Alaina is changing so much these days- it’s so exciting to watch! At her 15-month checkup, she was 30.5 inches long (46th percentile) and 22 lbs 14 oz (27th percentile), so she’s an averaged sized kid (which I was surprised at since she’s still sporting quite the baby belly). Here are some other newish things about her-

-She’s quite the chatterbox and can say a lot of words now. They include: apple, socks, Jayhawk (jay-jah), doggie, that (dat), more, duck, watch, hi, help (elp), up, hat, and Santa. An eclectic list! She’s constantly pointing at things and asking us to name them by saying “dat”.

-She loves to climb! Unfortunately, it gets her into trouble. This weekend, she had climbed on top of the ottoman to then climb on top of the end table, which is where I discovered her. She has a special mischevious grin that she saves for moments like this. :)

-Alaina is definitely testing boundaries and learning how to deal with frustrations in acceptable ways, i.e. not hitting.

-She’s had one ear infection since her surgery. After reading some research suggesting a link between pacifier use and a higher incidence of ear infections, we broke her of her pacifier habit last weekend so we’re hoping she will be infection-free.

-She now has 12 teeth since all 4 of her first-year molars have come through.

-She still loves to read books and anything that plays music.

-Alaina is now more interested in playing with stuffed animals and giving them hugs. And now if she wants to give you a kiss, she sticks her bottom lip and goes “mmm”. It’s ridiculously cute.

-After a few rough weeks of transition, she loves her new class at daycare and has won over all her teachers. She makes a craft almost every day so our fridge is covered in Alaina’s artwork. They do a good job of keeping the kids busy, so she’s worn out by the end of the day and we can barely keep her awake through dinner.

I love her facial expression in this one. I imagine she’s thinking “Mama, why am I wearing this??”

This is Alaina’s new face that she likes to make. We call it her “surprise face” and make gasping/shocked noises whenever she does it. But she really looks like she forgot to put her dentures back in and it cracks us up every time.

She’s finally saying “mamamama”! I’m so excited, except she’s usually saying it while whining.

This weekend, she suddenly entered a phase where she wants to be held all the time and throws a fit (i.e. cries out and lays on the floor) if we try to put her down. Where did my sweet baby go? Who is this new whiny, demanding kid?

She’s discovering all sorts of new things now that she’s getting taller and can reach things, like the joy of pulling out toilet paper. And she really likes to climb now so the stairs are always gated and she’ll climb up on the fireplace any chance she gets.

Good thing she’s cute and makes funny faces to get us through the frustrations of parenthood! (And check out that belly!!)

Alaina turned 1 last week! This past year has gone by so quickly, but it also feels like she been a part of our family forever. We feel so blessed we get to be her parents!

-She now weighs 21.5 pounds (53rd percentile) and is 29.5 inches tall (64th percentile).

-She’s walking! About three weeks before her birthday, she took her first tentative steps with much luring by us. Now she’s walking all over the place, although sometimes she’ll switch back to crawling since she’s more efficient at it.

-She has completely switched from bottles to sippy cups, formula to milk, and purees to table food. She’s being transitioned to the 1-year-old room at day care so she’s also trying to get used to only taking one nap (which means she’s tired and cranky by the time we pick her up) and playing outside.

-One of her teachers at daycare told me “usually by the time a kid is turning one, we’re ready for them to move up to the next room. But we’re all sad Alaina is turning one- we don’t want her to leave.” I was so proud!

-She can sign and kind of say “all done”. She can also say “uh-oh”, “dog”, and some animal noises (quack, moo, roar).

-She’s discovered the joy of dropping things on purpose, especially from her high chair and changing table, and climbing up stairs.

-On her actual birthday, Alaina got to enjoy some decorations around the house…

….and a few presents to tide her over until her party.

Happy 1st Birthday, Alaina! We love you!!

Last November, we were about to sit down to a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with the Caseys on a bleary, rainy day when a leak in the roof (that we thought we had previously fixed) sprung. After a winter of lots of snow and the rainiest spring on record, the clouds finally cleared long enough this summer for us to get a new roof. (To jog your memory, here’s what the house used to look like) We decided to get new gutters with fancy leaf guards while we were at it. It’s been so nice to not worry about it raining in the living room every time it rains now.

With the old teal-colored gutters out the way, Frank painted the trim and shutters on the house a lovely green. And when the doorknob and lock on the front door broke, we took it as a sign to get a purdy new front door installed (Frank even managed to sell the old one on Craigslist!).

We’ve also been gradually working on updating all the landscaping around the house. I’d love to just take a bobcat in and tear out everything in the front and side yards and start from scratch, but our wallets won’t allow that. In the side yard along the garage, we tore out some floppy sage and my wildflower experiment that just wasn’t working anymore (probably because I’m too busy and lazy to keep it from being overgrown by weeds!). When our landscape consultant (i.e. my dad) was in town in June, we picked out some boxwoods and rhododendrons for that space. I’m looking forward to seeing them bloom in the spring!

So that was all we had planned for the summer. But like I stated earlier, projects around here seem to have their own timelines. I’ll save the rest of that story for another post…

-Alaina doubled her number of teeth this month so she’s now up to 8!

-She’s really good at mimicking noises and sounds, which is especially amusing to her father. She finally started making some “mmm” sounds, but she still isn’t saying “mama”.

-She gives hugs now and it’s the sweetest thing ever. It makes me forgive her for still not saying mama, at least for the brief duration of the hug. :)

-She’s using the sign for more all the time now. We’re working on teaching her some other signs, including the signs for eat and thank you.

-Alaina had surgery to have tubes put in her ears. She had a hard time coming out of anesthesia and had a strange “freaked out” cry we’d never heard before. Other than that, she did really well. She’s even had a runny nose and it didn’t turn into an ear infection, which typically wasn’t the case pre-surgery. The only downside to having the tubes is having to put cotton balls in her ears at bathtime.

-She’s cruising all over the furniture and loves to walk- as long as there’s something to hold on to!

-She’s outgrowing her 12 month clothes and starting to wear 18 month items.

-Some of her favorite things right now are looking at the pictures on the fridge and reading books, especially the Elmo book “So Big!”.