until closer to 10 but that’s okay. I was still able to get everything done and we stuck to the routine of eat, bath, wrap, sleep – she doesn’t know what time it is.

Unfortunately she caught pink eye at daycare so now we were dealing with that. She has to have ointment put in her eye 3 times a day for at least 7 days! It seems to have cleared up with only a couple days of this but I best continue – don’t want it coming back. And now Eric’s sick so she might catch that which would stink. Poor girl has been through enough already in the last couple of weeks.  Not that it bothers her - and it sure doesn't bother me to stay home with her.  :-)

You know how everyone says kids have more fun with the boxes than the toys that came in them. Well, a few weeks ago we were sent coupon book from Similac and in there are development cards – cards that tell you how they are developing right now. One of them had black and red dots on white background covering the entire card. We discovered this week that she absolutely LOVES that card. We put it up in front of her and she just smiles big ole gigantic smiles. It’s so cute. She has a drawer full of rattles and toys, a tummy time surfboard mat, and a play gym but she gets the most immediate enjoyment out of that card! Too funny! The other thing that gave her immediate enjoyment - Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chip Cookies! Check out the video!

We’re beginning to see more and more of her personality. She’s a generally happy little baby. Smiles a lot but even when she’s not she’s quite content and quiet. I think she’s beginning to realize she has appendages like hands and feet. I can’t believe she wouldn’t have known until now that she has a hand considering the amount of time that hand spends in her mouth, but what do I know. And, even though she was never a big crier, she is crying less and less... though some nights do seem to be worse than others but that's to be expected.

People told me the first few weeks would be so hard and be this gigantic blur but while I was going through it I didn’t think it was that bad. Now that I look back – it is a big ole blur! I don’t hardly remember any of it. A friend of mine at work said it was hard but that “it helps that you’re completely enamored with your baby”… boy was he right. Like pregnancy, if we remembered it all that clearly we might not go on to have baby #2, or 3, or 14. :-) She's really pretty perfect - makes us nervous to have a 2nd one. :-)

Alright, alright... enough. Hope you had a Happy Easter!