Fun At The Beach!

This summer we've been able to go a couple times to a little local beach. Lauren always has so much fun, but at first wouldn't go into the water unless I was holding her hand.. Enter Bekah and Briella. The first time Lauren saw them charging out to deeper water, she took off after them! Since then I haven't been able to keep her out of the water and have to constantly stay with her to keep her from drowning, she'll walk out until she's up to her chin, crazy girl. I'm glad that she's having fun and being so brave, but I loved that first time of mostly getting to sit on the beach and chat with friends while she played in the sand! I'm so glad we've been able to go so much since a real beach trip, or any vacation, didn't happen this summer and I'm glad she loves the water so much. And, of course, I love fun times with fun friends.

Baking for Book Club

I don't host many things for friends because my house seems to be cursed! Whenever I try to have friends over for ANY reason, only 1 or 2 come. Not because they don't want to or are being rude, but something always comes up for everyone. So I've basically stopped having things at my house. 
I've been in book club for a couple years and I've never hosted, because of the curse, but this year I decided to give it a a try. I had a lot of fun planning what treats I'd make - some recipes on Pinterest I've been wanting to try. Chris was great with helping me clean and get chairs arranged in the living room. And what do you know - 14 people came! Now I don't know if that means that the curse is actually broken or if it just means that people really love and are committed to book club! Either way, I had a lot of fun and the recipes turned our pretty good, which is always nice.

Birthdays!

I do want to quickly catch up on the recent birthdays in our family. And then maybe I can stay current!

Chris turned 38 in February and Lauren had lots of fun helping him blow out his candles and eat his cake.

Then was Lauren's 2nd birthday! I've never felt like she's growing up too quickly, but it's hard for me to believe I have a toddler and not a baby! Her birthday was on a Tuesday and it had just snowed, so my mom had the day off of school so she and Ian were able to come out. Chris was working from home for his new job, so it was nice he got to be home. The night before, Chris and I snuck balloons into her room so she could wake up to them. She liked that a lot, but didn't like when we sang Happy Birthday as we walked into her room.

I invited two of her friends to come over for a little play date. They colored, played with bubbles, had lunch, and decorated cookies. It's always so cute to see her playing with friends, even if she still doesn't understand the concept of sharing very well.

The following Saturday we had my parents and brothers out for dinner and to give her presents. We also sang Happy Birthday to my mom and gave her presents, since her birthday was the day before. Lauren loved all of her presents and had fun playing with everyone. 

I couldn't get her in for her 2 year old checkup for a couple of weeks, which annoyed me because I'd always done her check ups within a couple days, if not on, her birthday. She weighs 23lbs (almost the 10th percentile!) and is 34 inches tall. This was her first time on the big kids scale and being measured on the wall, it was crazy how much that made her seem like a big girl to me!

She is definitely a two year old - she has opinions about everything and throws fits when she doesn't get what she wants. She also does amazingly cute things every day and is such a sweetheart! She loves music, dancing, reading, snuggling, sliding and watching videos of herself on my iphone. 

I'M BACK!

Obviously, blogging has not been my priority for a year now, despite my goal to get in 100 posts last year, ha! I've been thinking about getting back into it and couldn't decide if I wanted to try and catch up or just start "fresh". I post a lot of things on Facebook, but it lacks the details and stories behind the pictures. So, here I am, and who knows, maybe I'll make those 100 posts this year.

Here's a quick recap of what happened in the last year while I was busy not blogging.

Our baby girl turned 1

Grandma came to visit and we went to Amish Country

We went to Utah

to celebrate our 10th anniversary

 Lauren took her first trip to the beach - Chincoteague

We went to the DC zoo

We sent a balloon to Grandpa in heaven for his birthday

Lauren got a party for turning 18 months

Grandma came for another visit and we went to Gettysburg

Lauren got her first haircut

 Lauren went trick-or-treating for the first time

We went on a hayride

My brother got married (on my birthday!)

A couple days later we flew to Utah for Chris' nephew's wedding

 And, of course, Christmas was much more fun

11 Months!

I got a little sad this morning getting out her 11 month sticker - until I spent the next half hour trying to get her to sit still for a picture before giving up and letting her take a nap first. Then I got the absolute PERFECT picture! I'll have to think of a cute picture to take every year on her birthday.
I'm in the midst of trying to figure out how much I want to try and do for her first birthday. Obviously I know she won't care about any of it, it's all for me. I don't want to go so overboard that it's silly, but I do want to make it special, I've waited sooooooooo long to have a first birthday to celebrate!
This month she:
- has slept through the night twice, and for the most part only wakes up once
- is standing more and more on her own and for longer periods of time
- says "uh-oh" whenever she drops something
- waves hello and goodbye
- started eating turkey, apple slices, spaghetti, who bananas, rice out of Mommy's bowl, corn, butternut squash, pineapple

Clean Fridge!

Several months ago I found a link on Pinterest to a declutter calendar for the whole year. I'm ALWAYS trying to declutter the house, I don't understand why we have so much, so I was really excited to find this. I do as much as I can, but it's so overwhelming and sometimes I just don't know where to start or what to do. This calendar has it broken down so that it's totally doable during nap time and supposedly at the end of the year you'll have a clutter free home.
As the end of the year approached I found that a declutter calendar had been made for 2013. Originally I was going to make a cute dry erase calendar to have easy access to the declutter item for the day, but that turned out to be a little ambitious during December and all the festivities. Instead, I wrote each days' task on my regular kitchen calendar. I decided that Lauren's afternoon nap would be my declutter time. And off I went! Some of the days are just planning what or how to declutter or making resolutions about avoiding clutter, so it wasn't until the second week of January that a big project started. It was the fridge. We go through the fridge periodically, but sometimes I look in and realize we don't do a thorough enough job. So for three days I was suppose to clean out 2 shelves a day, the condiments, and then the outside. I went one step further because I'd found something else from Pinterest I'd wanted to do - put placemats on the shelves so that they're easier to clean and prettier. So I would completely clean off a shelf, take it out, rinse it off, put the placemat on and put much less food back (sadly, we had quite a lot of expired food). Then I cleaned off the outside, wiped it off, and put a lot less back. I felt a little like Superwoman getting that big of a project done AND taking care of a baby and coincidentally, that week was the first week since Lauren was born that I cooked dinner EVERY night.
I didn't take before pictures, one because nobody needs to see how dirty our fridge was, and two I didn't really think of it in time. But, here's the after. I don't think you can see the placemats too well, they're just black with white circles.

10 Months!

This is the first month I don't know her weight. We stopped going to the breast feeding support group a couple of months ago because she wouldn't sit still on the scale, she wouldn't nurse while we were there and it fell during her morning nap. I don't have a scale that works and I'm still debating whether I want to find a friend who has a scale we could use to at least estimate her weight.
This month she:
- got her first big head cold :(
- is still not sleeping through the night, but seems to be getting a little closer
- learned how to point
- starting shaking her head "no"
- learned how to play her favorite game on my iPhone by herself
- has stood by herself a few times
- managed to FaceTime Grandma by herself and call Nana by herself, all on the same day
- started saying "uh" when I say "uh-oh" on her birthday
- has tried blueberries, mango, apricot, pancakes, grilled cheese, eggs
- got to see and feel snow for the first time
- got WAY too spoiled at Christmas!