My Sincerest Apologies

I'd like to start off with an apology. My photographers were slacking off this week, so there aren't a whole lot of new pictures to share with you. I've had a talk with them, so rest assured, there should be more pictures next week.

My week started off great. Mom had the day off on Monday so we got to hang out. Well, she did have to go to her work for a couple hours to get some paperwork done, but when she almost turned into a popcicle (no heat in schools on holidays I guess) she came home. I hung out at G'ma Jan and G'pa Bob's. Megan was there too. I had a bath at their house and got to use this super cute doggy towel that my cousin Nate used when he was a baby like me.

Then we went to the doctor for my 9-month checkup. The best part-NO SHOTS! Woohoo! The doc says everything checked out great and I'm good for another three months or 3000 miles. Wait...that might have been the guy at the oil change place talking about my friend Pilot... I weigh 22 pounds and 5 ounces and I'm 29 inches long. After the doctor I had a nap then it was time to go have my 9-month pictures taken. That was fun and I think we got some pretty good shots.

New foods this week: noodles, Gerber diced apples, peas.

New tricks this week: I'm standing more and more without holding onto anything. I love to crawl all over my house and get into trouble. I think it's really funny to race Mommy to the bathroom. Sometimes I get there first but usually she's there slamming the door on all my fun. Seriously, what's wrong with playing with a plunger? I've done lots of giggling with Mommy and Daddy this week. They're funny people. I've been practicing my walking a lot this week with my walking toys. Here's a picture...

And here I am eating a duck in the bathtub. Mom and Dad don't understand the allure but I do it just about every bathtime.

And check this out!!! I can stand up in the bathtub, NO HANDS!! Mommy thought it was bad enough last week that I stood up holding on. You should have seen her face when I pulled this trick out of the bag!!!

Time for me to head out now. My apologies again for the lack of pictures. The good news is that my Grandma Trish and Grandpa Steve are coming up from Omaha to see me this weekend so there will be lots of photo ops!!

Have a great week everybody. Enjoy the nice weather we're finally having! ("Nice weather" being a respective term of course. I hear my family in Texas doesn't think that 25 degrees is all that nice. What the heck is it like there that 25 degrees isn't nice? Shoot, after spending so many days below zero, this 25 degree stuff is like a tropical heat wave!)

Love and hugs!

Tater Bugger

Vortex Disguised as Toybox Found in Taylor's Home

I forgot to add this picture last night when I did my blogging. So I was just minding my own business playing with my toys yesterday (Mommy pulled the tub out to the middle of the room so I could get to all sides of it), when suddenly I was sucked inside the tub. Well, as Dad tells the story, it wasn't all that sudden. I hovered for a bit with my arms submerged in the toys and my legs flailing about in the air, pleading for help, but he was too busy looking for the camera to help me. By the time he found the camera I was fully immersed in the tub. Thank goodness he decided to pull me out after he took a couple pictures.

Stay safe people, it's a dangerous world out there. You never know what vortex lurks around the next corner...

Peace out.

Taylor McKenna

All in a Week's Work

Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of Memoirs of a Baby. I'm happy to report that the week started out well with MORE real food. Here I am enjoying green beans. They're so yummy and I'd really fill up on them if I could just improve my aim and not drop half of them on the floor. Other real foods I tried this week: graham crackers (yeah!), Spanish rice (nay), Mexican fried ice cream (yeah!), Shephard's pie (nay), and pickles (yeah!).

Here's Dad and I up to our shenanigans again. I was goofin' with him in The Chair and totally did a face-first slide down to the floor. Thank goodness for that pile of blanket at the bottom.

Ah yes, more Kitchen Mayhem and Merriment. But the darndest thing happened this week. I can't get the cupboards open anymore! The only one that will open for me is my girl Lazy Susan. Not so lazy NOW is she?!?! I'd say the others are the lazy ones these days. I wonder if my mom and dad had anything to do with it...

Never too early to start and exercise regimen. Here I am working my deltoids and lats with some chin-ups...

Ball Popping Mania is the name of the game here. I got this toy for Christmas from my Greataunt Deb, Greatuncle John, and cousins Lindsey and Derek. I think it's great. The jury is still out for Mom and Dad. See, I like to stick my hands in there when the balls are popping and that totally throws off the rhythm of the machine so that balls then fly all over the living room. Funny, right? That's what I thought! Can you convince my parents? For some reason they don't find crawling all over the living room floor retrieving balls amusing.

This stuff is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S! My big girl bathseat disappeared and now I get to bathe Super Big Girl style--NO BATH SEAT YO!! It was great. Mom was chillin' on the bathroom floor, reading a little while I played. But things got a big hairy when I discovered that I could STAND UP in there! Sa-weet!!! I tried to turn on the water but that didn't work. Then I turned to the back end of the tub where I pulled down a towel bar and almost pulled down the big poley-basket thing that holds all the bottles. It was all good but for some reason Mom had this look of shear panic in her eyes. I can't wait until my next Super Big Girl bath!!

Saturday was a very busy day for me. I went to Grandpa Bob and Grandma Jan's in the afternoon while Mommy went to lunch with her friends from grad school and Daddy stayed home to do some work. I did lots of playing at Grandpa and Grandma's.

Then I went to Major's with G & G, where we met Mommy, Daddy, Aunt Jenni, Uncle John, Megan, Nate, Christopher, and Angela for dinner. (Christopher is Mommy's cousin and Angela is his wife.) Here's a picture of my auntie and me wearing a special bib I picked out just for her...

After dinner we all went to Megan's hockey game. She plays for Inver Grove Heights on the U10C team. Here's Megan all geared up. Someday I'll get to play hockey too, just like Megan and Nate!

Here we are, Mommy, me, Daddy, Chris and Angela. Chris and Angela are from Iowa, so I guess that means they don't know much about hockey. Now that they live in Minnesota I guess our family has taken it upon themselves to teach Chris and Angela about hockey. Mommy isn't any help though, she doesn't know much herself. That's Daddy and Uncle John's department.

Wow, it's been a busy week!!! I better go rest up now. Mommy is off work tomorrow so she's dragging--err I mean, taking me to the doctor and to the photographer. Time to take care of those 9 month things. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that--I'm 9 months old now!! And Mommy had a birthday last week but she's not real into talking about it. I heard her grumbling something about "31 is no fun...officially in my 30s....I want 30 back...blah blah whine whine whine...." I tuned her out.

For real, I better get going. Love, hugs and sloppy kissed to all!

Taylor Baby Girl

Still Adorable

Hello folks. Another week gone. I was up to my same old mischievous (but oh-so-cute!) ways this week. Made a few more messes in the kitchen. Here's a great one where I pulled EVERYTHING out of the cupboard with the muffin tins, baking sheets, etc.

And I am totally digging bananas. I bet I could eat a whole one but Mommy always stops giving it to me when I've eaten about a quarter of one. Party pooper. This week I also tried black beans, fortune cookies, cinnamon toast and ice cream (Grandma Jan slipped me some of that frozen heaven at Mommy's birthday dinner).

Oh yeah, here's another one of my mischievous acts. I crawled up onto the TV tray next to Dad's chair the other day. He called Mommy in from the other room to see me. I'm such a stinker! (Don't worry, Daddy held onto my ankle the whole time.)

Who's the trouble maker now? Oh but he's so fun and I just love him up!

Safe landing...

Here is a super cute picture of me before we went out to Mommy's birthday dinner. I look so grownup that the server lady asked if I needed a drink off the kid's menu. Mommy set her straight and told her I'm still a "formula only kinda kid". But that root beer that my cousins were drinking sounds like something I could get into someday...

Drumroll please... Below is a video of me cruising the living room with one of my walking toys. Please enjoy.

I didn't have a whole lot to say or a whole lot of pictures to share this week. I hope it was enough to keep my fans satiated for now. Love and hugs to all of you out there!!

Tooker

Toys, who needs 'em?

Well folks, I'd like to say thanks to all of you out there who bought me all the cool toys for Christmas.

Really, it was very thoughtful of you and I'm sure you had the best of intentions. And most days I start out with the best intentions of playing with all of them. See? Here I am playing with one of my new walking toys:

But I just get so distracted sometimes by all the other things in my house. Like my dirty laundry...

And this super cool cabinet in the kitchen. It's got a drawer that pulls out and oodles of water bottles.

Then there's the bags of recycling. Who doesn't want to rummage around in that?

AND there's the baby in the oven door that looks just like me. We like to slobber on each other's faces.

There's just so much that I need to check out in my house. It's for the good of the family. I have to make sure we're all safe and that I know where things are in case Mom and Dad need me to help them find things. Like a pie plate. Cuz my mom, she bakes a lot of pies you know! (That was totally a joke! My mom's never baked a pie in her life but she did inherit a really pretty pie plate from her Grandma Fern. I like to pull it out of the cupboard and yep, you guessed it, suck on it.)



In other news at our house this week, we got a new chair. Grandma Jan and Grandpa Bob decided they didn't like their furniture and got themselves some new Lazy Boyz. (I wonder if they're related to my friend Lazy Susan that lives in my kitchen...? Ah, but I digress...) So they were nice enough to give us their leather recliner. It's become Daddy's new favorite thing in the house. The other night he read me books and snuggled with me under a blanket.

I got a belated Christmas present today. It's a cute reindeer named Rooftop from my cousin Megan. I'm usually not a huge fan of stuffed animals, but I totally dig this one!

Love at first sight...

BANANA! Real banana, right out of the peel. Not mashed up and put in a jar. I love it! Thanks Mom!!

This is me in my new bath towel from Mommy's coworker, Ms. Cindy. Am I supercute or what?!?! And what a genius idea, because those ones that the people in the factories make for babies are totally not absorbant enough for me. Thanks Ms. Cindy!

Well folks, I guess that about does it for this post. Mommy has to go back to work tomorrow and I'm heading back to daycare to see how my friends have been doing since I've been away. I hope the place has been alright without me.

Peace out!

TaterBug

Happy New Year!

Hello all and Happy 2008. Taylor McKenna here. Yep, I did it. I got a blog. I felt I had mastered flickr.com and was ready to move on to bigger things. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post on here, but I'll do my best to keep all my fans updated.

Well, the new year has already been good to our family. Mom, Dad and I went to Warren's Jellystone Park in Wisconsin to celebrate the holiday. Aunt Jenni, Uncle John, and my cousins Megan and Nate joined us. Daddy's cousin Nick and his wife Lacy there and so was Daddy's cousin Joe with his wife Jill and their daughters Madison and Anna. We had so much fun! I loved the waterpark! I didn't sleep so great but hopefully nobody will hold that against me.

Mom took me down this waterslide. Sorry the picture isn't so great, but you get the idea, right?

I L-O-V-E-D the swings in the water!

Here's me and my mommy. We had to cuddle to stay warm when we got out of the water.

That's me and Anna. She's my 3rd cousin I guess. We love to hug and giggle.

Waterparking makes a baby tired. This is me chillin' with Joe, Dad's cousin.

Anna and I got in our pajamas on New Year's Eve and celebrated by reading some books. Rockin' goood times for the little girls!

That's my cousin Nate standing up in the loft.

This is Madison and Megan on Day 2 at the waterpark. The big kids played in the water for three days. I only played two days. That's a lot of work for a little baby like me!

While the big kids went back for Day 3 at the waterpark, I went to breakfast with Mom, Dad, Nick and Lacy. And guess what! PANCAKES! Mom and Dad let me eat pancakes at breakfast. I think 2008 is going to be GREAT!

AND Aunt Jenni gave me my first Cheeto. Talk about some good stuff!

When we got home from the waterpark, I climbed all over the Christmas gifts still spread all over our living room to make sure everything was still there. Yep, still there. Mommy says she's hoping I take some REALLY good naps in the next couple of days so she can return our home to something resembling order.

Well folks, that's all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed my first post. Catch ya on the flip side.

T-Mac