Ocean City, First Words, and 9 Month Update

So I thought I would post some pictures below from our time at Ocean City Maryland from the whole way back on the Fourth of July! It's been a while but oh well. Also, I wanted to post an amazing story from the other day! I couldn't even believe it myself! See below the pictures for the crazy story!

Here we are on the beach one breezy morning.



















Here we are at a yummy restaurant down there with Great cousin Lauren and probably Great cousin-to-be John.









At the restaurant with Great Aunt Jan. If you look hard you can see Kaylee holding onto her new favorite snuggly toy her Clydesdale horse named Claudia (It actually came with the name Clyde... it was to be a boy but we renamed it Claudia instead).





















Here we are on the beach soaking up some rays. The weather was perfect while we were there. Not too stinky hot and not too cold.





She stole Grandma's chair!












Here Josh is teaching Kaylee how to make a sand castle.





















Kaylee got hungry and ate some of the sand. Yuk!

















The two princesses in their castle.














I love these pictures. Kaylee loved being on her daddy's shoulders, especially when he didn't have his hat on. She loves pulling his hair and playing with his scruffy beard too! My dad joked that that is how he lost all his hair.










Surfer girls! Kaylee's like, "If I go down, you're going down with me cousin Audrey".
Audrey just turned one year old on July 9th. I can't believe she's 1 already. We had a great time watching her open gifts. She was so focused on getting the presents open and only stopped a few times to play. One of our gifts to her was a wagon which she really seemed to like. Kaylee and her had a lot of fun riding together around the house in the new toy. Also, Kaylee was crawling like crazy and it was so funny because Audrey would follow her wherever she would go and then Kaylee would quick switch directions and so Audrey would have to turn around and go right back after her in the direction she just came from. They were so funny. At one point they both crawled under the table together and were playing under there. Also, they looooooved the balloons. Kaylee kept grabbing at hers and then laughing hysterically. I think Katie got it on film. I love to hear her giggle like that! You can't help but laugh along with her.







Kaylee looooved being thrown in the air and then caught by daddy.
















Kaylee and Ma-ma in the baby pool.













For those of you who don't know him, my little brother Kenny(in green trunks) is the most outgoing kiddo ever. He made so many friends there at the beach. He seriously could make friends with anyone, English speaking or not. One group that he befriended was this group of Mexicans that spoke like no English at all. He was watching them play soccer for a while and then eventually either he asked to join them or they somehow asked him if he wanted to play. I think they were a little weary about having him play at first but he really showed them when he scored only a few short minutes after starting to play. It was so funny because us girls weren't down at the beach yet. We were going to do some shopping on the boardwalk so when we were walking past I was like, "Wait, is that Kenny?" So we stopped and watched and sure enough there he was lining up in two lines with the Mexican group and they were splitting off into two teams. Haha! It was just so funny because these people seriously did not speak a lick of English. Then later when we were driving to go eat, Kenny was like, "Hey there are my friends!" So we beeped and waved!




I love these pictures of Kaylee on the beach. She really enjoyed playing in the sand.
She hated to Ocean water as you will see soon but loved the sand.












The sandcastle building beauties!















Kaylee looooves playing in water but the ocean was just waaaay too cold for her. She DID NOT LIKE IT! It was so funny though so we had to take pictures.
















Awwww! Poor thing... we were laughing so hard! My poor baby! She is trying so hard to keep her feet as far away from the water as possible. Haha!














Kaylee with her Aunt Katie and Aunt Karie. The pool water was much more Kaylee's style. She takes after her mommy and daddy. We prefer pools too. We're not much of ocean people.
I am so fearful of what I might step on or what might bite me. Josh says he fears the unknown and that is why he doesn't like the ocean. Haha!



And I guess this is the last one for now... Here is me and Kay-bird in the baby pool. The water was perfect and nobody else was in the water so we had the whole thing to ourselves... Nice!









Okay so here is the story that I talked about above:
So last Sunday, all three of us were in Kaylee's room. She was under the weather so she was kind of just relaxed on my lap while we glided on her rocker. I found this book on her shelf that I haven't read yet called "First Words" and started to read it to her. She was completely focused and silent, just listening. The book just had pictures of single items and the names of the items. So I began to read it to her pointing at each item and saying the name of the item three times or so. When I got to the "apple" I said the name and pointed to it. Then Kaylee suddenly said, "apple". Josh and I just looked at each other in amazement. My eyes started to tear up because I was just in shock that she seriously said "apple". If she had been babbling or if Josh wasn't in the room and had heard it too I would have never believed it. I tried to get her to say it again but she wouldn't. Then I moved on to other items in the book. When I got to "cat" she said "cat"! Again, Josh and I looked at each other like WHAAAAT? haha! Again she wouldn't repeat it. So I went through the book again and she would not say any of the words again. But later in the evening I decided that I was going to read the book to her again. This time she said "boy" after I had said it. I was so excited and still in shock of her language skills already. I couldn't believe she picked those words up so quickly.
Then on Tuesday I think it was, we had Kaylee in bed with us in the morning for play time before we got ready for the day (we do this every day. it's so nice to have that special time together waking up and playing in the morning. I think it's my favorite time of day) and we were playing with this one yellow block of hers that has a duck on it. I kept pointing to it and saying "duck" and then after a few times Kaylee said "duh". We think she was really trying to say it because that is the only noise she made at that time and usually she says "dah" not "duh".
In addition to these few words she is repeating, Kaylee is trying to say "It's Jordan" whenever she sees him. If you don't believe us you will have to come over and visit us to hear it. Whenever we go downstairs with Kaylee or we come home from somewhere or something like that we always say "It's Jorrrrdan!" when he comes running so I think that is how she picked that up. Her version is something like this: "iii dordan" but the "n" kind of trails off.
She is just growing up so quickly. We had her 9 month check up the other day and here is how it went. The doctor had asked if she was babbling yet and saying "mama" and "dada" and "baba" and we said "oh yeah and she is repeating words too". So we told her the whole story and she couldn't believe it. She said that she is very far ahead in that area. This was after she had measured her head which just so happened to be in the 90-95 percentile. hahaha! I had told her about how me and my friends at work call her the big headed baby and joke about her big head. The doctor said, after we told her the first words story, "That's why you're head is so big. All those brains inside there." Haha! I had heard before that a big head on a baby can be a bad sign but the doctor said not to worry that everything seemed fine and she said that her three boys heads were so big that they weren't even on the chart they use for the %'s. Haha!
Kaylee's weight was in the 75 percentile-she weighed 20lbs straight. The doctor said that we need to still wait to turn the car seat around though until she is one year old. Her height is still at the top of the charts. She was 29 3/4 inches. She is in the 97 percentile for her height. The doctor looked at Kaylee's height chart and said to me, "Are you really only 5' 1''? haha! I said "Five one and a quarter". She said she thought I was taller (I thought that was nice of her to say, haha). She said that Kaylee will definitely be taller than the average female. Josh said, "That means no sharing clothes." haha! Punk!
The appointment went really well. I was worried that I might not be feeding her right but the doctor said I was doing a great job and that I should now be introducing more table foods which I actually have been starting very very gradually. Kaylee's gag-reflex is soooo strong. We REALLY saw this in action when we were out to eat for my Aunt's Bday. I had quite a mess to clean up when Kaylee tried some of my mashed potatoes. But now, just a few days later she is doing very well with the stage 3 dinners now which have little chunks in them so I expect her to be getting better with table foods too.
Kaylee's favorite things to do right now are crawl all over the place and chase her best friend Jordan. She likes to crawl over to Jordan's food, where she knows she is not allowed, and she will look up at me. I just say, "Yuk" and then she crawls away. The little stinker likes to test me.
She has a drum and every time she plays with it we turn it on and make sure the English option is on. The first thing Kaylee does is changes it to the Spanish option. And it's not even that she sees us do it. She just goes for that switch and changes it over. Maybe we will have a bilingual baby. Haha!
Although we don't want Kaylee to watch a whole lot of TV there are some really good shows out there that she is starting to like and that we like also. We just kind of turn them on during that down time. One of her new favorites is Little Einsteins. It's a cute little show that Kaylee zones out to. As soon as it turns to some weird monster show she starts to fuss and we know that she is done with TV time.

Kaylee loves to stand up on things. I think she will be walking before we know it. Her crawl is hilarious. She does the regular crawl most of the time but then she will randomly change into like a monkey walk, up on her feet and on her hands. This has to be good practice for when she is walking though so I will allow this silly crawl for now.

Well, once again I have written a ridiculously long blog so I will go for now. I will have to post more recent pictures soon!
Love you all and hope to hear from you soon!