06 December 2013

Brrrrr! It's cold outside!

12:17 PM Carlie: Amelia, winter No comments

We decorated our house last weekend. Earliest we've ever gotten our stuff together.

Amelia helped us put lights and ornaments on our little fake 3 ft tree.

She loved it and kept saying "treeeeeee!""

Every day we try and do some little activity to spend time together and enjoy the holiday spirit. I put together a little list of advent type activities. Mostly it includes drinking hot chocolate, listening to Christmas music or coloring. But it's nice to come home and have a list of something entertaining to do to keep us busy in the evenings.

We hope you are enjoying the holiday spirit and staying warm! It's barely been over freezing today! We even got a tiny amount of snow!

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Fall

9:50 AM Carlie: Amelia, fall, family No comments

With the days getting shorter we tried to enjoy as much time outside as possible this fall. We played at the park, in the alleyway with neighbors, cleaned up the garden and went for walks.

But now that it's dark before 5pm, it's a little tricky to keep Amelia entertained in the evenings. So I've been trying to keep her occupied with crafts and other silly baby-toddler things. Like collecting leaves and gluing them on paper.

That was entertaining for about 5 minutes. So we quickly moved on to crayons, coloring and making cards.

So far we've tried to do something crafty or at least attempt purposeful play each night.

Now that it's December we are trying to do our own mini advent activities each night. It's a little tricky with a 1.5 yr old, but we'll figure it out.

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18 months

9:23 PM Carlie: Amelia No comments

Height 2' 6.6" 13% <----- shortie!!

Weight 22lb 11.5oz 51%

Head 18.11" 44%

Okay, the girl is almost 19 months, but whatever.

As soon as 18 months arrived she's been a full-blown toddler. Terrorizing mom and dad.

Running, jumping, squealing, giggling, dancing, stomping.

Lots of "NO's!!!!"

"Ready. Set. Goooo's!"

She's picky. And bossy. And very determined.

She throws a mean slow-mo tantrum. Slowly lowering herself to the floor, as not to hurt herself.

It's a handful, but also pretty hilarious.

So all that makes her sound real terrible. But she's not. She's still sweet and loves to cuddle and gives us ~~occasional~~ kisses.

For a couple of weeks she was obsessed with books. We could read them for a solid hour, which is real long in toddlerhood. But now she's a little too bossy to let mamma read and turn the pages. So we read for 5 seconds instead. Fun.

Again, we are still convinced that she's brilliant. The words are flowing out of her mouth. Besides being big on "no" she also is getting better at asking for things. She says "more" in the sweetest little high pitched voice, "mo, mo, mo, mo." Also, "up up up up" It's totally precious. It's like she knows if she turns on the sugary sweet voice she'll get what she wants. And she does.

Other little things that nobody else really cares about, except for mamma:

She mostly drinks out of a real cup now. This is good and bad.
Still loves her blankey (one day she cried while it was in the washer)
She's totally figured out "eyes" "ears" "nose" and "mouth" and often points them out on us.
Her friend taught her how to do "knuckles" and she picked it up on the first try.
Her favorite color is "blue" although she calls every color "blue" but we're working on it.
She's starting to finally make animal noises and point out animals in books. It's taken forever for this to stick. I've been working on pointing at a cow for a solid 6 months....but she'll point to a balloon on the first try.
She still likes to clean and throw away our trash. It's awesome.

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Fruit cocktail

7:19 PM Carlie: Amelia, motherhood No comments

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing things right. Amelia always makes it so easy.

But there are definitely those moments where I just wonder if we are really messing things up.

Like when all I can think of for dinner is left over mashed potatoes and canned fruit cocktail. I mean...I meant to only give her a little bit of that sugary fruit, while I tried to think of something else a bit healthier. But then she kept saying "MOOORE" and pointing at the container. I tried to tell her that she just couldn't have canned fruit for dinner. And ya know...she did eat a lot of those mashed potatoes (I mean, it is a vegetable, right?)....and well, I just couldn't think of anything else clever to give her.

So we ate the whole can.

Together. Mostly.

We redeemed ourselves a little as we ended up rounding it out with some string cheese, half of which ended up being flung on the floor to the dog. Oh, and we added in some Toasted Os cereal for good measure. Half of which, also ended up on the floor for the dog.

Oh well.

At least the night ended well, with me rocking her and singing her to sleep.

She sang along to the entire 4 songs I sang her, meanwhile sneaking in wet kisses and feeling my teeth.

It was gloriously wonderful.

So I feel a little better now about the fruit cocktail for dinner (who bought that stuff anyways?)

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Halloween 2013

9:25 PM Carlie: Amelia, strawberries No comments

It's impossible to not take a thousand pictures on Haloween.

Lady Amelia dressed as a little strawberry.

She's actually wearing the same dress she wore last year that was way too big on her, plus a strawberry tutu dress that I quickly made.

We took Amelia to our church Trunk or Treat on the Saturday before the big day, so she could get the hang of trick or treating. She was a little confused at first, but quickly picked up on the concept of getting treats and putting them in her basket.

On the actual night of Halloween she was pretty excited. We practiced saying "trick or treat" during the day and she totally knew what was coming! While she could say "trick-tree" at home she would get way too shy to actually say it at the door. It was still adorbs.

And she definitely knows how delicious candy is now. Shoot.

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Baby babe

8:46 PM Carlie: baby, family, henry, motherhood, pregnancy No comments

It's been mostly by accident that I haven't put anything on my blog about little baby boy on the way. Mostly exhaustion. But I don't want little Henry to feel left out that he didn't get a proper blog post announcing his entrance into my belly and a record of his mamas ever increasing gain in weight. You know, because babies care about that sort of thing, right?!

It all began a little something like this. Dan and I had always said that after Amelia's 1st birthday we would start talking about adding on to our family. So one evening shortly thereafter Dan (yeah, HE brought it up, not me!!!) very casually mentions we should start thinking about another baby and I agree that that's probably a good idea and we should talk about it some point soon. And bam -- 2-3 weeks later little Henry is on his way. We found out in early June, but didn't tell a lot of people until late summer.

Obviously, we are thrilled! And to be having a boy! Honestly at first I was super nervous. I've always thought parents were ridiculous for thinking that they weren't sure if they could love another kid as much of their first. But I totally get it now. We are so consumed with Amelia and all her wonderfulness, that I was a little hesitant to add another little one in to our little perfect family. But now that Henry's been growing for almost 6 months, I am completely in love with him too. And I know it'll be just perfect when he's born in February.

Being pregnant the second time around it much easier in some ways. Mostly because I know what to expect and it's not as nerve wracking. But this time I am definitely more exhausted just because I can't nap whenever I want and I am constantly chasing Amelia around or picking her up. That is hard.

My belly is also MUCH bigger.

This is at Week 27 the 1st time.

And below is this time around at 23-25 weeks. They aren't great pictures, but if you saw me in person I'm definitely bigger. Fun.

So there we are.

Henry and I.

I truly can't wait to meet him. Dan too. Do you think he will have hair? I don't care. Cuddling a sweet baby is the best thing in the world. I could have 10,000 of them. And I hope he's sweet too. ~~I mean, what if he's not, we can't just throw him back, right?~~ We are expecting a little terror though since Amelia was such an angel. I mean, seriously she was the best newborn. Parenting was so easy. I'm almost sure we are overdue for a screaming infant that cries all night.

Random other pregnancy things:

I felt him moving/kicking super early like with Amelia. I swear I felt flutters around 13-14 weeks and definitely by 15-16 weeks. Now, I get quick swift jabs and kicks. Mostly in the afternoon/evening/all night long. I'm going to go ahead and predict that he will be an night owl.
Jack in the box tacos. Enough said.
No linea negra this time. Weird. Or an itchy belly (thank you, thank you!)
Lots of tailbone/back pain. Oh joy!
I haven't been plagued with it recently, but I had pretty bad insomnia for awhile.
I don't think I threw up, not even once. But I did get nauseous A LOT, especially if I was the tiniest bit hungry, which of course was constantly.
And...he is definitely a boy

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Growing girl.

9:06 PM Carlie: No comments

Well.

This cutie is 17.5 months old and almost ready to start the last half of her 2nd year. Time goes by so fast, but I've already mentioned that 20 billion times.

We do all we can to keep her busy these days. Although she is still shy when she's around new people (or people she hasn't seen for awhile) she's a little maniac at home. Running around and getting into everything. But in a good way. She is constantly learning and making momma and dad so proud.

I swear Dan and I look at each other every single day and just laugh at how clever she is.

Seriously.

We are ridiculously proud parents.

We've been facing teething the past month (6 of them...at once!!!), getting used to our new school/baby sitter schedule, nap time changes and getting a cold here or there....it's been a tricky time. But I think we have finally gotten our schedule set and Amelia is settling in better. Plus, most of those 6 teeth have made their permanent residence. Phew!

Despite everything that's been going on, here are the new tricks and shining Amelia moments:

Talking, talking and talking. Last week we counted around 20 solid words she consistently says. I'm pretty sure that she's said at least 10 more just this weekend. She says a ton of new words and copies us, bu might not say them again on her own. I feel like she understands nearly everything I say. I can ask her to do almost any random task and she can figure it out. It's pretty awesome. Especially when she picks up my fruit snack wrappers and puts them in the trash for me. :)
She loves her blankey and sometimes calls it her "-key" or "nuh-nigh."
Books are still fun to flip through, especially board books.
She likes to help out with chores, like laundry and sweeping.
Playing in the cupboards during dinner prep is a must.
She really likes to blow her nose and use a tissue. Weird. She likes to clean with tissues or rags too.
Playing with other kids is really awesome. Especially when they have dance parties, balls, sidewalk chalk or push her around in her toy car.
She can throw and kick a ball.
Drinking out of sippy cups is pretty cool, but a real cup is even cooler. Throw in a straw and she's occupied for a solid 5 minutes.
She's a little bit pickey with foods these days. She used to love string cheese, now it's hit or miss. Anything red is still fair game though...strawberries or tomatoes are always eaten first.
Amelia is bossy. She tells Lily, our dog, to "get" and "stop" and "bad." But she always loves Lily and gives her lots of kisses and pets.
She can selectively choose to give us headbutts or kisses. Momma like kisses, Dad likes headbutts.
She likes to get in mom and dads bed and snuggle under the covers with lots of giggles.
Mullet-baby. She has a bit more hair, but a definite patch in the back. Poor kid.
Favorite thing to do: go on long walks in the stroller with dad. She says "go, go go!"
Kissing moms pregnant belly and pointing out her own belly button.
Sitting on the potty. We have a soft kid seat for her. She loves it and is very fascinated by the bathroom. I think she knows what is supposed to happen...but doesn't quite get how to make herself go on the toilet. For now, there is no rush, we are just trying to make it fun and not scary.
She knows where her ears and her eyes are. Toes too.