FREE snotty nose to whoever wants one...

This week we have passed around a nasty cold at our house.
thanks for sharing your sick school germs with us Russ... :)

Unfortunately sweet little Caedmon has it BAD today,

and hasn't slept well at ALL for the past two nights.
Her little cough is absolutely terrible, and she is so congested...

Bless her heart. I absolutely hate when she is sick.

We are TRYING to get lots of rest today, but her cough keeps waking her up
(she finally went down for a little snooze a little while ago, complete with a raspy snore... but hopefully she can sleep through it for a little while)

She hasn't had much of an appetite,
so we are just trying to get some fluids in her!

We're trying everything we know to make her feel better...

cause this sweet little strawberry :
needs to be ready tomorrow night for some halloween
"treating"
(she's not really into tricks...)

well come to think of it,
she's not really into eating treats yet either...

which is why this year,
instead of gathering "treats" from door-to-door...

our sweet strawberry will be delivering sweet
strawberry "treats" to some of her friends & family!!
YUMMY!

so here's hoping that she is feeling better by tomorrow!

she won't be this little forever...

Right after you were born i heard it over and over from so many different people...

"she won't be this little forever, so cherish every minute of it."

And they were absolutely right. It's been 14 months and 4 days, and you aren't "little" anymore. I mean, you are still 'little', but you are so big too. All the little beginnings of "growing up" have started in your little brain and you are slowly starting to figure out life on your own.

Our time together has flown by. the fastest time has ever flown in my lifetime. even though it still ticks away one minute at a time, just like it always has.
When you grow up & have kids you will know exactly what i mean.

But no matter how fast the time feels like it is passing,
I am so glad to say that i HAVE cherished every minute.
I took the one piece of advice that so many people gave me, and i used it.

Every single day of your life has held a special place in my heart, and I am beyond grateful to your daddy for letting me stay home and experience unbelievable amounts of love that I have never experienced before. Yes, at times it feels like a lot of hard work, and sometimes I am SO happy when you finally go to sleep, so that i can rest... but even then, my HEART never rests.
It still keeps on loving you more and more.

Last night I picked you up out of your crib in the middle of the night just to hold you close. I don't know why i did it, because normally I would be furious if anyone else decided to do that, cause my baby needs her sleep. (otherwise you are cranky the next day!) But thankfully you stayed asleep.

And I am glad, cause I just needed to hold you.

So I did, just like when you were a teeny tiny baby, and you let me. I just rocked you and stared at your little eyelashes, your little belly button, touched your skin, and ran my fingers through your messy head of hair... and thanked Jesus over and over again for giving me such a wonderful gift.

Caedmon, you have taught me so many things about life. I will forever be changed all because of your little beating heart.
I don't deserve you, but God decided to bless me anyway, and i will never take that for granted. ever.


i love you as the thirsty duck loves a sudden shower.

and i always will.

mealtime is a chore at our house.

i had no idea before i became a mom that i would obsess over the types of foods that my child would eat, but now that I AM a mom, and caedmon's diet fully depends on ME, and what I decide she eats, the responsibility that i feel is pretty overwhelming at times... I want her to ENJOY eating, but I also want the foods she is eating to be HEALTHY.
I solely breastfed caedmon until she was just over a year old, and then she pretty much weaned herself when she started whole milk. I had kind of planned on nursing for longer cause I really believe that is a healthy choice, but I am pretty sure she was ready, and my milk supply was slowly dwindling, and I think that her drinking as much whole milk as possible was necessary for her to put on a little more weight cause she was starting to fall off the charts at her 12 month check up.
Anyways, she has been eating homemade baby food REALLY well since she was six months old. Seriously she ate everything that i gave her and TONS of it! I made all kinds of fruit, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, eggplant, turkey, and the list goes on... sometimes she scrunched her nose at peas or carrots, but she would still eat them...
BUT since caedmon turned one and has been drinking milk and eating all kinds of real finger foods by herself, she doesn't eat baby food anymore, and I am seriously struggling with WHAT i should feed her, how MUCH to feed her, and what she will ACTUALLY eat. As of right now, I am pretty sure that she doesn't eat anywhere near the amount of vegetables she needs, (she spits most of them out) but the child can eat her WEIGHT in pretty much any kind of fruit/grain.

I have looked online at several guidelines and menu plans, to help me know what she needs, and how much to feed her... but it was so hard to fit some of the things that I found into our life/budget/schedule and so I just decided to come up with one of my own that is customized to the things that MY one year old will actually eat, plus a few foods that she doesn't enjoy but that I want to keep offering to her, in hopes that she will eventually just eat them...

I really need all the moms I know to tell me their thoughts, opinions, experiences and advice on feeding a one year old and if this menu planner is reasonable/unreasonable? too much/too little?

I just feel really clueless on all this except for the fact that caedmon's pediatrician told me that she needs at LEAST 18 ounces of whole milk a day, and all the other random things i have read/studied online! I am also terrible with math & conversions & measurements so I have no idea if what i have "guessed" is even close to the right amount of food for her... basically I just need everyone to help me fine tune this thing so that I can have a better/easier plan for meal time! Cause right now, i feel like a chicken running around with his head cut off trying to find things that she can/will eat that is GOOD for her!

you have to click on the picture of the chart to make it big enough to read!


(and if you are wondering, i intentionally left out Sunday on my chart, because that is a day where most of our meals are "on-the-go" or prepared by someone else...)

so please tell me what you think, any advice you may have, or any tips or suggestions to change this! caedmon will thank us all later when she is healthy, healthy, healthy!

a new look, and a new skill...

hi, it's dixi again.

i know i am a 'struggling blogger', but life has been
absolutely amazing with a one year old
that it's getting harder and harder to find time to blog!
I mean Caedmon is just so cute that i like looking at her
way more than i like looking at this 'new post' screen... don't you agree?


speaking of Caedmon being CUTE,
you may have noticed that we added a new "look" to the blog!
i basically did this for two reasons:
my first reason was because we had some AMAZING family pictures taken by
the*reason and i wanted to show them off!
(thanks again chris+allie, we seriously LOVE you guys!)


most of these are just little "peeks" because we have special plans to save our most favorite ones for christmas cards, and possibly special gifts for our families! woo-hoo!






my second reason for adding the new "look " was because i thought that by having something fresh and new, it might give me even more inspiration to take time to post about our always exciting life!

So I hope you like the new look, and i will TRY to post more than i have lately!


Anyways, I know Russ posted a few updates in his last post from august, but caedmon is just getting so cute & smart that i have to brag on her some more!

so far this is a complete list of words (in no particular order)
that she has ACTUALLY said out loud,
WITH meaning, AND more than once:

catch
uh-oh
dada <--daddy
da <-- dog
dat <-- that
chair
nana <--mama
(but she has recently started saying mama too! she uses them interchangably...)
arthur <-- the PBS character
ba <-- bye
heather
shoes
there she is

and then there are a few words that
she is still working on and "KIND-OF" says:

light
book
storm
color

now, i know what some of you are thinking... some of these words are pretty advanced, and there is no way that a child who barely speaks can say them, but i am not joking or "parent exaggerating" (you know those exaggerations that parents make about their kids to make them seem more advanced than their kid actually is... yeah, that's not us. These words are the real deal.)

She RARELY says any of these when we ask her to (except dada, mama and catch), but throughout a regular day at home, this girl just talks and talks and talks, and she actually says all these words in conversation with me, and then she'll say them again and again on her own!

But I swear it does get pretty funny when we try to get her to say them for other people, and she acts like we are crazy.


Now to keep you in the loop with a few things
that Caedmon has been doing recently:
gives hugs & kisses
"reads" books to herself
plays peek-a boo with her hands over her face
tries to brush her hair with a brush or a comb
pretends to put "lotion" on her arms
sticks her tongue out (SO CUTE!)
dances when she hears music
tries to color
holds on to things while standing up
cruises along the furniture
walks while we hold both of her hands...

Then just over week ago Caedmon learned how to pull herself up so she can stand. She figured this one out while she was in her crib one afternoon for a nap, and that was pretty strange/funny to see in her video monitor for the first time!


Now she does it all the time, but it still makes me smile when i walk in and she is just standing there waiting on me! After these pictures were taken I ended up having to move her monitor to a shelf beside the crib and take down the canopy over her crib... i'm sure you can all guess why i had to do that... :)

And Caedmon's brand new skill that she learned this past weekend is CRAWLING!



This sweet beautiful child... that has been standing while holding on to furniture, cruising along the side of the coffee table & couch, walking while holding our hands, and pulling herself up to stand... apparently decided she was FINALLY going to crawl! haha, she just has her own unique timing for everything...

I am still lovin' the new excitement of all this new mobility for now, cause she is still pretty slow, and cautious, but i know that eventually she will be all over the place and into everything, and i will be stressin' out. I suppose that after almost 14 months, i will finally have to "baby-proof" the house... I don't think that only having two plug protectors in the whole house will suffice for this new mobile toddler.

One more little update that is somewhat of a "milestone" to us this week:
she now cruises around town in her new "big girl" carseat...




(this is the newest air protect seat from Safety 1st, hopefully, it will be a good one for us... so far so good! oh, and i couldn't find a picture on the internet of the actual color we purchased, but caedmon's is a brown/taupe color...)

anyways, if you can't already tell, caedmon is growing up so fast, but so far that about covers all of her milestones lately...


Russ got to celebrate a little milestone of his own:

he turned 27 on September 30th!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!
(Caedmon and I had to "celebrate" with him by bringing homemade cupcakes & Zaxby's to a Quik-Trip parking lot in between him teaching school in Dallas and then going to class for his masters degree in Carrollton, i swear my husband is so stinkin' great and he never complains. i love him so much.)


and my little milestone (aka: shameless plug) for the post is...

I started a brand new business from home!


Be sure to check it out and let me know if you need
any cards, invitations, announcements, logos, or anything of the sort!

click here to go to
the burnett collection!

and one more shameless plug:
the burnett collection is on facebook too.


okay that's it from our family for now...
but we DO have some
pretty exciting things that are coming up:
A Postseason Braves game! (GO BRAVES!!!)
Carving Pumpkins!
Halloween Costumes!!


And hopefully I will get the chance to post about these fun things!!

I promise I still appreciate our faithful blog readers! Love you guys!