Blog Book (Published!)

One goal checked off my list. I printed my 2008 blog book, and it came on Friday. It turned out so awesome, I just love that I have all the pictures and text in one place.

It is so nice to have this completed, it took me so long to finally finish and I am just loving how it turned out. I loved being able to customize each page. I did slurp it over from Blogger, and then rearranged text and everything to how I wanted it afterwords!

Wagon Ride

 Right before the weather turned snowy(well, it snowed but warmed up the afternoon we took her out) and cold again. Rob got home from work and wanted to take her for a stroll around our little block. So we got her all set and headed out. 

She had such a good time and loves being outside. She will always go to the front door and want me to open it, just so she can look outside. I am thinking there will be plenty of wagon rides this summer.

13 Months

-Loves to sing, we catch her singing at random times during the day and I just love to hear her!

-Is starting to repeat what we say, she has her days where she is just in an imitating mode and will repeat some of the words we say.

-Has the cutest pouty face, she does this all the time. She will do it just to be fun and get you to do it back, this is fun at night when she is tired. She will do her pouty face and we do it back and she will giggle over and over again. She does this face when we try to brush her teeth, or when we try to get her to eat more food and she doesn't want any more.

Coloring - gotta have that mouth open!

I love how she was holding the crayon with her thumb and finger, at the very top of the crayon.

 Most of the marks she made were just dots from slamming the crayon onto the paper.

She seemed to have fun, she kept taking the crayon somewhere other than on the paper. She got into the kitchen and I was doing something. She was in the process of coloring on the chair seat, and I had to hurry and stop what I was doing and grab the crayon from her. She knew I was coming and proceeded to color as fast as she could and as hard as she could. She had a good hold on that crayon when I grabbed it from her grasp. Little stinker!

-Loves her stuffed animals
-She has one book that she will sit down and turn the pages and "blah, blah, blah" and turn the page and start talking again. It is so fun to watch her do this.
-I will say, "can you give me five" and then I will raise my hand, she will slap it once and then she will swat your hand away because she is done!
-Loves feet and toes(my feet and toes), she is always down at my toes pointing to them or touching them. I can be sitting in a chair and my feet are hanging off, I will just wiggle them around and she will giggle and laugh.
-She loves to empty out a basket and climb inside(with some help)

She also loves to stand on the chairs, I need to teach her that we sit on the couches and chairs. I am always afraid that she will fall off, she hasn't got the concept yet that if she climbs over the edge, she will fall. She really has no fear.

She was sitting on the floor playing with her toes and out of the blue, pointed to her toes and says, Wee, wee, wee, wee, all the way home(the wee wee part is very discernible, the other words are not), and now whenever I am putting her socks on or changing her diaper and she sees her toes, she will usually say this.

Books

I finally was able to read one whole book with Julie! This is awesome, usually she is off and going or flipping to the next page before I can even get all the words read. Since Borders is closing, I went in on Saturday(not knowing that they had signs everywhere and everything was on sale, and everyone and their dog were going to be there), and was about to turn around and walk out when I saw the LONG line. Well, I stayed and browsed through the kids books. I needed some more picture books to read to Julie. I found a bunch and even met up with my brother and sister in law who were finding books for their new addition, which hopefully will come soon for them. We seem to see each other around a lot these days. Anyway, I stood in line for a while and realized I had picked the wrong line, I always do that. Carrying a bunch of heavy books was painful for my back, felt a little like carrying Julie around. So, I paid for my books and was outta there. The one that I read to Julie all the way through was "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?", I got the big board book so that Julie could play with it. 

It has little slats that slide on each page and she really liked that.

I was just so glad to be able to read it to her, and have her sit with me the whole time. Reading books to children is so very important! My mom got Julie this book for her birthday(it was actually for me), and I am so grateful that she did, it talks about the importance of reading aloud to your children. Here is the book:

 It also includes a list of books at the end that he suggests, which I love since I don't know what books to get. You start talking to your children from the day they are born, and that is when you should start reading to them. I really love this book and I am not even half way through it yet. I would highly suggest it to anyone wanting to know more about reading aloud to your kids, and what a great benefit it is to them. Go pick it up.

"The Read-Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease

Shoes and Tantrums!

Just before Julies birthday, I went to Kohls and tried some shoes on Julie. She was walking and so instead of getting her socks dirty all the time, we thought it was time to get her used to wearing shoes. She did not like me putting them on her, and would start to whimper until I took them off. I bought these shoes in a size 4,

 and another pair of cute pink shoes in a size 5, not knowing how fast her feet would grow. We tried them on her after Robert came home and she would just stand there and not move and just whine. It was kind of funny. We took them off, and then put them on again while she was eating dinner(while she was distracted), and she kept them on. She was still a little hesitant about them, but got used to them pretty quick. She has no problem with them now. The only problem we have now is that she is growing out of her clothes. Her pants hardly even touch her shoes. I went shopping the other day to get her some 18 month pants, the length was just right, but the waist was too big. So, I am glad that Spring is coming, so that she can wear 12 month capris and shorts! I swear she grew over night!

 Julie likes to get into my cookbook stash, and she was having fun reading one of them here.

 The other day I got a taste of her having quite a few "tandrums" she must have been having a bad day. She was just getting frustrated with everything, and she would start getting mad that she couldn't do whatever she was trying to do. She even screamed a few times. Is it weird that I love hearing ALL the noises she makes, even if she is screaming, at least for a little while. I know she is learning and trying to figure things out, but man, I didn't think it would start so early. She has mellowed down the last couple days!

Random

Julie has found her swing, and she loves swinging in it. She only likes to be in it for about 5 minutes if that at a time. She looks so huge in it. I haven't used it since she was a baby, and she has filled it quite nicely since then.

Yesterday, while I was at mutual, Rob took Julie downstairs to play and she found a candy cane. When she brought it over to Rob, there was a big chunk missing and so he smelled her breath, can you guess what her breath smelled like, Peppermint. Ya, she seemed to like that! The little sneek! Haha!

She also had fun riding up on Daddy's shoulder!

 What a fun little girl!

The Wizard of Oz

On Valentines Day Rob and I went to see "The Wizard of Oz" put on by Sky View. They had all new sets and backdrops from the last time I saw it(which was Forever ago), and they were awesome. The play was very well done, I really loved the Lion, he played the part so well.
We left Julie with my Mom and told her what her bedtime routine was and said that she shouldn't have much trouble getting her down. Well, lets say it didn't go quite so smoothly. I usually always nurse her to sleep(only at nights, which we are going to be changing), and so I put a #2 nipple on her bottle instead of her #4, thinking it would slow her down and she would fall asleep. Well, she kept pushing the bottle away and just screaming. We texted my mom at almost 9:00, and she was rocking her. She asked us how long we let her cry for(she usually never cries), she did finally get her to bed. We got home around 10:30-11:00. We had a good night, and it was fun to get out and do something, we don't seem to get out to do things very often.

Stuffed with Stuffed Animals

 This is our gate preventing Julie from coming into the kitchen, makes it easier for me to get things done without Julie getting into things. Well, she loves to stand on the bottom bar and hold onto the top one. She will occasionally slip and fall, but not to often. She usually stands on here when I am in the kitchen and she wants me right NOW, she will stand there and whine until I come rescue her.

  Rob was playing with Julie the other day, and I was in another room. When Julie walked in to where I was I looked at her and then started laughing. She looked so funny. Here is what I saw that Daddy did while they were playing.

 It wasn't super funny, but I was just dying laughing, and while she was walking around like nothing was going on, the animals would occasionally fall out one by one. It didn't seem to bother her that she had a shirt full of animals, she just went on walking around as animals would escape. We finally took them all out so it would not stretch her shirt out.

 I got all of these little animals at the DI for like 25 to 50 cents each when I was working on the bus. The kids loved them. I stuck them in the wash and Julie has had a fun time with them. She usually plays with ALL of them while sitting on her Love seat in our front room, her favorite place right now.

 This is just happy Julie, waiting outside the bathroom while Mom gets ready.

 Supposed to be asleep, but she has not taken her morning nap in like 4 days.

1 Year Pictures!

We got her 1 year pictures taken a few days before she turned 1, and of course my sister in law Heather did an awesome job of capturing Julie so well.

I can always get a smile out of her when I stick my ring in my mouth. When I put lotion on, I take my ring off and stick it in my mouth(one of these days I am going to swallow it, but hopefully not), and Julie will laugh and just get a kick out of it.

I wanted to get some of just Julie and I, and I just LOVE this picture of us, I think it is my favorite. Definitely printing this one. Although after seeing these, Robert was sad that we didn't get any of just him and Julie. Yes, we forgot, last time we had pictures, we got pictures of Dad and Julie together and none of Mom and Julie together. Next time, we will have to remember to do both.

Julie was also in a phase where she was constantly sticking her tongue out, and so this is just a fun one that we got with our tongues out.

I absolutely LOVE this one, I know she is not smiling, but it is so Julie. She has such a sober face, and this picture is just so her. I am so glad Heather got a picture of this face. Sometimes you have to work at getting her to crack a smile.

I think this is my favorite smiling picture, the colors turned out awesome.

We were going to do pictures outside, but I really wanted to make sure we got some good smiles from Julie, so we did them inside where it was warmer. Turns out, Rob was the one complaining of the cold when we did go out for a few outside. Oh well, I really like the colors we had on with the background gray!

Julie outside sitting in my parents wicker chair, she loves sitting with my mom outside on the porch last summer when she was a little younger and watch the cars go by, and she would run her fingers along the chair which makes a fun noise.

And yes, I did make both of the headbands she is wearing, I was looking at a whole bunch on Etsy, and just never found any that I wanted to get, and then didn't know if the colors would be right. So, I just got a flower pattern that I already had and changed it a little, and they turned out awesome!

I love this one, she is not quite smiling and looking off somewhere and I just like it.

-She can squat and pick an object up and then stand back up, but she can not go from on the floor to standing yet. Although, as of February 9, she can now stand without help from the wall or furniture to get her up. She gets on all fours, with her back legs bent, and pushes herself up. What a big girl!

-She constantly giggles all the time over random things and jabbers like crazy, especially at night.

-She tried pears, and likes them. So now she likes two fruits, bananas and pears. We need to try some others.
One of my unofficial goals this year is getting my 2008, 2009, and 2010 blog books finished and started and printed. Well, I am ready to print my 2008, and I just need to finish editing my 2009 and then print it, and I have yet to start 2010, but am excited to do that, since it will be all about Julie basically. 2009 came together really fast, and I have figured out how to change the page layouts of blurb to how I want the page to look. I use there's as a template and then tweek it how I want it after. Makes it nice, and I am loving how they are turning out. So fun!