First Outing

Besides the trip home from the hospital, we did not venture out of the house for five days.  Kate had her first check-up on Tuesday, so the four of us were excited to do something different.  Audrey had told Kate all about "Docker Barb," so Kate was excited to see her at the clinic.  We survived a trip to the doctor, a pizza lunch, and a trip to Wal-Mart as a family of four.  Kate slept almost the entire time, which is one perk of traveling around with a newborn!  Here are a couple pictures of our beautiful girls all dressed up for their outing.

Diaper Cage

Lately Audrey has been busy making "cages" in our house.  It started a couple weekends ago, when she moved all her little chairs and the laundry basket around the couch.  Jeremy was on the couch, so she said, "I put Dad in a cage."  Since then, she has made many different cages out of shoes, books, and other chairs.  On Tuesday, she even made a diaper cage.  I went into the cage with her and read a book.  I guess this is the fun we create when it's too cold to play outside!

Baby Kate

Baby Kate came home on Thursday, and we were both so excited to be out of the hospital!  She is doing very well and seems to have made a better adjustment to a day/night schedule.  Her big sister is helping as much as she can but runs in the other direction if any crying is involved. "Too loud!" is what we usually hear from Audrey! :)  Here are some of the pictures from our hospital stay and one from home.

I took a picture wearing this same shirt and Mila on the ledge when we went in to deliver Audrey! :)

Audrey's first sighting of Kate included a stunned expression on her face.

The second visit went much better!

Welcome, Kate!

On Monday, December 16th, at 11:48 a.m., we welcomed Kate Evelyn Paulsen into our little family!  She weighed 9 lbs., 3 oz. and was 21 inches long.  Besides being awake most of her first two nights, Kate is doing very well.  We are planning on being home tomorrow!  If you would like to see the pictures that were taken of Kate in the hospital, please visit this website:

http://www.mom365.com/babyphotography.aspx  .

Then you have to enter in some of Kate's information.  Hopefully it works for you to see our beautiful baby!  Otherwise, I will post pictures very soon.

Change is Coming...

This week will be filled with big changes for Audrey and our little family of three.  We enjoyed a quiet weekend together, filled with lots of playing, coloring, reading, and preparations.  We are excited for all that is to come, especially to see if it's going to be a little brother or sister for Audrey who is joining our family!  We will update the blog as soon as we can.

Decorating the Tree

We set up our tree last weekend, and we couldn't have done it without Audrey's help! :)  She was with us throughout the entire process, even though she would occasionally get distracted and leave.  She has enjoyed admiring the ornaments and has been much better than her furry sisters at leaving things alone.  Audrey and I have declared, though, that this is the last year to have an artificial tree in our living room.  Next year, our little family of four will pick out the perfect real tree!

Sometimes even a sock can be very distracting when you're trying to decorate a tree!

Baking

This weekend Audrey and I had to make cookies for a holiday celebration that was going on here in town.  Audrey put on her new owl apron and had a great time helping me put the ingredients into the bowl.  The best part of the whole baking experience for Audrey was "having" to taste test the chocolate chips and M & Ms before we put them into the bowl.  Audrey just wanted to make sure nothing was stale!

Even though she looks perplexed, we really did have fun baking together!

Big Girl

Audrey transitioned last week to her "big girl" bed in her new room.  Besides a few tearful moments when she was first alone in the room, Audrey has done an amazing job!  She has still been sleeping great through the night, and she doesn't get out of bed on her own in the morning.  She just calls for me to come and get her out.  We haven't reminded her yet that she can get out because we don't really want her wandering through the house!  When we had a fog delay one morning this week, she even slept in until 8:00.  What a weight off our shoulders to have that big move done!

Since I probably won't make it to a Christmas celebration this year, I made Audrey wear her Christmas dress for an early celebration with the Ihde side.  I just wanted to see how adorable she would look! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Audrey would like to wish all her fans a happy Thanksgiving!  She hopes you were able to spend the day with the family and friends you love.  She even cooked her own Thanksgiving meal for a few of her favorite friends!

Shaving Cream

To pass the time on some of these cold late fall weekends, we have been playing in shaving cream.  We spread it out on the counter, draw in it, and even write some words.  Audrey was hesitant at first to get messy, but she eventually joined right in.  She even got Dad to play and get messy, too!  It's hard to say no to this cute little face.

Happy Birthday, Audrey!

It's so hard to believe our beautiful little girl turned two yesterday!  She has grown and changed so much throughout these past two years.  She is such a happy, talkative, fun-loving, and active girl.  We definitely know how blessed we are to have her in our lives.  

Yesterday Audrey had a Mickey Mouse-themed party, as our little girl loves Mickey and his friends.  She was joined by many of the people she loves, and she thanks everyone for making the trip to see her!  She received many, many wonderful presents, but her favorite part was just getting to spend time with all of you at once!  When she woke up this morning, she said, "Mama, wanna go party."  Who wouldn't want a birthday party every day?

 

Audrey does love all her presents, though, and spent all day today going from one thing to another and tried everything out multiple times.  They will help us stay nice and occupied throughout this long winter! :)

Thank you again to everyone.  Happy Birthday, Beautiful Audrey!

The day started with wearing a crown while eating breakfast!  She's the birthday queen.

She had a delicious strawberry Mickey cake!

Even Belle got into the festivities.

Audrey is having a "coffee" party with some of her new friends at her new little table.

Reporting

Audrey has been doing a lot of "reporting" lately about daycare.  She'll often tell us (and Dana at daycare) who is hitting who, and it's not always accurate.  The best came tonight as I was saying good night to her.  This was our conversation:
   Me:  "Good night, Audrey."
   Audrey:  "Mom?"
   Me:  "Yes, Audrey?"
   Audrey:  "Belle (our cat) kicked me."
   Me:  "I'll talk to her."
   Audrey:  "Okay."
What a goof!

Candy

Audrey's Halloween candy has become a slight obsession for her.  She loves candy corn, Kick Kacks (Kit Kats), and pretty much anything else she has tried.  She gets to have one piece after supper each night, and her collection has quickly dwindled.  It helps that some has been transferred to the garbage. :)  The biggest obsession she has had since our town parade in August has been with lollipops.  When we went to our neighbor's house next door to trick-or-treat, they gave her a giant lollipop, without knowing how much she loves them.  She has been working on this one for three days, and it's still pretty big.  It's fun to see how excited she gets, but Jeremy and I will cheer when that orange pumpkin bucket is out of candy!



Look how big it is!

New Room

Audrey worked hard this weekend in her new room, and she is excited to sleep in it soon!  We think we will make the transition over Thanksgiving weekend, when she has a couple extra days at home to get some good rest.  We don't have all the decorating done, but the furniture is in place and the bed rail is on!  The bad news is that the furniture took away most of the room she had for dancing.  She'll have to dance to her AC/DC somewhere else now.

Audrey "helping" Dad put the bed rail together.

She is testing out the new bed and rail.  We think it will work!  After this picture was taken, she even tested out if she had enough room in her new bed to fit her shopping cart.  It did work.

Go Hawks!

Audrey's been battling a cough and cold for the past couple of weeks, with this past week being the worst.  She finally seems to be on the mend, with the help of some good rest and antibiotics.  Even feeling under the weather couldn't stop her from cheering the Hawks to a victory yesterday over Purdue.  She kept saying, "Go Hawks!"

Trick-or-Treat

We ventured out tonight for about forty minutes before becoming too cold to go on.  It's nice Audrey is so young that we are able to dictate when we head back. :)  Audrey dressed in her red crayon costume, and she did pretty well at each house.  We would say, "Trick or..." and she would always finish it with, "Treat!"  She said, "Thank you" at most houses, too.  She was very excited for her candy, and I'm sure she will demand a piece each day now.  Again, it's nice she's so young she doesn't notice how the candy dwindles quickly when some goes in the garbage! 

Audrey also really enjoyed having all the kids come to our house, too.  While we were eating, she would peek at the door and say, "Someone here."  She was accurate only about 50% of the time, so I was hopping up and down during the meal quite often for no reason.

We had so much fun watching her experience Halloween tonight.  It's amazing how quickly she is growing up.

Eating a sucker is serious business.

Pumpkins

Our Halloween week started off with Jeremy and Audrey working on pumpkins Monday night.  Audrey helped scoop out the pumpkins for about twenty minutes before losing interest, and I was only able to capture one picture of her helping.  Yes, you will notice she is wearing a garbage bag AGAIN!  Jeremy carved one pumpkin into a Mickey Mouse shape and one into a Minnie Mouse shape.  Audrey was very excited about them both!

She had to inspect the condition of the pumpkins tonight, on Halloween.  Things looked good!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

To celebrate Grandpa Ihde's 60th birthday, we all traveled to Galena for part of the weekend.  Though Audrey was looking the most forward to visiting all the little shops there, she also did enjoy her time spent with family.  Happy Birthday, Grandpa!  We love you!

The house we stayed at for the night had a little playhouse and a swing set.  The only problem was that the playhouse was a little dirty.  Audrey did not like the dirt inside.

Grandpa reading Audrey a book about his secret obsession....CATS! :)

Audrey absolutely loved when Uncle Justin would throw her up in the air!  She kept saying, " 'Gin, 'gin."