New videos of Kate

Kate's custom surfboard is on the way. In the meantime Don got her started with some basic body surfing techniques. Lesson #1 - Getting Your Feet Wet (Literally)

Earlier this evening we caught her on tape teasing us with a "mama". You be the judge!

Beach Baby

Hi Everyone! So, I'm sure you've logged on to see what crazy stuff I did last week. I have at least one great one, but to be honest, I don't feel much like a Not Me! Monday today. You see, MckMamma started Not Me! Monday. She has a sweet baby boy named Stellan, who is only a month or so older than Kate. Stellan has a heart that beats MUCH faster than it should - often at over 200 beats per minute. The heart is a muscle, so if it goes on like this for too long, it begins to wear out, and he can go into congestive heart failure. Stellan's doctors have been controlling it with medication, but that doesn't seem to be working anymore and they are going to airlift him to Boston for open heart surgery. That is, as you can imagine, risky for an 8 month old boy. So, to read about Stellan, or keep up with his story, just click here. And even if you don't click there, because it is an especially heart-wrenching story, could you just pray for Stellan and his family? And pray for the doctors to have wisdom and steady hands? I have to admit that I don't always know what prayer does in situations like this... Certainly God knows exactly what will happen to Stellan. Does it mean that he will change that plan to heal him? (because we know he CAN b/c he's God) Does it mean that he will give wisdom, clarity, peace and discernment to the family? Ah.. whatever it is, I keep asking. Please do the same, and I promise in the not too distant future I'll share with you what I did not do in the doctor's office last week. :D

Little Surfer Girl

We decided to take a little overnighter to Charleston this weekend so Don could do a little surfing and Kate and I could do a little of whatever we liked (ok, whatever I liked). She loved the beach and the sand. Here's proof!


First dip in the ocean!

Kate and Mamma

Played with her cousins Elizabeth and Tate. LOVED Tate! I think they're going to have some fun together!

Hotel Baby got to stay up WAY past her bedtime, and still looked like this the next morning.
Sunday trip to the beach. This time wore her suit and enjoyed the sand.

Watching the surf.

Dad promised to teach her. Here they are.

I think she's a natural!
Happy Baby. Happy Day at the Beach.

A Friday Photo

Every girl needs a good bear. Kate wouldn't let us leave this one in Charleston. She convinced Nanna to buy it. From her cousin Courtney.

I know what you're thinking

You're thinking that I only made it 2 weeks in a row on Not Me! Monday before I fell off the bandwagon. Not so! This week was Not My Child! Monday. Kate really hasn't done anything bad or embarassing yet, so I didn't have anything to contribute. I am looking forward to the day though, b/c these posts are pretty stinkin funny (just click here to read for yourself)! Don't worry, Not Me! will be back next week and I'll try to be prepared. Anyway, just so you know, we didn't fall off the face of the earth... we've been busy with.... stuff.

Kate is now learning object permanence, meaning if you disappear behind the refrigerator door, she knows you're actually still there. Smart little booger huh? And she will crane her neck out to see you and what you are doing. She does the same thing with the dog and cat. As a matter of fact, they come in and out of her field of view quite often and she spends a lot of time looking for them. I still think her giggles are the cutest thing ever, but this is a very close second.

Lastweek my Ohio friend Dori sent Kate a new book: "I'll Take a Dozen" Its a counting book, where you count, of all things, Bagels!!! (One plain bagel, 2 onion bagels, 3 sesame bagels and so on) Dori introduced me to bagels when I was in grad school, and I've been in love ever since. So here is Miss Kate at breakfast Saturday morning.. With Daddy, eating a bagel, and counting!!

Miss Photogenic

Kate had her second photo shoot with my friend Shannon Osborne on Monday. It was great fun (for me at least). If you would like to see the beautiful photos that she took, she sent me a link to share with my friends and family that you can find right here! And please, if you have a favorite, let me know! I'm having such a hard time chosing the ones I want because I LOVE them all!!

Here she is having her picture made! Notice the bunny on Shannon's head? He was quite the hit (as you will see in the proofs). I only wish someone had a video camera of us working to make Kate smile. Talking like Cookie Monster works. Singing Elmo's song? Not so much.

Not Me! Monday

Good Monday everyone. I really do NOT have time to post a Not Me! Monday right now.. no, really, I don't! But if I don't do it now, it might be Tuesday before you get one, and that wouldn't be right, now would it? Kate is napping and we have a photo shoot with my friend Shannon at 10:30. (Holy Cow she takes great pics!!!) So! Everything MUST go according to schedule. Ok, you know the drill, this is going to be short and sweet. Either last week was a good week for me, or I have a terrible memory (or probably both). So, if you need more than what's here, or want to do your own Not Me! post, you can head on over to MckMama's blog to see what she and everyone else didn't do last week! Enjoy!

So it was a good week for me, and I can't for the life of me remember what I did all week. I do know that Dick Dyer Volvo Mercedes held my poor Volvo hostage and returned it to me 3 days later damaged. :( Poor Volvo. Its right schizophrenic as it is, and now bruises on the dashboard? Aye. Ok, I digress. Let me say that I did NOT spend the entire weekend watching a Harry Potter movie marathon. I'm 35, I have a baby to mother and a house to clean. I did not skip the vacuuming, dishes, bathroom cleaning and laundry for this little guilty pleasure. Two clean toilets is not all I could muster during the commercials. :)

When checking the mail, I usually give Kate a piece of her own. You know, some kind of junk mail that she usually drops 3 times before we get back to the house. Well, she's getting better at holding onto it, and sometimes I forget that she even has a piece. Well, on Saturday, I did not look down and see this after becoming enthralled in my own, more interesting piece of mail:

What kind of unfit mother would do such a thing? And let her sweet baby, who only eats limited solids, chew off the end of a piece of mail. CHEW IT OFF!!! Did you get that? Had I seen this, I would not have completely PANICKED trying to figure out if she ate it. Wow.. they might take her away if had done that! (never fear, she didn't eat it!) I guess those envelopes are pretty biodegradable afterall!

Ok, and finally, I decided that putting Kate on my shoulders like Don does would be a fun thing. But, I did not get my hair caught in her diaper so that when she was finally down I had a hair-do similar to how my cousin Courtney used to "style" it when she was 5. And Kate did not have a nice tuft of my hair hanging out of her diaper. No one has proof of any of that.

Ah.. I feel much better now. And here are some pictures since I didn't manage to post Sunday. And no, It was not because I was watching yet another Harry Potter movie until 11:00.


Uh oh... learning what you do when someone gets out a camera!!!

First teething biscuit. Liked it. Messy as heck, but a hit. And yes, organic too!!

Yeah, you know I LOVE baby feet. They won't be baby feet forever, so I have to take advantage now. :)


Sweet Kate and Daddy sleeping at bedtime. This happens to me a lot too, but usually at 2am when there is no one around to see it.
Have a great week everyone!!!

Cry Baby

So, if you've been following our blog for long, you know this baby:

She's a sweet, smiley little thing isn't she? Makes you just want to eat her up!

Well, just in case you thought we were somehow blessed with one of those babies that only smiles, sleeps through the night, and never has a dirty diaper, I thought I'd let you in on a little secret. Yes, Kate smiles most of the time, she's a happy girl. But! Once in a while she's a crabby little booger.

What is she crying about? Who knows. It wasn't hunger, and her diaper was clean. My theory is that the lack of naps might have caused this, or perhaps she just had a grouchy day. So how do you fix the baby grouchies? Well, there are a couple of ways. Both involve fur and tails...

Method 1: Smokey the Cat. Notice he remains just out of reach in this photo


Method 2: The much messier Foster the Dog. Ick.. I did stop this lick fest immediately right after I put down the camera.

And there you have it! The happies are back!

Can you believe Kate turns 7 months old tomorrow?! I can't! I counted down to 6 months because then she'd be old enough to do more fun stuff with (like take out in public without crying so much). After that? Time seems to fly! She's starting to think about crawling (a little), and is really developing a fun, mostly laid back personality. She doesn't have teeth yet, but they could make an appearance any day now. She did fuss this morning when I took a teether away from her. So, of course, I promptly returned it! She is starting to get excited when she sees me or Don, which kinda makes us feel like bona fide parents! :)

I can't believe it is so late. I have much to do before bed. Have a great Friday and an even better weekend!!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to the one day a week that you can let loose and confess all of your short comings, wrong doings, parental mistakes and let it all hang out! Its really great therapy, and shouldn’t everyone be able to laugh at themselves?! When you are finished here, hop on over to MckMama's and see what everyone else has not been doing!

First, let me say that you should really be impressed that I’m completing my second Not Me! Monday post on Monday. I’m mostly motivated by the fact that I would be embarrassed to link to MckMama’s Not Me! post on any day other than a Monday.

It was a busy week leading up to a long weekend and my mind was in a million places. But I wasn’t so distracted and on autopilot that I drove home and pulled into the neighborhood before I remembered that I hadn’t picked sweet Kate up from her Nanna’s house. If I had done something so atrocious, I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone!

Many of you know how diligently I’ve worked at getting sweet little Kate to sleep in her own crib over the past month – and I certainly was not motivated by the fact that I knew the pediatrician was going to ask if she was sleeping in her own crib when I went in for her 6 month checkup! Well, its a good thing I'm so consistent. This past weekend she did not sleep in the bed with us on Thursday night and we did not revert back to the swing for Friday and Saturday night. That would just undo all of the hard work of putting her in the crib. Only someone desperate for sleep would do such a thing. Not me! Remember last week… I LOVE sleep deprivation! Whoever came up with the phrase “slept like a baby” anyway? They didn’t have kids did they?

It was my Gramma’s 90th birthday this past Sunday, and we had a Birthday blow-out luau for her on the 4th of July! I always plan ahead so that I give the most thoughtful of gifts, so I certainly did not wait until the evening of July 3rd to shop for her birthday. Because, if I had done that, I would be in quite a pickle knowing that stores aren’t open on the 4th of July. Don did not have to call and ask me if I was ok when I went out to Walmart to buy corn and it took 2 hours. Yeah, that’s right, I went to Walmart the day before a holiday. I did not make the comment that I felt my IQ go down several points when I went into Walmart, seriously, I didn’t b/c I felt that would be stereotyping the people that shop at Walmart, and that’s just mean. And then I did not think to myself that maybe it wasn't such an unfair stereotype after having been in Walmart for about 20 minutes. Luckily, corn was cheap and I assured the checkout lady that I was “in charge” of corn and that’s why I bought 15 ears. Oh, and my gift was thoughtful – homemade oreo chocolate balls and pictures of Kate. Two things Gramma could never get enough of!

The birthday luau was quite fun. We had a sack race, hula-hooped, and did the limbo. We laughed and had a great time like always. I did not, however, wear a pair of white pants with a broken zipper that wouldn’t zip – that might have left an 8 inch slit in the side of my pants. I would have to have rigged some mechanism to hold my pants on if that were the case! They were the perfect pants for that new top I bought.

Well, that’s it for this week – at least all I can remember. Hope you have a great week! See you next Monday!

The 4th! Part II

A Birthday Bash!

My sweet Gramma turned 90 today!! Ninety! Wow! In true Fraylick fashion, it was another fun-filled 4th of July!

The Birthday Girl!
There was Luau theme... Kate loved her Lei

Elizabeth and Tate. Tate is only 6 months older than Kate!
Don, Alice and Kate.
There was a chicken. We weren't in the country, by the way.
Kristen and David - soon to be homeowners!!
Sweet Alice.

Nanna was there too!
Oh, the sack race. This was the girls' race. It was kind of a sack race/obstacle course. Notice the baby and the dog...
Elizabeth crashing and getting passed by a 3 year old...
The guys were a little crazier in the sack race. Here is Jordan after the heat that he won. He almost took out a dog in the process.
And of course, hula hooping. I didn't get a picture of the Limbo - had to leave in the middle of it, but my money was on Caroline.
What a great time!! I love to get together with family - I rarely laugh so much.

OK, so this is where I should break things up into Part III, but really, I'm ready for a hot shower and bed. Kate is asleep (for now) and who knows how long that will last. I'm afraid some teeth are on their way, and she's been quite a little crab today. So here are some shots of our day of recovery...

We slept in, believe it or not, until 8:32!! WOW!! Here are Don and Kate eating breakfast in the dining room.

Sweet little pudgy cheeks.

I'm pretty sure that neither company intended that their products be used in this fashion. But, as you know, Daddy rules are, well, unconventional. We like to say she was in the canopy of her jungle gym. :) Petting the butterflies..
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend!

The 4th! Part I

What a fun weekend! (so far) I've taken quite a few pictures, and I'm not sure that you can handle all of them at once. So this is the first installment! Enjoy!!


We started Friday with a little shopping! Saw this cute baby in the mirror of the Victoria's Secret dressing room.


What's this Dad??
City kid swimming pool? Sure feels good on my toes!


Wore her out!