Resurrection Sunday

Since Sunday was going to be a full day and we had to be at church early (ah, the life of a musician's family!!) I knew the only way to be successful and sane was to prepare as much as possible before going to bed Saturday. Since Resurrection/Easter Sunday is such a special event to us as Christians, it was fun to take extra time picking out our clothes to wear to church. I started with Susannah and Sylvia's dresses, wondering if I would be able to have us ALL matching this year. Lo and behold, with some digging around in my and Charity's clothes, I found us all clothes that coordinated! I was pretty excited since it doesn't happen very often and I think this is the first Easter Sunday that I've been able to do this.

Charity dressed and ready for church. As soon as she was finished eating her "first breakfast"

Sunday morning, I got her dressed. One down, however many to go!

After our wonderful, wonderful service (that I didn't want to end) Daniel and the girls went to get lunch while I fed Charity. They ate in the car and then we did a full round of potty trips before hitting the road for a 2.5 hour trek to my parents. We didn't have to make any stops and the girls traveled pretty well. I wanted to nap but only managed to rest and doze. Such is life!

When we got to my parents (aka "The Ranch") it was time to feed Charity again. As soon as she finished eating I re-combed hair and straightened bows and got a quick picture taken. (Sylvia hasn't warmed up to the idea of smiling with other people are behind the camera...)

Then the girls got to change into play clothes and the fun began.  My mom got out her wooden puzzles for Sylvia (a puzzle shark!) and she spent lots of time learning the new-to-her puzzles and involving other people to help her. Towards the end of our day there, my dad was sitting on the couch and she took puzzles to him to work on together.

Sylvia, Aunt Gail and Hannah

Susannah enjoys the vast expanse of books in Grandma's big library.

After dinner, a few big people went outside and hid the oodles of Easter Eggs that my sister and her husband provided. Then the cousins enjoyed an egg hunt!  It was a new experience for Susannah and Sylvia and they both got help from Aunts and Uncles with finding eggs. I'm afraid their experienced cousins had them beat in the number of eggs found, but they had fun and didn't care. :)

Sylvia and Aunt Gail

Susannah and Auntie Juls

At the end of the day we loaded up our tired crowd and made our way back over the mountain to our beds. It was a good day, starting out rejoicing in Christ conquering death that we might live, and ending with time spent with family.

A Birth Day!

Monday evening at 8:07pm our third daughter, Charity Kathleen, was born. She weighed 9 lbs, 6.6 oz. and is 21" long.

It was an induced labor, but no drugs (I really did not want pitocin). It was fast, everything went very well, and much of it still seems very surreal to me. :-) I am very glad we had our friend and doula with us. I plan to write Charity's birth story soon. For now we are focused on our new life as a family of 5!!

Susannah and Sylvia are pretty happy with their new baby sister. :)

Susannah's 4th Birthday

Getting a head start on making the March birthday cakes, Susannah got to be the main helper and watcher when we mixed up her birthday cake, a Whacky Chocolate Cake, on the last day of February.

She got to lick the beater and smile her very excited smile for the camera, too. :)  Someone commented on the "bibs" I use for the girls to lick the big beater. It's a dish-towel and it works great! The wider beater always ends up getting stuff all over their shirt sleeves and the wideness of the towel helps catch those drips and smears.

For a very long time (late this past summer, I think, is when I started quizzing her from time to time) Susannah has specifically been requesting a butterfly birthday cake. For a while I thought she would change her mind, but she never did! I guess she knew what she wanted. :-)  As the time drew closer, she got more specific and requested FOUR butterflies on her birthday cake. Sometimes she would say she wanted other things (ladybugs, flowers, Tigger, Pooh, cats, etc.) on the cake with her butterflies, but butterflies were always the main thing.

Since I wasn't up to making an all-out zoo scene on her cake with all the critters and insects she mentioned, I stuck with the four butterflies. :-)  I looked through many pictures of butterflies trying to find one I liked but none really thrilled me. I ended up loosely following the butterfly that is on her shirt (in the top photo).

When it was time to color the frosting, she knew exactly what colors she wanted her butterflies to be: pink, purple, brown and yellow. When she started naming more than 2 colors I got a little nervous but she only had 4 colors. That worked out well and they went together nicely, too.

Several days before her birthday (which was on a Tuesday) I asked what she wanted for her birthday supper. Her immediate, and never changing, request was "nuggets and salad". How many four year olds request salad for part of their birthday meal? I'm not sure but I thought it was pretty mature of her and her tastebuds to know she likes salads enough to request one for her birthday supper!

I had an appointment the afternoon of her birthday, and we needed to get some groceries, so we went grocery shopping before the girls spent a couple hours at the babysitters house. While we were getting things from the produce section we passed the mushrooms. She asked if we could get mushrooms. I started to say "no, they don't have any on sale" but then I remembered her birthday salad. I asked if she meant for her birthday salad and with a big smile she affirmed my suspicion. I happily splurged and bought a small container of mushrooms to add to her birthday salad. It's the small things in life!

To round out the meal a little bit more, I also made a batch of cheesey noodles. I had originally planned to make roasted sweet and regular potatoes but my energy simply didn't last the whole day and I ended up exhausted and out of time. Since neither the potatoes or noodles were a part of her requested menu, I didn't feel badly doing what worked for me. My mother-in-law brought a fruit salad to add to the meal. It was a very yummy, very easy birthday meal.

I found a "4" candle in my cake decorating supplies box and Susannah asked if we could put it on her birthday cake along with four regular candles. She was one happy birthday girl!

I had a great gift in mind for some time and was thrilled to find it at a local store. It is a fold-up case with colored, wooden, magnetic shapes that stick to the insides of the case. It comes with a wide array of pattern cards to make all kinds of designs from the shapes (from people to cars to mugs of coffee to surfer men). She really likes it though she needs a little help knowing where to start on the design and getting some of the placement correct. I know with just a little more experience she will enjoy doing them by herself and that this is a "toy" that will last for a very long time.

Daniel wanted to get her something and he had a fantastic gift idea. He gave her a tube of pink, Wild Cherry Chapstick and a little box of orange Tic Tacs. Oh my, you would think he had handed her the moon!  I think instead of turning 4, that gift made her be 24!! She is very specific in her frequent "need" of "lipstick" and a mint. The Tic-Tacs have been everything from mints to pills to candy. She keeps both in her pocketbook and uses them regularly and faithfully! She shouldn't have any chapped lips (or cheeks ;-) ) or bad breath for a while!! She even kindly shares her "lipstick" with Sylvia and offers me some, too (I decline since I prefer the original).

It was a wonderful, enjoyable birthday celebrating the 4 years that God has given Susannah to our care. We love the smiles and cheer she brings to our family.

A few things about Susannah:

She sleeps with a whole menagerie of stuffed animals in her bed, a few of them extra special.

Since the time change she has been taking shorter naps, but sleeping later in the mornings. I am guessing that this is the year she may drop her afternoon naps. *sniff*

She can - and usually does - go potty all by herself for #1. We require her to ask for assistance if the visit is for #2, but it's a big help to us and helpful for her, too, that she can take care of most of her bathroom visits by herself.

She has really improved in her coloring skills. She colors specific areas now, and will color an entire picture instead of a few scribbles and being done.

She loves being a big sister. When we are in town or at church she takes her responsibility to hold Sylvia's hand in the parking lot very seriously (most of the time). Lately she's even asked if she can take Sylvia to her class at church (instead of me doing it). Knowing that my hands will soon be full(er) with our new baby, I am happy to let her gently guide Sylvia where she needs to go under my watchful eye.

She still sits beside Daniel at the table for meals and adores him. She scoots her chair right up against his and many times throughout a meal she will reach over and give his arm a big hug. Both of their main love languages is physical touch so it works well for them. :-)

She loves to sing and recently memorized Psalm 23 set to song. She pronounces "enemies" as "em-en-ies". :-) She has a few other words that she gets the pronunciation mixed up, but I enjoy hearing her say them that way and know that one day she will correct them and it will just mean she's getting older. I'm enjoying all of her little girl-hood as long as I can.

She asks to pray for every meal. In her prayers she always asks that God will keep Daddy "safe well", and in a rather jumbled together thought prays "thank you for the food that we died on the cross for our sins" and most times prays "help us to learn to obey". 

That's about all I can come up with today, though I know there is much, much more about our newly-turned-four Susannah that is specific to this time in her life. She is such a joy to us!!!

Sylvia's 2nd Birthday!!

With our new baby's pending arrival, I wanted to get a good head-start on birthday cakes for this month. On Friday, the last day of February, the girls and I mixed up and baked their birthday cakes.

For Sylvia's birthday cake, I wanted to do something a little different (not the same as Susannah's - post coming soon, is the plan) so we wouldn't get burnt out with two birthday cakes so close together. I chose to make her cake a spice cake, and decorated it with regular buttercream frosting.

Sylvia was the main helper/observer when we were mixing up her cake.

And she got to lick the beater. :)

Since she's not quite old enough to communicate how she wanted her cake decorated, I had been thinking about it for a couple of months. I kept drawing a blank, though. Her two favorite critters that she sleeps with are a stuffed cat and a stuffed duck and that was a close as I could get to an idea of some sort. Even the day before we started the cakes I was still wondering how I was going to decorate it. Then I had a light-bulb moment! She currently loves the Gossie & Gertie board books that we have. I knew that a Gossie & Gertie cake would be perfect for her.

Friday night after the girls went to bed I mixed up the frosting so I could get right to work on the decorating as I had the opportunities on Saturday (Daniel was going to be gone much of the day). Saturday before lunch I worked at getting the patterns drawn, increased in size (thank you, printer, for having an enlarge feature!) and cut out. Then the girls watched as I mixed up the different colors for their cakes. That was a bit of a brain stretch for me as they wanted to help and touch and sniff and look REALLY closely. :) 

I decorated the cakes over naptime and Sylvia was very, very happy with her cake when she woke up. :)  After the girls went to bed that night I wrapped the cakes up and we put them in the deep freezer to wait for the birthday celebrations.

Sylvia's actual birthday (March 5th) was on a Wednesday. Since we have church Wednesday nights and we knew it wouldn't make a difference to her at her young age, we celebrated her birthday Tuesday evening.

Daniel's parents came over and joined us for her birthday dinner. She is a big fan of anything noodles, so I made a 9x13 dish of Spaghetti Pie. I also had a tossed salad and a (store-bought, brown & serve) loaf of french bread. It was a yummy meal!

She loved her birthday cake and did a great job blowing out her candles after we sang to her. :) Funny enough, as soon as we put the cake - with the candles lit - in front of her, she blew them out before we could start singing. So we laughed, re-lit the candles and told her to wait until we sang. She loved it!! 

Waiting for supper to begin. 

Opening her gift from Grandma and Papa - bath toys!!!

 

(Secret: I couldn't think of a single thing to get her. I thought and thought and though and thought. We have PLENTY of toys, puzzles and books. She could use some new tights and clothes but shopping for any of those was about the last thing I wanted to do plus with my weekly Dr. appointments for the Baby I didn't want to spend any more time in town. We didn't officially give her a gift. I am having a friend put several childrens records onto CDs, so they will be her "gift" once we get those back. :) )

Reading the Gossie & Gertie book that I based her cake picture from.

And that is how we celebrated Sylvia turning 2 years old!! We are so thankful that God gave her to us to love and care for.

A few things about Sylvia:
She still sucks the two middle fingers of her right hand, and holds her blankie with her left hand.

She went from calling her blankie "bah-hee" to "bah-wee-see" and just recently started calling it "blankie".

She pronounces Susannah's name correctly now. It started off as 'hannah, then it was SUE-sannah, and now it's Susannah. :-)

She is very much an imitator! Monkey see, monkey do, not matter what it is. She also likes to do thins by herself. Often she will tell us "I do it". Most of the time it is for things she really can't quite do yet, like getting dressed or putting her socks on.

She has a very independent spirit but a very sensitive heart. Oh my, it doesn't take much to discipline her. One "look" from her Daddy and sometimes that is all that is needed!

She loves to snuggle. She is very good at puzzles. She just started singing a few weeks ago and sings bits and pieces of many songs.

She likes to take BIG bites of food and we have to frequently remind her to take little bites. Another mealtime frequency is knocking one of her utensils onto the floor. Almost EVERY suppertime, at some point we hear the clang of her spoon or fork hitting the floor.

She loves noodles (any pasta, fixed any way), scrambled eggs, almost any fruit, and especially DESSERT. She just started pronouncing it "dessert," too. It was "deh-wit" for a long time and it took us a long time to figure out that she was asking for dessert! :)

She likes to go potty but isn't ready to potty train yet (and neither is this mama ready to tackle that!). Some days she asks to go more and some days she doesn't use the potty once.

She is growing like a weed lately. She has pretty much outgrown all of the shirts she started out the winter wearing. I am still squeezing her into them, though, because Susannah is wearing the next size up! I have had to shift a few of Susannah's shirts down to Sylvia, though. I know brand and style has some to do with it, but overall 2T and 3T shirts are too small for her. I think she is going to take after the taller people in our families (there are very tall people on both sides).

She loves to swing. With the few spring-like days we've had lately, she has really enjoyed being outside and swinging. She will just sit there and be pushed for a very long time. She gets that from her mama. :)

She loves her big sister but also knows how to push her buttons. I have to frequently remind her to ask, not just take; use kind words; and so on.

And that's a little bit of what all is going on with Sylvia lately! 

A Post of Pictures

One night I took pictures of the girls sleeping. For a while it wasn't unusual to go in and find that Sylvia had gotten out of bed at some point before falling asleep and had collected either stuffed critters or a few shoes and added them to her bed (this wasn't one of those nights, but she had turned upside down in bed). Another night I walked in to find Susannah had switched herself and all of her things to being upside down in her bed. :)

 Back in February when we all fell sick with the stomach virus, Sylvia was the first victim. On the morning of her personal sick day she was so, so tired. I knew she needed a nap but didn't dare put her in her bed. I fixed her a place to lie down on the dining room floor and she took a good 45 minute nap there. I could keep and eye on her and she was so tired she slept through Susannah and I doing dishes in the kitchen.

The week after the stomach bug made it's rounds, the girls' "digesters" were still adjusting to normal foods again. On top of that I was pretty exhausted from all the emergency bathroom trips and wardrobe changes that were a result the aforementioned state of things. While I had been planning to make and serve lots of special Valentine's Day foods, I had to stick to some pretty basic stuff for diet and time reasons.

I think for breakfast we had leftover pancakes. When I made the pancakes a few days before, I specifically made a few of them heart-shaped for Valentine's Day morning. The girls thought they were special. :)

For lunch I made the girls their first ever jello jigglers, cut into hearts and a star. Lots of cheese cut into hearts and stars, lots of crackers and a little tuna salad rounded out lunch for them. Funny enough, neither of the girls were huge fans of the jello. :)  I love jello and it's a real treat for us so I was a little surprised. They loved the shaped cheese, though and had plenty more cheese and crackers than what I started them off with.

I don't even remember what we ate for supper; it certainly wasn't a "fancy" meal at all, it may have even been leftovers! I did splurge and we all had our first post-sick dessert. :)  Susannah had been anticipating our special dessert for so long! Before naptime she and I mixed up some chocolate pudding (and I used goats milk since she and Daniel can handle that much better than cows milk, and pudding is primarily milk). I had made a pink angel food cake the day before. After naps and before supper I assembled the pudding, angel food cake and whipped cream parfaits. They were so pretty!! They tasted good, but not what I was hoping for. Daniel and I both decided that the pudding tasted salty and different than usual. I determined that since goats milk isn't as sweet as cows milk, that was probably the difference. Regardless, it was a lot of fun to make, a lot of fun to look at, and we did enjoy eating them. :)

 These next two pictures are ones I quickly took with my phone while we were eating dessert. They are such a good example of our girls' totally opposite approaches to eating! 

We have long called Sylvia our "shop vac" eater and Susannah our "osmosis" eater. :)

Saturday Surprise

Yes, Baby #3 is on his or her way. :)  This is the picture we sent to our families back in July. (It was right at bedtime when I got this idea so we were all a little worn-out from our day!)

To answer everyone's first question - or at least I am sure I hear them asking it in their heads even if they don't verbalize it - having all our babies born in March (Lord willing) has been God's doing. :) If this baby does come in March (likely late March), we will have 4 birthdays and our anniversary in March!

I had several weeks of almost-all-day queasiness and yuck. Faithfully eating something every 1 1/2 to 2 hours helped, but it was still no picnic. If I didn't HAVE to be moving, I was parked on the couch holding still.

Thankfully the sickness has passed and I am feeling good again. We are planning to wait until the baby is born to find out if the Lord is giving us a son our daughter. Susannah says she wants a brother and I ask if she will still love the baby if God gives her another baby sister. Her answer is always "yes". :)

Susannah's 3rd Birthday

On March 11th, my sweet, sunshiney Susannah turned 3. Three whole years have passed since the day she was born.  I never dreamed I'd be the mama of a cute, chocolate-brown eyed, curly-haired little girl, but whenever I daydreamed about what my little girl would look like if I ever had one (even back before I was ever married), she always had curly brown hair and bangs, just like Susannah. :)

On Susannah's birthday, we did not do any official celebrating since some of her grandparents were coming over the next evening for her birthday party.  Turning 3 was something Susannah was so very, very excited about because she would get to move up to the 3's Sunday School class at church.  Once we told her this a few weeks prior to her birthday, that was ALL she talked about on Sunday's and about any day in between.  The last Sunday in her 2's class, I happened to glance in the door and saw they were singing "Happy Birthday" to her.  I was so glad to catch that moment in my memory, seeing the special joy on her face.

On her birthday morning, she snuggled in bed after breakfast (a bit unusual for her) and read her very. favorite. Bible. story. EV-ER: David and Goliath.  Oh my goodness, this girl lives and breathes the David and Goliath story.  She has just recently started NOT asking me to read it to her every waking moment of every day, which is a bit of a relief for my brain. :)  We also have it on CD (from The Jesus Storybook Bible) and we listen to that at least once a day. 

The day of her birthday was a sunny, warm day and she went outside to play.  When I went to check on her a little later, I found her perched at the front door relaxed and just watching the world go by. 

I had decided at the beginning of the year to make her a lady-bug birthday cake, as we called her our little ladybug when she was a baby and toddler (and still do sometimes).  She also loves to watch, touch and yes, squish, the little fake, stinky ladybugs that invade our house on warm days. Ugh. She is fascinated with all things creepy-crawly. :)  I was not prepared well in advance for this birthday like I was last year, but the evening of her birthday she and I mixed up her birthday cake.  The next day during naptime I made the frosting and iced it.  I had to think about how to do a ladybug cake without having it "just" a ladybug since I didn't want all that horrid red icing (which tastes bad and I'm sure is full of unhealthy dye).  In the end, this is what I created (I totally cheated and bought a tube of pre-made red frosting so I wouldn't have to mix and mix and mix to get a tiny bit of red frosting!) :

For her birthday dinner menu I made a pork roast, baked macaroni and peas.  My mom and Daniel's parents came to celebrate with us.  When I bought Sylvia's birthday balloons, I looked over their selection to see what I might get for Susannah's birthday the following week. I saw they had a ladybug balloon! Perfect!!!!  On her birthday-party day, Daniel stopped at the store and couldn't find the ladybug balloon!! He asked the lady and she dug through a pile of stuff and found one.  Not the one I saw on the balloon rack, but this one was much bigger and thrilled Susannah to no end. :)  It is still floating around here, as enormous as ever, and still being enjoyed.

I wanted so badly to sew several items for Susannah for her birthday, but the only thing that I completed was a pair of long bloomers for her to wear underneath her dresses and jumpers.  I did get a new seat for her doll-baby buggy mostly put together, and it is now in use and just needs the straps sewn on.  

A few things about Susannah:

3 years old is turning out to be a whole different ride than 2 years old.  We did not have the terrible twos... but 3 is proving to be challenging on different levels as she tests rules, instructions and attempts much more independence than she is allowed.

She no longer says "stoom" for spoon.  She says it the correct way now. *sniff*  Last night, though, she couldn't say "spaghetti" and instead it was "basketti". :)  Horse and oink are still "worse" and "woink".  This morning I made waffles and she kept calling them "wapples" (like apple).

She likes to use a knife if there is any possible way she has something to "cut" for dinner.  Asking for things politely is a constant reminder, but it is paying off as probably 50% of the time asks the right way ("may I ___, please?" or "yes, please" or "no thank you").

She still naps every day, but the first part of naptime is spent sitting on her bed reading and/or singing.  For about a week she was a jack-in-the-box and constantly popping out of her room, or sneaking off her bed and quietly playing while I thought she was napping!  I may have solved that problem by graduating her to 30 minutes of quiet time before I go in and tell her it's now time to lie down and sleep. 

She has a bad habit of having something in her mouth almost all the time.  We weaned her off her paci when she was about 2 1/2.  Increasingly since then, she puts anything and everything in her mouth just to have something in her mouth, blanket, toy, stuffed animal, etc.. Most recently it is her fingers. When she wears her coat she chews on the collar and it chaps her poor chin.

She loves to cut paper with her small child-sized scissors and will spend any amount of time "cutting". I have started to save my junk paper just for this purpose.  She loves for me to cut out snowflakes, or for me to fold the paper so she can cut "snowflakes" on her own.  She also loves to draw and is getting better at drawing things instead of just scribbles.  A few weeks ago I found a picture on her easel of a hill with several crosses on it, proof that she is retaining what we are telling her about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins.  In fact, a month or so ago, we were driving somewhere and passed a hill with 3 crosses on it.  I didn't notice it until I heard her gasp from her seat and say "Mama! Crosses! It's where Jesus died! For our sins!".

She has started saying things in question form, which totally makes sense since we ask her things frequently.  Instead of "I need to go potty" she'll say "Do I need to go potty?" or "Would I like a drink of water?"  It is fun. :)  Asking what does [insert any animal, bug or critter of any kind] eat is a frequent question and she has also started asking what peoples names are... which I'm never quite sure how to answer especially when it's a complete stranger to both of us and the person is right there!  Life in the eyes of a 3 year old is an adventure, for sure. :)

Late last year after months and months and months of trying to train her hair to fall to the side, I ended up cutting her bangs.  In general they still fall to the side, but no matter how much wetting and combing of her hair I did, she would always have the front section of her hair falling down over her forehead like very long bangs (and it grows that way, to the front). I don't mind it and I think she's rather cute. :)  It also doesn't drive me nuts seeing her with hair hanging in her eyes! As for her curly hair, most days it looks the same brushed or unbrushed, and some days it is just wild. She's pretty cute to see when she first wakes up and often has "big hair" as we call it.  Some days she likes to wear bows or barrettes, some days she requests to wear none, and some days she likes to wear "pulled pigtails" which I finally figured out are french braids. :)

She is growing out of her 2T pants and her 3T shirts are quickly getting too small.  I haven't weighed or measured her lately, but I know she is growing!  She eats well, but can take a very long time to eat meals. :)

I am looking forward to discovering who 3 year old Susannah is this coming year.  I love her so very, very much and can't believe she is 3 already, but can't imagine her any other way. :)

Sylvia Turns 1

 This is a week and a few days later, but last Tuesday, March 5th, we celebrated Sylvia's birthday! Oh my, how one year has flown past in a blur!  I can't believe that she is one already and I wonder sometimes if I took enough time; time to snuggle, cuddle, kiss, hug, love, gaze, cherish, pray over her, read, tickle, stack blocks... but unless she is hungry she is a very happy girl, so I think she has a pretty content life. :)

She sleeps through the night very well (and except for a spurt during and following our Christmas travel, always has), usually going to bed around 9pm and sleeping about 12 hours.  Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  She takes a 2.5 - 3 hour nap every afternoon; she dropped her morning nap between 10 and 11 months.

She wakes up happy and her new thing is to throw her duckie and kitty-cat out of her crib if I take too long getting to her (I don't usually run to get her as soon as I hear her wake up). Her blankie has made it onto the floor once. She wasn't happy that time!

She loves to eat. On. my. goodness.  If there is food in sight, you know it because she is letting you know!  Her very favorite is bread or crackers. If she is in the kitchen and sees a loaf of bread, or a piece of bread, she thinks that she will DIE if she doesn't get to eat it! Her next two favorite foods are sliced, quartered banana and bits of cheese.  She is mastering "chewing" soft bits of food pretty well with her 6 teeth (4 top, 2 bottom). Some meals she is very picky, others she eats well.  For breakfast she almost always gets oatmeal (1/4 c. quick oats with 1/2 c. water) with applesauce and yogurt.  For lunch she usually gets either suitable leftovers that she will eat or - more often than not since she's going through a picky stage - 1/2 to 3/4 of a sunbutter sandwich, up to a whole banana and cheese bits. Avocado is frequently on the lunch menu for a good dose of "good fat".  She used to eat it smashed up, plain, but now she only eats it if I mix it with something else (usually banana).

Towards the end of February she started refusing to drink goat milk (what she was getting in place of dropped feedings). I don't know why, but that's what she did. She gets plenty of other dairy (cheese, yogurt) and plenty of other calcium laden foods, so I'm not too worried.  She hung on to the morning feeding for a while and I let her do it. Mostly because I wasn't quite ready to wean her, it would mean my Sylvia was growing up!  This past Saturday, though, was the last time she nursed. My supply had dwindled to almost nothing and Sunday morning it was a time issue.  She hasn't missed it and I'm mentally adjusting.

On the allergy note, I introduced whole (scrambled) egg to her and she broke out in welts around her mouth. The same thing happened the 2nd time I gave her peanut butter.  So those are two things we're keeping away from her at this time (and why she gets sunbutter instead of peanut butter).  So far she has not had anymore reactions like the original allergic reaction that she had, and I am grateful for that.

After supper, waiting for her cake.

She is pulling up and exploring anything and everything she can get her hands on or get open.  Keeping her out of the cat food & water, cupboards and the bathroom drawers are part of her constant learning.  Crayons and colored pencils are her favorite treasure finds, and as a result some days she has some colorful diapers!

She went through a few weeks of saying "Hiiiieee!" to things and people - including strangers in the grocery store :)  - but that has slowed down.  Her only real word so far is "Mama".  She is learning new signs. "Milk" is a sign that she will use for just about anything she wants, but she also recently figured out "all done" and "please". It is nice to have this level of communication from her before she can communicate with spoken words.  She has started to clap and wave her hands, doing "motions" for the different songs we sing.  Her favorite song to do her version of motions to is "God Made the Mountains Tall".  I can't wait to hear her sing!

She is wearing size 4 disposable diapers and is still in the Medium size FuzziBunz cloth diapers. She wears a few 12 mo. clothes but mostly 12-18 or 18 mo. things, especially for pants or one-piece suits.

For her birthday, I made a chocolate with chocolate frosting cat cake.  She loves our cat and her stuffed kitty-cat, so it was appropriate. :) 

She REALLY liked her cake and her small piece kept her very busy as she licked her hands and fingers for a while, getting every bit she could!

Her first ice cream cone:

a mini-cone with a tiny bit of Raspberry Ice Cream. :)

She liked it quite well after she got used to the cold. :)

All cleaned up and ready for bed.  I love my smiley, happy, birthday girl!!