We're Getting Closer...

Today while waiting to leave church, I was standing in the foyer talking with a friend and Y was playing around on the floor. Well she was wearing her Christmas dress and judging from the odd movements she had been making all day (crawling sideways instead of forward) I had pretty much figured out that the dress is hard for her to crawl in. Because of this it was no surprise to me when she started "walking" around with her hands and feet on the floor and butt stuck up in the air - she's been doing this for a while now, usually for short periods of time each time she does it. Well I always get a kick out her doing that so I was watching her and out of nowhere she slowly removes her hands from the floor and stands up. She only lasted a matter of seconds before she fell to her butt, but as you can probably imagine, I was clapping my hands and just beaming with excitement. She has never made an effort to stand before so it's a pretty big deal! After she toppled down she it didn't take her long to give it another go and again, she lasted for a few seconds before she fell on her bottom again. She tried it for several times before moving on to something else and each time I think I grew more and more proud. I was just sad that B wasn't there to see it, she did do it again at home though so he got to see it that time. We're getting close to having a walking baby on our hands!!!! Hopefully by Christmas...that would be the best present she could give me! I honestly can't wait to see her walking, and even running, around!!!

A Christmas E-card!

This year, after many years of just having the intention of doing it, I actually made and sent out Christmas cards!!! I am very proud of myself that I didn't procrastinate because had I these cards would never have made it out in time for Christmas. Making handmade cards was a lot more time consuming than I ever thought it would be, but if I'm honest I must say that I really actually enjoyed doing it. Hopefully I'll do it again next year but maybe a simpler pattern (although I really loved this one).

I made 40 cards which isn't even close to the number I would have made had I sent one to everyone, so I thought of a way to give all of you a card without actually sending them out to everyone. If you didn't get one, it doesn't mean that I don't love you, it just means that I have far too many family and friends to mail cards out to every one of them. Anyway, back to my idea...I decided that I would take a picture of the front of a card, the inside of the card, include a copy of the picture enclosed in the card and then a final picture of ALL the cards I made. That way, you can pick your favorite card and pretend you got that one in the mail! It's genius if you ask me!!!

So here we go:

Pick your favorite card out of all these in the picture below (if you need to you can click on the picture to make it larger):

Here's a close up of one card, just imagine it is the card you picked above:

Here's what your card says on the inside (I blotted out the names for all those crazies out there on the internet who might happen to come across our blog) but most of you know the names and can fill in the blanks:

And finally, here is the photo that was included in with the card:

Hope you liked your card (at least you got to pick out which card you liked best, the ones who I mailed them to just got whichever one I gave them, hahaha)!

We love you guys and wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

Finished...Done...Finito!

It is the end of an era...tonight I nursed Y for the very last time! I am a little saddened by it but I am also pretty happy about it. I am totally surprised that I was able to breastfeed for 15 whole months - we had such a rocky start with it - but I am so extremely glad that I stuck it out and kept at it. It has given me and Y such a stronger bond than I ever thought imaginable and I loved every minute of it. It has also helped us save a ton of money that we would have spent on formula. I'm in no way knocking formula because I also loved the fact that she would take both breastmilk and formula because there were many times that formula was a lifesaver! But seriously, I can't wait to do it all over again with the next bundle of joy!

15 Month Well Baby

On Monday we carried Y to the doctor for her 15 month well baby check up. She's doing really well, she is now 22lbs 12oz. and 31¾ inches long. She remains in the 50th percentile for weight and head circumferance while being in the 90th percentile for height. He was a bit surprised that she was not yet walking but isn't overly concerned about it but if she's not walking in a month he wants us to give him a call and he'll likely refer her to someone who can just check to make sure everything's okay. Neither he nor us really think that anything is physically wrong with her but he feels it'd be better to find out sooner rather than later, just in case. We really just feel it is a matter of her being ready, she is a very precautious little girl, not really into taking any risks. We also went ahead and let her get her first H1N1 vaccination, she'll go back in January to get the second and final shot.

15 Months!!!

Our precious little angel is now 15 months old!!! As you can see she definitely looks like a little toddler now, I keep searching for my baby in there but sometimes it can be hard to find her. She's still awesome and way better than I could ever ask for. It seems like she adds a new word all the time and pays very close attention to what goes on around her. She has 8 teeth now and loves to eat as much as she always has, my only question is, where does it go?!?! She has the cutest laugh you've ever heard and she has only just become interested in playing with other little kids in the past few weeks, I guess that's due to being the first child who really isn't exposed to other kids that often except at church. She loves to stare out of our sliding glass door and watch the ducks and Canadian geese swim in the lake. She likes to look at the Christmas tree but as of yet has not attempted to take anything off it. It probably helps that we only have a small tabletop tree. Below are some pictures that we took today, we take her in for her 15 month well baby visit on Monday so I'll let you know more about height and weight then. Enjoy the pictures!

Cheese

Today while I was snapping a few pictures of Y (see previous post), I would say "say cheese" before I would take a picture. Well I noticed that after I would say that she would reply with "cheese." So her newest word is cheese. Not sure if I've ever posted her words (and sounds) before but she can say: uh-uh, mmm (when she sees something she wants to eat and she even does the fluctuation in the sound so it's more like "mMMm"), dada & mama (and she does know that they refer to us), baby, bye-bye and a few others that have slipped my mind. But anyway, here's the video.

Words I forgot about when I initially posted this: Yay, hey, & uh-oh.

New Pictures

It's been a while since I've posted some pictures and seeing as Y turns 15 months at the end of this week, it's about time I put some up...so here goes:

Happy Thanksgiving

It's November and because this happens to be the month when we celebrate Thanksgiving it is also the month when people generally start to think of all the things that they have to be grateful for. I honestly express my gratitude for my life and all that I have on a daily basis but I wanna put a few of them in writing. So I have written one thing I am grateful for for each day of the month of November up until Thanksgiving day. Here's my list and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

1. I am thankful for a relationship with my Heavenly Father and being able to talk to him each day in prayer.
2. I am thankful for the Atonement of Christ which allows me to be my imperfect self yet maintain the ability to return to live with my Heavenly Father if I earnestly repent.
3. I am thankful for my wonderful, amazing husband who I still feel unworthy of (but I'm so glad he's mine).
4. I am thankful for my beautiful baby girl and all the joy that she brings to our lives.
5. I am thankful for family and friends and the strength and encouragement they always give me.
6. I am thankful for the turkey who (unwillingly) gave its life so that I may have a delicious dinner tonight.
7. I am grateful to have shelter, transportation, food and all of life's necessities that we often take for granted.
8. I am grateful for the Gospel and all that it has brought into my life.
9. I am grateful for the temple and eternal marriages.
10. I am grateful for answered prayers, even if the answer is not what I want it to be.
11. I am grateful for the summer months that offer me a reprieve from horrible Michigan winters.
12. I am grateful for each day that I wake up.
13. I am grateful for 4 guys who each took 2 years of their life to go serve a mission in North Carolina 16 years ago.
14. I am grateful to live in a country where I am permitted to have so many freedoms which are often denied in some other countries.
15. I am appreciative that my husband has a job when there are so many who do not.
16. I am doubly appreciative that his job allows him to provide for our family which allows me to stay at home with our daughter.
17. I'm thankful for my health.
18. I am thankful for the trials I have experienced in my life which have molded me into the person that I am and given me the strength to endure.
19. I am grateful for my mom who is a pillar of strength and an amazing example of integrity and love.
20. I am grateful for my dad who appears to be a rough and callous man on the exterior, but who I know loves his family more than anything else.
21. I am grateful for banana bread, white chip macadamia cookies and vanilla ice cream (not necessarily at the same time).
22. I am thankful for the opportunity I have to be in such a culturally diverse family. I tell everyone that I come from a small city in North Carolina with black people, white people and 5 Mexicans! It's an obvious exaggeration but never in my life did I dream I would have a Mexican mother, a Canadian Father, a Norwegian brother, a British grandmother, a Dominican cousin, a Kenyan cousin (and maybe one day a Peruvian sister). A piece of useless information: I used to refer to B as my Canican (CANadian + mexICAN).
23. I appreciate the days when I have a clean house (they are few and far between).
24. I am thankful for scented candles and tart burners.
25. I am grateful for Facebook which has enabled me to reconnect with so many friends I had lost contact with and allowed me to become both a chef and a farmer...at the same time. haha
26. I am thankful for good books, even if I don't have the time I'd like to read them.

We're Still Here

I guess I should start this post with an apology, it has been a very long time since my last post. I didn't post much, if anything, while my mom was visiting and by the time she left I guess I had just gotten out of the habit. Luckily though, there hasn't been a whole lot going on with us so this probably won't take too long.

Last month we received what is quite possibly the best gift we've ever been given (it's definitely in the top 2)! Someone very close to us, paid off our car loan! We were both surprised as well as being very excited and it could not have come at a better time. It was an answer to a prayer and definitely a message from Heavenly Father letting me know that we're on the right track. The extra money each month has allowed us to save more money each month which will hopefully enable us to buy a house sooner, assuming we find something affordable in the location that we want.

We had a pregnancy scare this month. Or at least I had a scare, B didn't seem to be worried either way. I guess scare may be a little too severe a word but let me just say I'm not quite ready for #2 yet. Had it turned out that we were pregnant I would have come to accept it and even be excited about it, but I am really relieved that we're not. I have a tendency to plan things out, and sometimes, when things don't go as I plan I can get pretty emotional and even a little upset. Right now I just wanna take some time and enjoy being with Y. That combined with the fact that I'm really not ready for the multiple night feedings, being sleep deprived, and just becoming anyone's personal milking machine quite yet. When the time comes that we're ready for #2 (or even if we're not ready but it's on its way anyway) rest assure I will let all of you know, but as for right now...I'm just relieved!

Y is now 14 months old! She is still not walking and that's probably due to the fact that I want her to walk so badly. I have heard from some moms who have said that their son or daughter didn't walk until 18 months and some even a little bit later. I REALLY don't wanna wait that long. I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will walk by Christmas. I should not, however, be surprised that she is taking her time learning to walk. She is such a laid back little girl and doesn't really seem to be in a rush to do things, take crawling for example. She has 4 teeth all coming in at once and she has been surprisingly tolerable through it all. We recently bought her a toothbrush to brush her teeth, previously we had been using one of those rubber fingertip brushes that you slide onto your finger. I was certain that she would just take the toothbrush out of my hand and start chewing on it but she doesn't. She LOVES getting her teeth brushed so she makes no effort to take the brush from me. When she sees me grab the toothbrush and her toothbrush she gets all excited and happy; maybe we have a future dentist on our hands. She still refuses to touch her own food although I did get her to pick up some french fries on one occasion, but other than that she moves her hand away whenever I try to make her take food. She has started trying to help me feed her when using a spoon, she will grab the spoon and pull it to her mouth. She still brings us so much joy and I love to do anything that will make her laugh because it is the cutest, most heartwarming sound I've ever heard. I really do love being a mom, but then again, she makes it easy!

Like Taking Candy from a Baby???

About a month and a half ago while we were at Y's final dermatologist appointment they had a huge jar of DumDums sitting on the counter, so I grabbed one and stuffed it into the diaper bag. Well tonight I discovered that Sour Apple flavored DumDum and began to eat it as I sat on the floor playing with Y. She was, naturally, intrigued by the white stick hanging out of my mouth and below is a video of Y's first candy experience (and the last for a very long time).