10.25.2010

Oh the imagination

I walk in from cleaning up breakfast dishes to find her dollhouse people all sitting in their chairs facing forward.


I ask her what everyone is doing..."singing" she says, as she belts out her latest song full of made-up words to the tune of something sounding like a mix between 'jesus loves me' and the 'grand ol' duke of york'.


I have a boo-boo of dry skin around my finger where my wedding bands live. I took them off and put some medicine on it, as she was watching. She then says "EWE! Mama! You need to CUT OFF THAT FINGER!". I'm dying laughing. I say "what will I do without a finger?", she says "I don't know but you need to CUT. IT. OFF! Ewe!".

We go the post office and she asks for a "sticker". I give her one and explain to her that it's actually a mailing label. We mail our package to Aunt Kiki and get back in the car. I get everyone buckled in and she says "mama, look!". I look and the mailing label is stuck to her leg. She says "I'm mailing my leg to Aunt Kiki!" and laughs so hard. I say "how are you going to walk without your leg?" She says "I'll use my foot!"

All four of us are riding in the car. She asks Justin if he can roll down her window. He says no, because its too windy here on the highway. She says "well, can you roll my window down when we get on the low-way?" We laugh. And then she says "when are we going to be on the low-way?"

Seriously, I need to carry a notebook around to write down all of the funnies.

9.5 Months

It's a little blurry, but I can't believe I caught this picture. This captures so much of Finley's personality at this age. The spiky soft hair that she rubs to get to sleep, the eight teeth peeking through that sweet smile, the squinted eyes when she laughs, and that nose wrinkle. Oh we just love that nose wrinkle!

Stats at her nine month check up:
weight: 20 lbs (75th percentile)
height: 29 inches (75th percentile but she was wiggly so they think she is actually taller, usually 95th percentile)

She army crawls on her tummy like a champ, picking up all of the dog hair and dirt from our hardwood floors on her clothes along the way. She has now mastered sitting up from crawling, which is so stinkin cute. When Grayson and I wake her up from naps now she is sitting up ready for us, which Grayson finds hysterical. She is happy when she wakes up and laughs and smiles when we come in to get her.

She just started pulling up to her knees on things, but not to her feet yet. I'm sure it's soon. Her favorite spot to pull up is the potty. Nice. What is it with children loving the bathroom? And yes, I only refer to the "toilet" now as the "potty" with a three-year-old in the house. Justin especially liked this vocabulary choice when we went with a realtor to look at a couple of houses in town and I was exclaiming, "oh this is a nice potty", "oh, two pottys would be nice". Ha. And no, we're not moving. Not right now at least, but probably at some point in the next 4 years ;)

Back to the baby. She likes finger foods. Most favorites include any sort of carb like cheerios, puffs, crackers, pancakes or waffles. She also likes chunks of pears, cooked apples, bananas, peas, carrots, corn, ground turkey and deli turkey. She loves yogurt and still eats a healthy amount of jarred baby food too, along with baby oatmeal in the morning.

She was nursing 4 times a day, morning, noon, afternoon and bedtime, but lately has become highly impatient and distracted. After a whole week of only wanting to nurse here and there and getting bottles here and there to supplement, it looks like she might drop down to nursing 3 times a day, morning, before nap, and before bed. We'll see.

She has started saying "mama" and "dada" and is getting more consistent about saying it right to us instead of just babbling it when we are in the room. She loves bath time and never cries when Justin pours water over her face.

Overall she is a happy little baby, as long as she gets her naps and is fed on time (aren't we all that way?!). She is also decently compliant on obeying our "no touch" wishes as she is into everything now. She still adores Grayson and echoes squeals when Grayson squeals first. She moves her whole body in excitement when she hears Grayson running down the hallway and squints and giggles when Gray runs into her room. She has started noticing Maggie more too, maybe because Maggie has started noticing her more that finger foods are being thrown on the floor. Thank goodness for a dog to clean up meal time messes!
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10.18.2010

The Party

Only 22 days after the party preview post, I finally get the details blogged!!

One of Grayson's top things to play with is a sand and water table. So we decided to throw her a "Sand and Water Party". Borrowing 3 more tables from family and friends, we had plenty of sand and water for our friends to play with on this rainy day. It was so fun to be able to use the new screened in porch for a party! Here was the set-up:

The tables were filled with mostly water, some sand, and lots of seashells and toys. The seashells were from our family vacation, which was in September and has also yet to be blogged. Yikes. Anyways, the cake was an island with teddy graham bears in bathing suits, swimming in an ocean with fish, idea courtesy of Family Fun magazine (a favorite around here!). I got to buy a huge new sheet cake pan for this one and got to eat some of my favorite candies while decorating (during naptime of course or there would have been a riot). We collected a ton of seashells on our trip to give away as party favors.

And then there was the party garland! Seriously, it was much easier to make than I anticipated. I have been talking about making one for a while and Justin convinced me to just go ahead with it this time. He even helped me cut out all of the triangles (which took the most time but was still not too bad, especially with rotary cutters) and then I sewed it in about an hour. If you want to make your own, I used this link but instead of different smaller shapes I just made a pattern for one larger sized triangle. I also skipped the invisible thread after it kept jamming my sewing machine and switched to hot pink since most of my fabrics had pink in them.


Here are all of our friends and family enjoying the festivities. Click on the collage to enlarge it if it's hard to see all of the pictures.

Happy third birthday sweet girl!
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