She loves to read!!!

Halloween!!

Halloween was bittersweet for me this year, I love Halloween, I always have, and was so so looking forward to it this year, because I had my little girl to take out and enjoy it with!! Unfortunately things did not quite turn out the way I had planned, the Wednesday before I had surgery, gall bladder removal, and a small lump in my back to be removed as well. If I would have only had the gall bladder done I would have been able to take McKelle Trick or Treating, but with both I was still to much in pain to be able to, it broke my heart I wanted to so bad! Luckily her daddy was able to, and she was able to get her little pumpkin bucket quite full! And she was absolutely adorable in her elephant costume!!! Here's to next year!!!

To bad its barney! Watch to the end..too cute! (Needs sound)

Things she does...

There really is no expressing how much I love this little girl, and how much everyday I look forward to spending all my time with her and watching what new things she'll do that day. There are so many. When she drops something she'll hurry and look at me, throw her hands to her cheeks and make her mouth into the biggest O shape she can make it, sometimes saying uh oh, sometimes just doing the expressions. She has lately learned that she loves spinning around in circles on her own, not caring that she gets dizzy and goes plop after wards, in fact more often then not she'll laugh. She loves putting her things away as long as seconds later she can dump them all out again. She has learned that if she goes into a room and shuts the door, if she knocks, mom will come and get her out again. She LOVES to run, when she sees you coming and she wants to play she'll turn around and run as fast as her little legs will carry her, and I just melt it is so cute! She waves and blows kisses, and loves her belly button, finding it hard to keep her shirt pulled down. When mommy has to say no, she'll plop herself down and grunt...seriously where do they get these things!! She absolutely loves to rearrange my kitchen now that she has learned to open cupboards and drawers (good thing we already had the ones we wanted kept shut child proofed), she takes out all the bowls, and from the drawers, the towels and potholders, and then when she sees me coming to come save my kitchen, she takes off running with them in her hands, and I can't help but laugh. She really is so fun, and my world!

More walking

And she walks!!

My little girl is getting soooo big. She was taking small steps before her birthday, but the day after her birthday her little cousin Adalene who is 10 walked all over the place with her only holding one hand. It seemed to make McKelle into a brave sole, because from then on, she has been a walking machine. She takes off on her own and walks everywhere!! It is so incredibly cute, she still mostly has her hands up in the air, to help with balance. The only thing she hasn't quite mastered is getting herself back up off the floor, she'll have to crawl somewhere to get her up, and then from there she will just take off and walk again...what a great birthday milestone for her! I do love watching her learn new things!

More birthday pics!

McKelle turns 1!!

I still can't believe that a year has gone by and my little Mckelle has turned a year old! But on July 13th that is exactly what happened. A year ago I was meeting this perfect angel, bringing her home and learning to be the best mom I could possibly be for her. It has been the most rewarding, fantastic, loving, enjoyable year of my life. And once again when I looked at her on her birthday on Tuesday, I let the tears come, on this day I still couldn't believe I was so incredibly blessed to be able to be her mom. Words can never explain the blessings of being a mother.

Throughout the day we decorated, and got ready for her very first party! I had been planning it for like 3 months haha. I wanted it to be so fun and perfect for her, even though I do know she won't remember it in years to come I know that I will, for it was HER day! The decorations and cake matched, I of course got her her very own cake, which she of course dug right into and loved it, and ate a lot of it! So many friends and family came to celebrate her life with us on this first birthday. We started with gifts, she was a little tired when we started gifts, but she held it together! She got so many, and loves them all. We moved on to introducing her cake next, and again let me tell you, she absolutely loved that, cake everywhere and loved eating it. While she was enjoying her cake, we all ate and visited, and enjoyed watching her devour it. It was a great day and night for her and were lucky enough to share it with the special people in our lives!

My mom and dad, my sister Carm, and her kids Adalene, Alex, and Ashley from Kansas, Quinn, Ryan, and Kaea. My brother JayC, and his girlfriend Larissa. Alex's parents, and three of his younger brothers and sisters, plus Ashley his other sister. And also our great friends James, Courtney, and Little Ava, were all amoung our guests. It was such an enjoyable and special night, and I am so thankful for all of them, that they could celebrate with us.

Happy Birthday McKelle, I love you beyond words!!


More pictures to come!!

4th of July

Her red white and blue shorts are covered, but she did enjoy dressing up for the holiday..haha. Throughout the week we did a few things. Auntie Ry, cousin Kaea, along with the two of us went to the Gateway, and hit up some sales..shopping always seems to tucker our little ones out, but they both seem to love the shopping experiences that we give them! On Saturday the 3rd, we had dinner with friends, then at 10:05 when the fireworks began, we were there to watch and enjoy! At the beginning when they first started, McKelle absolutely loved them, she clapped, and laughed, and smiled, she loved the colors and the lights. Towards the end though, she began to get tired, rubbing her eyes and yawning, and that is when she decided that the noise was to0 much, and kept saying mom, mom, mom. And I had to keep saying momma's here, and daddy too. She calmed down, but man was the little darling tired, then the colors would capture her attention again. When they finished we went home put her right to bed, and she fell instantly to seep. Overall we had such an enjoyable holiday, and another first for our little girl! How fun and exciting it is that we get to share all of these firsts with her!

10 months

It seems unreal that in a little over a month, that McKelle will already be a year. It does not seem that it was a year ago, that we were getting ready to have her. She is such a big girl, and so incredibly cute and fun. She is all over the place, my little explorer, if she can find a maze to go through, she will do it. She loves walking along the furniture and and walking as long as she has something to push. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of walking without having something to hang onto yet, because she is always in a hurry and just wants to take off! She eats everything, and if I am eating she better be eating the same thing, she'll eat anything you give her, and a lot of it! Her favorite I think though is anything pasta, I swear she can eat more of that then I can. I thought it would be good to start easing her onto the sippy cup, because I didn't want her reliant on a bottle after one year, well it proved to be a lot easier than I thought for she is completely on the sippy already and knows that she is a big girl. She's learning to wave, and give a five, although she is very stubborn as to when she will give them...it is up to her when she wants to, and nobody can make her haha..she knows nose really well, and ear almost as well. She loves baths, and she loves books. She has a pair of little sunglasses that she loves to wear and will wear them forever if she could, the girl just loves her sunny's! She is such a joy, and makes me laugh and smile everyday, she pulls the funniest cutest faces, and makes the funnest noises, and her personality is a joy to behold! I love her!

9 months...what????

Today we had McKelle's 9 month appointment, when they say the time goes fast..they mean it! I can not believe that in 3 months my newborn is going to be 1 year!!! She is still a little munchkin. 16 pounds 14 ounces, and 27 and a half inches, 16 percentile in weight, and 48 percentile in length, so she is a tall one! She really is just growing so big! She crawls (both regular, and army) whichever she feels in the mood for. She pulls herself to a standing position and walks along the furniture. She says both mom, and dada, and loves to say hi, be it to people she knows or strangers. Lately she has developed a very deep growl, that turns my sweet little gizmo, into a gremlin haha...but oh it is so dang cute! She really has a fun and loving personality!!! Man, I love her!!!

Easter fun!

We had tons of fun being able to give our little McKelle a fun Easter! We had tons of plastic eggs that of course had candy in them, she loved them! We also gave her lots of candy, although it will fall to her daddy and I to eat it...oh the hardship!!! ;-) Of course we also spoiled her with a couple of fun toys for her to play with..she loves mom's computer, so I got her her own, and gee what do you know, she still loves mom's...luckily she loves her as well! And of course, although it was conference Sunday we still got her a very cute Easter dress! I am so thankful to be able to have these fun and amazing holidays with such a doll!

Ode to Joy

Joy Collings was Mine and Jason's first. We were so very excited to have this little one, the baby's room was fun to decorate, green carpet (like grass) blue walls, and white clouds, and bees and whinnie the pooh decals on the walls...it was darling! Our doctor was in Evanston, and on our 4 month appointment we were very excited on that day because we were finally going to get to find out if we were going to have a boy or a girl!!!! Instead right off the doctor noticed that things were not as they should be (he barely looked to let us know what the gender was, he said a "boy"). He proceeded to point out things that were not right and was very thorough and extremely good about informing us on the truth. First off there was no amniotic fluid, and instead the fluid was where the kidneys and lungs should have been, he informed us that it looked as though it was what is known as Potters Syndrome, where they are born without kidneys, therefore could not develop lungs. We knew on that day that our baby would not live. We were absolutely heartbroken, it was unreal, and Jason and I went home, held each other and cried, the devastation of such news is hard to talk about. When I was almost 6 months we decided to induce, she had died the night before I had her, and she needed to be born, when she was, that is when we found out that our little boy that we were going to name Joey, was a little girl instead, and that is how we got our little bundle of Joy!!!! She was stillborn, but still so beautiful, I often wonder if she and McKelle would have any resemblance, since there is a lot of me in McKelle, I am sure there is, although if she would have had dark hair like her dad, that would have been so beautiful! Oh how I miss my angels! Mommy sure does love you!!!!

mcKelle Ryan

Although McKelle will be 8 months on the 13th, here are some of the things she does, and has learned throughout month 7. She loves sitting up, and thinks that she is a big girl, and indeed she is. Although she rocks back and fourth she seems to be completely content on doing the army crawl, she loves it, and goes so many places. It is darling and I love it! She loves to stand, and thinks its perfectly fine to start taking those steps to get her to where she wants to go, (us holding her hands of course). She smiles, laughs, talks, and blows raspberries all the time, and is such a happy little girl! She always wakes up very happy...most of the time I don't even know she is awake, til she starts talking and playing, and then when I go to get her out of her crib, she just looks and me and gets so excited!! It is only one of the highlights of my day!! I love this little girl!!! How lucky am I!!!

10 years ago..

It was 10 years ago that I was again blessed enough, to welcome an angel into my arms for a short time. Kyle Robert was born January 23rd, 2000, and lived for 10 hours. He was absolutely beautiful with golden skin, and tight little blonde corkscrew curls. I was told that his dad had the same hair, I loved it. And I love him so much. We knew with this little guy, that we would not be able to raise him at this time. We spent as much time holding and loving him as we could. All too soon, it was time for him to leave us. The days that followed were kind of a blur, I remember after his burial, as people were leaving, I was still standing there, my dad came to me and said," it's time to say goodbye", and all I could say was, "I don't know how". But I can say, that I was and am so thankful for the knowledge I have of the gospel in my life. It helped me through the most difficult times and trials in my life. And I am so blessed to have known and to be able to raise 3 perfect angels!

Oh how time fies when you're having fun...

I can't believe that McKelle is 6 months already! She had her 6 month appointment today and is 14 pounds 13 ounces, and 26 inches. 27 percentile in weight, and 51 percentile in length. She is growing so much and is such a joy! She rolls all over the place, and sometimes I truly wonder how she got where she ends up. She sits up, and she grabs for everything! She loves baby food, and surprisingly, at this point she likes vegetables more then fruit. She loves pushing toys out of her reach, and then gets mad when she has to work at getting to them again. She lifts herself up on her hands, her arms completely straight, or she'll push up on her knees, but she hasn't quite mastered doing it at the same time, to learn to crawl yet. She loves her exersaucer, bouncer and swing. She still sleeps through the night, and I love it when I go in when she wakes up and she looks up at me and gets the biggest grin and starts kicking with excitement, and I couldn't be happier being her mom. It still amazes me at how blessed I am to have this little darling in my life. She is the love of our lives.