Arielle at 16 months...and, ahem 1 week

My baby girl is starting to seem not so babyish to me these days. She is entering my favorite phase of baby/toddlerhood, the year and a half to 2 and a half range. Well, I'm not sure if that will be my favorite with her yet, but it sure was with Nate. I love seeing them start to figure things out. Their personalities become more defined and their language skills improve so much in that time frame. Ok, enough of what I'm looking forward to, let's talk about what I'm enjoying now!

 This face! This cherub, sweet cupie doll face! I can't get enough of it. I want to smooch it all day and snuggle into your squishy cheeks and neck. You still smell like baby and, since I can't bottle it, I will enjoy it as long as I can!

You are becoming quite funny and will repeat something if you see it has solicited a laugh from someone, especially Natey. The down side to this is, Natey likes to laugh at the inappropriate things that I don't want to encourage, like hitting yourself in the head or spitting. But your awareness of cause and effect is definitely growing.

You have started babbling a lot and repeating words you are learning. You like to say "Mama" and will keep saying it until I say what...and even after I say what. It seems you are working your pronunciation or something since you change the inflection on the words as you repeat them.

Your new favorite words and phrases are "Mama", "Good girl", "More", "Show", but you have started repeating so many words and are picking them up very quickly.

You still drive me nuts and take your shoes and socks off EVERY time we get in the car. If it wasn't freezing out I'd just take you to the car barefoot and put them on when we arrive at our destination.

 You do, however, have a fascination with everyone else's shoes and try mine and daddy's on all the time. It is hilarious to see you clomping around the breezeway in my red high heel or daddy's giant high top Nikes.

 You are very into demanding "Up" and then getting down right away only to demand to come up again. You try to climb up on anything and everything and are starting to get quite good at it. I have to watch you every second or I will turn around and you will be standing on a chair or climbing the couch.

You are a baby tornado. You would be happy if every object in our house was located on the floor. You upend baskets of folded laundry, pull papers off of the desk, try to take things out of the trash can, and take all of the DVDs out of the cupboard under the TV. Once they are safely on the floor, you want nothing to do with them and go about your merry way. It is hard to clean when you follow behind me making a mess, so let's work on that!

You are down to 1 bottle a day! It is progress. I thought the morning bottle would be a hard one to break you of, but you seemed to give it up without an issue. You still get the one right before bed and that one will be phasing out to a sippy cup of some sort in the near future.

It is super difficult to brush your teeth. I don't remember it being this hard the first time around. I practically have to wrestle you and hold your head to do it. There must be an easier way, but I have yet to figure it out.

Daddy puts YouTube songs on for you in the mornings on his phone as you snuggle in our bed. Now, every morning, you pick up my phone and demand, "Show!" and "mulk" (milk) when you get into our room. You are definitely learning how to get your way.

Keep up your sweet ways my sweet girl and I look forward to the months to come!

It's what's for breakfast!

UPDATED: And the winner is....

Lyr said...

I feel like Nutella is the new craze. I guess I have got to try this stuff

I will email you for your address so I can send you out your goodie bag!

 I got the chance to host a "Mommy Party" sponsored by Nutella. Anyone can have a party at home, but I took my party with me to work. We had a lunch meeting in one of our conference rooms and I shared the goodies Nutella sent me with several of my awesome co-workers. I had heard people rave about this stuff before and I had tried it one time, but using it for breakfast items isn't something I thought of before. We toasted some English muffins and topped them with Nutella and banana slices and it was delicious! I also sliced up some apples for dipping in the Nutella...mmm. Let's just say, I had the rest of the jar in my cubicle for a couple days and finally  had to take it home because I was tempted to dig into it with just a spoon!

I have one goodie bag left over from the party. It has a Nutella sample pack, tumbler mug, special spreader, coupon and breakfast tips in it! Leave me a comment telling me your favorite way to use Nutella and I will pick a random winner and send it out to you!

Flower cake pops & Brunch

I feel as though I have fully embarked on my cake pop adventure now! This is the 5th time I've made them (for the other times see here, here and here) and I am just loving it. While this design is not in the Cake Pop Cookbook, I was having a brunch party at my house and wanted something springy without being Eastery (totally not a word but let's go with it) so I did some Googling and found this idea. Thankfully, since it is almost Easter, pastel candy corn was available. I used the candy corn for the pedals and a chewy sweet tart for the middle. The pop part was straightforward since I was just using white candy melts. I think they are cute and fun and they were a nice addition to the brunch....which I will talk about after the slew of cake pop pictures!

I never have events at my house with just friends any more. It seems that having kids puts a crimp in your partying, but I got some of my girls together on Saturday for a little brunch. We had mimosas and I made stuffed french toast, which was to die for. I got the recipe from Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen site and the only thing I did differently was I used Challa bread instead of French bread. You see, here in NE, french bread is a baguette. I have yet to find loaves in a bakery that aren't Italian bread. I also wanted to make frittatas which, for a girl who doesn't eat eggs, is rather gutsy. I have a couple of friends with dietary restrictions and I wanted them to be able to enjoy too so I decided to make individual frittatas in a muffin tin! I prepared sauteed mushrooms, asparagus, peppers, and zucchini along with bacon, ham and cheese. I numbered a piece of paper that corresponded to the muffin tin spaces and had people write their names next to a number. They put in the tin whatever ingredients they wanted and then I poured the raw scrambled egg into each tin and baked them at 375 degrees for ~17 minutes. Apparently they were delicious, or so everyone said. Next time I will spray the muffin tin with cooking spray before I add the ingredients but luckily the tin was non-stick so they came out OK.

It was fun to have people over and talk and enjoy the nice day. Of course I took 3 whole pictures since I was in a rush to get the food out when everyone was arriving. I swear I might form a procrastinators support group...eventually. It was a nice day with my girls and it makes me look forward to spring (and continuing my cake pop obsession) even more!

Just one of those days

Do you ever have a day that just makes you feel like you suck at life? Yeah, that was yesterday. Nothing huge or terrible happened, but a series of little things just beat down my confidence and put me in a bit of a funk. I forgot to feed Nate breakfast before I dropped him off at school and had to call and ask them to give him part of his lunch to eat in the morning. I was so embarrassed having to call and tell them I forgot to feed my child. Who does that? I won't bore you with the rest of my crappy day but it ended at 11pm with me attempting to finish a nap mat for Nate and accidentally sewing the bias tape to the edge of the whole thing but forgetting to add the blanket. I cursed loudly as I began to rip 5 feet of seam apart and then heard Nate crying. I thought I had woken him up but, it turns out, I had forgotten to put the kid's diaper on before bed and he woke up because he had peed. He was so upset like it was his fault. I comforted him, changed his clothes and bedding, and snuggled him until he fell asleep. I gave up on the day at that point and just went to bed.

Do you ever feel like your tiny failures as a mother add up to epic disappointments? I know I do. I will try to make today a better day. I will try to keep my patience in check when I am feeling beat down. I will try not to be so hard on myself. I will be better. They deserve it.

The Blackberry: My Gateway drug to technology

The hubbs and I were watching a show the other night and a Blackberry commercial came on. He glanced lovingly at his Droid X and snarked, "Aren't you glad we don't have those any more".  I looked at my own smaller Droidlet phone (the Droid 2) and smiled. Oh how I love my technology. I didn't always have this love for all things convenient in the palm of my hand. I didn't even have a "smart" phone until I was nearing the end of my pregnancy with Arielle. I switched from my good ole LG, all-it-can-do-is-call-and-send-texts model to the Blackberry Curve. I was instantly enamoured with the bbm function, instant access to my email and the ability to look at web pages, albeit slow loading and not the easiest to see at times. I was grateful for my new toy considering I didn't get within 30 yards of a computer in the first few weeks with the new baby. Heck, I was even able to tweet and FB the birth of my daughter almost as soon as she came out. This is where the honeymoon ended.

The BB started to freeze up ALL the time. If I didn't erase my emails my phone would freak out and I would have to take the battery out and reboot it. This happened daily. I got so irritated that I wanted a new phone, but I couldn't go back to my plain Jane phone. I NEEDED the email and twitter and all of the smartness of my smart phone. So we upgraded to the Droid family of phones. Now I fear I have too much technology at my fingertips. I have a Tweetdeck, words with friends, angry birds, Zoodles for Nate, a stopwatch app (you know we all need one of those), Facebook, ebay, Kayak, Pandora and who knows what else on my phone. I find myself walking around the house with my technological leash and have to ask myself how I got to this point?? When did the simple like of technology turn into this addiction? I blame it all on my Blackberry. It was my gateway drug. I don't even think they have a rehab for this kinda thing. Hmmm, maybe I'll ask Charlie. WINNING!!

Arielle at 15 months

Hello sweet baby girl. You turned 15 months a week ago, but you were so sick I couldn't bear to torture you by trying to take pictures. Better late than never, so here goes...

You have made leaps and bounds in the language department. You know a lot of words but you don't often volunteer them, but will say them when I ask you what something is.

You do make exceptions to this and the words shoe, mama, daddy, Nathan and "baba" (bottle) are frequently uttered.

Speaking of the "baba", we need to start kicking that to the curb. It will be painful for us both, but it really needs to happen before you urn 18 months old. You have now been warned.

 You are still as smiley as ever, but had a couple of weeks that you were just miserable. You got your first ear and sinus infections at the same time. You looked so sad, but are back to your chipper self now.

At your 15 month check up, they weighed you and I made them do it again just to be sure. You actually LOST weight from your 1 year appointment. You were 26.5 pounds (a whole pound less than 3 months ago) and are 33 inches tall. You have finally come down onto the chart for weight (woohoo!) in the 96th  percentile and are in the 99th percentile for height.

Your hair is finally starting to come in but for now I have dubbed you "baby bad hair" because the front grows straight forward and, when it is on your forehead, looks like an old man. You are still cute, don't worry! As soon as the summer comes, I pray the humidity helps that hair start to curl.

 You answer to Arielle, Ari-belle, puddin pie and "sisty" and when I point to you in the mirror and ask who it is you always say "baby".

When you are finished eating you put your hands out to the side, palms up, tilt your head to the side and shrug while you say "done".

There is nothing you have tried so far that you will not eat...including random objects from the floor.

You have been learning your animal noises and are starting to recognize animals in the book.

You are obsessed with books and will ask for one every chance you get.

You are wearing size 18-24 months in most clothes, unless they are really structured (like some jeans or khakis) and then you wear a 2T. You are in a 5.5 shoe.

You have a jealous streak that shows when Natey is on my lap or getting my cuddles. You will come over, screech and try to position yourself between us. It is hysterical.

You will turn off any light switch you can get your hands on. This is really fun when I am trying to brush your teeth.

Speaking of teeth you have all but the canines and 2nd molars. The bottom canines are on their way in and bugging you right now.

This is still the sign that you are tired. Thumb in the mouth and left hand on the ear.

I love you my sweet girl!