Introducing Tayler Day!

Our baby girl #2 was born this weekend on Saturday afternoon! She and Shannon are both doing amazingly well. Shannon's recovery has been relatively, I dare say, comfortable; even requiring a few reminders yesterday to "sit down", "you just had a baby", and the like. And the baby is beautiful and healthy. The fast labor of about 4 1/2hrs aided both of them, I'm sure. Last time we spoke to much of the family we still didn't know her measurements, or her name for that matter, and we have yet to send/post a lot of pictures. So let's fix that. Here's the skinny:


Oops, wrong skinny. (This was Shannon's last pregnant picture as we were leaving for the hospital.) You were probably expecting something with respect to the baby:

We finally named her last night: Tayler Day Reed (Day is also her Grandma Reed's middle name)
She weighed 7lbs 2oz and measured 18in long (not including her sweet mohawk, dude)!

Ashlynn got to see her yesterday (Sunday) afternoon for the first time. She was SO intent on her; whimpering when Tayler whimpered, shaking her finger at nurses who attempted to wheel her out of the room, and SO excited to hold her as you'll see in the video...

More pics

PA to GA!

With a week off last week and 22 inches of NJ snow we thought, "What better time to head south?". So that's what we did. We got to see 10 states and the District of Columbia! Needless to say we covered a lot of ground, making it all the way to Atlanta before coming back. We were so excited to spend some time with some great friends along the way and see some very cool sights and scenery including Gettysburg, PA, mountains (I forget how much I miss them until I see them again), the Georgia Aquarium, Coca Cola World in Atlanta, the Atlanta temple, and a cold Clemson baseball game. Excuse me, to be true to local culture, being in South Carolina it was not a baseball game that we went to. Rather, we went to a baiseboul gaime where we gout ta sie the Taigas baet USC! I loved hearing the accents!

These Are A Few of Ashlynn's Favorite Things

As Ashlynn has begun to make her likes and dislikes very much known since my last post, let me post some pictures and videos of some things that she loves:

Snow -




All of the above was from the first storm of about 13 inches about 3 weeks ago. A second, and even bigger one, came through just over a week ago leaving us 22 inches! Crazy for Manhattan! Those actually made February the snowiest month in New York City history. Here's what we were left with during the second storm. (By the way, here's our new car, too):


(It's sad, to me, that my daughter has developed to habit to, whenever we walk outside, immediately shrug her shoulders and say "cold!". It's about time we move south.)

Golf -

(She just got these a few days ago and has hardly put them down since then. This makes daddy very happy!!!)

Fish -




Feeding the duckies -


And, my favorite, dancing -


But there is one thing that she's not so fond of...


The giant balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. What?!?!?! What kid doesn’t love those? I‘ve dreamt of seeing the parade since I was a kid so I took Ashlynn to see it a few months ago. We had an AWESOME location - 42nd and Broadway in Times Square - from which we could see everything. Noisy concourses of fatiguing bands; no problem. Weird looking, unnecessarily tall clowns; great. A truly endless crowd of coffee-drunken New Yorkers; all the more people to convince how cute I am. Colorful flying personified animals; SCARY! Okay, when I put it that way, flying personified animals don’t sound so cute. Of course, a giant green ogre flying through Times Square sounds like a sight that could leave me in tears as well. But I thought she would like it. Instead she cried at every...



single...



one...



at least for an hour. Well at least she enjoyed the rest of the parade.



(I don't think she had seen Horton yet at this point)

Happy Fall!!

Well as usual, it's been a while since our last post. We're working on it! ;) We have had a great fall and are loving all the fun that comes along with it. Football, pumpkin carving, beautiful leaves, Halloween, and yes even a little Christmas music thrown into the mix! (Don't judge us)

Ashlynn has loved being a part of so many new things this year. She and Sean went to an Army football game up in West Point with a couple of friends of ours and she LOVED all the excitement. She would clap and cheer when everyone else did, she waved at everyone around her, and she even tried to 'share' all her neighbors popcorn with herself. But who could resist that face?! I'm sure that's her first of many football games to come.



One day for mommy group we decided to take the kids to a little zoo not far from where we live. I didn't get any pics of Ashlynn with the animals, but they had some fun fall decorations that Ashlynn liked playing with. She loves getting out and doing things with her little friends! :)



Ashlynn has started to walk around so much more lately. She still crawls the majority of the time, but it has been so much fun to see her progress to where she can walk quite a bit more now. I don't think it'll be long until she's cruising around looking for more trouble. :) Her hair is finally long enough to pull up in little piggies in the back and I think it's SO adorable! She is always getting into things she's not supposed to and has a knack for finding these things. I don't know how she does it. It's like she's attracted to things that she knows I'll tell her not to touch.






We had a little ward Halloween party last night and had so much fun seeing everyone's costumes and taking Ashlynn trick-or-treating around the church. Sean dressed up like Bobby Jones which I thought he impersonated very well, I was an Army person (not very creative but my Camouflage toes were AWESOME if I do say so myself), and Ash was a little Duck. She loved getting candy in her bucket and shaking it every chance she got. She loved the sound it made. . It was so fun to see her watch and follow what all the other little kids were doing. We are so blessed to have to many wonderful friends/ward members around that make living here so much fun.

Ashlynn: 1 Year Old!

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Ashlynn's first b-day! And immediately after she's begun to change SO much, particularly in that she's begun talking! First words had to be "whoa" and "wow". She says these ALL DAY LONG!!! And they're actually well-placed expressions, too. For example, when dad (aka, me) pulls out in front of a car and guns it b/c we don't want to be late for Church you will hear a "wow" from the car seat in back as we did the other day. Other recent words have been "bye bye", "night night", she tries to say "duck" and "quack" but there's some progress to be made on those. She just started saying "amen" on her own at the end of our prayers. Even if she cries throughout the prayer because she just wants her food she joins us in saying "amen" when it's over. And yesterday we were sitting in the middle of stake conference and Ashlynn, from the middle aisle, through the open doors, and across the lobby, spotted a large picture on the wall that she saw the night before. Her finger shot up, pointed proudly and said "Jesus"! We've shown her several pictures of Jesus and say it often but she found this one and remembered who it was without us prompting her! It's been SO exciting to see her make sense of the world lately.

Oh, and Ashlynn made sure to dance to every hymn we sung in our meetings yesterday. It was definitely hard not to laugh. No matter if it's the organ at Church or the muffled blare of a dying car stereo from the road behind our apt, if there's music she'll dance.

Birthday:

1 Month:

2 Months:

3 Months:

4 Months:

5 Months:

6 Months: (Look at those massive cheeks! This was them at their finest)

7 Months:

8 Months:

9 Months:

10 Months:

11 Months:

1 Year!: