6 Months Old!

Saturday, January 30, 2010


Wow has it really been half of a year? Kenley is getting more personality by the day! She loves to watch me brush my hair and then gets completely mesmerized by the hair dryer. She also has noticed that we have dogs! She loves it when she is in the exersaucer and they walk past her. We even let her "pet" Sadie for a little while. Really she just grabbed a big clump-o-Sadie hair and pulled it as tight as she could. Sadie was really good about being gentle and letting Kenley tug all over her. Kenley has been in a weird funk ever since getting the stomach flu, she went from calm independent baby to super clingy and whiny. We are working on that. Brian and I came to the conclusion that the first 6 months of her life were physically demanding on us and now the rest of her life is going to be more mentally demanding for us as we figure out disciplining her and training her to be like Christ. I still cant believe that God blessed us with such an amazing little girl.

Kenley eats food!

Since today is Kenley's six month birthday we decided to start her on solids! She absolutely loved it! She was definitely ready to eat. I think that with future children I will start them at five months rather than six because she downed all that cereal! She kept trying to take the spoon from me so that she could try to feed herself. She ate the whole bowl!

I sent a text to some family members telling them that we started Kenley on cereal today. I got a text back from my sister asking what kind. Sarcastic me replied back to her "Trix".... She believed me :) haha I love you Kimbe, I am going to start writing down all of the funny things you say so that I can read them to you when you have kiddos. :)


GRRR... The pictures are so grainy. I accidentally messed with some setting on my camera the other day and now it is not taking good pictures.

Kenley's Weight

Friday, January 29, 2010

The visiting nurse came by today. Kenley weighed in at 11lbs 10oz which is 2 ounces less than what she weighed on Monday. I am not really sure why she is losing weight, I feed her all the time. We have gone from a 3 hour schedule to a weird sort 2 hour schedule/ on demand feeding thing. It is really wearing me out. We have her 6 month doctor appointment on Monday so we will see what they say then.

Lately when I get the camera out and tell her to smile for the camera she totally does! Hopefully you can see it through the pacis!


Here she is smiling while modeling her new fancy paci clip
Here she is chilling on Daddy's lap. She always get so frustrated during tummy time on the floor but for some reason she is totally content to lay like this on his lap.

Pineapple BBQ Chicken

Pineapple BBQ Chicken
Serves 2

Ingredients:
1 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast
BBQ Sauce (We like Sweet Baby Rays)
2 Pineapple Rings
Any combination of shredded cheese that you like (I used Cheddar and Mozzarella)

1. Place your chicken breast in a Ziploc bag, squirt BBQ sauce onto chicken, add a little bit of water to the bag and mash it up. This makes your marinade. Refrigerate bag for at least 1 hour.

2. Remove chicken from refrigerator and pound out the chicken to get it nice and thin. I don't have a meat mallet/tenderizer so I used an ice cream scoop. :)

3. Once your chicken it at a thickness that you like, remove chicken from bag. Cut your chicken breast into 2 equal pieces and place chicken on a foil covered baking sheet or your stoneware.

4. Top each piece with a ring of pineapple. Then spread a thin layer of BBQ sauce on top of the pineapple. Top it off with your cheese.

5. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Notes:
We dehydrated the remaining pineapple rings from the can and they were so good! Another great recipe for using up the remaining pineapple rings is Hungry Girls Banzai Burger Swap. When we make those we use real burgers rather than Boca's because well... I am married to Brian :)

Also Brian informed me that he could have eaten 2 servings of this chicken by himself. So feel free to double the recipe! I certainly will next time!

Thank you LORD!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

On Sunday, to church, I wore my Diamond Heart necklace that Brian got me when I had my appendix out. When we got home from church I realized that I had lost a diamond. :( It wasn't really too big of a deal because it was one of the teeny ones so we thought it would for sure be under $100 dollars to fix.

On Tuesday I went to The Cow Cafe and The Accidental Artist with Lauren and Lily Kate to have a make-up birthday lunch for Lily Kate. After hanging out with them I went to Mikes Downtown Jewelers to have them look at the necklace and tell me how much it would cost to replace. Thankfully, it will only cost $35 dollars to replace so I was excited about that because we could afford to do it right away!
While I was there I asked them to clean my rings because I love when they are all sparkly and free of spit up and everything else that accumulates on my rings :). When she brought my rings back she said that I couldn't take my wedding band with me because 4 of my diamonds were loose!!! Yikes!!! She took some tweezers and was showing me how wiggly they were! She said that they would have fallen out soon!
I am so thankful how the LORD worked everything out so that we only have to pay $35 dollars to get my necklace and rings fixed rather than having to pay a lot more to have 4 of the diamonds in my ring replaced! Praise the LORD!

How the bumper snaps

Monday, January 25, 2010

Here are a few pictures of how I added snaps to Kenleys bumper to attach it to the crib!

I cut a strip of ribbon and added a snap and then I hot glued it to itself around the post of the crib. I did this on 6 posts. I added the other half of the snap to the bumper
Here is the view of the snaps with bows for the front of the crib
At both ends I added snaps to the pillowcase style cover to keep it closed and held together

Let me know if you have any questions!

For the Fancy Baby

Our Internet was out for a little while this morning so I decided to pull out some of the pearl beads from our wedding and make a fancy paci clip for Kenley.
I double threaded it to hopefully make it extra strong as well as coated the knots with clear nail polish. Hopefully there will not be beads everywhere when Kenley uses it! {Don't worry Dad, she is always supervised when we use paci clips!}

We have made some progress on the furniture front too!
Its pretty hard to see but there is a squirrel between the tire swing and the tree. Sadie was eyeing it for a good five minutes before she decided to pounce :) I still need to get a video of us jumping on the trampoline with Sadie and Tyson! It is so funny because they totally love it! So, does anyone have any other great ideas for me to use up some of the pearl beads from our wedding? I seriously have 3 Ziploc bags full!

Kenley's Weight Saga :)

This morning the visiting nurse came to weigh Kenley and she weighed in at 11lbs 12oz. So she is up just a tiny bit from Thursday. We scheduled another appointment for the nurse to come back on Friday for another weight check.

I am so thankful that we are blessed with a visiting nurse @ Cherry Point. She has been a really blessing to us to come out and do all of these weight checks for our skinny baby.

Furniture Finds!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

We scored some awesome finds yesterday at the Helping Hands Closing sale. I am really bummed that Helping Hands is closing because it was my favorite thrift store and it definitely had the best prices in town.

First I saw this big coffee table and it immediately made me think of the coffee table that Lindsay @ Living with Lindsay made. This huge piece was only $40. I plan to totally copy her table :)
Here is what Lindsay's gorgeous coffee table looks like.

Then, while I had Brian lugging the coffee table out to the car, I ran across this table. It was only $15 dollars and its solid wood! I have actually really been wanting to get a round table for our "dining room" because I think it will make that area appear larger and therefore our house more sell-able :)

My plans are to paint the table black and then distress it! We already have almost everything primed and we are just waiting for it to dry!

This crown only lasted about 2 seconds

Kenley at Lily Kate's birthday party

Cheese Biscuits

Friday, January 22, 2010

{First off, Sorry for this ugly photo... I still need to find a way to take attractive food pictures, especially at night because that is usually when I like to bake...}
Mr. Billy & Mrs. Billie always make these with {the most awesome} grits when it is their morning to bring breakfast for Sunday School. I could eat 50 of them. The grits that they make are awesome too! I need to learn how to make grits because I really like them!

Ingredients
Pillsbury Flaky Layers Refrigerated Biscuits
Cheese (as many slices as you have biscuits)

Just take your biscuits and split them in half. Then place your cheese in there and close them back up. Bake @ 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until they are golden brown and the cheese is bubbly!

Doctor Visit

Thursday, January 21, 2010

I took Kenley to the doctor this morning. Kenley was down to 11 lbs 11.8 ounces, So she has lost 3 more ounces since Sunday. Poor Girl! The Doctor told me that it takes babies longer to recover from the stomach flu than adults so that is why she is still throwing up and having diarrhea. There isn't much that we can do for her other than continue trying to feed her and wait. The visiting nurse is going to come out on Monday for a weight check so hopefully she will have gained some weight back by then.

Candy Corn

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I was debating to titles for this recipe post. I was either going to go with Corn Nuts or Candy Corn. Candy Corn won out because of the sweetness that these little babies have! These little candy corn thingys would make great toppings for salads or soups or whatever you would like to give a little crunch too! They certainly are great by themselves though and are quite a healthy snack!
Candy Corn

Ingredients:
1/4 of a bag of Frozen Corn (more or less depending on what you want)

Spread frozen corn on a towel and let thaw on counter for at least an hour. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place thawed corn on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes then stir. Continue baking a stirring about every 5-10 minutes for about 45 minutes or until off of your little corn niblets are brownish and wrinkly. The drier they are the better.

Basically you will be dehydrating them and roasting them at the same time!

Only make as much as you will eat at one time because these will get soggy if kept in the refrigerator.

We're here still...

I am back to feeling 100%, but Kenley is now refusing to nurse and will not take a bottle either. I can tell that she is so much skinnier and her little ribs are so prominent now. Please pray for her that she would have an appetite. We have a doctors appointment tomorrow to see what is going on with her.

The Bug

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Kenley has passed the stomach bug onto me. Yesterday evening I couldn't even drink a sip of water without throwing up so we are not doing well at all. We went to the urgent care on base this morning and we were told that we both have the stomach flu.

What I am most worried about though is Kenley weighted in at 11 lbs 14.1 ounces. This is not good at all because at her last doctors appointment on December 10th she weighed 11 lbs 12.4 ounces. So please be praying for her that she would recover from this stomach bug and then begin to breastfeed more again so that she can gain weight. I would really hate to have to put her on formula now that we finally got the hang of breastfeeding.

I totally understand why Kenley just wanted to be held by her mommy the past few days because honestly I just want to be held by my mommy until this thing passes.

Okay back to bed!

Dogs like to blog too

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Sick Baby

Even when she is sick she will smile for Mommy


I actually got the camera out to take a picture of Tyson but when Kenley saw the camera she started smiling! I guess I have her trained early!

My Moment

You may think that I am crazy since my baby will be 6 months in a few weeks but during all of this time I knew that I was her Mom and I loved her like crazy but I hadn't had my ah-ha moment of wow I am a real Mom yet. Yesterday I had the moment where I realized that I was a Mom.

A Little Back Story:

Brian is required by the Marine Corps to get any vaccine that is available to him. Seriously they pass those shots out like candy. Thursday he got the H1N1 vaccine, He felt fine when he first got home but that quickly escalated into "I am freezing cold and my stomach feels HORRIBLE." So I wrapped him up in some blankets and didn't think much of it.

Then yesterday Kenley woke up happy like she always does but then it hit her too. She was throwing up all over the place. I have no idea how many outfits that she went through, I lost count after I had to wash almost all of the sleepers that she owns, but I know that she made me go through at least 7 outfit changes.

I was sitting with her in the office chair rocking her back and forth, there was nothing I could do for her except hug her, rub her back, and stroke her hair while she threw up all over me. That was the moment that I realized I am a real Mom. She needs me and wants me! It was the most precious moment of cuddling her ever, even if we were both covered in throw up.

I also learned that the good thing about having a sick kid is that they are cuddly! Kenley is not a cuddler so I enjoyed that she wanted to cuddle up with me yesterday!

I thought that she was feeling better today but she just threw up again so I will probably keep her home from church tomorrow just to make sure that she doesn't pass this bug onto anyone else!

Getting ahead of myself

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I like to day dream. a lot. Here are a few gorgeous projects that I would like to make for Kenley right now!

Sometimes I forget that she is only 5 months :) So obviously this awesome bunk bed from Pottery Barn Kids is out of the question for awhile....I am also pretty much in love with everything that Ana from Knock Off Wood has plans for!

Kenley will need a mailbox that she can use to send out her felt mail supplies

She can go to the grocery store and purchase Pantyhose Potatos, Cake, and various other Felt Foods. I want to make almost everything shown on the blog Playing Food. I also have some ideas of how to make Artichokes and Ritz Crackers and Oreos and the list goes on and on!

Then Kenley could make a run to Starbucks, I certainly have enough Starbucks mugs that I could share some with her! She could also pick up some donuts and then head to the library.
The Library might be my favorite idea because it would be the perfect place to keep all of her books!

Once she finished with all of her errands in town she could head out to her yard and tend t0
A Pickable Garden

Then she can start making dinner in her play kitchen! Lowes used to have plans on their website for how to make a play kitchen similar to the one in Pottery Barn but it looks like they have taken the plans off of their website... Bummer! Click on this link to see an awesome play kitchen that one mom made using the Lowes Plans.

I hope you enjoyed day dreaming with me and checking out all of the awesome links!

Kenley Update!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Brian just got home from work and we were sitting in the office talking so I decided to lay her down on her tummy time mat and she rolled over all on her own 4 times in a row! She immediately stopped when she saw the camera so I don't have a video yet but I will try my best to get one soon! I am a very proud Mommy and I am so glad that Brian and I got to watch her do it together!

Here she is right after she spotted the camera and stoppedThe other day I was bored and she was being grumpy so I put her in a dress and cowgirl boots! No one an be irritated with a baby in cow girl boots!
We love this hat that Tonia got for her! Here she is last night after we got home from ChurchThis is a video clip of Kenley "walking" she really is picking up her own feet! Sorry its the wrong direction, I can not for the life of me figure out how to flip it.

January Goals

I stunk at doing my goals in December!
December Goals

1. Finish Sweater Project... check
2. Pack Early- Total Fail. I threw everything in my suitcase last minute
3. Clean out fridge again before trip... check
4. Paint Ceiling- Big time Fail.... I NEED to stop putting this off!
5. Make presents for family members- Total Fail... Maybe next year
6. Make appointment to get Sadie groomed- Fail
7. Clean house before trip... check
8. Buy filters for my Roomba... check :) Brian bought them for me for Christmas
9. Send out Christmas Cards... check

I am not going to make new years resolutions this year. I think I do much better on the monthly goal system but I do have a few things that I would like to get accomplished in 2010... Stay tuned for that list but for now here are my January Goals.

January Goals
1. Paint the stupid ceiling already!
2. Do the 30 day shred everyday except Sundays
3. Wear my retainers every night and floss my teeth more often.
4. Buy less pre-packaged-bad-for-you foods
5. Eat healthier breakfasts
6. Put away Christmas decor
7. Take some of Kenley's and my clothes to the consignment shops

Happy January Everyone!

So Proud

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Warning: Mom, you may want to skip reading this post :)

I am so proud of us! Last night for dinner we made a whole roast chicken! That may not seem like a big deal to you but to this former vegetarian it was a ginormous deal! Did you notice that I wrote we and not I? That is because my wonderful husband helped me! By help I mean that he touched all the yucky parts and disposed of the yucky parts... Basically I just picked the recipe :) It turned out great and looked beautiful too but I forgot to snap a picture before we cut into it. Roast chicken will definitely be on our menu from now on so I will take a picture next time I make it!

The recipe from an old Martha Stewart magazine. I added a bag of baby carrots and more onions so the recipe below reflects my additions.

Roast Chicken
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 Whole Chicken (about 6lbs)
2 T Butter
Salt and Pepper
1 Lemon
3 Large Garlic Cloves
4 Sprigs Fresh Thyme, plus more for garnish
6 Onions, peeled and cut crosswise into 1/2 inch this slices and then separated into rings
1 Bag Baby Carrots

1. Let chicken and butter stand at room temp. for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Remove plastic pop up timer and other gross stuff from the inside of the chicken, discard. Tuck the wing tips under the body (to prevent them from burning). Generously season the cavity of the chicken with salt and pepper.

2. Place the palm of your hand on top of the lemon and pressing down roll it back and forth on a hard surface several times. Pierce the entire surface of the lemon with a knife. Using the large side of a knife gently press on the garlic cloves to open slightly. Insert Lemon, Garlic, and Thyme into the chicken cavity.

3. Spread your onion rings and carrots all over the bottom of a roasting pan. Place the chicken on top. Tie the chicken legs together with kitchen twine.

4. Spread the entire surface of the chicken with the softened butter. Season generously with salt and pepper.

5. Roast until skin is crisp and deep golden brown and the juices run clear when chicken is pierced with a fork about 1 1/2 hours. Insert and instant read thermometer into the breast, then the thigh. Chicken is ready when the breast or thigh reaches 165 degrees. Garnish with thyme sprigs.

The onions got all caramelized and cooked down so that they practically disintegrate in your mouth. They were so good! The carrots we also delicious! This is definitely going to become a Ronk family regular especially since I have just enough chicken left over to make Southwest Soup tomorrow!

Sometimes babies have bad hair days too...

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Maybe she is just trying to be more like her super cool cousin James?

Back to "Normal"

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Today ends our vacation time. Brian is back at work and I am supposed to be back to cleaning and laundry... Don't worry I will get to it before he gets home. :)

Since we know that we will be moving fairly soon we are in a total clear it out and clean it up mode. The floors in our laundry room and master bath are begging to be tiled so we headed to the Habitat for Humanity store yesterday to see if they had any tile that we liked. Nothing really stood out to us there except for this:

Amy, I almost bought it for you so that your other "bunny" could have a baby but Brian wouldn't let me "waste" the $3 :)

After Habitat we headed to Michael's, Ross, TJ Maxx, Walmart, Starbucks, and another thrift store because if you are in the area, Why not??

Christmas picks were 80% off at Michael's so I bought 47 of them. Yes, I may have been a little over zealous BUT next Christmas will be our first married Christmas where we stay at our own house so I am going all out!

At the thrift shop I found a boppy pillow in really great condition with one of the nice minky covers for only $3.50 so I scooped that up and while I was checking out the kids toy section I heard the boss lady telling a worker that the doll house had been sitting there forever so just to throw it away. It is the same doll house that I had growing up so I went up to the lady and offered her a penny for it. She agreed and when she rang me up she didn't even charge me a penny! So I have a free doll house now! It is in pretty shabby condition but really just needs to be cleaned but I want to paint it bright fun colors too!

If you need any storage bins, Walmart has some on sale for $3.40. We stocked up on those. I have just been informed by my friend Christy that the fabric dept. in the New Bern Walmart is closing so everything is half off!

We finished up the day with ice cream and the movie Up. That movie had many cute parts but overall it was way to sad for me. I cry way to easily. Although I am pretty sure that the dog Doug in that movie is based on our dog Sadie :)
 
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