Christmas 2009

After spending 2 Christmas Season's in Korea, it was GREAT to be in America! It was so much fun being a part of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. It was great seeing all the Christmas lights shining when out and about at night. I just absolutely LOVE Christmas...can you tell? We had a great Christmas. It was great starting to teach about the holiday. I'm sure that by next year he'll be starting to "get" it, but this year was still fun. Now for some pictures....

Christmas Eve

Caden seemed just as interested in (or maybe even more so) Uncle Eric's water bottle as the gifts everyone was exchanging.

Caden opening his first present with the help of Daddy





Christmas Morning


This year we actually had to wake Caden up. We got him up around 8 so that we could feed him breakfast and see what Santa left for him. Unfortunately he woke up with a runny nose. He was still his happy self though.


Opening up one of his presents from Santa with Mommy's help.

Crawling across the room for another present.

Our house Christmas morning :)


Around 9 we headed to my parents house to exchange with my parents and Aunt Courtney and Uncle Eric.

The stocking were hung by the chimney with care....

Thought it looked like a really cool picture!

Caden looking at his stack of presents.

Opening gifts continued past his morning nap.

So he napped in Pap's arms with Kirby & Kylie.

Christmas afternoon we headed out to Andy's parents' house to hang out and exchange gifts with them.

Chillin' with Grandaddy...."Boy, this has been a long day!"

Playing on my new alphabet train

Eating wrapping paper...a very familiar sight on Christmas day!

I hope your Christmas day was as enjoyable and filled with as much joy and thanks as ours was.

Now its off to prepare for my baby's first birthday party....where did the time go????

11 Months

Well as hard as it is to believe Caden is 11 months old. He is full of life! He loves to be with us and follows we were are. If I am in the kitchen cooking, he's in the kitchen investigating what is going on. His first word was Mama, which he said for the first time at about 10 1/2 months. He is babbling constantly, but says Mama all the time. I think he picked a good word for his first word. He also got his 7th tooth (bottom front left). He didn't seem very phased by getting this tooth. That was a nice change :) He weighs approximately 22 pounds and is growing before our very eyes. He continues to be a great baby and is generally very happy. There isn't much that makes him cry! Guess its time to start planning his 1st Birthday Party. Wow...where did that time go??? Without further ado the part you all want to see...

11 Months Old with my bear..the bear is beginning to look small

10 Months Old ...a little late

This post is sooo late. Guess better late than never. Life seems to be quite busy. Caden keeps us very busy. He definitly likes to be constantly moving around and he's very fast as well. At his 10 month birthday he was 21 lbs. 14 oz. Wow! What a big boy. He absolutely loves food :) He is such a good eater. So far he is not seeming picky other than he HATES mashed potatoes. Weird. Right before he turned 10 months he got sick for the first time. Wednesday night he spiked a 103 fever so we took him to the emergency room. They told us that he seemed otherwise healthy so it was probably just a virus. They told us to alternate Tylenol and Motrin every four hours. We did that and the fever broke on Thursday. Then Friday he broke out in a rash. Friday he was also seen by his pediatrician and she confirmed that the rash showed it was viral. A few days later Daddy ran a 103 fever. By Saturday Caden was back to his happy self!

Here are some pictures of our sweet baby boy!

Baby on the move.

While the pictures were being taken Caden thought it would be funny to come crawling to the camera. What a cutie!

He finally stayed put long enough to actually have a picture taken with the bear. He's definitely surpassed the size of the bear.

9 Months Old

Wow...9 months! I believe Caden is growing before our very eyes! He's becoming such a big boy. He is absolutely wonderful too :) Barely cries. Is just a happy baby. What more could we ask for? He went from learning how to crawl to crawling EVERYWHERE! He is also pulling up on EVERYTHING. Before long, I'm sure he'll be cruising along our couch. His bear used to look huge and now he's bigger than him.

At his 9 month appointment he weighed 20 lbs 2 oz and was 28 inches long. He is in the 50% for both height and weight.
He is really starting to "talk." He seems to look talking. I wonder where he got that from???He's got the ba ba ba's down. Daddy thinks he's going to soon be saying da da da.

We are working on eating more green veggies and he's doing better. He has always been a fan of the yellow/orange veggies.

He has such a sweet personality!

More Milestones :)

As I sit and type this update it is so hard for me to belive it, but my baby turned 9 months old today. He is such a joy in our lives. He constantly brings smiles to our faces. We are certainly blessed!

I have been meaning to post this update for over a week. On Tuesday, October 6th I went in to get Caden up from his nap and to my surprise he was standing up. He had pulled himself up in his crib for the very first time. I did not have my camera with him so I kept peeking in before I would go get him in hopes of finding him standing up again to get a picture of it. Finally, two days later, he did it for me and I got some adorable pictures of him. So these are from that Thursday.

Now when we go to get him out of his crib he is standing there waiting on us. It is so cute :) He is starting to do it in other places, but he isn't doing it as consistantly as he is in his crib.

Don't you love this smile?

Later that evening on Oct. 8th while Andy and I were sitting eating dinner Caden was playing on the floor. All of the sudden I looked over and I told Andy, "Look! I think he's crawling!" He had been doing the Army crawl, but on that Thursday he decided to get his belly off the ground and crawl for real!

I'm coming to get you!

There I go...

Off to explore the house!

Modeling for the camera

Guess he's used to his mama taking tons of pictures of him. He certainly doesn't mind!


He has his 9 month check up appointment Thursday morning. I'll post an update after his appointment, as well as his 9 month bear picture.

Hope you are enjoying fall (or winter as it feels like in VA)!

8 Months Old and Welcome to America!!!!!!!

Well, it has been a LONG time since I've updated the blog. So long that we were still in Korea for the last post. Our flight from Korea was fairly flawless. Just a minor incident with luggage. Caden did very well on the flight. The people around us commented that they never saw a baby do so well on such a long flight! We enjoyed about 2 weeks in PA hanging out with family and relaxing. We are now in Virginia and are fairly settled in. The day we moved in Caden got sick :( That was not fun. We were able to get him into the doctor and it was only a yucky chest cold. He is all better now.

Caden is already 8 month old!!!!!! At 8 months he weighed 19 lbs. 2 oz. at his sick dr. visit. He is enjoying a lot of new toys that we had waiting here for him.

Side by Side

Taking my picture isn't as easy anymore.

I was trying to army crawl to mom to get the camera.

I'm getting big!

Look at me sitting in my new high chair.

Don't I look like such a big boy?

On Thursday, Caden got his 3rd tooth. It was the tooth beside his middle left upper tooth. Then Saturday morning when we woke up his two upper middle teeth had broken through. That's 3 teeth in less than 48 hours!!!!! He's not done yet though. He still has one more that is about to break through! Poor baby isn't doing so well with all this teething.

Caden's Faces

Caden is doing great eating baby food so we thought that we would try some finger food. Last week he had a small piece of a saltine that he gagged over. Then we tried a cheerio and he gagged about that too. So this week I bought him some of the Gerber Puffs in the banana flavor. I thought that since he LOVES bananas that maybe he would like these. These are some of the faces we got.

I'm not too sure about this.

Oh my, what a face!

Daddy just gave me another one!

We really think that it is more of a texture issue since he has never had something dry. He is doing progressively better with them. I'm sure he'll get used to them and love them like he does all other food.

On a side note, one more week til we are stateside!