Julie turns 1

Turned 1 on January 25 at 12:33p.m.
 I can't believe this day is here, she has grown up so fast in this last year and I have loved every minute of it. Of course I will have to post some baby pictures also! But first, some new things.
-She is in 12-18 month clothes and has been for a while now, wheres size 4 shoes. She actually just recently started wearing shoes and was not fond of them for the first day. She has since gotten used to them. 
-She loves carrying my phone around with her everywhere, she has for the most part gotten over the sucking all over it, but now just leaves that clammy feeling all over it. We keep it locked and she loves to push all the buttons.

 She is one big girl, she is now getting some speed to her walking. She will book it and get going so fast that her body will get ahead of herself and she will face plant into the floor. Luckily we haven't had to many falls or bumps. But man alive, she can go, especially if we are chasing her, haha!

 She knows where her tongue is and loves to stick it out!
Some new things she is doing, Julie sticks her tongue out all the time, I will ask her where her nose is,"which she will point to my nose", and then I will ask her where her tongue is and she will promptly stick her tongue out with a big grin, which I in turn have to stick mine out also. She is getting quite the personality and is so fun to play with. 

 She wanted to get in her car seat that we have sitting in our front room at the moment, and Daddy was getting her to laugh really good!

She was just snuggling so cute with Robert that I had to snap a picture.

I love this next picture, Julie is usually always so happy when getting up in the morning or after her naps. In the morning, she will usually kind of whimper or cry about an hour before it is time to get up and then she will go back to sleep. When Rob gets up, I will get up and go to the bathroom and put my contacts in, and then while Rob takes a shower I will go in and wake Julie up and feed her. When I open her door she is usually awake just lying there waiting for me to come in. So, she pops her head up when she hears the door open, then she will lay back down and I will rub and scratch her back and ask her if she slept good. Then I will sit her up, or she will sit up herself and she will wait for me to unzip her from her sleep sack. She points to the hallway, because she wants to see Daddy. So we go say hi to Dad, and then she gets fed and diaper changed. About an hour and a half after getting up she goes back down for a nap and sleeps while I get ready. When I hear her, she is always playing in her crib with one or all of the blankets that she can reach through the slats in her crib. I keep them next to her crib on a quilting rack. She seems to always have at least two of her muslin blankets and her other sleep sack in there with her!

She is such a good sleeper, she has had the same schedule for the longest time now, probably for a good 6 months or longer. Takes two naps during the day about 1 1/2 hours long each. And then she sleeps for about 11 hours at night. She has slept through the night since she was 2 months old, and that is one thing that I sure do LOVE!
-Right now for her night time routine, I change her diaper, and Rob puts her pj's on, then we say prayers, and Rob will snuggle with her for a second and then he will lay her in my lap so that I can feed her before she goes to bed. As he is laying her down, she waves frantically at Daddy, Dad will give her a kiss and then he will walk into the hallway. Julie lays her head back on the arm of the chair, halfway hanging off, and looks toward the door, because Daddy always jumps back into the room a few times, which Julie gets a kick out of and gives us the best laughs EVER, and then Daddy will come back in and give her one last kiss and then leave, and she gets fed and then put to bed. I love this time with her.
-In the morning after she wakes up from her nap, she plays for a while and then when it is time to nurse her, I will say Julie to get her attention, and then I will sign "milk", she will stop what she is doing and head into her bedroom, singing milk the whole way, and she will stand and wait for me at the recliner in her room. Sometimes if she is hungry, she will look at me and sign milk, and then head to her room. It is so cute!
-She will fold her arms for prayer, at least for the start of the prayer. It was so fun, the first time she did this on her own. I said, we are going to say the prayer, can you fold your arms, and she did it all on her own. We were so proud of her. She even has done it even before I have said anything, I sat down with my lunch, and she immediately folded her arms for prayer.
-She loves to be chased around the recliner or the table in the dining room. Her face just lights up and her giggles are contagious.
-She always gets a worried look on her face and comes straight for me, when a noisy car drives by.
-I have to distract her during diaper time, so that I can change that diaper before she flips around. We sing, I give her toys, anything that I can think of. That is sure a process, makes you learn how to change a diaper super fast.
-She has a good imagination already, she has a bucket with shapes in it, and she will take them out and put them behind or to the side of her. Well, there wasn't anything in the bucket, but she still pretended there was and would take something out and set it to the side and then grab another object and do it over and over. It was so funny when I saw her do this.
-I love it when she comes to me with her arms outstretched wanting me to pick her up. It usually is around dinner time when I am trying to fix dinner, and she just wants to be held and watch what I am doing.
Now for some reminiscing, I love this picture of Julie after the Doctor suctioned her nose and mouth and held her up for me to see, and also for Rob to get a picture.  

 And here she is all cleaned up, her face was so plump and swollen looking.

 I would love to go back and just relive the whole experience(yes the labor and everything), it was just so awesome. The whole process of labor just amazes me and is truly a miracle. How a little person can just live inside of you for nine months and then come out into a whole new environment. It is just so sweet to remember everything, and I can honestly say, I am so excited to have that experience again(when the time comes). What a joy it was!

 This sweet face, I just love this picture of her sleeping so peacefully in my sisters arms.

 Another of my favorites! I still remember all those little bumps on her nose and chin, her full plump lips. The angel kiss on her forehead.

Oh the memories that I hope I never forget!
And here are two more pictures of what is to come in an upcoming post!

Her classic "Sober" face that she does so often, but I love it!

Taken of course by my lovely sister in law Heather!

Three Parties!

Warning: Long Post
We celebrated her birthday with Robs family on Saturday, she already missed her morning nap, but she was having fun with everything going on that she didn't seem to mind. But, when we decided to open presents and have cake, she was definitely tired. Here she is with the new wagon Grandma and Grandpa Taylor gave her.

And her Aunt Heather and Uncle Scott gave her a fun Winnie the Pooh puzzle, she loves it and has had fun with it at home.

From Aunt Emily and Uncle Daniel, she got a puffed up elephant or anteater, I am not sure what it was, but it was so cute, and Julie thought it was pretty awesome.

Doesn't she look so excited, she also got a whack-a-ball? game from Aunt Jen and Uncle Kyle. She hasn't quite figured out how to use the hammer to whack the balls down, she just likes to carry it around the house. She will get it though.

With all her toys, she also got some hair bows and a fun bear beanie from Aunt Heidi and Uncle Mike.

Next was the cake, or cupcake. She didn't know what to think, Rob trying to block the kids from blowing out the candle. She did try to touch the candle but she didn't blow it out.

She was really not interested at all!

Unpeeled the wrapper and watched to see what she would do.

Rob broke it up in little chunks for her, she wouldn't really even touch it!

Took a few bites, but that was it.

And she was done, do those eyes look TIRED or what, we took her down and she played for a little while. We tried to lay her down for a nap and she wouldn't go to sleep, so we headed home about 2:30. Once she was in her car seat and in the car, she was out. Got home, put her in her crib and she slept for another hour and a half.

So, we should have waited until she wasn't so tired, but as you will see with the party on my side of the family, being well rested didn't change things much. Here is our happy little girl wondering what is going on. We took her shirt off thinking she would get messy.

My sister made the cake, it is a block, she had some struggles with it, but oh well. She did fix the top part. We lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday and then brought the cake in front of her.

She didn't like that so much, we tried to show her how to blow out the candle, but she just didn't want anything to do with it.

Poor girl! Not happy!

Gave her the bottom half of the cake, to see if she would dig in and get messy and eat some. That wasn't going to happen.

We still got some good smiles out of her though!

We put a chunk of cake in front of her and she would swat it away with her hand like she does when she is done or doesn't want something. So, we cut in into small chunks. She did pick up a few pieces and eat them, but that was it and she was DONE!

So, she didn't get messy really at all. She also wouldn't eat any ice cream. Oh well!
So, on her actual birthday, I got balloons the night before after she went to bed and in the morning, Rob and I both went in to wish her a Happy Birthday! She was talking and happy when she woke up. She didn't know what to think of the balloons. Although the must have been pretty cheap balloons, because they looked like this before lunchtime.

 Robert took a half day and came home early for Julie's birthday. Here is Julie having fun when Rob would bounce the balloons around for her.

 Sometimes Julie is a crack up! She sure makes me laugh!

 I went shopping while Julie was taking her nap, since Robert was home and when I came home I fed her and we hung out. Just a normal day. We decided to clean up her toys and have her open her gifts from us. We hadn't wrapped them, so we just stuck them under a blanket for her to find, since she doesn't know how to unwrap presents anyways. We got her some alphabet blocks and a telephone. So unique I know! She liked the eyes on the phone, it was one of those phones that has a string that you pull it along behind you and the eyes go up and down.

She liked to knock over our block towers.

 Family picture with the Birthday girl!

 So, after dinner of homemade pizza, she was hungry before the pizza was going to be done, so she had some noodles, peas, string cheese, and olives. I had a little cake that I made and we put a candle on it and sang her Happy Birthday.

 She again wasn't too thrilled and wouldn't blow out the candle.

We cut a piece for her and cut it up for her, she wouldn't even touch it. She would flick her fingers at it.

 And we knew she was done when she started to pull and rip that bib off! Well, three parties and three attempts at cake, and she didn't want anything to do with it.

 So, what do we do? We made SMOOTHIES, and Julie LOVED it. We knew Julie would love it since we have made them before and she would eat them up. This picture is funny, she can't drink out of a straw, but from this picture it looks like she is sure going to try. I had a spoon and would give her bites and she was bouncing around the room going from one thing to another. I tell you, she is one busy girl!

We have had so much fun celebrating with this special little girl!
We sure LOVE her!
More on Julie later, I am not quite finished with that post!

We have a Climber!

 Ya, Julie has discovered how to climb! She loves the stairs already, and now she loves to climb into her car seat on the floor all the time. She loves just climbing in and playing, she is so proud of herself when she does this. I had to turn the car seat, since she tipped it over.

And Robert keeps his back pack by our couch and she loves to climb up onto it and look at all the pictures of mommy and daddy. She will point to the pictures and waits until we say "mommy" or "daddy", she loves doing this. Or she loves just laying across Rob's backpack.

The other day I was in our bedroom, and she was playing in there on the floor with her toys until she decided she wanted to see what was on Daddy's night stand. Our bed is tall, so we had some night stands made to the height of our bed. She can reach the night stand, but to really see what is on the top of it she has to step on something. I was just watching her from the other side of the bed, and all of a sudden I saw her head pop up above the bed, she got what she was after on the night stand, Daddy's floss, and promptly got back down. Well, when Daddy got home, we figured out how she did it. She had climbed up on Roberts bag that he had next to the bed, which we thought was too high for her, obviously not.