Lainey's First Birthday Party

We celebrated Lainey's birthday at the beginning of the month when Greg's parents were in town. My parents came over after church on Sunday and we had a little family party.

Greg grilled fajitas for lunch, and we followed it up with cupcakes. The birthday girl had a small smash cake too. Dairy free soy free, of course :) I knew she wouldn't really eat it since she will not eat any solids, but I still wanted to make her one for tradition sake. It is possible that she has grown out of her allergy (we pray!), but we have not given her dairy yet. We will be trying that soon though.

Lainey mostly softly patted her cake, and showed general displeasure when we tried to put icing in her mouth. Maybe next year folks.

The grandparents gave Lainey lots of fun new toys, which she has been enjoying lately. Then birthday girl was worn out so she finished off the afternoon with a nap.

We are so thankful for this past year with our sweet girl! Love you baby bear!

Lainey 12 Months

Happy Birthday precious girl! I can't believe you are 1! You still seem so little and I am kinda glad because I just love the baby stage. You are so sweet and cute. I smoother you with kisses and hugs all day. I am so thankful for this past year with you and I am excited to see what this next year brings.

Your hair has lightened up so much since you were born.

Size: A couple weeks ago you were 18 lbs. 6 oz. (32%), 29 in. tall (59%), and head 17 in. (17%). You wear 12 month clothes and size 3 diaper. I sometimes put shoes on you but I can't remember what size you wear. You usually try to pull your shoes off and eat them.

Likes: You like to grab everything. You want so badly to go places but you are still working on it. You can get across the room by rolling and can go from sitting to all fours but then you go to your tummy. You like when Cambry plays with you. You like being out and looking around at everything. You almost never cry when we are out of the house. 

Dislikes: You do not like to be left alone in the evening. You are usually ok playing on the floor with toys while I am out of the room for short periods of time during the day. But for some reason when evening rolls around you are like I AM TIRED OF PLAYING WITH TOYS, YOU BETTER HOLD ME AND DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT LEAVING THE ROOM. You will cry dramatically until I pick you up and then you are fine. You also get frustrated and will cry when you are so close to grabbing something but can't quite get there. You are not the biggest fan of bows. You usually pull them out in the car. I am still pressing on.

Working on: You are getting pretty good at going from sitting to all fours. But you will only stay there a few seconds before going on your tummy. You haven't figured out the crawling thing yet. You are getting better at pushing up on your arms from your tummy, so we are working on the legs coming up. You are very close to being able to get in sitting position on your own (from laying). We are also working on you saying a word. You said "mama" for the first time this month. You haven't done it since but I did get the video proof!

Eating: You take about 3 1/2 bottles a day and baby food several times. You have made a little bit of progress with eating small bits of texture. You have tolerated small bites of bananas or puffs, so that is a start! You can suck down a pouch in no time at all.

Sleeping: I am SO SO SO thankful that you are such a good sleeper. You love your crib. And just this month you started sleeping on your tummy. You move around a lot at night so you don't always stay on your tummy, but you seem to like it. It is just crazy that you HATED your tummy the first 10 months of life and now you are actually choosing to be on your tummy. Bedtime is around 7:30 and you wake up around 7am or even sometimes 8am recently. You take 2 naps a day. When you wake up in the morning you have the craziest hair. I love it.

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Happy Birthday Lainey! We love you so much!

October Happenings

I can't believe we are already halfway though my favorite month! The weather has been gorgeous lately. We have been staying very busy. I don't have any kind of well thought out post, so I'll just post a few random things since it has been a while since my last update.

1) First of all, here are a few more pumpkin pictures. Cambry fell asleep in the car on the way to St. Luke's so when she got woken up to take pictures she was a wee bit cranky. Hence, the no smiling. 

But Lainey gave us some cute smiles!

Why is it that sibling pictures always turn out like this. It's like as soon as you sit them down next to each other in cute outfits things just go downhill and the tears start to flow.

I mean this is probably the best we got. At least they are both looking and no one is crying.

2). I had fun decorating pumpkins and writing a post for HMB on 20 Ways to Decorate a Pumpkin that you can read here.

This is what it looks like to do crafts with babies around. Not easy my friends.

Also you should know that the gold paint has killed/rotted/disintegrated my pumpkin. I have since had to throw it away. 

3) Cambry is so imaginative and creative these days. I love watching her play and seeing how her little mind works. She is great at playing by herself. She will take any object and turn it into either a mommy, daddy, boy, or girl. It will be given a name and will become permanently part of her people group. I have lost many a chapstick and hand sanitizers this way. If I try to sneak the hand sanitizer back in to my diaper bag at night, the next morning she will be like "Where is Williammmmmm??? Who moved him???"

In exhibit A they are playing "Ping Around the Rosies", and exhibit B they are gathered around singing Happy Birthday. I forget whose birthday it was but pretty sure it was Minnie's.

4) Cambry does not always like to take naps these days. She definitely needs them, but it just doesn't always work out. And trust me, we try. She does "room time" if she doesn't want to nap. Sometimes she will end up falling asleep and sometimes not. On this particular day she did not nap. So this happened at Kroger. Sound asleep.

5). Lainey said "Mama" last Friday! This was such a gift from the Lord! So encouraging and so exciting! She won't exactly do it on command, but I do have the video proof from Friday :)

Fall: Then and Now

Last October...

This October...