Pictures of the last two weeks

Kara Mae just a few minutes old. You can tell I had to work a little harder for this one, a lot more pain and it was 3 in the morning.



Daddy's first kiss.



Sisters meeting for the first time when Kara was just a few hours old.


Sisters face to face.


Arriving home.




Mama and Kara taking a snooze the evening we came home.


Jana's not so sure about Kara hanging out with Mama.



Sleepy girl.


Holding onto Dada' s thumb - knows her way straight to his heart!



Jana's favorite place to stand - rocking Kara in the bouncer.



Jana started throwing fits and we couldn't figure out what was going on... and then we saw that pic. Can you see her molar? She got all 4 one-year molars and is now working on two bottom teeth too.



Family pic. (Note to self: Don't use "How big is Jana?" as an attention getting technique for a pic.)


Kara Mae hanging out in the bouncer.



Sharing blankie with Baby Sis.


Big Girl! Chillin' on her scooter with her feet up and talking on the phone.


Hanging out with Mama and Baby Sis.



It must be Jana's nap time because it's safe for me to hangout on the floor! :-)



That's my baby sis!



Sleepy head.



Hanging out on Grandma and Grandpa's patio on a warm day.



Great Grandpa and his two girls.

My girls

Here are some pics of my two girls.

The first two are of the girls, both at 10 days old, both wearing the same onesie. It is so amazing to me to see the difference in sizes between the two.


Here's Jana at 1o days old, probably weighing around 6 lbs.



Here's Kara at 10 days old, weighing around 8 lbs, 5 oz.


Here's a close up of Jana at about two weeks old.


Here's a close up of Kara at about two weeks old.



It will be interesting to see if the girls start to look more alike as they grow up, but right now Jana really looks like J and Kara looks like me. However, Jana has my eyes and Kara has J's.

Jana's 14 months old

Well, my baby girl is now 14 months old!

She's still not walking, but is truly close. She's playing with standing and her balance and how much she can move while standing. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it will happen soon!

She's such a chatter box and a total crack up! She loves to play peek-a-boo where she hides behind something and then pops out at you. Her newest favorite word is "puppy" and she still calls every child "baby."

Everyday is such a joy with her and I'm so worried about missing out on things with her when the baby arrives.

I'm feeling okay. I'm having a rough time with my energy level and am having a horrible time with swelling. My hands hurt most of the time because of how swollen they are. I'm also having a hard time fitting into my Danskos which I always was able to fit into with Jana. I'm finding that I'm really sore... in lots of places. The most appropriate to discuss are my stomach muscles and skin over my stomach. I can tell my belly is growing again because a) my pants don't fit and b) the stretch marks are getting worse. J made the comment about how they are concentric around my belly button! Oh joy. But I feel like my stomach muscles are always tight and sore. (Okay, I'm done whining!)

Here are some pics of Jana at Easter at my parents.

Here is my dad with her while cousin Tyler was hunting Easter eggs.

Jana and I hanging out during the Easter egg hunt. Pardon the horrible pic of me. Can you tell I'm not sleeping these days?


Playing with toys on Easter in Grandma and Grandpa's family room.


This was on our trip south while I was working. This is Great-grandpa Ray, Grandma, and Great Aunt Boo.

Jana cracks me up

Here's one of my silly girl eating dinner last night. She managed to make it through all of dinner with a piece of corn on her nose. Have you ever noticed that a lot of my pics are of her eating? It's the only time this kid sits still enough to get a picture of her face!

As requested... new pics

Here are some new pics of my little girl. We hope she's heading into a growth spurt because she's an eating machine. She's chunking up so much! Those cute little chubby cheeks are back.

Here she is last weekend playing the piano with Grandpa.



Here she is taking apart Dada's robot he built with mega blocks. The little stinker stands up to do everything and is constantly on her feet and cruising around, but refuses to walk.




The mohawk hair during bath time! (This goes into the Boyfriend album - to be shown to any boy who wants to take her out! Hee, hee. So evil!)



Brushing her teeth like a big girl after bath time!


Every kid needs one of these - the spaghetti face picture. She LOVES whole wheat rotini with meat sauce. I swear this kid would eat it for every meal if she could.

Jana's 13 months old

I can't believe my baby girl is already 13 months old.

She's such an amazing joy to be around!

We're starting to see some toddler fits and we're not doing a good job of managing them. J and I find ourselves working very hard to keep from laughing hysterically! She even has the lie on the ground and flail her arms and legs. Where do they learn that?

She's like a little parrot! She mimics everything, unless she has an audience of course. On her own, she'll say: mama, dada, baby, doggie (but loves to do the baby sign more), hi, bye bye, and yes. The words she'll repeat after you all the time are: Tigger, banana, please, thank you, moo, baa, roar, up, sheep, Maiya (the dog), and somtimes even Maiya no (oops, we must say that way too often!).

She is definitely a fine-motor kid! She seems to develop by reaching the fine motor milestones before the works on the gross motor skills. She loves to take things apart and put them back together. Her favorite toys at my in laws are their candles. My mother in law has these little tea light seasonal candles (for all seasons) and then the tea lights in the plastic containers. Jana loves to take the tea light out of the holder and then take the candle out of the plastic. Then she puts them back together so she can do it again. She also loves mega blocks where she can put them together and take them apart.

However, we're not really making any big movements toward walking. She cruises everywhere and now that we brought the coffee table back in, she's always standing at it, playing with her toys. She freaks out if she can't reach something and will drop down to crawl to it.

She's doing so much better on food these days. She still loves toast, banana bread and grilled cheese sandwiches, but is expanding her tastes. She still loves all fruit, but is now trying all kinds of vegetables successfully. She now eats peas, carrots, corn, green beans, and lima beans. She LOVES baked potatoes and pasta. She loved lasagna last week when I made it. We actually discovered that she loves plain chicken. I just cook up some plain chicken tenders and she loves them.

She's actually off bottles too! She was a champ switching from formula to milk. We had one day that she was grumpy about getting her milk in a sippy cup instead of a bottle before bed, but after that she was awesome. We gave up the morning bottle this morning with no problem. (Knock on wood! I'll keep my fingers crossed that it stays this way.)

Here are some new pics of Jana

Here's her last bath in the bath seat.

Here she's being a big girl and pulling out all of her toys. This was moments before she up ended herself into the basket.

Smiley girl!


Jana's first attempt at coloring. I LOVE the color wonders, by the way. She couldn't believe we were actually giving her a pen and taking the lid off.

Unfortunately, she also likes to shove as much food in her mouth as she can fit. This was after she shoved in three pieces of her toast and couldn't close her mouth to chew.

Boo boos

Jana took a big spill last night. She was done eating and wanted out of her booster seat, so we set her on the floor. She crawled around, so she was sitting on the floor between J and my chairs, with her feet underneath her. Out of no where, she flopped forward and hit her head on the leg of my chair. She managed to somehow hit it two spots.

You can see the beginning of her bruises: one above her left eyebrow and the other is on her right cheek.


They definitely look worse today, but haven't gotten pics yet today.