One year

Our baby girl is a year old. Crazy! I can say that parts of this year flew by but the first part really was slow. It's been a year of joy, tears, laughter, learning, and tons of love and kisses.

We've watched our tiny baby grow into a beautiful, fun little girl. She's so smart and happy and she loves her mommy and daddy!

We had a great birthday party on Saturday. Friends and family were there even though it was Thanksgiving weekend. We'll probably have to have parties a week later from now on! Lilly seemed to enjoy the party and somehow knew it was for her :)

We were a little nervous about the birthday cupcake. Lilly can be really weird about food sometimes but she took several bites of that cupcake like a pro! It was so fun to watch! She opened presents and ran around the room after her cupcake sugar-high.

She has an owl theme in her nursery and I wanted to do the owl thing one more time before she gets an opinion and wants everything to be Elmo! So we had owl cookies, cute plates and cups, and handmade owl ornament party favors. (Matt helped, too!)

*The party was at our neighborhood clubhouse. We do not have a huge cow hide up on our wall ;)

Our baby girl is a year old. Crazy! I can say that parts of this year flew by but the first part really was slow. It's been a year of joy, tears, laughter, learning, and tons of love and kisses.

We've watched our tiny baby grow into a beautiful, fun little girl. She's so smart and happy and she loves her mommy and daddy!

We had a great birthday party on Saturday. Friends and family were there even though it was Thanksgiving weekend. We'll probably have to have parties a week later from now on! Lilly seemed to enjoy the party and somehow knew it was for her :)

We were a little nervous about the birthday cupcake. Lilly can be really weird about food sometimes but she took several bites of that cupcake like a pro! It was so fun to watch! She opened presents and ran around the room after her cupcake sugar-high.

She has an owl theme in her nursery and I wanted to do the owl thing one more time before she gets an opinion and wants everything to be Elmo! So we had owl cookies, cute plates and cups, and handmade owl ornament party favors. (Matt helped, too!)

Flannel sheets and Halloween pictures

If you don't have flannel sheets for the winter months, stop what you're doing right now and go buy yourself some!! For about 5 months every year we use flannel sheets. They make the whole bed feel squishier and softer AND it eliminates that shock of cold sheets when you get into bed at night.

Onto Halloween. Better late than never, I always say! We had a great time with our friends. It's always a blast to see the creative costumes. We were farmers with our little cow. My original idea was for Lilly to be a sheep and we would be Austrian sheepherders, but the only costume I could find was a German beer girl. Matt thought that would be an awesome costume, but it didn't seem family friendly ;)

Thanks to Melissa for all the pictures!

Potato sack race. Pictures speak more than words here.

And they're off!

Mike takes the lead but Matt's a close second!

And the winner is...Mike!

The girls race, too. The crazy cavemen wrestlers from Nacho Libre dominated!

11.11.11

Our girl is having a growth spurt. She's been eating so much better. And chugging her bottle like never before. I gave her a Gerber arrowroot cookie the other day and now it's her favorite thing. We have to spell c-o-o-k-i-e at times otherwise she'll whine and reach for the counter where I usually have the bag. We had to start breaking them into small pieces because she got so excited about it the other day that she stuck the entire cookie in her mouth. I guess she's been watching Mommy and Daddy when there's a bag of Oreos around :)

We had a great trip to Branson last weekend. Bought some clothes at Tanger and had the ultimate winter comfort food, homemade chicken pot pie, from Andy William's restaurant. Heavenly.

"Um, Dad? This bear is freaking me out..."

Being in a hotel with a baby can be scary at times because you're afraid you'll wake everyone up, but Lilly did great. She loved running around the room trying to get into trouble. Her favorite thing was the air/heat unit under the window. She would turn the knobs and put her face over the vent. I loved watching her goofy, snaggletooth grin when it blew her hair everywhere.

She's been very fun lately. We like to play hide and seek where Matt and I will jump out and scare her. She is very sneaky about putting things in random places. Today I started the dryer and heard a lot of banging around considering I only put soft clothes in it. I opened it up to find a wooden puzzle piece from her new puzzle in there. She put a sticky note in Daddy's shoe. I found her hair-rinsing cup from the bath in my shower.

( She has 6 beautiful teeth now!!)

Necklaces and purses are all the rage over here. She knows how to put on necklaces and when Aunt Lisa brought a huge sack of them to me Lilly had the time of her life digging through the bag and inspecting them all.

I had a profound realization yesterday that Lilly can understand what we're saying! She brought me her shoe which means she wants to go outside. So I said, "If you want to go outside bring me your other shoe because you need two before you can go outside." Well she marched right out of the room, found that shoe, and brought it straight back to me. I was so shocked and proud. We went outside right away!