14 Months

-We had a doctors appointment today(not planned), she has had a fever the last two days, and today wasn't eating or drinking really at all until after 3:30, and was starting to get a raspy cough. So I called and got her in today, she is all good, just something viral that will work its way out on it own. Just switch between Motrin and Tylenol to keep the fever away. She was 24 lbs. which she is up two pounds from 2 months ago. After her appointment, she ate some cottage cheese, a little yogurt, and she has been drinking her water.

-We went to our Ward Temple night on Wednesday, and dropped Julie off at my parents. We usually always get a Jamba Juice after the session. I try to get a new kind each time, this time I got Caribbean Passion(which I enjoyed), and Rob always gets his old Zuka Juice flavor Raspberry Refresher. We got to my parents house and my mom had given Julie a bath. I gave her a taste of my smoothie and she kept coming back for more, but wouldn't even try Robs until mine was all gone.

-Since Julie was born I have been storing frozen breast milk in the freezer(thinking I would use it), and 14 months later, there it all still is. It is no longer good, and so I emptied it all out he other day. I stuck all I could fit in the sink to let them thaw out and dump them down the drain. I had to do this twice since they didn't all fit. These pictures don't actually show it at its fullest, there was one point where I would just slide them in the top in the little sliver of space there was left. So, I had written how much was in each bag and as I was draining them, I totaled it all up. I ended up with 517 oz. which equals out to be about 4 gallons. That is just amazing to me. Whoa!

Thawing them in the sink.

Ya, these were nearly a year old!

Still a bunch in the corner, but we are now cleaned out, and I can now organize and throw away pretty much everything in there and use it more efficiently.

-On St. Patrick's day I dressed Julie in a Spring outfit since that is the only outfit she had really that had any green on it. It was a sunny day and I am so in the mood for this winter to be over. I can't wait to put more spring clothes to use.

 My sisters birthday is on St. Patrick's Day and it was also her magical birthday, 17 on the 17th, and so my Mom and my sister and I got together 17 little gifts to give her through out the day. I think she had a good day, and we celebrated with cake and ice cream that night. Julie even ate some of the cake.

She was kind of tired!

-We finally installed her Britax car seat, she was really outgrowing her infant car seat. She had outgrown the length a few months ago. After installing the car seat we tried it out and it was so much easier to get her strapped in. We are still keeping it rear facing and will for as long as possible. We just need to get a sun shade for the back window. I am just glad that we haven't had to much sun lately, although I have been missing seeing the sun lately. Kind of hard to get pictures in her carseat!

-Julie LOVES LOVES watching Baby Signing Time, she watches it at least once a day, sometimes more. She is always saying Baby, Baby and will go over to my computer. She has even figured out how to get my computer open. I will usually try to hold her off until just before dinnertime so that she is occupied while I cook. She is starting to actually sign along with the kids on the movie. She knows many many signs and I am loving that she can basically tell me what she wants. We have never had any problems with her throwing food on the floor while she is eating, she will just sign "all done" when she is finished. Or whenever she is done with sitting on your lap or whatever she will let you know by signing all done. I highly recommend these DVD's, she loves them and I love them. I learn right along with her, and she actually grasps it better when I do the signs during our day together. 

-3/17 - while Rob was in St. George at an ATV Jamboree, Julie and I spent one or our afternoons going to the Library for the first time. I whipped out her little stroller and she had fun looking at the babies is some of the books. We brought a bunch of books home, and she even looked at one on our ride home. We are going to go often from now on.

-3/19 - Well, Julie will no longer drink from a bottle, she just refused to take it anymore. She still gets her milk in her sippy cups, but the actual bottle drinking is no more.

Eating at the Table

 A couple weeks ago, Julie sat at the table to eat dinner with us. She would usually eat some of her dinner and then she was done, so we would wash her off, and then she would want to be picked up and held while we ate ours. But, she would eat more while we were holding her, so we just sat her in a chair in between us. We only did this once, and it was just cute. We need to get a booster or something.

Can't quite reach up to get things very well, but she managed pretty good.

 She made some cute faces for me while I was taking pictures.

 Sitting next to Mommy!

 She is growing up just so darn fast!

Straw Success!

Julie can now FINALLY drink from a straw and maybe from her sippy. I can't tell if she is just drinking what drips from it, or if she is actually sucking water out. What finally got her to drink from a straw was a smoothie, we would put a little bit in the end of a straw and cap the top, so that she would taste it, but she had to suck to get more of it out. And, today I made Rob a fresh strawberry milkshake, and he sucked a whole bunch into the straw and she sucked it right out and wanted more. In the meantime I was making her and I a smoothie of cranberry juice, peach yogurt, mango, and strawberries(just threw stuff in and blended away). Oh, and I also added a little spinach for iron. And we stuck that in a cup with a straw and she went to town sucking that stuff out. She would tip it up at first, and then she got the hang of keeping it down while sucking. She is my Smoothie girl. We were so happy today for this accomplishment, I didn't think we would ever get her to suck out of something other than her bottle.

Yeah, Julie!

Things I want to Remember!

See her hand, she was swinging this long strand of rings together, I swear she was going to smack something with it.

She saw her pink shoes, and just had to have me put them on for her, they are a little stiffer on the bottom and  a little big, so she was walking kind of funny. But she loved them!

-I made some Chicken Enchilada Nachos the other day, and one of the ingredients was Cream of Mushroom soup, and I never use that. But after trying my sister in laws Sausage Soup, and not knowing that it had Mushroom soup in it and it was good, I decided that I would try this other recipe. And I liked it. It was also pretty quick.

-I love it when she sneezes, usually after she sneezes we will say something like, "Whoa" and laugh. Well, when she sneezes she has this cute little laugh at the end of it.

-When she has ventured into my bedroom, she always heads for my socks. I always find them screwn all over the room. Just little reminders of where she has been.

-She loves to unload ALL her books. Kind of drives me nuts, but she has fun. I love it when she is trying to get a book out and can't quite get it, and gets upset to the point of screaming. She get so frustrated, and starts crying until she pulls it out successfully. This happens almost every day. Makes for a lovely mess that I get to clean up once she is in bed for the night.

She is into climbing in baskets/laundry baskets right now. She can't quite get in by herself yet, although she has succeeded a few times. We drag her around everywhere and she loves it. I like it when cleaning up the room, I can drag her around and pick up her toys and dump them in with her and then deposit the toys to where ever they need to go in the process, all while she is having fun.

I love her eyes!

She loves it when I go so fast and then she smashes into her Bears head!

I sometimes will wake her up if she has been sleeping for longer than usual. She is usually not asleep when I enter her bedroom during the day, and I just love how comfy she looks in this picture. During the day, I stick a muslin blanket in there with her and  a little lovey blanket, and she makes herself comfy before falling asleep.

-I love giving her kisses, even though she doesn't always enjoy them. She is not a snuggler, even when she is hurt. It is really hard sometimes to get her to smile. She won't give hugs or kisses to others, except her animals(if that is what she is doing), it kind of makes me sad at times, but that is just her personality.

-At about 13 months I cut her 11:00 nursing out, and just would give her a bottle, and then about 3 weeks later, cut her 3:00 nursing. She seems to be okay with it, and so I only nurse her in the morning and right before bed. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be/not in the weaning part, gradually is definitely the way to go, just in the closeness that I have with her. I don't want that to end. It is two more times during the day that I get to snuggle with her. It must end though, and we are getting close to being completely done.

-She has these faces that she makes, and she will wait for you to copy what she is doing and then move onto the next one. Usually, her first one is her pouty face, and then her open mouth face, and then her show your teeth face, and then the spit bubble face(she loves it when mommy does spit bubbles for her), she has kind of got the hang of doing them herself. It is just funny to watch her do them.

-She likes to feed us her Fishies from her snack cup.

-She understand pretty much anything we ask her to do. I will tell her it is time to change her diaper and to go to her bedroom, and she will go, or to brush her teeth, or whatever. Or when it is time to take a nap. Love this stage.

Instant Potatoes!

It is 9:30p.m. and I just made my first instant potatoes ever. I know it is late, but Julie is in bed and what better time to try it out. Plus, I was going to use them for a recipe that I am going to make, and I didn't want to cook up one potato. Anyways, I used the LDS cannery Potato Flakes, I cut the amounts down from what is says on the can. So, I used 3/4 cup water, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1 Tbsp. butter, 1/4 cup milk, and 3/4 cup potato flakes. Once I added in the potato flakes, they dissolved so quickly and instantly(haha) turned into potatoes. I have never made instant potatoes before and it was just awesome to me how fast this was. So awesome, Rob thought I was pretty crazy and asked me, "haven't you even made instant potatoes", he was not impressed. Anyway, I just had to share this amazing discovery, even though it is not that exciting. And Heidi, I am using these potatoes to try out those dinner rolls, that were so yummy, and also the soup. Hopefully it works with instant potatoes.

Mmmmmm! Even though I am not a huge fan of instant, these were pretty tasty!

Bed Crazy Head!

I love it when she wakes up with totally crazy hair, I think we gave her a bath the night before and it was so crazy when she woke up.

 This one was after one of her naps, she looked like Alfalfa on "Little Rascals", just had one little piece in the back that was sticking strait up. This picture doesn't show it so well, and she decided to give me her pouty face. Not that she was pouty, she does this and then we do it ourselves back and she thinks it is so funny.

I love her cute face when she wakes up from her naps.

Another tooth!

Her teeth have been kind of at a stand still, we can see quite a few of them just under the surface. But they have been like that for a month or so now. Just hanging out until they are ready to make their entrance. This one that finally popped is on the bottom to the left of her two middle teeth. So, an even 4 on top and 4 on bottom. Although, there is one on each side of her top teeth that are ready to just pop out one of these days.

New Style

 I found another way to get my hair wavy! I did not like the curly so much, it just seemed to take a little longer to get how I wanted it to look and I just wanted those beachy waves. I am loving this look and how simple it was to do. It is something I probably will stick with doing. I still just used my flat iron to do this look. I take a section of hair and starting at the root, I place the flat iron on my hair and then twist my wrist to the ceiling and then I twist it to the floor while moving the flat iron down my hair. It just gives you that wave effect and I love it. And it didn't take long to style after that. It gives me texture without being huge and poofy, I put a little bit of Paul Mitchell's Wax Works in it after to calm down the frizz a little and I use it to style the top.

Here is the back view!

Try it out! You can also go to youtube and type in Beachy Waves to see a tutorial on this hair style.