Climbing every mountain

In the past few weeks, Willa has transformed from a girl content to play with just the mulch, avoiding all other elements of the playground at all costs, to one who will go on the slide as much as we let her!  In the span of about a half hour one day, when dark storm clouds loomed and limited our time in the park, Willa decided to try to climb the stairs up to the slide, and to slide by herself!  Thanks to the stairs in our house she mastered the stairs of the slide fairly quickly, but the transition from standing to sitting at the top of the slide was more difficult.  It took her a few tries to feel confident enough to drop to her bottom, and to figure out what to do with her feet.  I was pretty hands on during this time, but in only 30 minutes she (and I) had enough confidence for her to try it solo, and here is a video of the result!  Now, a week of daily park visits later, she is a champ and needs absolutely no help.  She even tries the bigger, twistier slide, and I am so proud!!  Go, Willa, go!!

Making up for lost time with lots of videos

I have been postponing writing a blog post because I feel compelled to back up to February when I first started shooting pictures and videos that I did not immediately post.  Fast forward to four months later, and I Have decided to just post all the videos here, with brief captions instead of long narratives in order to start my momentum for writing back up again.  Hopefully this way I will get back into the habit of posting fun things as they happen, with nice long stories to help me remember!

First up, Willa's first time walking in the snow in the biggest snow storm of the winter.  It left about six inches of snow, which promptly melted in the next two days.  That makes me extra glad that we got her out in it, to use her puffy coat at least once before she outgrew it!

Next up, Willa playing in the park about a week after the previous video.  I think it's a hilarious depiction of the ever changing North Carolina weather!  Say what you will about Florida weather, but it is consistent if nothing else.

Willa also likes to get active indoors, and has taken a particular shine to basketball.  I love that she also knows what a "quaffle" is so young!

Not only is she a Harry Potter fan already, but she also loves the Gators!  This is a video of her choosing to read "Goodnight Gators" for her bedtime story, complete with her first Gator chomp!

She is learning like crazy now too.  We shot this video on a sleepy Saturday morning, when Jeremy woke me up to say that Willa has started counting to three (with a little help)!

On June 2, we had our last day of Little Gym for the semester.  Willa got to show off her athletic skills, as well as her verbal skills when she proudly declared, "I did it!"

And finally, a video of us at the Arboretum last Saturday.  I'm so proud of her ability to kick and run!

Phew, ok, that should be all of them!  I hope you enjoyed them, sorry for the delay!

What does a sneeze sound like?

AH-dorable.

Let It Snow

Those who know me know that I love a good party.  Since Willa was born I have not been able to plan any of the big events I usually do, including the Oscar party, my birthday, or any big Family Solutions events.  So I had a lot of time to plan for Willa's birthday, and I wanted it to be perfect.

For the theme I decided to go with "Let it Snow."  I chose this after a client of mine said that her favorite part about having a January birthday was the possibility of snow.  I also have quite a few snowy decorations in my Christmas boxes, and figured all white food wouldn't be too challenging.  With this in mind I started gathering items that would fit the theme as long ago as last summer, grabbing six cups with white starbursts on them from the dollar spot in Target, discounted silver polka dot tissue paper, and pink and white beach balls from Party City.  I was hoping I could put all those things together to make fun favors for the kids.  When Christmas decor started going on sale, I grabbed all the snowflake ornaments I could, a sign that said "Let it Snow" and a little white fox.  All together it wasn't too expensive, and when I added it to our snowy Christmas decor and the paper garlands I made for Lark's Frozen themed birthday party it was quite festive!

A poster I custom ordered from Etsy with all of her special facts

The marquee number I made for Ethan's birthday party, and got to reuse, so pretty!

The favors I made for each kid, complete with a snowman I knit and a marshmallow snowman 

I served all of her favorite foods, like apples, cheese sticks, cheese puffs, cucumbers, and snowflake shaped Ritz crackers.  I used a snowflake cookie cutter for the apple slices, and for the homemade soft pretzels that Jeremy requested.  It was quite the snowy spread!

I wanted to keep the activities simple, so I limited it to the bubble machine her uncle Kenny got her for Christmas, and the beach balls I bought for the favors.  Those things plus her toys were the perfect entertainment for the three other kids that ended up coming.

No matter what the context, Willa loves books the best!

Willa's friend Wilbur, who is only 9 days older than her

We're still working on sharing...

Willa's friend Petra, whose mom, Audrey works with me

Her toy corner has never been so busy!

She ate off of everyone's plates, hilarious!

Again with the books!

She also loves to stick her tongue out, especially when someone sticks it back!

We were all excited to see her reaction to chocolate, since I didn't like it at my birthday but Jeremy loved his.  As it turns out, she was more like her Daddy with this and was all over it!

All. Over. It.

We asked each guest to pose with her in full cake mess, just so she can remember all the people that were there for her on her big day!

We had such a good day, and Willa enjoyed every minute of it.  I was so proud of her, she didn't get cranky at all during the whole thing, making it all the way through gift and card time.

Our little bookworm loved the cards more than the gifts!

How blessed we are to have so many wonderful friends and family to celebrate our little miss.  It was a perfect day I will be excited to share with her someday!

One year state of the Willa address

And just like that we have a one year old!  What a sweet, sunny, brave-hearted wonder she is.  She is walking everywhere, has ten teeth, and is a bit of a picky eater.  Seriously, I think she is going to turn into one big cheese stick later, if she doesn't eat her weight in Apples and Chicken puree first! 

Her favorite game is "clean up," wherein she puts things away into boxes or baskets, regardless if whether they belong or not.  I think the cutest example of this is when she was playing with a refrigerator magnet in the mudroom, and when I told her to put it away, she dropped it in the nearest shoe.  Too cute!

She has a lot of words and signs now.  Her words are mama, up, ball, book, and bubble, and her signs are milk, more, cheese, cookie, want, and daddy.  We are working a lot on getting her to say "daddy" clearly, but so far she prefers to sign and point it.

She loves to see mirrors and pictures of babies, and has perfected her kissing technique by practicing on them.  She can kiss on command now, which is amazingly charming.  She can also tell you what a fishie says, how big she is, and point to her head, ears, nose, toes, and tummy.  Its incredible how brilliant she is, in my completely unbiased opinion!

I can't wait to see how her words start to pick up steam, and to start hearing simple sentences.  I know she'll have some amazing things to say once she can say them!

11 month state of the Willa address

Just one month to go in her first year!  Just looking at this picture I'm astounded by how much she has grown.  Gone are the days when I had to prop her up and shoot very quickly before she slid down in this chair.  She has even started posing a little, since she has gotten to know this routine after 11 times in the hot seat.  Excuse me while I get a little emotional!

So, her stats.  As of this picture she had taken her first steps (November 28th) while she was playing with me on the floor.  She was cruising on the chaise part of our sectional and walked over to me where I was sitting on her playmat.  It was two or three steps together, and I screamed in excitement!  She did it a couple more times that day, but silly me, I forgot to get my camera out in favor of staying present with her.  So that moment will exist in my memory :-).  She still wasn't confident enough to walk spontaneously, but every once in a while we could get her to walk while her hands were occupied or she was surrounded with people.

She hasn't cut any new teeth, but given her sleep regression, I thought that she must have by now!  For about a month and a half she started to get up every two hours again, wanting to eat.  At least once a week she would wake up and refuse to go back to sleep for the next two hours.  Those were dark weeks, y'all.  We were all SO tired, all the time.  It got difficult to follow my clients in session, and I unloaded my woes on my coworkers almost every day.  This continued until December 20th or so, but I'll fill you in on all that in her 12 month post!

She is still nursing a lot, but she has started to love saltines, cheese, and yogurt more than anything else.  Seriously, I can get a whole meal eaten while she chows down on cheese and crackers!  She has learned how to sign her own versions of "more" and "all done," and I am very excited to be clearly communicating with her.  She always smiles super big when we do, so I think she does as well!

She now has a couple of words, "up" and "mama," and Jeremy is working very hard to get her to say "dada."  Sadly, she's actually closer to "puppy" and "ball," but we'll blame that on phonetics not affinity!

Our little miss is growing like crazy, I can't wait to celebrate her first birthday very soon!

Getting ready for Christmas

There are so many things to do before Christmas, and having a little person that simultaneously needs fun things and takes my free time has only made it more challenging this year!  Because I knew there would be a lot of demands, I started my knitting projects way early this year.  The two ones I wanted to accomplish the most was a "Weasley sweater" for Willa, and a stocking that she can have for years to come.  Since I started in October I was able to get both done, woohoo!

I think I have an unhealthy fixation on the letter W

On December 5 we attended the Greensboro Lights Festival downtown since our company holiday party was at the same time in the office.  All of the activities were free and open to the public, and we had a good time walking around with her in the carrier until the crowds got to be too much.  Here are some highlights:

Willa's first time sitting with Santa, she was totally calm if a little bewildered

Remembering her affinity for bands, we made sure to stop and listen to the 

local high school's brass band play Christmas carols

Who doesn't love giant holiday wind socks?

They made fake snow for the little ones, who clearly should have been warned that 

it was made of soap suds, and therefore not the tastiest stuff ever!

I was worried about how Willa would do with a tree this year.  I always love to get a real tree, both for the smell and for the ritual of choosing just the right one.  However, our little miss loves to put anything she finds on the floor in her mouth, including (and especially) dog hair and little bits of paper.  I just knew that I would spend a decent amount of time chasing her down and prying needles out of her mouth if we got a real tree.  I briefly considered an artificial tree for this reason, but then I realized that since she is just learning to walk and steadies herself on anything within arm's reach, she would be likely to topple the thing onto herself.  Thus, I took this year to experiment with a tree alternative.  I always loved the trees made out of book arrangements, and when Jeremy suggested using our built-ins in the living room, I jumped at the chance to play with it.  Behold, the result:

I grabbed every green book in the house, a couple of baskets, a stack of Real Simple magazines, and some white bowls/bud vases to assemble a rough outline of a tree

Then we added our favorite ornaments by wedging them between stacks and pages, on top of vases, and from light clips I stuck to the front of the shelves

And here it is all lit up!

I think it was a nice compromise, although I look forward to next year when she is (hopefully) old enough to be safe with a regular tree.  If not, we can always bring this out again, it was quite easy!

The last big thing to accomplish this year was the first year I got to play with taking pictures for our first family Christmas card.  I bought her a pair of red and white striped pjs for just this occasion and scoured Pinterest for cute ideas.  I really liked pictures of babies with lights, so I took these:

No, she didn't actually eat the light.  I swooped in right after I snapped this!

Why do I have to do this, Mom?

We ended up choosing two different styles of Christmas card because I just couldn't decide between the two,  Hopefully if you are reading this you got to see at least one of them!

So that's my super long post on Christmas preparations.  Get ready for the even longer one on actual Christmas celebrations!