18 months!

i can't believe my baby is a year and a half! it went by super quick.

the jellies return! can you believe she still fits into them from last summer?? wow, she has tiny feet.

haha this picture makes me laugh.

she weighs 22 pounds (20th percentile, which is the highest she's ever been so good job eating penny!) and 32 1/2 inches tall (75th percentile, she's always been pretty high in this area).

she likes to...
- grab paul's hair (soo funny)
- pat your cheeks with her hands when you put your face up close to hers
- sort of give kisses, i'll say "gimme kiss!" and she'll sort of nuzzle her nose and lips on yours (i LOVE this)
- wave and say "hi" and "buh-bye"
- roll her fists over each other and say "roh-ohllllll"
- clap her hands and say "pat pat"
- throw her hands in the air when you say "toss it up!"
(i can't really take credit for the last three...grandma debbie likes to sing patty cake with her and do the motions...)

she still sleeps like a champ, 12 hours a night + a 3 hour nap every afternoon (it is HEAVEN). still a super happy baby, really content most of the time.

we're still working on the walking thing. since she just learned to crawl 2 months ago, i'm assuming it's gonna be a few more months before she walks. oh, well. she'll catch up in her own time i guess..and whenever i'm not worrying about her walking, i'll just enjoy not having her get into things or falling down and chipping a tooth (ahem, cousin max).

thank you for being a wonderful baby, penny-butt!

and if you were wondering about her little owl dress...i finally conquered my fear of sewing clothing and made a few simple pillowcase dresses for penny. and it wasn't as hard as i thought it was going to be! now if i could just conquer the mysterious world of sewing sleeves...

today

dear winter,

you need to go away PRONTO. it's freaking march and i'm tired of you being all cold and icy and drying out my baby's skin no matter how many times i slather lotion on her cute little pudgy body. also, i would like to start wearing flip-flops please.

here is our "apple" tree in our backyard this morning. grrr....snow....and i say "apple" because they look like tiny apples and feel like tiny apples but i'm sure as heckfire not gonna eat one of those creepy tiny apples.

making these put me in a better mood.

(go here for the recipe. AMAZING.)

i made them because our church does this pioneer trek re-enactment every year (sounds hard to me) and they're having a baked good silent auction tonight to help raise money so the teenagers in our area can go. plus, we get a free dinner for bringing a baked good so why the heck not.

lastly, this man is the best. yesterday was kind of a hard day and what does the husband do? he brings me home my most favorite, irresistable, and the symbol of all that is good in this world - the original cadbury egg. (none of this caramel or butterfinger egg crap, thank you.)

*4 years ago, when i bleached my hair so much it started falling out.

buh-bye! (plus some gimme-fives)

wait for it...it takes a few seconds to get the buh-bye out...

WORDS ARE OUR FRIENDS!

sorry for the lack of pictures lately, videos are my way of lazy blogging. there really hasn't been too much going on here lately, nothing really to take pictures of...it's overcast and chilly outside all the time and i can't wait for it to warm up!

brushy brush brush

we have taught penny the finer arts of grooming oneself.

next we shall teach her the pythagorean theorem.

i love my hubby because...

he gets me cute flowers, buys me an awesome *cordless!* glue gun for all my crafting he puts up with, draws me cute cards with a glue gun in the shape of a heart, and acts surprised when he opens the shoes i got him for valentine's that he picked out.

i also love him because he takes pictures with me at one in the morning.

yes, i still quote napoleon dynamite.

SHE CRAWLS!

yes, at the ripe old age of 16 months penny has finally started to crawl.

we've been working with her for about 4-5 months on this and she FINALLY started crawling on her own last night. i realize that this is twice as long as other babies normally take to crawl but for pete's sake i don't care i'm so excited!!

it was all about the motiviation. her physical therapist said that was key, so last night we were using her regular toys and she just wasn't interested. then we got out the grown-up toys, i.e. keys, cell phone, and all of a sudden BAM she was on the move without any help from us at all.

here's a video of her crawling this morning:


it's a slow little crawl but I LOVE IT. i'm starting to feel a teensy bit less inadequate as a mother.

now about that walking thing...

cabella's...again.

my mom is visiting from california this weekend to see the grandkiddies and we went to cabella's today for some saturday entertainment. if you're not familiar, cabella's = rugged hunter bliss. or blech, in my opinion. we've been there before but there's not much to do in utah during the winter that's warm and "kid-friendly". it's sort of entertaining, in a creepy stuffed animal sort of way.

mom and derek...and lana helping derek with a nose problem.


RAWR.

workin' it.


ahhh...can't you just smell the fresh air?

haha i didn't even see that random antler hooked in the plane at first.

the chitlins weren't much more enthused than we were, and didn't feel like looking at or smiling for the camera...

so me and lana smiled for them.


and the only tolerable reason i think for coming to cabella's: the homemade fudge.

oh, cow drool fudge how i like you.