Blevins Update

It has been a while since I have “blogged” but I really don’t have to much to talk about, and I have not taken any pictures of Kenzie since her birthday. We are working on taking her binkie away from her, and it is going pretty well if you don’t count the half hour before and after she is sleeping. Without her binkie she is jabbering a lot more, she says “cheese” when we take her picture and sometimes I can get her to say “done,” “more” “bird” and “book” and last night she said “thank you” twice. She has 8 teeth now, 4 on top and 4 on bottom, the last two on the bottom came in without any problems, and I was so thankful. We dealt with fevers and puking and runny noses and drool forever with the last teeth. Hopefully, all the rest will come in without issues as well.

Waylon started his new job this week in Spokane so Kenzie and I are on our own for the weeks to come. He will be working every other Saturday, but on the off weeks he gets Friday off so that way he will be able to spend sometime with Kenzie.

I finally got him to sell some of his horns last week. He has been horn hunting for about 3 years now and our little house could not take any more. He got rid of most of his good deer horns, so the ones that remain all fit into the trunk that they belong in. The elk horns are another story….he has 3 sets on top of the armoire in our room and a couple behind it.

I started my free trial at Gold’s Gym last week and I liked it so much that we joined for the year. I also get unlimited tanning so I am pretty excited about that. I have been to the gym everyday for the past week and I have been pretty sore, but it’s worth it if I am able to wear a swimsuit this summer without making everyone puke. Tonight will be the first time that I will go and put Kenzie in the daycare there, it makes me feel a little guilty that she is at daycare all day and then for a while in the evening, but she really gets bored at home, she likes to play with other little kids.

I have my last day of CASA training tomorrow, for those of you who don’t know CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. I will be assigned a case and work with the social worker for a child or children that have been removed from their homes. The purpose is for someone to meet with the child and all of their influences including their parents, foster parents, teachers, counselors, etc. to make a recommendation to the court for the child’s well being. Eventually the court decides if they child can go home or if they need to find another permanent home away from their parents, and this decision is somewhat based on my reports of the child’s’ wishes, how the parents are doing following their case plan (drug treatment, parenting classes, etc), and if the child is in a foster/adopt relationship with the foster parents. I am looking forward to getting started with it, check out the website www.nationalcasa.org if you want more information.

For not having much to say this was pretty long…..

Birthday Pics

So here are some pictures of Kenzie's birthday party and her on her birthay. I took about 250, but since my computer is so slow I'm only going to upload a few. Hope you enjoy!

My little girl is one today....

One year ago right now, we were in the hospital waiting (as we already had been for the past 28 hours) and Kenzington Grace eventually did grace us with her presence at 6:13 p.m. only 39 hours after the first contraction. It has been quite the year for us, I honestly cannot believe how much she has changed in just one year and at the same time its crazy how fast that all went. She had her first holiday the day she was born *(St. Patty’s Day of course). And her second holiday less than one week later as Easter was very early last year. She started out with waking up every 2-3 hours in the middle of night, then her getting up at 5 and not taking a nap for quite a few hours. At 2 weeks she started coming to work with me (I was going crazy staying at home). When she was about 2 months old we took a trip to San Antonio, and then the first week in June she started daycare with Tiffany Gilmore. Throughout the summer we went camping and swimming, she had her first rodeo, parade, and Mariner’s game. We went to a few weddings and had many, many friends be born (Layla, Brit, Jaxon, Ava, just to name a few). She stared to sit up a little before six months and got her bottom two teeth around then too. She moved from her bassinet/playpen in our room to her own crib on my birthday in September. By October she was crawling a little and by the end of October she was into everything. In November she could walk with a push toy and around Christmas (at nine months) she was able to take a few steps. By the middle of January she could walk well, and in February she could officially run. She now has 6 teeth, 2 bottom and 4 top. She can dance, wave, and clap. She is done with formula, feeds herself with a spoon (very messily), loves whole wheat bagels, and likes to play peek-a-boo. She loves to “find” us from around the corner when we are hiding from her and she thinks is hilarious when we jump out and scare her. She is very attached to her blankies, and unfortunately also to her binkies. We are working on getting her off the bottle completely and she only has one per day. She likes to walk around holding onto her spoon after she is done eating. She can throw one heck of a fit if she doesn’t get her way. She says mama, dada, yeah, and a few other things that I am not sure what they mean. She now weights about 20 pounds (up from the 7 lbs 2 oz when she was born). There is so much more to it, but the important thing is, we love her to death!!!

Her birthday party was great, thank you to everyone that came I think that she had a really good time. I have a ton of pictures that I will post sometime soon. We are having a family birthday tonight so I will have pictures of that too.

Oh, and I can finally get pigtails in her hair...

For your viewing pleasure...

Atlanta...and more

Thursday morning I left for Atlanta (for work), it was a good flight and we got to the city at about 4 o'clock their time, which, in my mind left plenty of daylight hours to get some sightseeing done.  Unfortunatly my boss did not see it that way, and we instead spent most of the afternoon/evening in a mall (I usually LOVE to shop, but when I am some place I have never been before I prefer to spend my time doing things that I cannot do around here).  And then we went to our hotel and watched a movie (good movie, The Changling).  The next day we were in our conference all day (which was fine since that was the reason that we were there), but when we were finished we still had plenty of daytime left to do somethings, but once again that did not happen.  We took the MARTA (Atlanta's subway/train system) to Midtown and walked around for about 20 minutes and then went to Old Navy and back to the hotel.  The next day we were in class until 3 then we went to the Olympic Park and the Coca-Cola museum as well as the CNN center.  The Atlanta Hawks happened to be playing that night and we were right next to the stadium (literally), but my boss did not want to be out after dark, so we went back to the hotel.  The next day we came home.  So I do not know much more about Atlanta than I did before I left, however, I do know much more about what were went there to learn about (the conference was very informative), so it all turned out ok, I guess.

Back to the main thing in my life, Kenzie.  She is doing well.  We started her on milk two weeks ago and all seemed fine, however she did have a hive outbreak and I am still not entirely sure what caused that.  We took her off the milk for a few days and the hives left, and we have since put her back on it and the hives have yet to return so we will see.  She is eating mostly table food now, she really likes whole wheat begals and yogurt.  We are having a problem getting her to eat pieces of fruit although she still likes the pureed versions of the same things.  She can feed herself with a spoon now, it takes quite a while and she is messy but she likes it, so we go with it. 

Her birthday party is this Saturday at McDonald's.  I would have perferred to have it someplace else, but with all the kids that will be there I needed to have something for them to do that did not cost too much.  Her acutal birthday is on Tuesday, wow I cannot believe that she has been around for 365 days, how time really does fly.  I am in the process of uploading some pictures from the past month, and I will post them tonight, hopefully.  Waylon and I are putting together her present tonight, so hopefully that does not take too long.

Playing Catch Up

So I realize that my dedication to this blog has dwindled in the past few months and I plan to remedy that sometime in the near future.  I think tonight would be a good place to start and I will update you all on the going ons of the Blevins' household, but you will have to wait a little longer for pictures as I do not have the patience to deal with my 10 year old computer and the speed of the upload. 

As for us,  Kenzie's babysitter had her baby two weeks ago, and the week before that her husband had emergency gal bladder surgery, so we have been babysitter-less for the past three weeks,  however thanks to my mom, grandma, great friends, and a flexible work schedule Kenzie was never left unsupervised.. :)  She will be going back to daycare tomorrow.  I think she really misses it as around here there are no other little ones to play with and she seems to enjoy that interaction. We are starting her on regular milk now as well as working on getting her mostly on table food and off of baby food.  She cracks my up everyday with the stuff that she does.  Lately she has been drinking water and she will pile a whole bunch in her mouth and then let it all run down her chin and laugh, she thinks its great.  Thursday when I was home with her she was kinda being a turd and I was putting dishes away from the dishwasher, I turned around and she had crawled inside of it, craked me up.  Later, she brought me a book and hit me on the leg with it until I sat down and read it to her (10 times, its only a 6 page book).  Wow, she is growing up so fast.  

I was able to get about 10 scrapbook pages done this week, so that made me pretty happy as usually I do not get time to do them except at scrapbook camps.  I am caught up to the beginning of February now, so I think I will be able to take a ton of pictures at Kenzie's birthday party on the 14th of March.  I really cannot believe that she will be a year old in 16 short days.  

On Thursday I will be flying to Atlanta for 4 days for work, I am pretty excited because I have never been there, but nervous because it will be the first time that I have left Kenzie and acutally went out of town, usually if my mom takes her Waylon and I just stay home. 

Waylon is now back to work, and I don't honestly think he is too excited about it.  After spending all those days with Kenzie he really bonded with her and if he could be a stay at home dad I think he would now, seriously.  

Well that's all for us now, more to come.