HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Happy Halloween from Huey and the Bean!

11 Months!

Kylie is 11 months old!

Well...It's that time again. Another month has passed and Kylie is officially 11 months old. Only 31 more days until we no longer have ourselves an infant! I anticipate that this will be a fun and busy month as we are in the midst of planning birthday parties, buying gifts and transitioning to "real people" food.

Kylie continues to grow and change and burrow deeper into our hearts everyday. Jon and I often ask each other how it's possible to love a little person so much, but somehow we just keep making more room. She has the best personality. She is calm, sweet, silly, and totally awesome! She is definitely in a moving and exploring stage, which has meant a baby proofing stage for us. Her toys are boring...She likes everything she is not supposed to have much better. One of her favorite things being Huey's food and water dishes. She has had a few episodes of dumping his entire bowl full of water onto herself. It's funny and awful all at the same time. She loves being around other kids, especially her cousin, Emmit, who she follows around like he's king. She also likes Baby Jacob (the baby boy that I am babysitting). When he is on the floor, she crawls over to inspect him closely. She LOOOOOVES her daddy. I'm telling myself it is because she doesn't see him as much, but she gets sooooo excited when he walks in the door at night. She likes Huey, and all other dogs for that matter. Poor Huey gets pulled, pushed, and prodded whenever he is within Kylie's reach. Huey doesn't seem to mind, though, as he has not received as much attention from his parents...Any attention is good attention, right?!?

There are two things that come to mind this month when I think of Kylie's dislikes. First, she is starting to show her extreme hatred for being cold again. We haven't really had to deal with this since before we left for Florida in March, but with the temperatures dropping she has rediscovered her dislike. For example, we were running errands recently, and the wind was whipping as it does in the fall. While we were walking into the store from the parking lot, Kylie was screaming the whole way. I didn't realize until we got into the store and she smiled at me that it was because she was cold. She also dislikes being set down on the floor when she is hungry. This normally happens in the morning and after her naps. She is clearly wanting to eat, and as soon as I try to set her down to fix her meal, she wails! Even though I calmly explained to her that I will never let her starve, she still yells at me until I pick her up and put some food in her belly!

As for her milestones, she is finally, "crawling." I say, "crawling" because it is technically an army crawl, but she is fast like a normal crawler. I have a feeling that she is going to skip actual crawling because she is so efficient with her army crawl/roll strategy. She is sitting up much better these days...She still lays down by choice sometimes, but can officially sit for as long as her heart desires! She is still teething....She still has the 6 teeth, and she is currently working on the top, middle two teeth. I can see them about to pop through. Maybe she will have them for her 1 year pictures! She is quite the talker, but might be a little shy around other people. She talks and talks and talks when she is home with us, but when we are with other people she stays fairly quiet. It will be interesting to see if she will always be like that. She has most of her consonant sounds down, except for "ma" of course. Her favorites are "da" and "ba." She can clap her hands, wiggle her body, and click her tongue on command. All of which are really cute! Kylie has continued to grow...She weighed in at 22 pounds, 15 ounces earlier this week. She has moved up to size 4 diapers, but she is still wearing size 3 shoes. She is pretty much completely in 12-18 month clothes, which is really big considering she is only supposed to be 9 months old! She is still taking 2 naps each day and sleeping about 11 hours at night. She also still eats 4 times each day...We are working on the sippy cup and eating real people food. My goal for her is to have her completely on real food by her first birthday and off the bottle by 14 months. Wish us luck!

Happy 11 months, Kylie!

Another Day, Another Orchard.

Kylie posing with the pretty mums!

This time Kylie and I hit up Northwoods Apple Orchard in Douglas, which is just north of Rochester. Many of the husbands were out of town at a conference, so a few of us ortho wives took our babes up to the orchard for a fun Saturday morning. I hope I don't offend any Apple Ridge lovers, but I think I liked Northwoods better. There was no entry fee, and the tractor ride only cost $1.50. The building was spacious and they sold delicious, homemade donuts for 75 cents! There were quite a few different animals to visit, hay bales to play on, and beautiful mums for taking pictures! It was a fun little adventure!

Kylie and Kinsley

Me and my Bean!

Apple Ridge Orchard and Vineyard!

Kylie's first trip to the apple orchard!

Who doesn't love fall in Minnesota?!? The weather is warm, the leaves are changing and the apples are ripe for the picking! And as you may or may not know, my husband loooooves him a delicious apple or two. So this past Sunday, we headed up to Apple Ridge Orchard and Vineyard with some friends for some apple picking and tractor riding. The weather was a perfect 70 degrees and the Honeycrisp apples were amazing! We spent our time there sampling a variety of apples, including caramel apples, looking at animals and strolling the trees, vineyard and pumpkin patch. We all enjoyed ourselves, and Kylie is clearly carrying on the apple-loving gene! It was the best way to spend a beautiful fall day!

Jon and Kylie

The Crew: Anne, Rebecca and Ella, Me and Kylie

Apple Lover #1: Notice one in each hand!

Apple Lover #2

The beautiful scenery!

Homemade Foaming Soap

While reading one of the 'frugal living' blogs (Money Saving Mom) that I follow, I spotted a post on how to make homemade foaming soap. I love foaming soap, and I usually spend too much to buy it at Bath and Body Works, so I figured I'd give it a try. And let me tell you, it is probably the easiest thing I have ever made! I think it might even be too easy to be called "homemade." You should all give it a try....

You will need...

1. An empty foaming soap bottle. I used one of my old Bath and Body Works bottles.

2. Two Tablespoons (about 30 squirts) of a liquid hand soap. I used Method brand, Cucumber scent.

3. Water.

Put the 2 tablespoons of liquid soap into the empty foaming soap bottle. Then add water and gently swish back and forth until the soap and water have mixed (do not be aggressive with the mixing or you might end up with a sudsy mess). Finally, give the soap a squirt and enjoy your new, homemade foaming soap.

On the right is the liquid soap.
On the left is the finished product... It foams!

I love this because it is super easy and it's a money saver. Two tablespoons of liquid hand soap can now last weeks rather than days! :)

Enjoy!