One for the Archives: Birthday with Momma and Daddy

On E's first birthday, J and I took her to the Long Beach Aquarium. We have a large fish tank at our house and she has always loved watching the fish and we figured that she would love to experience everything on a much larger scale.

The Long Beach Aquarium isn't huge, so it's perfect for someone that is E's age. It's a place that you could stay all day or walk through in a couple of hours and go grab lunch at one of the great restaurants nearby (which we usually do).

It was awesome to spend the day together, just the three of us, at a place that none of us had been to before. One of the best things about being a parent is to see things through your child's eyes and to experience things with him or her for the very first time. It's amazing and humbling every single time.

20 Months!

E is growing up so fast. At this stage in her life, she continues to want to try to do everything by herself and thinks she knows best. But we are having fun showing her everything that we can offer.

E, at 20 months you:

-Love to high-five and fist-pound as part of your normal goodbye routine.

-You are doing a great job eating with a spoon and fork.

-You threw your first major tantrum; you really don't like to be rushed through your morning routine.

-Daddy let you have your very own popsicle instead of sharing with him on a hot day on the patio.

-You love to draw outside with sidewalk chalk and inside with colored pencils. You have even surprised Momma with a beautiful mural on one of the walls in the house.

-You have grown out of your first pair of Converse Chuck Taylors,we definitely need to go shoe shopping for a new pair to keep with family tradition.

-Momma gave you your first timeout for intentionally throwing crackers on the floor.

-You had your first injury (with blood) while out to lunch at Madison Bear Garden. You slipped on the picnic table and cut the inside of your mouth. There was a lot of blood, but thankfully, not too many tears. You were a  tough little cookie. 

-You have an amazing vocabulary and pick up on new tasks and words very easily.
-You are regularly using almost 50 words.
-You can point to most major parts correctly when we ask.
-You love looking at pictures of animals and telling us the sound they make. We just play along and let you think that giraffes growl every now and then.

Within the past couple of weeks, you have really been working hard on figuring out how to put your pants and shoes on by yourself. Sometimes you will sit quietly in your room and empty your entire pajama drawer so that you can work on getting each pair of pants on. I just have to make sure I pop my head in every few minutes, because complete silence might mean trouble.

We are loving this phase with you. Even though sometimes it's hard to interpret exactly what you want, you are so gracious in showing us what you are trying to say. I can't believe your birthday is only a few months around the corner.

For the Archives: E's Bee Day Party

The original date of this post was October 19th, just two days after E's first birthday party. I guess I got way to busy to finalize this post at the time, but can't go without recording it here.

J and I decided to throw and all-out bash at our house to celebrate E's first birthday, and surviving our first year of parenthood. After searching endless party blogs, I finally stumbled upon a theme that I loved: Bee Day. The entire party was bumble bee and honeycomb themed, the invitations, decorations and, of course, the cake!

I won't bore you with the details, cause I'm sure you're dying for pictures. I had a wonderful friend agree to photograph the party so that I didn't have to worry about missing any of the priceless moments with our girl. All images © 2011 Jennifer Leanne Photography. I highly recommend this practice to anyone planning an important celebration. It's so important for parents to get out from behind the camera.

E at 18 Months

I can hardly believe that 18 months have passed since the first time that I held E in my arms. I have conquered most of her milestones with joy, but this time around was bittersweet. Although, I have to admit that I am working on a photo project for one of the walls in the new house which required me to labor through EVERY SINGLE PICTURE that we have of E. It was awful. If awful means turning the laptop around to your husband every 60 seconds to ensure that I wasn't the only one drowning in this pool of emotion.

We are on our way to living with a two-year old!

-E at 18 months you are such a spitfire. You are figuring out how to communicate all the things you want with words and gestures, but when you can't accomplish that, you stomp your feet, back into a corner and whine a little bit louder. Hopefully I can keep a smile on my face through this phase.

-You weigh 23 lbs. and are 32 inches tall. Seventy-fifth percentile for height!

-You are doing great eating with a fork and a spoon, of course we still end up with a mess, but at least it's a cute one.

-You have all of your teeth except your two-year molars. Your top K-9 teeth are coming in now and we might just have a summer free of teething.

-You enjoy helping with some of our household chores; especially emptying the dishwasher and putting laundry into the washer or dryer.

-You are talking up a storm. Your vocabulary includes more than 25 words, but you will make a decent attempt at saying anything that we ask.

-You recently started mimicking 'momma' behaviors. You love to wheel your baby dolls around in a little stroller, feed them a bottle, pat them on the back and give them kisses. It is the sweetest thing.

-You love to be independent and do anything that makes you feel like a big kid. You often refuse help or only let an adult give you minimal help with a task until you can follow the lead. 

-One night during a particularly bad teething episode, Daddy showed you a video of Barney on the computer. Now you just might be OBSESSED. Sadly, J and I have learned the words to all the songs and added a Barney box set to our DVD collection. Go ahead and laugh, but Barney has saved us during a recent eight-hour car ride.

-You still love to read books. I love watching you pick up a book and chit chat your way through it or fly through the pages. Reading is one of my favorite times with you. You will sit on my lap, or snuggle up close to Daddy, or climb over Grandpa to sit on his left side for the second book of the evening after you enjoyed the first on his right side.

-You are a dancing machine. You love to dance anytime that there is music playing, at home or in the car. You have mastered the art of getting Nana to turn on music on her cell phone for an impromptu dance party.

You continue to challenge me and teach me about the depth of love, even if we are just laughing our way through it.

Dive Right In!

E got a little excited tonight when I was running her bath. To help her beat the heat this weekend, J filled up her little pool and put it on the patio. She must have great memories of her swim yesterday because she decided to hop over the side of the tub and start her bath with all her clothes on!

Easter 2012

In previous years, we have spent Easter weekends camping in the desert with some amazing friends. E spent her first Easter riding out the the wind in our fifth wheel. This year we were able to spend the holiday weekend with my family. We went to church in the morning, hung around our house and enjoyed the weather after E's nap, and ended the day with a feast at my parents' house in great company.

Just cookin' breakfast before going to see where the Easter Bunny hid her basket

Found it Momma!!

Look what I got!

Ready for church.

Cruisin'
(She insists on pushing it herself, but she has to hold the handle.)

Dance party!!

We're back...but from a whole new zip code!

Our lives have completely changed (well, almost completely) since I wrote a blog post. I'm sorry that I haven't made the time to chronicle everything as it was happening, I had every intention...and then life happened.  I'm sure it happens to every mom once in a while , right? I promise to give you the long and short of all the changes. Soon.

I'm going to pick up my posts and move forward from today. My intention is to make the blog a priority. After all, this is the 'yearbook' for our sweet little family and all of the adventures we create. For my own satisfaction, I am going to finish a few posts that I intended to publish months ago. Hopefully all of the adorable pictures of my daughter don't bother anyone, even if they are nine months old and she looks, acts and eats nothing like she did all those eons ago. 

Thanks for sticking with us, or joining us for the first time. Updating the blog is more important than ever. As our family has a Southern California family that has loved our daughter just like a Momma, supported J and I through the changes we've decided to make (cliffs we've decided to jump off of) and created some fabulous memories with. We've revving our engines for a whole new start, come along for the ride!