February 2013

Here is Rylee at 9 months.  She is SO much fun.  And she just keeps getting even more fun!

Rylee has discovered the dishwasher! She gets so excited when I start to unload the dishes. She likes to sit right on the door and play with all the silverware.  I have to remove all the knives as soon as I open the door so that she is safe to have fun. It is actually really nice, because it gives me a chance to unload the dishwasher without her getting fussy.

 Rylee loves having the cats around.  She isn't the softest to them, but they are really good about it.  It think they are just starved for attention and don't care what form it comes in:)

 

 

Here is Rylee posing for the camera. Isn't she the cutest thing?!

 And I love this picture!

Rylee has an on-again-off-again relationship with pacifiers.  She likes them leading up to our trip to Sacramento, and then when we got back she wanted nothing to do with them. Sad day...or month really...

When Rylee was a few months old, Christie got her this awesome pacifier.  I found her playing with it in her room.  She loved to chew on it.  Then gradually it would end up in her mouth and she would suck on it for a little bit...there was hope!  Then she started sucking on it more and more until.... she started liking pacifiers again!!! Thank you Christie!!! Once she started taking pacifiers again she started going down for naps SO much easier!

 Since Jenny lives in D.C., anytime we have a chance to get out of State College (and Jenny is free) we go visit.  Jenny is nice enough to let us stay with her and we always have a blast! It is so nice to have Jenny so close! She does so well with Rylee and even lets Kenny and I go to the temple together. Here is Rylee and Kenny hanging out in Jenny's bedroom.

We finally found a sippy cup Rylee can use all by herself.  She had a hard time learning that she had to tip back the other sippy cups.  Yea for straws!

She is using the walker all by herself! You can see the handle bars are missing... unfortunately, that is where all the noise would be coming from. So it was a silent walker:) She wasn't as excited about using it as I thought she would be.  She loves crawling and doesn't quite understand why walking would be any better.

She still loves bath time:)

January 2013

It is time for MAJOR catch up! Kenny is working late tonight, and I figure it is as good a time as any to get started:)

After Rylee and I went to Sacramento to visit family, we finally had a break from traveling. There wasn't too much going on, but her are some cute picture of Rylee when she was 8 months old.

Rylee was crawling around everywhere! And it didn't take long for her to be pulling herself up on everything.

 

Since she loved pulling herself up on everything, we decided to get her a toy that would help her learn how to walk. It was an awesome little motorcycle that had a seat that went up so it could be used as a walker, and then it went down so she could ride it too. Unfortunately, I put it together wrong and we weren't able to attach the handlebars.  Luckily, the walker didn't need the handlebars:)

She still loved putting everything in her mouth. (Don't worry, it wasn't plugged in)

 Rylee's new favorite thing to do is wave.  She learned it from Skye and loves to wave at everyone.  She is such a social baby. It blows me away! She loves to be around people and she loves the reaction she gets now from waving at people. There are times I would be worried about taking her out to run errands or to go on a play date because she was being fussy.  I would take her out anyways and she would be so happy!  She was a completely different baby! Often times you try to run your errands all on one day so that you can get them over with.  With Rylee, I learned that it is better to spread them out during the week. I wait until she gets stir crazy at home, and then it is errand time:)

 I know, she looks like a little boy, but she looks so cute in those dinosaur PJ's!

I was having a hard time trying to find things in the diaper bag to entertain Rylee while we went grocery shopping.  When I pulled out my wallet to pay for the groceries, she grabbed it and was having a hay day!  It was the best thing I could have pulled out of the diaperbag!

I was going through Rylee's room and found all of the free samples I had been given of formula and nipples and Rylee got into one of the packages of nipples.  She loved chewing on it backwards:)

Getting the McAllister Girls Together

Over MLK's Birthday, we were able to get all the McAllister girls together.  It was so nice being able to spend time with each other and just hang out!  Rylee ended up getting sick while we were there, and she didn't sleep too well, but we still managed to have a blast.

She did awesome on the airplane!  She slept for about half the flight each way and just played for the rest of the time.  She is a champion traveler!  Unfortunately she developed some stranger anxiety the week before we went.  Just my luck right!  But by the end of the trip she was gradually doing better with being held by different people.

Rylee definitely missed Kenny.  I would let her hear him every night.  He she is smiling as she listens to dad:)

We would also facetime using my dad's ipad.  She loved seeing dad, but was so confused as to where he was.  She would try to grab the ipad and look behind it for where dad was.  You can barely see her smiling in this picture.  It is so awesome to see how excited she gets to talk to and see Kenny:)

We threw Diane a baby shower while we were all together. This is one of our trips to Joanne's.  Rylee was exhausted!

We all went to the Fair Oaks bridge.  It was perfect weather! And Rylee was even letting my dad hold her!  She took to the girls a lot faster then my dad.  But she eventually came around:)

Rylee also enjoyed bath time with her cousin Skye:)

Niagara Falls

We got an awesome groupon to go to Niagara Falls.  The only Saturday night it could be used was the first weekend in January.  (And Kenny can't miss a Friday of school.) So a week after going to Tennessee and Alabama we drove north 4 hours to Niagara Falls.  The drive felt so short compared to the last one.  And, once again, Rylee did AWESOME!  She is such a good traveler.  She does take a lot of entertaining in the back seat, but it is so nice that she still allows us to travel and see different places.

Here is Rylee having fun on the ride.
 

The Falls were amazing! The pictures don't do them justice.  At night they light up the falls.  It was so cool!

It was awfully cold in Niagara Falls.  Not as cold as it normally is, but plenty cold for us:)

 

Check out all that water! The falls looked so cool with all the snow!

All of the ice around the falls was also so cool to look at!

It was crazy to see how fast the water was moving over the falls.  I had a hard time getting close to the edge of the railing.  And of course Kenny had no fear:)

Hanging out in our hotel room:) She is so awesome!

Rylee's favorite part of the trip:  the hotel swimming pool!  She loved it!  Especially when Kenny would throw her around:)

Bouldering over New Years

Even though Kenny didn't have any "vacation" left, he decided to still take off New Years & New Years day.  Since those days happened to land next to a weekend we decided to head south to "warm" weather so we could go bouldering.  We went all the way to Tennessee and Alabama.  It was a 10.5 hour drive to Tennessee!  Rylee did WAY better then we could have ever imagined.

We took a lot of stops a long the way. Here we were changing her in the car before taking her into the mall to give her some space.

 

Having fun with dad outside of the car seat!

 

 Having even more fun with dad throwing her in the air at the mall:)

We spent the first day in Tennessee at ??  I thought it was going to be warm but it snowed the first day.  Kenny did all the climbing that day.  Then we went further south into Alabama for some warmer weather.  It was a lot nicer.  Still a little cold for me but perfect for Kenny:) Her are some cool rock formations there.

 

Here is one happy guy after a day of bouldering!