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!