McKenzie's Playroom

Hey Everyone! We have been really busy here and I am sorry it has been so long since I last blogged. We have been working very hard on creating a playroom for McKenzie and all her stuff! So... as of yesterday, McKenzie's playroom is just about finished! This weekend Jason's parents came and his dad put up all the bead-board for the playroom. We had already painted it light blue and put the two book shelves together and the window seat toy box. His dad helped paint the bead-board also. Then we moved in the furniture and organized the toys! We have not yet found curtains that we like so we still do not have them. Also there is nothing on the walls yet because we are still trying to decide what we want to put up. However, this is what we have done thus far. We hope everyone has had a great weekend and will have an awesome week! Enjoy the pictures that follow! :)

McKenzie's Playroom!! We do not have the curtains yet!

The "new" brown couch!

We have not hung any pictures yet. This is still just a work in progress!

Another wall!

Bead-board!

McKenzie wanted to help paint!

Such a big girl!

We went to The Varsity after IKEA!

The Varsity

Waiting for our food...

Riding to IKEA to look for storage units for the playroom!

Cousin Tate came to help decide what the playroom should look like!

Lauren and Bethany came too...all the way from SC!

We love to look at each other!

9 Month Check Up

Hey everyone! Yesterday we had McKenzie's 9 month check up. She weighs exactly 20 pounds (75%), is 29.5 inches long (95%), and her head is 44 cm around (75%)! She is growing like a weed! She now can eat 3 meals a day! She is over the taste of any kind of rice cereal and baby food and wants the real deal. So, now she can eat real food! On Sunday she learned how to high five and did it with her doctor yesterday! The doctor could not believe it and thought it was the cutest thing ever! She put on a show for the doctor and clapped and laughed at herself. Everything was great until the nurse came in to give her the shots. She had to get her Hep B shot and have her iron checked. The Hep B shot was first and the nurse shot it right into her little leg and hit a muscle. As soon as she pulled out the needle blood went everywhere. While I was holding pressure on her leg she pricked her toe for the iron check. Her iron was great! Normal is 10 and hers was 11.8 so the nurse was very pleased! McKenzie is a tough cookie and only cried for a minute. We came home and made chicken and rice casserole for dinner and McKenzie loved it! Enjoy the pictures! Have a great day! :)

I can feed myself!

Yummy!

Is there really some on the bottom of the bowl? Yes, there is!

All by myself...I can do it!

Where is McKenzie?

She had chicken and rice casserole everywhere!

She was so proud of herself!

McKenzie was so tired on Sunday after church that when I laid her in her crib for a nap she fell asleep on the bumper pad. She couldn't even wait until her little head hit the mattress!

Another pic of the bumper pad pillow!

Tate's Dedication

Handsome Tate! Look at his teeth! He has four already!

Sunday, January 11, 2009 we went to Cumming for our sweet nephew's baby dedication at North Point Church. It was such a sweet and meaningful ceremony. Brian and Amber did an excellent job and even made bookmarks for everyone to keep in their bibles to remember the day. After the service we went back to Brian and Amber's house to celebrate with the little man of honor, Tate! It was a great day! Since McKenzie and Tate were both healthy, they got to play together and McKenzie does not like to share her cup with Tate! She squealed and pitched a fit and little Tate just sat there and watched as if to say, is she really doing this? It was quite funny!

Congratulations Tate! We love you lots! :)

The Little Man of Honor-Tate McGowan Lamb!

Tate sleeping on Grandma (Amber's mom)


Nana and Papa T

The Happy Family! Brian, Amber, and Tate

Brian and Amber

Us - Jason, Megan, and McKenzie Grace

Amber's side of the family

McKenzie trying out Tate's new chair!

Brian's side of the family

Aunt Martha's cake!

McKenzie loves Auntie Amber's vegetable soup and corn bread!

(Notice that her cup is up side down!)

9 Months Old Today

Hey everyone! McKenzie Grace is 9 months old today! We can't believe it! Time is fling by. To celebrate her turning 9 months for breakfast this morning she got to try a Chick-fil-A biscuit! She loved it! Then we got a very special phone call all the way from Africa this morning. It was precious Uncle Jeffrey! He called to wish McKenzie a happy 9 months! While we were on the phone with him McKenzie decided she would try to climb the stairs. I was going right behind her. She has only ever made it about the 5th stair and then she sits down and waits to be carried back down. Not today! She climbed the entire staircase today all by herself! She is getting so strong and pulls up on everything. We go on Monday for her 9 Month check up and shots. I will let you know how that goes.

Jeffrey is having an amazing day today in Africa. He found a special needs boarding school 5 minutes from his house. There are about 35 students that live there most of the year and on weekends too. He has already fallen in love with a Down Syndrome boy there. He plans to go back tomorrow and visit again. He took care of a man with Down Syndrome when he lived in Greenville, SC and he absolutely loves and misses him tons. Jeffrey was saying today how awesome God is because that was the one thing that was missing in his life in Africa, a person with special needs that he could care for. Now he has found not only one but several! God is truly faithful!

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend! :)

McKenzie loves her jumper still!

Riding her pony all over town!

Again, riding her pony.

Pulling books off the shelf!

Reading the books and crawling all over them!

Trying her very first Chick-fil-A biscuit today!

Happy Birthday

Happy 3rd Birthday Baxter! Today McKenzie's dog turns 3! Baxter is so good with her. He lets her pull up on him and pull on his fur. Baxter even shares his toys with her! (YUCK! We have to be very careful of that!) Baxter is enjoying his day. He took a morning walk and got an extra special mid-morning chew treat! He is now currently taking a nap a the couch! What a life! Happy Birthday Woo Woo!

Wilbur is now an Inchworm

Hey everyone! We hope you had a great weekend! Now that McKenzie is crawling she has now become an inchworm in the church nursery. She is no longer a little ladybug but a big inchworm! When I went to pick her up yesterday the man that was holding her said, "Boy she sure does have a high pitched squeal." I replied, "So she showed you how she squeals." The man thought it was so funny that she could squeal like a little pig. (That is why we call her Wilbur!) So as we are walking out of church yesterday I looked at McKenzie and asked her why she was squealing in the nursery. She just started laughing so hard as if she knew exactly what I was saying to her and she thought that it was so funny to squeal in the nursery!

Happy New Year

Happy 2009 Everyone! We hope that you are having a great 2009 so far! A new year...a new change! We are changing our office into a playroom for McKenzie Grace. Our office is moving to the front living room. We went today and bought a new desk for it. It is a much nicer desk than the one that we have now. Since it will be right by the front door and everyone who enters will see it, we wanted it to look nice. So, our house is a complete mess with furniture everywhere! We are so excited to have a place to keep McKenzie's toys now instead of all over the family room! We are not quite sure yet how we are going to paint the new office and the playroom so right now we are just trying to get everything in the correct room and worry about painting and decorating down the road.

As the New Year Rang in so did a new accomplishment for McKenzie. She can now push her little piano across the floor and walk behind it! We cannot believe how fast she is changing. Just a few weeks ago she was crawling and now she is walking behind things. Tonight during our dinner she ate an entire roll all by herself! That was after I had already fed her her dinner! She is going to be a bread lover like her mother!

McKenzie got her first big bruise. She crawled right into our kitchen table leg head first. Her forehead immediately turned black and blue and became a large lump right between her eyes and it is still there. This was on the 31st of December. She is learning that she has to be careful of her head when crawling and that is sticks out a bit.

We will post pictures of our house changes when we are finished! Again, Happy New Year!

What a Christmas

What a first Christmas we had with McKenzie! It was three straight days for presents and tissue paper and bow eating! We started at our house on the morning of the 23rd. When we finished opening our presents we packed up the car and headed to Nana and Papa T's house. The 23rd was a Tuesday and that made day 5 of McKenzie and the stomach virus. The poor little girl had diarrhea so badly by the 23rd that she had welts on her bottom and we had to put prescription burn cream on them. Christmas Eve day came and McKenzie was no better. I called the doctor back again and this time they told me to take her off of all formula and just give her Pedialyte, Gatorade, and water for 24 hours (I had to switch her from milk based formula to soy also). Brian, Amber, and Tate arrived at the Farm that afternoon with Tate bringing a Christmas fever with him of 101 +. Amber had taken him to the doctor that morning and he had a virus also. Tate and McKenzie opened their presents on opposite sides of the room. It was so sad at one point they just reached for each other and wanted to play with each other so badly. We just could not let them.

Christmas morning we got up and had breakfast. McKenzie still had awful diarrhea and Tate still had an awful fever. We loaded up our car to head North to Young Harris and Brian and Amber loaded up their car to head South to Warner Robins. We had to stop 3 times on the way to change McKenzie. It was the longest ride ever. When we arrived at Grandma and Papa Norton's house we opened presents. Jeffrey had bought and wrapped our presents before he left for Africa so that was really neat. We got to open up presents from him. He thinks of everything! Christmas night McKenzie was still no better. She was up several times sick in the night and by the 26th I was at my wits end. So, off we went to the ER to look for an answer to having diarrhea for 7 straight days. The doctors there were no help and told us that it could last up to two weeks and printed us off a paper about keeping your baby hydrated while having diarrhea. The only good thing about this was that McKenzie continued to drink. She drank and drank and drank. It was such a blessing because she never got dehydrated. We left to come home on the 27th and by now McKenzie is just absolutely exhausted. You can imagine. We packed up the car again and headed for home. She seemed to feel a little better and her diarrhea was not as often. The ride home 3 hours was not that bad. By Monday, day 9 her diarrhea was gone and she was back to squealing her little squeals! She seems to be all better now. She is still getting up several times a night to eat. I am guessing that she needs to make up for lost time. However, getting up several times a night again is very exhausting! All in all we had a great Christmas and we all received many very nice presents.

McKenzie learned how to do several things over Christmas while having the stomach virus. She can now pull herself up all alone. She can crawl/climb the stairs. Today she even stood all by herself! She is growing up so quickly. I just can't believe that 9 months is around the corner.

I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas and will have a great New Year!!

Baby's First Christmas

Our Family


McKenzie on her new ride from Papa Norton

What a very special little present!

The ball popper from Uncle Jared!

Daddy and McKenzie with Minnie Mouse

Grandma with a mouse pad of McKenzie from Jeffrey!

Minnie Mouse!!

McKenzie loves tissue paper!

Look at all the present!

Nana giving McKenzie another bottle of Pedialyte.

Tate in his new rocker with his Christmas fever

McKenzie in the car

McKenzie loves her new rocker and is clapping about it!

McKenzie and Tate trying our their new rockers from Nana and Papa T

Santa Came!

Opening presents with Mommy

McKenzie opening her stocking from Santa with Daddy!

Playing on Christmas Eve before going to bed and waiting for Santa to come!