Day 2 (31 days of KayLeigh)

This is what tired looks like (and there's Binky Bear!!!)

               We had our German friend, Anke, and her son over for coffee this afternoon, while they visited with their puppy (wolfie and foxie's newest offspring) and KayLeigh refused to nap through that...then we went to the Mall in Mons to do some Christmas shopping, and again, KayLeigh did not want to fall asleep... after looking through a few stores and getting a few gifts and finding a very cute purple skirt for me to wear to our holiday parties (yay!) we discovered that KayLeigh had lost Binky Bear!!   For those of you that don't know Binky Bear, he is the only toy that KayLeigh has cared about for more than a day. She actually takes him to bed, and wants to carry him around most of the day, she calls him her "bebe" or "baba". Not only that, Binky Bear is actually one of the few toys my mom held onto from my childhood, so he is special to both KayLeigh and I. (I wont lie, I REALLY love that she chose a toy of mine as her special lovey) Needless to say, I wanted to find that bear! So we retraced our steps back to H&M, and Mat went to look around the store, and I tried to explain to the french speaking employee that my daughter had dropped her "Peluche", plush toy, that is "grise", Gray... At first she thought I was looking to buy a stuffed HEllO KITTY doll... close but not quite.. so I took the kitty, put it in front of kay, and tossed it out of the stroller, trying to explain that it was in fact her toy, that she tossed aside, like a common piece of trash. After quite a bit of miming, and both of us laughing, she got what I was saying and checked behind the counter.. low and behold, there was Binky Bear!!! The night was saved... I am very surprised, and grateful that someone turned him in, I guess he looks well loved, so someone figured he would be missed. We got some smoothies and headed home after that, KayLeigh fell asleep about 5 minutes before we got home lol. now she's tucked away in bed, and Mat and I will be on our way soon. 

               Hope you enjoyed your cuteness today! love you all!!

31 days of KayLeigh

You lucky lucky people, do you know what you are getting for Christmas? You are getting 31 days of cute, that's right, for every day in December I am going to post a picture of KayLeigh along with a blog, while all those "facebookers" only get 31 days of pictures...so you are the lucky ones! : )  So here is the picture for today, December 1st.

KayLeigh is content reading her picture book on the couch, she reads a lot longer if you just let her flip through the pages herself lol. If you try and read to her, she only lets you get a few pages in then gets frustrated and leaves... unless it's bedtime, then she wants you to read the whole story. She even picks out the one she wants you to read for the night, tonight it was "silverlicious" which is one of Breanna's books. I end up skipping a few pages, because she doesn't have the patience for all those words yet lol. She gets excited when we read a book with something she recognizes, like a dog or a cat, or elmo for instance. She'll point and say "oof" or "meow" or whatever goes along with the pictures. Haha, speaking of cats, she now tries to call the cat like Mat and I do, you know when you're trying to get the cat's attention, and you click your tongue and say "here kitty kitty kitty" well she clicks her tongue, and says "kittakitkitkita" lol. she is such a goofball.

Hopefully I can keep up with this, I'm going to try!! Mat just told me he doesnt think I'll remember... so thats just extra motivation!! love you all! Happy 31 days of KayLeigh! <3

Flu shots and Christmas shopping

This is how KayLeigh likes to wear her tutu

                                            Today Kay and I got our flu shots, it suprised me that she seemed to remember what horrible things happen in the immunization clinic. She started squrming while I was filling out the paperwork. The nurse gave me my shot first and I swear I saw a smile on KayLeigh's face when she realized that I was getting stuck with a needle for once. Once I laid her on the table, she realized what was happening and gave that nurse a very dirty look. But she is a very brave girl, she got two shots, cried a little, her face turned BRIGHT red, I picked her up, and then she was fine. Such a big girl!

                                                We got a catalog from the Px for all their christmas toys, and KayLeigh managed to drag it off the kitchen table and has been carrying it around the living room for the past two days. She sits down and turns the pages like shes reading a book. Today she climbed into my lap with it, expecting me to read it to her. So we looked through all the pages and talked about the toys, then we got to the page with elmo on it, and she went nuts lol. They got in a lot of sesame street toys this year, and that is by far KayLeigh's favorite page, a close second is the page with all the ride-on cars. Shes such a silly girl. We're going to go pick out some presents for her tomorrow, and the nice thing is, that even with her sitting right there in the cart, she wont remember what we bought for her after naptime! lol. I'm excited for christmas this year, and I'm also sad. I'm excited that KayLeigh will get to actually open presents and be excited for toys and the pretty lights on the tree and all that.I think it will be fun to watch her rip open presents and see everything. And it only gets more fun from here, once she starts understanding about santa, and we can make cookies the night before. Oh I'm so excited! But the bad part is that since we got stuck in the states so long this summer, Mat wont have enough leave for us to come back to the states for Christmas to get Breanna. :( We're all really disappointed about it, but unfortunatley there's not anything we can do.. We'll just have to make the most out of our time this summer, we're going to have a christmas/birthday in July for Breanna, so we're looking forward to that.

                                                 If anyone is planning on christmas presents for the girls, (We're not expecting anything, your love and support is really all we need) here's some ideas. Breanna is growing quickly and I would suggest any clothes in size 7. We're asking the gifts to be sent here, so that we'll have clothes for her this summer, and she can always use more toys to play with here. Breanna is still very into princesses, and she also likes the Monster High stuff a lot. Baby dolls, cooking sets, anything girl is still her :) KayLeigh is pretty into cats, she meows at everything that resembles a cat, so thats a very safe bet with her. She also is still very much in love with elmo, videos, clothes, toys. anything elmo. She's still pretty small so 12 months are still fitting her, but if you're planning on sending clothes for her, 18 months would be a safe bet to fit her for a while. She also has a thing for cars, shes a crazy kid. If anyone needs our address, let me know. And I'm going to try and send out christmas cards to everyone, so please send me your address, either on Facebook or my email, beckyfohner@gmail.com.

We love you all!!!

KayLeigh watching elmo and snuggling with the cat

Halloween 2011

Halloween this year was a blast! We did Trunk or treat again, but we had help, and a way cooler trunk this year! We did an Airforce sponsored trunk, which was awesome because we didnt have to pay for any of the decorations :) We did the trunk with our friends Kelly and Matt, and their son Brody, who is the same age as KayLeigh. We were a family of zombies for Halloween this year, I did the makeup and I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself :)

                     we set up the trunk and handed out candy for a little while with the boys, then Kelly and I took Brody and KayLeigh around the trail to trick or treat for the first time! She had an awesome time! She was screaming most of the way,and stomping her little feet to make her shoes light up. She refused to let me help her carry her candy bag, even though she was dragging it on the ground. She enjoyed looking at all the trunks, especially the ones with light up stuff on them. She didnt really get the hang of saying "trick or treat"in fact she didnt say anything other than screams in between candy stops when she was stomping around like a wild woman, I guess she was really just committing to her zombie role lol. KayLeigh did really well and didn't fuss until we were on the car ride home and we had to stop and get some more milk for her. she was fast asleep very quickly with some left over zombie blood on her head, I tried to scrub off what I could with a baby wipe, she was just too sleepy for a bath. good thing it came off this morning in the tub!

                          This year Halloween was a lot more fun than last year, it was warmer, we had good friends with us to run our trunk and hang out with. And kay had her buddy, Brody, to go trick or treating with for the first time. I cant believe how fast she is growing up. Last year she spent all Halloween bundled up and sleeping. This year she walked most of the trail on her own, and even shared some Halloween chocolate with me today. :) Next year, she'll be able to say trick or treat... I just cant believe it!  Happy Halloween everybody! Love you all, enjoy the pictures!



My baby zombie walking the Trunk or treat trail

Watch out Brody, Zombie Kay's gonna get you!

Trick or treat!

my big girl!

Zombies!!

Kay and her Buddy brody,and Kelly

Mat scaring little kids

Zombie Fohners

Our monster trunk!

Cutest zombie ever!

October 28, 2011

In an effort to update my blog more, here's another post for this week! I'm on a roll, lets hope I can keep it going :)
  I guess I'll start off by bragging about all the new things KayLeigh can do, it seems like she does something new everyday now, it's amazing! She has a pretty good vocabulary, she can now say... "Me-mo" (elmo) This is usually said while pointing at the t.v. or laptop, requesting to watch elmo... "kitty" or "cat" which is usually followed by lots and lots of "meow! meow! meow!" and then trying to chase down the poor cat to snuggle him to death. She loooooooves that kitty. She also says "dog" and knows that the dog says "woof" although when she says it, it usually sounds more like "oof" which I think is way cuter anyways :) She likes to say "eye" and then try to poke your eye out, I guess she just really wants to make sure you know where your eye is! She can also locate her nose, mouth, belly, and booty. although she doesnt say any of those yet, she is more than happy to point them out to you. She will even shake her booty (dance) if you ask her to while music is playing :) Of course she says "mama" and "dada" but I get confused a lot about "mama" and "me-mo" and sometimes I try to hug her when all she wants is elmo lol. She says "bebe" (baby) when she carries around babies, or a little yellow stuffed sheep, whose name is apparently "bebe". She doesnt say "no" but if you tell her "no way" she shakes her head all crazy and thinks its the funniest thing ever, she has to concentrate a bit harder to nod her head yes, but she's got that down too :) she tries to say "night night" but it sounds a lot like "nana" or "ana" which is what she says for breanna. She usually says breanna while shes looking at pictures with me, or the pictures of her and breanna on the bookshelf, probably one of the cutest things ever. She has a rubber duckie, and a duck backpack, and she says "duck" and "quack quack" to both of those. she also really likes playing with cars, and will also point them out to us while we drive by saying "car" She says "yum" if she's really enjoying her food, and "ooooooh" with her little lips all pouty if she sees something she thinks is really neat. And I think thats it for now...
             She's learning all sorts of new things lately, just the other day she picked up some of her socks off the floor, and tried to put them on her feet, she does the same with her giraffe slippers, I was so suprised!! My favorite is when she tries to tickle mat or I. She comes up to you and says "tittle tittle" (theres another word I missed!) and tries to tickle you, she likes to tickle my feet, because I scream and act like it REALLY tickles, she thinks its funny :) We've got a good bedtime routine down now, she goes and gets me a diaper out of the diaper holder and we get her into pjs, then she shuts off the light (we have low light switches in all our bedrooms in addition to the normal height ones for some reason...belgium..) and picks up a book and heads over to the rocking chair to read. Shes just becoming such an awesome little person, I love it! When I ask her if she's hungry (especially in the morning, when I've made french toast sticks) she'll march right over to her highchair and wait to be lifted up so she can eat. she usually does not wait quietly and does a lot of whining and screaming in the process, I think its her attempt to hurry the food up :) Shes been walking for about a month now,and she's really good at it. She hardly falls, unless one of the dogs throws her off balance, or she trips over the cat lol. She's getting quick and is trying to run. she loves going for walks around the neighborhood, and is very sneaky about trying to let go of your hand. If shes holding onto anything, like a toy or a flower she's picked up outside, she'll drop it so you let go of her hand so she can pick it up, then she takes off as quick as she can in hopes that you don't notice you're no longer holding her hand lol. She's quite independent. 
                       She's pretty fond of books, she'll bring them up to you and sit in your lap so you can read them to her, or she'll sit on the floor and look at the pictures while babbling away like shes reading. She likes to chase the cat around too, and pick him up in various awful ways, but he's a good cat and will put up with it for a while.

Speaking of KayLeigh, I hear her hollering upstairs, its bedtime here, and we've all had a cold, so she's probably not feeling well. So I better be off :) motherhood is calling.
Love you all, I promise more to come, monday is halloween, and we've got a busy night :)

             

My Elmo pumpkin, I'm rather proud of it :)

KayLeigh's first Halloween Party

Kay had her first halloween party at her playgroup today. Any guesses as to what she dressed up as? .... give up? She was the cutest kitty ever!! A lady that works at the clinic made her a tutu that she loves wearing, so we had to include that in her costume. She had a good time, ate some cookies and played with all the toys. 

                                                    My little kitty after breakfast, getting ready to go

                                                           Somebody's got an awesome toy over there!!

                                                                 cutie pie!

                                                 she found a baby to carry around

                                                         looking out the window

                              she was excited that daddy showed up, he usually works when playgroup happens

 

It's been too long!

Wow. I just looked at the blog, and I am way more behind then I thought! I'm going to try and catch you all up. After Jared's graduation and all that, we went back to Ohio and Mat picked up Breanna from Louisiana. We spent a few days in Ohio, and In PA with Mat'sfamily, then headed back home to Belgium! We took a military flight back from Maryland to Belgium, it was their commercial airline, so it was a pretty nice flight. Except that neither of the girls felt like sleeping the entire time... We flew into germany again, and walked around Ramstein and got some German food then were on our way home. Its about a 4 hour drive and luckily both the girls slept a while on the way there. We got home and showed Breanna her room, and she played with the dogs and we all settled in. We spent the next two months enjoying having her here, we went to the zoo quite a few times, she really enjoyed being able to pet the lemurs and even fed the little monkeys some grubs, she was pretty brave :) The best part of the summer was our trip to euro disney, in Paris!

We planned the trip to be just an overnight thing to Paris, we drove up on tuesday, and checked into our hotel that was about 20 mins away from Disneyland. and drove into Paris! Mat has been there before when he was a kid, but it was a first for all of the girls :) I was really excited to be going to see the eifel tower, and Disneyland. We parked by the NotreDame, and walked ALL THE WAY to the Eifel tower! It was exhausting, luckily we brought two strollers so both the girls could ride. We saw a lot of neat stuff in Paris, and I'll post the pics :) It was fun to just wander around, until we found the eifel tower, which is huge! breanna was so excited when we found it! On the way back to the car, we ran into a little fair, and stopped for some food, and enjoyed looking around at paris at night. we made it back to the car and drove back to the hotel, and we all fell asleep very quickly!

We woke up pretty early the next morning, and got breakfast at the hotel and headed to Disney! I think I was just as excited as breanna! It was a nice day to be out, not too hot, not cold, and we went on a weekday so it wasnt too crowded. The nice thing was that everyone who worked there spoke english, so even though it smelled like france..it didnt sound like it lol. We rode a lot of rides, and saw the parade. Breanna even got to be part of it! "Mary Poppins" brought a bunch of kids into the parade and she got picked, and danced around with them to zippedy doo da. I think she really had a good time! We were sad when we had to leve, but the plans are already set for next year, when Kay will be able to enjoy it a little more too.

Disney was really the last hurrah of the summer. We had to head back to Ramstein to catch a flight back to the east coast to take Breanna home :( The plan was just to take a hop back to the east coast, hopefully have someone pick us up and head to ohio. That didnt really work out the way we planned though.. it took 3x as long to get out of germany than we expected. every time we have gone on space a its only taken us a day or two to get out. this time it took us a week!!! We spent way too much time in that tiny airport terminal on base... We had to be there so early in the morning to hopefully catch a flight, and every time we had to pack up all our things and bring all our luggage into the terminal and check in for the day. we spent a lot of time in the family lounge, sleeping, and letting the girls blow off some energy. they have cribs and a couch in there so both the girls could nap, as long as there wasnt another annoyingly loud family in there, which there usually was... we spent a lot of time walking around the mall on base, but even that got old after a while, we were sooooo ready to leave. we went swimming and tried to keep the girls occupied, both mat and I felt bad for keeping them at the airport for that long.

We finally got on a plane, after waiting way too long! we flew on a cargo plane, that has the sideways seats that fold up and all the cargo in the middle.. .Breanna was a little freaked out by it, since its way louder than a commercial plane. But she found a buddy with the army guy that was sitting next to her. He was on his way home from Afghanistan and he was so nice, he told her the plane was ok, and nothing was wrong even though it was bumpy and loud, he showed her pictures of his puppies, and even gave her one of his patches. I think she had a pretty big crush on him! Kay slept almost the whole time, but breanna did not want to cooperate and had a very rare temper tantrum on the plane. We had a layover in Bangor, Maine, and they got to run around in the terminal for a while, so i think that helped both of them a bit. We had to rent a car and drive 4 hours into ohio, we flew into indiana.

We made it to mat's mom's house finally and a few days later had kayleighs first birthday party. it was really nice. she had an elmo cake, and all of mat's family came and she got a lot of presents and it was just a really nice night. She got a little overwhelmed with all the prestents and then the cake but i thnk overall she had fun. I still cant believe she's already a year old!

We spent a few days in Ohio, then had to make our way to louisiana to take breanna home, that was awful. we always hate saying goodbye, and the drive was long, and hot. After we dropped her off, we headed to colorado, which again,was a very long drive. and I never want to do that much traveling ever again! We made it to my parents house and the plan was to stay about a week, then mat was going to go to a school for work in missouri, and i was going to stay at my parents house for the rest of the month and thenwe'd fly bck home. that worked about as well as flying out of germany....

Mat's school suddenly got cancelled and he was out of leave so he had to go home asap. so we made the decision to drive back to ohio and catch a hop back to belgium. we drove back, but there were absolutley NO FLIGHTS going out, every day we'd wait and hope for something but there would be one flight with 2 seats, if we were lucky, and we couldnt get on one. so mat had to buy a ticket back home so he could go back to work. Kay and I had to stay i n OHio for a while longer before we had the money to pay for a flight for us to go back. I was rather proud of myself for mastering international air travel by myself with a one year old though :).

So that is a quick, very quick recap of the past few months... I will post some pictures tonight. but kay just woke up from her nap.. so this is to be continued :)