10 months

 Little Smiley is 10 months old. She has four teeth, can eat anything but especially loves whole bananas, and can stand on her own. She is full of the sweetest, most laid back personality ever. 

 She loves her sister and especially her momma! She's at the stage where she cries whenever I leave her sight. It's sad that she is so worried but selfishly I love it. I love that she loves her momma! I know that it won't be long when she is breaking loose and trying to walk on her own and won't need me as much.

 She can wave "bye, bye" like a champ and has mastered the words, "bye bye and dada" and on occasion will say "momma".

 She doesn't care to ride in her carseat at night so everywhere we go after 5:00 is with our inside light on.

 She seems to be phasing out of one of her bottles a day- will be down to 3 before much longer. She doesn't eat any baby food anymore- once she learned to pick up food and put it in her mouth herself, she wouldn't have any part of the baby food. Now she eats whatever we are having and macaroni and cheese is her favorite.

At 10 months, she weighs 20.4 pounds which her sister didn't reach until she was right at 2 years old. She's right on track with her weight and Audrey is petite. It's really nice because SC was born in the winter and Audrey in the late summer. Due to the differences in seasons, SC wasn't able to wear the clothes Audrey wore so now that she's putting on some weight, she's caught up with Audrey's seasons. The clothes Audrey wore in the late winter of 2010 are the clothes Shelby Claire is wearing now.

 SC is a wonderful sleeper and has been since she started sleeping through the night. She only wakes at night when she is sick (she's had a few colds) and has trouble breathing.

 She's easy to take around with us and just generally goes with the flow. We fully expect her to be walking by the end of her 10th month because she is already walking while holding one of our hands.

We started working on sign language with her this month and she's gotten "more" down pat. That was a pretty easy sign to teach her and she picked it up with just one "lesson". She is highly motivated by food so I'm hoping the other signs are that easy to teach her.

She has us all wrapped around her sweet, tiny, little fingers. Including her big sister. This could be trouble.

Happy Birthday, Jesus Party

Audrey had a little Christmas party at her school. She enjoyed herself and I enjoyed being with her. My mom came up and kept Shelby Claire for me so I could just go visit with Audrey. It was nice.

 Audrey got her first taste of Sprite at the party. I guess when you are in 3K you get to have Sprite instead of juice to drink! Ha! She didn't care for it much and asked for water instead. Whew. I won't even tell y'all how bent out of shape Clay got about this Sprite business!

 Ms. Jill, Audrey's sweet teacher. This lady has four little girls of her own.

 After she ate, Audrey hopped up and went straight for the book center. It wasn't long before she had a group of little boys over there with her. Where were all the little girls? Sitting in their seats waiting for the teachers to tell them they could get up. :)

 They look very nice in both of these photos. It didn't take long before this sweet little book session turned into a full-on wrestle match with Audrey in the middle!

 Here is Ms. Rhonda opening her gift from Audrey. Audrey was beyond excited about giving both of her teachers gifts this year. She was very concerned about what we were actually giving them. It made it a whole lot more fun for me!

The party was quick and over before I knew it. I brought her home with me to see Granny and she fell asleep very soon after that. Later when I asked her what her favorite part of the party was... she replied, "the goody bag". ;D

Presents

When I was growing up, I was a master at unwrapping my presents and then ever-so-carefully wrapping them back up so my parents wouldn't know I'd been in them. I'm sure they did know but they pretended not to anyway. My little Audrey is falling right in my footsteps. I don't know what it is about a wrapped gift with my name on it that makes me go a little "insane". Even now, at 33, I can't keep my hands off my gifts. I shake them, poke at them, ask a million questions about them, and bait the giver until I get them to succomb to my pressure and just tell me what it is. It is a very rare event around here when I am surprised about a gift I have gotten. I just can't take it- if it is under the tree with my name on it, I have to KNOW.

This year, I put a present for Audrey under the tree fairly early. I didn't put any others under there and didn't tell her I'd even put it there. I wanted to see how long it would take her to notice. The tree is in our dining room and that room is at the bottom of our stairs. Audrey has to pass right by it anytime we come down from her room. She noticed the gift immediately and asked whose it was. I very nonchalantly told her it was hers and tried to distract her with a snack. She took to the snack and I thought she'd forgotten the gift.

She didn't.

 She just waited until I wasn't standing right over her to take a peep. I'm not exactly sure when she did it or if she really saw what was inside. She admitted that she looked and said she didn't know she wasn't supposed to. :) I believed her precious little 3 year old self. This will be the last year she gets to use that excuse though.

That sweet girl loves everything about Christmas this year- especially this tree that she helped me decorate so well. I think we may just keep it up all year so Audrey can move all the ornaments around as she pleases.

33

The first birthday I blogged about was my 30th. We left our almost 4 month old with my in-laws and took off to The Grand in Point Clear for the weekend. I can't believe I did that and I can't believe I am blogging about my 33rd birthday now. A lot has changed in the past three years. For starters, I remember that I was very concerned about making my 30th birthday "memorable". I kept telling Clay that we had to make it special because it was my "30th" birthday! For my 33rd birthday, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do. When asked what I wanted for my birthday, my response was a day off. I did get a new wireless printer, a date night, the second book in The Hunger Games series and some free time! My two girls worked hard to make my day special by letting me sleep in, helping daddy make my birthday cake and we invited some sweet friends over for dinner. I think my 33rd birthday was more "memorable" for me than my 30th. Like I said, a lot has changed in 3 years around here!

The morning of my birthday, I slept until I woke up. What I mean is, I slept until I WOKE UP- not when a little person woke me up or my alarm clock. I loved it. While I was sleeping, my precious ones were working on my birthday card.

 Their sweet Daddy was keeping them busy!

 My momma has always made me a Pea Pickin' cake for my birthday. Well, as long as I can remember anyway. Since we live 3.5 hours from her and my birthday is so close to Christmas, I don't always get to see her on the actual day. Clay has graciously taken up the task of making this cake for me. He's gotten really good at it! Those of you who know Clay know how special this is- he doesn't eat foods like this. He made this cake completely for me knowing he wouldn't take a bite of it. He likes it, he just doesn't eat foods that are "bad for you" like cake! He's a disciplined fella.

 This picture is of when everyone was singing "Happy Birthday" to me. I'm not sure why but I was feeling pretty embarrassed at this particular moment. I love the expression on Audrey's face though. She loves special occasions and she was loving singing to her momma.

 I put this final picture in because I think Clay looks so handsome. I love it when he wears this blue shirt. He was multi-tasking like a champ, too! Audrey told him he was a superhero the other day and I think this picture proves it. He can do it all.

The day/weekend was wonderful but it seems like I just celebrated my 30th birthday yesterday. It's hard to believe that it was 3 years ago. I hope the next 3 years don't go by so quickly.

Playdate

We went over to Lyric's house last week and painted salt dough ornaments. Erica and I have become addicted to Pinterest and decided that we need to have a once-a-month craft playdate with our girls. She hosted the first one and I will do next month. We are doing them in the afternoons after nap- that is the hardest time for me to fill and with Clay starting his outages, we need something constructive to do!

The actual craft lasted about 10 minutes.  They enjoyed it while it lasted though! Plus, I have some super cute ornaments for the tree! :)

Wordless Wednesday: Park Play

Mcwaneing

We went with some friends to see McWane's new Winter Wonderland exhibit. I love that place. It is so worth the annual fee!! Smiley stayed home with Daddy so he could get some snuggle time with her and I was able to play with Audrey one on one. It's so easy to just take Audrey somewhere! She no longer needs me to take anything with us except just her. I love that!


We played in the snow... this was Audrey's favorite. They have a zipline that I tried to get her to go on but she wasn't interested. It was a little too scary this year.

 In the space shuttle taking us to the moon.

 Playing with the blocks... see how she has her sleeves pulled up? She does that all the time. She says that is how they are 'posed to be. Drives me crazy but I love it at the same time!?! What I love is that she is her own little person and can make her own choices about silly little things like how she wants to wear her sleeves.

 She's at a bit of a clumsy stage. She does lots of falling and flipping and just overall losing her balance. In the picture below, she was just pushing these cars around (she told me to move off the road cause I was in the way) and fell and hit her head. Huge bruise and cried and cried.

 By the time we left, we had to visit the snow one more time. I would have just let her play there the entire time but they have a time limit (10 min?) so we have to leave and then get back in line again. Later she told me she wanted some snow for Christmas. I'll add that to her list with the soap dispenser. Haha