my little california surfer girl

the post is a little late (like a month and a half) but the pictures are from when she was six months old. sine it was right in middle of the summer, we felt it was appropriate to do a beach them photo session. and what's the fun of a beach if you cant bare it all right!?!?


i seriously am in love with all my pictures that brooke does for me! she is so patient with trying to get taylor to smile and work with all the cute poses. im sure it helps that she has a super expensive camera and all the lighting and stuff too, but id like to think it helps that i have cute kids to start off with. i love how perfect her complexion is in the picture!


she wasn't at all interested in smiling during this photo session, but at least she wasn't making scary funky faces either. guess you gotta take what you can get when you're working with a baby.

and finally a crack of a smile! i love the faded colors in this one! i really like the color ones best where you can see her bright blue eyes, but these always look so neat too! for her seven months pictures brooke was sick, along with her kids too i think. so we had to go to JCPenny's instead. but i think they did a good job, and will be anxious to pick em up in a couple weeks and post em on here too!

i swear she didn't feed herself!

k so this is taylor this evening after my attempts to feed her vegetable beef. i dont know what it is about baby food that has carrots as the #1 ingregient, but this is what it does to my poor childs face. i have to read the jard every day to make sure im not giving her too many carrots, cause we dont want her to turn orange. poor landen went through a little orange phase before i realized that all the baby dinners are made with carrots! LOL
you cant really see much of her bib or body but she wasnt that messy at all. its just her face :). she is such a good little eater and never complains no matter what i give her. she's up to eating three times a day of real baby food (fruit in the morning, veggie at lunch and a dinner type meal at obviously dinner) plus she still takes a 6oz bottle every 4 hrs during the day. any my little angel is sleeping 12 hours straight at night for almost a month now!! a few nights ago was my first experience with going to bed at bedtime and not waking up til it was morning. i seriously hadnt done that in YEARS and it felt soo good! a girlfriend of mine commented today and taylor has suddenly really started growing more hair. im not sure its growing fast yet, but its definitely getting more than just fuzz. when she wears a headband it actually lays over the band now and when we take it off she gets crazy action all over. she has been such a fun baby so far and im really enjoying her alot! hopefully more pictures to come soon! and blog updates, since ive been slacking lately :)

our trip to CALM

some of my friends in the neighborhood put together this little co-op preschool thing. the moms all take turns having the kids at their homes and attempt to teach the kids something fun and educational for two hours. i didnt join the group, but they were all nice enough to allow us to tag along on their field trip today to CALM.



There's definitely nothing fancy about this little attempt of a zoo, but its local and fairly cheap and the little kids love it. landen and sadie (my little daycare munckin) ran all over the place checkin out the animals native to california. we were able to keep the kids outdoors and having a good time for nearly three hours and the weather was perfect! then we all stayed and had a fun little picnic together.



i think their next field trip is in another couple months and im sure we will try to tag along for that one too. i hear that have a few fun ones planned out throughout the year. we loved spending the day with our friends!

baby butts drive me nuts!!!

so i might sound crazy but taylor and I have made a big change in our lives (and poor joe too). we have decided to switch to cloth diapers!!! no she was not having an allergic reaction to disposable diapers, and no we are not crazy wacko tree huggers. i had thought about trying cloth back when i was pregnant with her, but then i got a zillion packs of diapers at my shower and didn't want them to go to waste. plus when they are newborns, they seriously poop every hour and its always nasty poop. so i decided id wait until she wasn't pooping so often and it wasnt so runny. she's now just over seven months, and to be honest i kinda forgot about the whole cloth diaper idea. but i saw someone selling some on craigslist the other day and it totally got me thinkin again. so here we are!!



for those of you who have never done any research on the matter, there are tons of options out there. and they are waaay better than back when we were babies. so far i don't like ones that secure about the baby with velcro, but totally like the snaps instead. i thought id like ones that were all one solid piece but quickly decided those were too bulky. so now i use these cute little oens that are known as pocket diapers. they are waterproof on the outside and with all the layers of snaps you dont have to continually buy bigger sizes. they are supposed to fit until the kid is potty trained! we will see about that one though :)
the diaper has a pocket throught the middle where you slide in something absorbent and there you go. for night time you can add an extra layer or whatever you need. so far we are loving them! yes cleaning off the poop is not the most glamorous thing in the world, but im fine with it and its soo nice not throwing away 10 diapers a day just wasting all that money!!! not to mention these are soo much cuter than pampers or huggies or whatever brand of disposable you can think of. much thanx to my great cousin marguerite for loaning me all her fuzzy bunz and for all her advice in the cloth diaper dept.

oh the joys of being a mom!

ok so i haven't taken any pictures with my real camera lately (just my cell phone) so i don't have anything cute to show off this week. but i want to stay up to date with my postings, just i thought i'd fill ya in on some of my recent funny experiences. landen has FINALLY accomplished daytime potty training. he still wears a pull-up to sleep, but he doesn't have to be reminded a zillion times to go potty during the day. he will actually come tell me when he needs to go, and takes care of it himself. of course he yells for me to come help with clean up duty when it's #2, but its soooo much better when its not smeared all over his bum and in his clothes!!! sorry if this is TMI, but most of you who read this are moms, so you understand :) landen is really enjoying his preschool so far (he goes twice a week) and i can already tell he's learning things. his teacher has such cute ideas for how to teach them things. he comes home and tells me what he learned and i always wonder why i didn't think of that idea! taylor is seven months old now and she is actually sleeping 12 hours straight at night! i dont think landen EVER did that as a baby, and its sooo nice! i put her down about 7 and she wakes up about 7 the next morning. no more middle of the night feedings!!!!! she is getting close to crawling as well. if you put her down on her belly is she get up on her hands and knees and kinda rock back and forth for a while and it's soo cute. we are starting to have nicer weather here in good ol bakersfield and we are really loving playing outside more often. not to mention getting to bust out the cool weather wardrobe that i totally love.
of course my own kids arent the only ones around my house getting into funny things. the other day i was watching my friends boys and the potty trained one forgot to flush the toilet. i didn't realize that was a problem until his two younger brothers decided to go splash around in it while i wasn't looking! the little girl sadie that i babysit has learned how to climb out of the playpen i put her in for naps. so the poor thing just gets locked in the bedroom and hammers on the door until she finally passes out and sleeps on the floor. today while i had my back to her she found a jar of glue and decided to finger paint herself with it! we quickly cleaned up the mess, but boy was it a shocker when i first turned around.
well that's all for now. as soon as i get some pictures from our recent fair trip ill make a post about it. adios for now!