Month 15 Pictures

I've started a gallery for month 15. Click on the link on the right side of the page or click here. I am loving my new 50 mm lens!

Happy Memorial Day!

Ready for the pool!

Welcome summer! We had a great, busy weekend. The pool is so much fun this year! We went three times this weekend, including the Memorial Day BBQ, which completely wore Shelby out. She fell asleep in her push car on the ride home and slept for two and a half hours... we all did!

Mmm.... sand!

Saturday morning, we went to the Decatur Arts Festival. Shelby didn't much care for the art and sculpture, but she did like the King of Pops popcicle and playing in the sandboxes with her pal Everett at the children's festival. On Saturday afternoon, she got to spend some quality time with Mimi while we enjoyed a movie. It was a nice treat and it's been forever since we've had some time to ourselves.

Pasta at the Pool

Every Friday night our pool hosts a pasta dinner. Here's Shelby chowing down after a busy evening of swimming.

14 Months Old

Sunglasses - my new obsession.

Here's my monthly brain dump for 14 months. I just try to remember as many things as I can because time is moving way too fast and I don't want to forget anything!

• Shelby has three new teeth coming in on top, in addition to her one year molar and her giant first tooth. I don't know why that one tooth came in so much earlier than the others, but it makes her grin look so funny right now! She's getting the rest of her front four and hopefully they will all even out soon, although we have been enjoying her "hillbilly" smiles.
• Our pool opened last weekend and it is so much more fun than last year! She loves the water and had so much fun splashing around in her float! A big change from just one year ago when she was just a wiggly little bean who couldn't even sit up or wear sunscreen.
• She is still taking her time with walking, although she will take more steps between us now - about six or seven - before collapsing into our arms. Her confidence is slowly improving and she is great at standing by herself.
• After what seemed like a bout with fussy eating (maybe it was all those teeth coming in) her appetite is back with a vengeance! It seems like she eats so much more now and she definitely feels heavier when you pick her up. Seriously kid... whenever you want to start walking ... mama's back is killing her! It seems like she can polish off an entire slice of pizza and we had Mexican last weekend and she ate almost an entire plate of rice and beans. She's definitely eating enough now that we have to order a kid's meal for her, rather than just sharing a few bites from our plate, although sharing with her did make for good portion control for me!
• She loves demonstrating the fact that she can point to her head and nose, and will now point to her mouth and say "ma" and point to her eye. Learning "ear" might be tough though, because she is always rubbing her ear!
• She's been regularly sleeping 11-12 hours a night and it's been awesome. I wasn't ready to night wean before a year, but now that we have done it, I am glad we did. It was super hard, but worth it in the end, I think. She still nurses in the morning and at night and I am not really sure how or when to stop! I guess it's a personal decision. Do you just quit cold turkey?
• She loves to pull our sunglasses off of our face, so on a recent trip to Target, I bought a pair of kid's sunglasses from the dollar bin for her to play with. She actually likes wearing them and will leave them on and grin for a while before pulling them off and wanting one of us to put them on. Scott wearing baby sunglasses = hilare.
• At the moment, she is obsessed with this small framed picture of O'Malley that we had on a shelf (yes, we have a framed picture of our cat). We put it in her room and she wants to look at it and hold it every time she's in there. She loves him and will even roll a ball at him and "play" with him. He isn't scared of her and often walks by close enough so she can pet him. It's super cute!
• She also loves sitting in her little beanbag armchair in the mornings and looking and old brochure about SIDS I had laying around. I guess she likes the pictures of the babies? It's weird, I know. She looks like a little old man reading the morning paper!
• She also loves this Grover puppet we have and we let her watch Sesame Street a few times and she can already associate the show with the puppet! Oh no! What have we done?! I was hoping the obsession with licensed characters wouldn't start so early. No princess stuff for you yet, my dear!

Pool Fun

Friday Night Pizza

Shelby Slides

Here's a video of Shelby sliding. She looks like such a toddler now!

Step by Step. Oh Baby.

After weeks of cautious stumbling, Shelby was finally confident enough to take more than one or two steps this week! She's worked her way up to three or four at a time! Is this officially walking? I think so! This week, she has also gotten much more confident at standing up by herself and cruising around. I think overall she's a pretty cautious baby and has taken her time with walking.

To celebrate, we went to New Baby Products to buy her first pair of real shoes (she had a couple pairs of cheapies and hand me downs) and got a cute pair of Robees and Pedipeds. They are so cute!

She's fully transitioned to one nap a day now and takes one long nap around noon for two to sometimes three hours. It's heavenly! For the past two weekends I've been able to have some "me" time for shopping, relaxing or mani pedis. It's awesome! Combine that with sleeping at night and life is pretty good right now.

Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day! We began the day with a pancake feast and relaxing around the house. Then Shelby took a marathon three hour nap, which allowed me to take a nap and have some time to myself for shopping. We then enjoyed frozen yogurt and fun at the playground and then ended the day with Scott's softball game.

Playing around with my Mother's Day present - a new camera lens! I like to overexpose the picture a little to emphasize Shelby's blue eyes!

Shelby's yogurt moustache.

Playtime with Friends

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We've been busy having fun and enjoying the nice weather! Here is a picture of Shelby at the mall today with her little pals. I've been friends with their moms since elementary school and it makes me so happy to see our babies playing together. We used to hang out at the mall after school - and now they are! It's too cute. Shopping, getting wings and Chick fil A ... some things never change. Now they just need to start watching 80s movies and studying together. They were playing on one of those interactive floor projector mats and while I was cringing at how filthy it probably was, Shelby was having so much fun with her pals that I could not help but just let her crawl around and get dirty!

She still won't let go of my hands or furniture when she cruises and she will sometimes do this weird crab walk where she walks on all fours. It's very strange and cannot be comfortable! Maybe she will finally get the confidence and balance to let go one day soon. She is really into cruising around though, and gets impatient with sitting in a stroller or high chair for too long. I feel like she's not eating very much because she gets fussy and wants to get down before she finishes her food. Hopefully this phase will pass soon!

She now has four teeth - two bottom front teeth, one top front tooth (which is huge and makes her look like a snaggle-toothed hillbilly when she smiles) and one MOLAR! I could not believe it and did not even notice it until after it popped through. I guess babies get one year molars? I had no idea. Bad mom.

We started night weaning this week and it has been going surprisingly well. I've been sleeping in the downstairs guest room to curb my temptation to go in her room and Scott reports that she has woken up and mildly fussed once or twice each night, but not been too upset about it. I hesitate to even call it "sleep training," because she doesn't have a problem going to sleep ... she was still just waking up at night to nurse for a couple of minutes and going back to sleep, which made for one very tired mama! I've enjoyed the sleep I've been getting and feel like the timing is right. Our favorite part of night weaning has been seeing the funny positions she winds up in after she falls back asleep! Why do babies sleep with their bottoms in the air? It's so cute!