Are you serious?

So, it's March 29th and this is what we are greeted with in the morning...SNOW! I'm ready for some sunshine and warmer weather!! :)

Bath Time

Jaelyn LOVES bath time! It's her special bonding time with Daddy every night (a.k.a. break time for me!) If we would let her, she would stay in the water forever. :) She has also learned a new game in the water: see how wet she can get Marcus! She loves to splash & splash & splash. It's so cute to hear her giggling when she gets him wet.

Happy Easter!

Here is Jaelyn in her Easter dress. It was very difficult to get a full length shot of her in her cute pink dress now that she is always on the go....so we had to resort to Marcus holding her for a second while I captured this!

Otherwise this would have been the next best shot...of her back side! She's literally on the move all day long (with the remote in her hand)!

Here are a couple of Jaelyn sitting on Marcus' lap...as always...hammin' it up for the camera!

I'm not sure if you noticed in the previous pictures, but Jaelyn split open her top lip yesterday & her bottom lip in nursery today. The red mark above her eye is a mystery...it just showed up today as well!! I have a feeling we are going to have many fat lips...Oh, the joys of learning to walk!!

And of course a fat lip doesn't come without blood...the red stain on her cardigan is the result of the nursery incidence!!

All in all we had a good 1st Easter celebration as a family...next year we'll have to do an egg hunt & maybe color some eggs!!

11 Months Old

Here is a synopsis of what Jaelyn is doing at 11 months:

• Walking (almost running at times)
• Still requires something to pull herself up into the standing position before she walks
• Has had many battle wounds from run-ins with furniture/walls
  
• Her 6th tooth is almost popping through...so that will make it 4 on top, 2 on bottom
• Says Dadda frequently, Momma is harder to come by.
• When she hears the garage door open, she says Da (meaning Daddy)!
• Has learned the "I don't know" sign with her hands and uses it all the time...it's pretty cute.
  

• LOVES swimming class~especially going down the slide all by herself and then under the water.
• Is a "thinker". She is very alert and attends to things for a long time. She looks at things very intently. Even the librarian picked up on it at story time. I think she has the "engineering" brain...she wants to know how things work.
  
• Is starting to "blow kisses" to Mommy & Daddy
• Still taking 2 naps/day. Usually around 9-10am or so and 2-4pm (depending on the days activities)
• Has mastered the art of opening up the cupboards & drawers. She loves the tupperware cupboard...ahhh...she loves to create a mess! I need to get the china out of this cabinet so she can have full reign.
  

• Continues to enjoy standing at the paper shredder (while Mommy or Daddy are at the computer) and likes to shred the paper Jaelyn style (by mouth).

• Still pretty much eats anything we put on her tray. Her go to fruit is grapes...she could eat those all day long as well as mac-n-cheese.
• Enjoys running around without a diaper on...this happens when mom gives up on trying to get the diaper on after a diaper change! She has won that battle. A couple times she has peed on herself...she gets this funny face as it trickles down her legs! Kinda funny! :)
• Is now confined by the gates we have installed in the house. I LOVE these things....Jaelyn isn't so sure of them, though! :) We should have put these up a long time ago!
  

The Park

The great thing about living in the Highlands is that there are parks everywhere. There are 4 parks all within a 5 min. walk from our place. And with the extra daylight hours we are getting (thanks to losing an hour of sleep this weekend!) we are trying to take advantage of them before we sell our house. Here is a snapshot of Jaelyn's first experience with the playgrounds:

"Wow...look at all the wood chips I can put into my mouth!"

"This is very interesting...can you help me Daddy?"

Going down the slide with Mom...this was fun!

And.....{drum roll please}...The Wall Wins!

This afternoon Jaelyn's noggin' met the corner of a wall and unfortunately the wall won. :( But, she wasn't going to let it stop her! She was up and at 'em fairly quick after the incidence...much to my surprise because I saw the initial "dent" in her forehead before it turned into an egg. She didn't even want the ice I tried to put on her forehead...oh well!! I'm sure we'll have many more run-ins with walls, furniture, etc as we master the skill of walking!! :) This photo doesn't do the "egg" justice...but thought I would share it anyway.

Logging with Opa

This is what happens when Oma & Opa babysit Jaelyn...they put her to work! Didn't she do a good job cutting down that BIG tree in their yard?! :)

Climbing the stairs

Here is another first for Jaelyn. I am really amazed at how quickly she is learning new skills. She made it up all 16 stairs by herself (with Marcus right behind her, of course!). This little video clip is from one of her tries up the stairs. The cool thing about her becoming so much more mobile is that she takes great naps during the day~she wears herself out! Hey~does anybody have suggestions on what type of gate we should buy? We went looking for one the other day, but didn't have any luck. We need one really bad...I'm so exhausted running around after her (having 2 staircases is a pain in the butt).

***If you listen really closely, you can hear Jaelyn say, "Good Job" after I say it to her!! Ok, so may be I'm stretching things a bit***

Walking

Here is Jaelyn on the move. She is doing so good with walking. I can't believe that she's doing this well & she is only 10 1/2 months old. Kinda fun...but also a lot more work for me during the day! We desperately need to purchase a gate to contain her from going to the stairs. We've just been putting it off since our house is on the market...it's one more thing to bring to the garage when we have to show the house. If you look closely, you can see a strategically placed chair in front of a plant. This doesn't completely stop her from crawling under it to get to the dirt, but it gives me more time to run after her!

Spaghetti!

This is what Jaelyn looked like after eating spaghetti for lunch today! I think she was having more fun wearing the spaghetti on her than eating it! Ha!

Don't ya wish you could get this messy and have this much fun eating lunch? Oh, to be 10 1/2 months old again!!