1 and a half!

Alexandra turned 18 months, which means she is officially a year and a half old!

Her vocabulary is developing a lot even though she doesn't pronounce all of her words very clearly, and she is improving every day.

Some of her most-used words are:
Daddy!
MaMa!
UP please!
Down!
Please
Thank you!
Hi Sadie!
Bye BYE
Bird
Socks
Shoes
Juice
Fish  (pronounced Pisshhh, which is really funny sounding!)
Cat
Doggie
Ball
Uh Oh!
Good Girl (pronounced go-go)
Yes
No
Baby

She is 25 pounds (70th percentile for weight) and 33 inches tall (90th percentile for height).  She has been fairly healthy lately (although she has had a few colds, it's nothing like the ear infections we battled last year!)  She has 8 front teeth (4 on top, 4 on the bottom) and 4 molars.

Her favorite foods are waffles, milk, bananas, bean burritos, mandarin oranges, hot dogs, and turkey.  She is not a great eater, and any of her favorite foods listed above can suddenly become the most vile things she has ever seen depending on her daily mood.

Alex is extremely temperamental and is already throwing temper tantrums pretty badly when she doesn't get her way.  She throws herself on the ground, rolling around kicking and screaming, and will even bite herself if she gets really angry!!! But she can turn from angry to calm in a matter of minutes, and will make us laugh at her expressions or body language.

She loves her daycare/school, and runs to see her teachers and give them hugs every morning.  Sometimes when I pick her up she even cries because she is having too much fun and doesn't want to leave! It sometimes makes me sad when she pitches a fit about going home, but I'm ultimately glad that she is being taken care of by wonderful people who love her.  I drive 45 minutes to drop her off at this particular daycare, and it is extremely inconvenient for us, but I can't bear to transfer her elsewhere because I haven't found anything comparable.

At home, Alex's favorite activities are playing with her kitchen, her toys (like her dog Patch), and BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS! She cannot get enough of the books.  I think she would be fine if we read to her for hours every night.  Not to say that she has a wonderful attention span, because she likes to change out the book sometimes before you have even finished reading it.  She loves the playground and the slide is her obsession.  If I let her walk down the driveway and take my eye off of her for a second, she takes off running at full speed to the playground (which is about 30 yards away) and I have to chase her.

We are both so proud to be the parents of this little joy.  She is brilliant and funny and thoughtful.  She is also stubborn and willful and determined.  We have our hands full every single day with her, and we are continuously amazed at how difficult yet awesome she is!  We can't imagine what life was like before her, nor do we want to! 

Merry Christmas!!!

What a wonderful Christmas we have had!

We announced to our families what we will be naming baby #2, which we have kept under lock and key up until today!   And her name is......

Kathryn Grace!

It was the name that we both loved when we first started coming up with name ideas.  And even though we came up with many other ones that we loved, for some reason, we just kept going back to our first choice.  It just felt right, and now we have already come to think of her as our Kathryn.  So there it is!  We can't wait to meet her and see how her name fits her!  :)

Naming Baby #2

Want to know what we are naming this little baby? We are going to be announcing her name on Christmas! Stay tuned! :)

Over halfway there now!

This pregnancy is flying by so quickly! It helps that I have a busy toddler to chase after (which distracts me from the months of waiting for the new baby).  I'm much bigger than I was at the same point in my pregnancy last time despite having gained less weight.  I guess it's true what they say, that your body knows what to do and jumps into gear a lot faster the second time around! I haven't been as excited about taking photos this time, not because I'm not excited about the pregnancy, but because I'm just not that into my pregnant self.    But here are my 2 photos, at 3 months and 5 months (oops, forgot to take one at 4 months!)

Katie's Jungle Baby Shower

My best friend Katie is having a baby! I was given the privilege of throwing her a baby shower, and boy did I have fun with it!!! We chose to do a jungle theme to match the baby's nursery decor.  As usual, once you give me a theme, I pretty much can't help myself from going crazy trying to plan and plan and plan around it.  Her sister, Kelly, the amazing creative paper artiste, designed and made the invitations and the paper decorations for the shower.

They were gorgeous! This photo doesn't do it justice, because you can't really see the dimension of the animals coming off of the card, but you get the idea.  

I had fun designing a menu around a jungle theme.  We had Safari Salad (Spinach Salad with Cranberries, Walnuts and Bacon), Monkey Mushrooms (Mushrooms stuffed with Brie cheese), Wild Jungle Vines (Rosemary skewers of mozzarella, salami, olives, etc.), Critter Crunch Chips and Artichoke Dip, Grilled Vegetables (titled "Zoo you want some vegetables?"), Jungle Fruit Kabobs, Monkey Bread, and Chocolate-dipped Bananas.

Besides being pretty darn yummy, if I do say so myself, it was a great themed menu!

Katie and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning on the night before the shower to finish the food preparations.  We were most entertained by our cookie decorating, and maybe it was the sleep-deprivation, but we had some hysterical giggle moments.  There were some definite flops (most notably the Giraffe with measles) but we kept at it and came up with some cute enough versions.

I'm not in love with them, but they fit the theme, and there definitely wasn't enough time to start over, so there you have it.  Next time, I will START with the detailed cookie-decorating instead of trying to finish it at 3 a.m.! 

I decorated the tables with palm fronds and jungle animals, simple and cute. 

Kelly made the banner, and of course it was BEAUTIFUL!!! I keep saying that I will take some classes from her one day when I have time for another hobby!  But I think with a full time job, a toddler, and photography, baking and book club, I'm pretty set on the schedule at the moment! 

The most important thing was that Katie enjoyed her day and was showered with a ton of great gifts for her and baby Lucas.