Happy First Birthday Kaitlynn!!

We celebrated Kaitlynn's first birthday with a family party. On her actual birthday, she fell down the stairs on the porch (yes, it was my fault for leaving her unattended for even a brief moment) and had wonderful bumps and scratches to show off to everyone at her party. :-) Thankfully, she is pretty tough and it didn't bother her much. We had two sweet wonderful ladies from our church come and take pictures at the birthday party.  Thank you Courtney Bond and Laura Susan Cain for capturing our family memories on this special day! It was a very special gift for us! We are so thankful for your God-given talents and that you are willing to use them to love on others!

Paint Fun!!

Baba got to FaceTime in to the party! The kids loved it. 

Gramm's specialty is making birthday signs!

Thanks GranAnn for a beautiful cake for the special occasion!

Our friend, Matthew was ready for the cake :-)

This last year, we have really loved watching Kaitlynn grow and develop.  She went from this chunky baby who could roll over to a running toddler with a personality in a year! It is crazy how time flies! God has taught me so much about Himself through loving on this little girl! When Kaitlynn was first born I had quite a touch of the blues that seemed to stick around for a couple of months. But even in that time God was showing me love and grace and the bond Kaitlynn and I have is beautiful to me. I've learned to cherish moments that I was too scared/nervous to cherish with William, learned to slow down and enjoy that baby laugh, listen when she chatters, and not sweat so much of the small stuff.  She is a joy and delight.  She does like things her way, just like I do and even voices her opinion about such (again, must be genetic).  She is really easy going.  She loves her thumb! We are lovingly trying to switch her to her paci instead (never thought I would try to make a child take a paci lol).  Kaitlynn loves her big brother and follows him everywhere and wants to try anything he is trying.  She loves to race us through the house and back to the starting point and will just start laughing toward the end making her unable to finish the course.  She is really fun to be around and is really starting to become her own unique person.  She adores her Daddy and lights up when he walks in the house.  She loves to play with toys at home and at church and has tons of fun by herself or with interaction.  Looking back over the year, it's been super tiring, but super rewarding being her parent (along with her big brother).  Having two wonderful blessings in less than two years has already been a great joy to us.  Busy, yes. Tiring, yes.  THE BEST, YES!!
Some memories of Kaitlynn's first year included: learned how to sooth herself to sleep (without beloved paci) at 3 months, found her thumb (insert foot in mouth mom) two weeks later, rolled over from back to tummy at 16 weeks on the day of her dedication to the Lord, went to the CrossPointe church nursery during service without a family member in there at 4 months, rolled to tummy to go to sleep for the first time during two long naps and before going to bed for the night June 20, sleeping 10-12 hours at night consistently at 4 months, went on a trip to the other side of the world at 5 months, didn't sleep through the night again until 10 1/2 months and not consistently until 12 months (blame the trip lol), would not "cry it out" to learn to sleep so we learned a lot about a whole new world of sleeping lol.
Ok so I know, I know, enough with the words....
one last thing....KAITLYNN WE LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER KNOW AND IT IS OUR PRIVILEGE TO PARENT YOU IN SUCH A WAY THAT YOU WILL SEE WHO GOD IS AND HOW HE LOVES YOU!