16 Months Old!

keeping with tradition, she’s actually 16.5 months…maybe someday we will be on track with the timing!

Anyway, we’ve learned that keeping a 16 month old in front of a background and off of the “monkey bars” (aka lighting equipment) is nearly impossible, so we’ve gone away from pictures in her little chair. Oh well! Maybe some day she will sit and smile. (PS – She often says “cheese” when we take her picture, but says it so fast we can’t snap the picture!)

She is so fun! Have I said that enough? She definitely did not let croup get her down!  She plays hard and messy! I think the thing that entertains her for the longest is definitely pulling all of her toys out of the toy box and all of the books off the shelves (Rather than the actual books and toys themselves). Someday I think she may actually PLAY with the toys…

I hope you all had a nice thanksgiving! We did another family race on thanksgiving and had lots of fun! She seemed to enjoy it for the most part (yay!).  I’m happy to be exposing her to the importance of exercise, even at this young age.  Maybe next year she will get out and run some of it with me! We then spent the day with some of my family and had lots of fun. Since last thanksgiving was “milk only”, I was excited for C to enjoy her first real thanksgiving… she seemed to enjoy it, but she would only eat cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie! (Seriously no potatoes-sweet or other- no turkey, no stuffing… she’s definitely my daughter, the cranberry sauce is my personal fav! And only from the can with nothing resembling an actual cranberry in it! )

my brain is spacing on what is new with her! while i think she is saying more and more things, sometimes the words all run together in the way they sound… “baa” is for sheep, bear, etc… but a lot of her older words are getting more and more clear. Doll, and Ball come to mind as words she says crystal clearly. She will say jibberish sentences a lot of the time now, which is really cute. Her most said word right now is either “see! see!” (“I want to see it” or “gimme it” or “turn the tv on”) or “Yights” (lights or fan). She walks around like a little captain, commanding us to turn on all the lights, especially lights with fans. It’s really cute and energy in-efficient. 🙂 (this includes the lights in the car much of the time!)

Oh, this is new! she has started to sing the ABCs. Sort of. When she pushes the fridge alphabet and it starts to sing she tries to sing a long. It’s not the right letters by any means, but she definitely is attempting to sing along.  I haven’t been able to get it on video just yet.

We saw a Christmas tree the other day in a restaurant that had the round ornaments on it, and she immediately wanted to grab them off. So I’m thinking we will be leaving all the “balls” off our tree this year. Hoping to put it up soon!

Favorite Veggie: PEAS (pretty much the only veggie she eats regularly)

Favorite Fruit: Banana (which she calls MAaaaaaa for some reason) or “bapple”

Favorite Toy: Busy Ball Popper (in the last month she has figured out how to work it on her own so she uses it a lot. I’d recommend it to you all, but it’s the most.annoying.toy.ever. The balls dont stay in the thing!! So I spend half my day wandering around trying to keep up with all the balls.

Thankfulness

Thankfulness is so important. Taking a moment to realize all that you have is good for the soul. I tend to be someone who struggles to have an attitude of thankfulness, especially in the day to day of life- which is where it is most important! I am a complainer, a debbie downer, much of the time, in my own heart. Shame on me!  The Lord has blessed me with so much. I forget to thank Him and others ALL too often.

So, first of all, I am thankful that we DO have a time of year set aside to remind me/all of us to be thankful for all that I have been given. I need to continue to keep that attitude in my heart, but this certainly helps kick start it!

I’m so thankful for such a healthy family.  I have been around too many (1 is too many!) families in devastating grief stricken circumstances. I am so thankful that we are all so healthy. I pray that that continues!I’m also thankful for continued relationships with some of those families, and seeing that they have continued on in faith, and despite difficult (horrible!) health problems, they have continued to march on…that is so inspiring. I am blessed to know these people, they give me hope that if I was to ever be a part of such trials that I WOULD be able to lean on Him. And, I pray that they would experience the miraculous healing of the Lord.

I am thankful that for the first time in MONTHS bath time wasn’t AWFUL last night. (it wasn’t fun either, but she didn’t scream and cry the entire time!!!!!).

I am thankful for a husband who works so hard both out of the home and in. He does so much for C and I and I really appreciate it. I COULD be working & it would help out, but I feel I am a better mom/wife if I’m not (today anyway!) So  for now, he works hard as the sole provider, and I truly appreciate that (even though sometimes the green eyed monster gets the better of me!). I’m also so thankful that he loves the beauty that God has placed in our country, and is always so eager to go and visit these places. Most are places I never would have gone without him, but I’m so glad that I did get to see! I can’t wait for our next adventure. Thank you for broadening my horizons, hon!

I’m also so thankful to my little light, C. She is so fun, beautiful, and full of personality all ready. She makes me laugh and smile constantly. And while sometimes I can get down about our milk stained carpet filled with toys and flash cards and raisins, in my heart, i 100% it is more than worth it.

Most of all, I’m thankful for my Savior who died for me on the cross. I definitely have been having a harder time this fall with the change of seasons. But the Holy Spirit has been at work in my heart and has drawn me closer to himself… and I’ve been doing much better!! Thank you Lord!!

and thank YOU for reading. 🙂

Marathon Fail, Sewing Win!

I’m aware that I really should make this into two blog posts, but I know I’ll never get around to separating them, so hey, at least I’m writing something! 🙂

Well, my “groupies”that were going to attend my (attempt) at a marathon were unable to make it because they turned to “croup-ies”. The wee one ending up in an emergency room Saturday night. NOT FUN. I’m so glad she is okay now, but croup SOUNDS terrible. I really hope she never gets it again, it was very scary. She was so very miserable, and to be away from home when it happened made it so much harder in some ways. In other ways, we were just SO indebted and thankful to all of our friends who supported us and helped us out while she was sick.

She is still coughing, but definitely acting more normal and seems herself, thank goodness!

Post Bath/ Vapo Rub :

Sooo, in other news, prior to our week away, I had gotten into using my sewing machine. I really hope I can learn to use it more and really get going with this, because I’m really enjoying it! I already posted two of the dresses I made  a few weeks ago. I also got this tutorial off of a friend’s blog and decided to use some scrap fabric (and then I went and bought more fabric…I’m a sucker for this stuff..) and made these dresses.

I’m using this picture as a double for showing off C feeding a baby doll for the first time…isn’t that SO CUTE?

same style but another dress:

What do you think?!

Pig Pen

So if you’re my friend, chances are you’ve heard me complain about my child’s complete hatred of baths lately. A friend sent me a link to this post today because she knew that I can totally relate! It inspired me to go ahead and write a post of my own in the off chance someone has a shred hope for us! You’d think she had had some sort of traumatic incident in the bath..but nope, nothing we can think of. She won’t even LOOK at her toys. In fact, inspite of my foreknowledge that a new toy wouldn’t help; we tried it anyway.  So, we got her a new toy today, & she was VERY excited about it in Target, cried when it had to be swiped at the register.  But once she saw the full bath tub… forget about it. (Literally, she forgot about that once super cool turtle.).

Another suggestion I got was to get those little tabs that change the color of the water. Nope, still thought she was being bathed in hot lava. (except now it was pink hot lava).  So pink water was no help. Neither was a duckie bath puppet/washcloth.

So I guess we are currently resigned to bathing her when we absolutely HAVE to (because we hate torturing her in this way!), and praying that she doesn’t spill anything too smelly on herself. Because right now, our kid’s nickname could be Pig Pen.

Christmas Preview!

I ACTUALLY ORDERED CHRISTMAS CARDS! My goal is to send them out BEFORE  CHRISTMAS this year!!!

In order to do this we had to do a little photo shoot. It has become increasingly difficult to get pictures of this ever-moving child!! We need a bigger “studio” (Living room!) Her 16 month onesie pics are going to have to happen outside- she’s just too quick

But here’s a little preview of my 16 month old (as of yesterday!) Christmas Cutie!!

B is for Awesome, C is for Cuteness.

I actually have time and energy to blog! What?

S is for Sleep! C has been sleeping wonderfully for the last week or so! It’s amazing and has really brought life to me (mainly because I’ve had time to read my bible, which has been amazing!). Minus a few dark days thanks to the end of DST (sunset was at 4:28?!), we’ve been doing well around here. My amazing husband has really dedicated himself to serving me in one area that I REALLY neeeded it: dishes.

Oh how I LOATHE doing the dishes. I don’t mind a lot of other tasks I do over and over in a day (putting toys away, changing diapers, laundry even). But when I wake up in the morning and come down to last night’s dishes..I get depressed. And worse, I then don’t want to do the dishes from breakfast because it’s too overwhelming.. and then it just gets worse. So I happen to mention how much it makes my whole day better if the dishes are done the night before- and he has done the dishes every.day.since. Even when he has cooked dinner too! That’s an awesome husband. And he’s all mine! 🙂

C is for cuteness is obvious. Yesterday we went to the library for story time (that was actually today, whoops), so we played for awhile with some kids instead and had some (tough) lessons in sharing. At one point C was playing with this little wooden doll house and she kept laying her head inside the bedroom of the house and looking at me through the window of the house. It was SO cute, but unfortunately I only caught blurry photos. 

She also has learned the sign for sleep and it is adorable when she does it… I’ll see her doing it at lunch, or today (during the ACTUAL story time) she saw a baby sleeping and she signed both “baby” and “sleep” which made me really smile.

And just in the last two days I’ve seen REAL progress with using please (signs or says) and thank you (signs). While it’s definitely not something she does unprompted (yet) she is doing it a lot more often when asked! Yay! Another thing that makes my heart glad :).

S is also for Sewing. I got a hair-brained idea in my head to make C’s Christmas dress. I have no idea why because I barely know how to use my machine. (I’m not kidding- the first dress- which, incidentally I’ll be saving for a future baby because it was too small- took me like 6 hours, half of which were spent on you tube trying to remember how to load the bobbin in my machine.) But I eventually got the bobbin loaded and managed to piece together two jumpers… now I kinda can’t wait to take some more sewing lessons and really learn to sew!

What do you think? 🙂

check out the cute buttons i found:

this one fits!

and this one has gingerbread man buttons too, if you look closely:

 

15 Months!

As usual, I’ve been slacking, but I’m pretty sure the 5 people who probably read this won’t mind. C JUST turned 15.5months…!

First of all, YAY! SHE IS WALKING!! So exciting! We spent a week in the OBX (so much fun!) with my family, including C’s older cousin (also a C 🙂 ). I knew this would be a good influence on C and I was right- she walked here and there a bit before we left, but still pretty rarely. After seeing her cousin walk around, she steadily increased walking more and more and I have finally declared her “a walker!” (for my own memory’s sake, I’m saying she walked at about 14.75 mos). She only crawls now if she’s in a REAL hurry & is trying to run, loses her balance, and still needs to hurry- then she crawls. But more and more I am seeing her pick herself back up and try to run again! While most people say “oh, now you are really in trouble”– I disagree. She was always wanting to be crawling around anyway- but walking is much more socially acceptable when we are outside our home. I’m relieved that now I can let her walk around the Old Navy or whatever, know what I mean? (Of course I mean supervised. We aren’t quite ready for the texting while trolling the mall stage yet…eep!).  Anyway, it’s super exciting and oh so cute to watch her toddle around.

Also while at the beach she has learned to start giving kisses, which is awesome. She is pretty free with kisses though, and is willing to kiss strangers if she’s in the “kissing mood”. That’s something else to work on before the teenage years! I think she may have even blown a kiss last night!

Her animal noises now include: baa, neigh, moo, woof, roar (and non animal): choo-choo, sometimes she will “woo woo” for fire truck. 🙂 We’ve also gotten an occasional “EEEE -EE” (monkey- she definitely knows the word monkey though!) as well as “hoo” for owl.

She learned the word apple (though she says”bap-ple” which is adorable). Not so adorable is the ability to scream”apple”  in the grocery store as soon as she sees them AND until I give her one. Oy. I no longer can shop the front half of my grocery store- one side is “bapples” and the other side is “BOON”. (balloons).

She’s cute, but noisy. 🙂

I was all excited today at story time (we’ve been going for a few months now) because she seemed to sit still for the first time. Well, that lasted about 5 minutes. Fortunately this story time is designed for the coming and going of toddlers. But why is my kid the only one who comes and goes? (it seems?). I think she is amongst the youngest there, but something tells me it’s going to be a long time before she actually sits still for story time!

Since i waited so long to finsh this post, I’m getting to include some halloween pictures. I tried to teach her to say “ARRR” but it didn’t really happen. But she did LOVE being dressed up (to my surprise she left on her hats!) and she LOVED the trick or treaters coming to the door! We hit a few houses just to say hi to the neighbors. It was a very fun night, I’m so glad we were finally home on Halloween!

PS- I’m pretty proud of my costume putting together skills. all 3 of us were dressed for around 20$! I made C’s tu-tu using this tutorial . I can’t wait to make more! It was SO EASY! It seriously took me an hour or so!