happy birthday penny!

today my baby turns three! i can't believe it.


*one week old.

*8 months.

*18 months.

*2 1/2 years.

here's what penny's up to:

- she LOVES princesses. bascially any girl in a dress is a princess. when i get ready for church on sundays, she sees me in a dress and goes "ooooh! princess mommy!" it totally kills me.
- also obsessed with tinkerbell. she's constantly requesting to "watch teen-kuh-bell" and she can't do it without making me set up her little collapsible disney fairy house so she can sit in it while she watches the movie. the girl knows what she likes.
- still really loving. she'll randomly come up and say "kisses mommy!" and pucker up her lips. i love it.
- sometimes she'll come up to me with this little smile on her face and go "tickle! tickle!" while she pokes her little fingers in my ribs and just thinks it's the funniest thing ever when i wriggle around when she does it.
- she also thinks anyone falling down, or getting hurt is suuuuper funny. (i swear she's just like her dad, aka #1 fan of american's funniest home videos.) when she sees it in a cartoon or if i drop something on accident, she just belly laughs and says "again!"
- starting to go some days without a nap (nooooo!) but i may or may not put her down for a late afternoon nap whether she wants one or not...because sometimes mom needs a nap.
- she's walking a lot better, but if it's not a flat surface (i.e. grass) it's definitely harder for her and she is more apprehensive to walk. but she's improving all the time and it's exciting to see her "catch up".
- she's talking sooo much more, i love it. she's constantly saying new words and sentences and singing new songs that i didn't know she knew, and it's fun to communicate more with her. she's still a shy little bug and might not talk a lot with less familiar people, but me and my little buddy chat all day long.
- getting slightly bossy. she loves ordering me around (see tinkerbell reference above) and it's always "sit down!" "stop it!" "don't do that!" but i never do anything she says unless i make her say please first because i'm tough like that.
- still so funny and cute and makes me laugh every day.

i love this little butternut and i'm so happy she's in our lives. love you pen!

*birthday party pics to come!

happy birthday paul!

yep, this lumberjack turned 31 on sunday and i'm such a terrible wife that i didn't take one picture to commemorate this glorious event. but i did make a pot roast dinner with all the fixens and baked him a funfetti cake. he specifically requested funfetti cake. we blew off the roof with a crazy party that consisted of me, penny, paul, and his parents.

it was very low-key, and that seems to always be the case for paul's birthday. each year i ask him what he wants to do for his birthday, and he just shrugs and says "just dinner or something." so that's what we did. also not helping the low-key situation, penny's birthday is exactly one week after his and i always get way more caught up in planning her birthday party than paul's...thanks for being a good sport, husband!

paul would also like me to note that he has more gray hairs than last year. this is true.

adele!

*all gussied up and ready to go.


for our 6-year anniversary we treated ourselves to some tickets to see adele! she was coming to vegas so we decided to make a weekend out of it. miss penny stayed with paul's parents (thanks debbie + glade!) and it was fun to go see a show just the two of us.

i didn't realize it until we claimed our tickets at will call, but they were general admission and that meant standing. UGH. but we got closer than we thought, about 10 feet away, and once she started singing i could've have been standing on hot coals and wouldn't have noticed. she was amazing. one of my favorite things about her is that she sounds soooo good live, like even better than the album. and she was funny! she seems shy on tv but was way outgoing and funny onstage.

all in all, it was awesome except for this older lady FAINTING next to me and paul. she was standing there sipping her beer and i guess she got overheated or something - there was a ton of people squished together - and all of a sudden she keeled forward. paul caught her under her arms and i was like "are you okay?!" and she had these blank eyes and nothing going on upstairs. (have you ever seen someone faint in front of you? it's slightly creepy.) she couldn't get it together so some guys swooped her up and carried her off to the medics. poor lady!

adele sang for almost two hours and i couldn't get over the richness of her voice, like i would die to have a voice like hers. if you're not familiar with her stuff, click here to watch my favorite song.

such a fun quick trip!

cousins!

we baby-sat my sister's kids, max and elsa, on friday night and i loved it! those kids are so adorable.
i snapped a few pics of max and penny...


max is so embarrassed...about something.


high five!




love those kiddos!

happy anniversary!

six years ago i married my hubba hubba! love you long time paul!

fullerton trip: sea world!

this past weekend we did a quick trip to visit my folks in fullerton, CA. this was pretty much our "family vacation" for the summer and it was awesome! so awesome in fact that i couldn't be bothered to take any pictures except for the day we went to sea world.







we also: met up with some friends, went to the beach, ate at rutabegorz (my fav fullerton restaurant), and saw the last harry potter (so good!). thanks parents for living in such a prime vacation spot. :)

my favorite post ever.

and this is why: MY BABY GIRL CAN WALK!!!

see for yourself!


i can't believe it finally happened! my baby girl can walk! and can i just tell you, i feel on top of the world right now. we've been working towards this for so long that it feels strange to write the words. penny has been in physical therapy since she was 10 months old and now, two months shy of turning three, she can finally walk on her own.

you might say, that's quite late for a toddler to walk...and there's a good reason for that.

last year after penny turned two, we met with a pediatric neurologist due to her gross motor delays (i.e. not walking yet). he suggested we get an MRI done for penny and they found, in his words, a “tiny brain injury that’s very old, most likely happened in utero, and in the section of her brain that controls gross motor and muscle tone.” in other words, it only affects her walking. they couldn't say why it happened, it's just one of those things.

although it wasn't the best news, we actually weren't too surprised. it pretty much confirmed what we already knew, that everything else has always been on par with penny except her gross motor. the neurologist assured us that the brain injury wouldn’t get any worse and that the “cure” was physical therapy, which is something we were doing already.

at 10 months old we noticed some motor skill delays, and enrolled penny at DDI Vantage, an early intervention program funded through the state of utah. a physical therapist came to our home twice a month and taught me exercises that i could do with penny. with their help, she finally crawled at 16 months, an age when alot of kids are already walking.

we're currently doing physical therapy once a week at Shriner's Hospital, an amazing speciality hospital for children. both programs have been so beneficial for penny, i honestly don't know what i would have done without their help.

penny still has a little ways to go, her balance and coordination are still not what they should be, but that's small fries compared to this major hurdle that she's overcome recently. i'm so proud of my little girl and so, so grateful for this huge blessing in our lives.