Thanksgiving/Meeting Gwen

Thanksgiving began for us with a celebration/feast at Ryan's preschool. This is pretty much what Ryan looks like during any performance. He gets a little stone-faced in front of large groups. It was still cute :)

This was the place-mat that he made for the feast. Even though the name is spelled wrong, it's super sweet that when asked what/who he was thankful for, he chose to say his little brother.

The boys & I were fortunate enough to spend 10 days in CT with my family over Thanksgiving while we had some work done on our current house and Mason stayed home to supervise & work. Unfortunately, there was a fair amount of illness in my little family, but we had a good time anyway!

An extra special part of this trip was getting to meet my precious niece, Gwendolyn. We weren't sure if we would get to meet her at all that trip, as she wasn't due until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but she made a surprise appearance (in true daughter-of-two-actors dramatic form!) a month early, so we were anxious & excited to meet her... not to mention photograph her!
Gwen, at 3 weeks old

Proud parents:

Kaeden is very into babies right now, so he was especially thrilled to meet his little baby cousin. Maybe he's just glad that he's not the youngest anymore!

Thanksgiving day itself was wonderful, as we had our traditional dinner with my grandmother, aunt & uncle, and my cousin Sara. Aunt Monica was happy to give Kaeden his first taste of pumpkin pie. He liked it more than his brother, who put himself clearly in the pecan pie grouping.


Gwen's first Thanksgiving

All in all, it was a great trip and a nice opportunity to get away and escape the chaos of home. And the sunsets? Awesome!

Birthday Celebrations

Since Kaeden's birthday was on a Wednesday this year, his birthday celebrations ended up being spread out across many days.

For his birthday morning, I made him a special breakfast of french toast (with syrup!) - he was a fan :)

One of Mason & Ryan's favorite treats is to go out to frozen yogurt, and poor Kaeden would often tag along and be deprived. So, since we had no other plans for his actual birthday, we decided to take him to frozen yogurt and let him try it himself!

He didn't like it all that much - I think the cold kind of bothered him, but the rest of us enjoyed his little birthday celebration :)

After my parents arrived on Friday, we decided to do presents. Ryan was (not surprisingly) more excited than Kaeden, but Kaeden definitely enjoyed his new toys and even figured out the whole unwrapping thing a little bit as time went on.

Practicing his standing/walking

Learning to open :)

Clothes may not be that exciting to a one-year-old, but some day he will appreciate the AWESOME owl sweater that his Nana knit for him!

Playing with his new music toy - probably the biggest hit of the night.

This was another of his favorite new toys: a walker! As you can see, he was pretty enthusiastic about it.

Saturday was Kaeden's party. I was very thankful to have my parents there to help with preparations. Even Ryan helped to get our "owl s'mores" ready for the party and he had a lot of fun doing it too!

I have known since he was just a few months old that I would have an owl party for Kaeden. His favorite toy as an infant was an owl and when he started to coo, his most common sound was "whoo whoo". I was excited to find some really cute party supplies and decided to model the cake after them. I was really pleased at how it turned out.

Kaeden's favorite part was, by far, the balloons. Ever since, every time he sees a balloon, he points at it and goes, "ooooo". He loves 'em!

The older kids were definitely excited about cake time:

The sequence of events:

I think he liked it!

Happy, happy birthday to my big one year old!

One year old

Dear Kaeden,

Happy Birthday!


Okay, so I'm a little late, but we were too busy celebrating for me to get the portraits/blogging done on time. More to come on that soon...

You've had a wild month. I feel like something about you changes every single day. The most significant is that you've started walking some. It's been very gradual, but over the course of the month, you've gone from 1-2 steps at a time to occasionally walking across a room. You still fall on your bottom plenty, but you're doing great and you're very proud of yourself. If you get any recognition at all, you stop what you're doing and clap.


This month, you had your first sleepover with cousin Atticus. He got to stay at our house, and you were so thrilled. You still love him and he's still wary of you, but don't worry - he'll come around eventually. He's quite happy playing next to you, though... just not with you yet!

We also tried out the car-full of cousins and you all seemed to get a kick out of being back there all together:
You have a new cousin now too! Her name is Gwen and you'll meet her in a few weeks. She's pretty cute, so I think you'll like her. In fact, you have a bit of an obsession with babies right now, so I'm afraid you might like her a little bit too much. You don't really understand "gentle touches" quite yet, so you may have to watch her from a distance.

You have also been in a serious daddy phase. You've had a strong mommy preference for most of your life, so it's been really sweet and a lot of fun to see you clinging to your daddy. It's not always so fun when you scream in the mornings when he leaves for work, but it's worth it :)


You painted for the first time this month. You were super focused & into it at first, but you lost interest pretty quickly.


Some other skills you've been working on are clapping, waving, pointing, and blowing kisses. You are a very social little guy, which is a new thing for your daddy & I to get used to. On the plane ride up to Nana & Papa's this month, you entertained people all around us for most of the flight with your smiles and waves. It was great for me too because it kept you entertained!


At your one year check-up, you weighed in at 21 lb 13 oz and you were 29.5 inches long, both of which are right around the 50th percentile. You grew 2 inches in 3 months!! I have definitely noticed that you are thinning out some and getting longer - makes you look like a big boy. You also got another tooth this month, so you're up to 5 now. Oh, and you are officially done nursing. I cut out your last feeding this past week and you have hardly noticed, so it's been great. Unfortunately, you don't like cow's milk at all yet, but we're working on getting you used to it. In the meantime, you get lots of yogurt, and milk and cheese mixed in with things. You continue to be more and more picky, which is a bit frustrating. You are now fighting veggies too, but you'll let me spoon feed them to you still as long as you have other food at the same time.


You are definitely starting to transition to one nap. If you sleep well in the morning, you will often skip your afternoon nap these days, which makes for long afternoons! Once I get more of a commitment out of you, I'll start pushing back your morning nap so that you can hopefully have one longer mid-day nap. We'll see.

I guess that pretty much wraps it up. We made a trip over to Duke Gardens for your one year pictures and I LOVE them.

Happy birthday once again to my child of many expressions. Mommy loves you!

What a difference a year makes...

One year ago, I had the most amazing birth experience I could have hoped for and met my little angel Kaeden for the first time. It was one of the very best days of my life.

He fills my days with happiness and I could not be more proud to be his mommy.

Happy Birthday, little one.