Project 365 - January

I mentioned earlier in the month that I was doing the Project 365, which is a picture a day. And I mentioned my days are about Sara Kate, therefore, my pictures are following Sara Kate grow. Some other blogs I follow post weekly updates, which is really cool, but between working full time, taking care of my busy 21 month old, and attempting to keep my house in some sort of order, I'm afraid I would never keep it up weekly. But I did manage to take a screen shot of my calendar app to post for the month, and I feel that I am much more likely to post these monthly, although I don't feel that this is the ideal way to show off these pictures. Oh well. I couldn't get the entire calendar in one shot so the first picture is days 1-16 and the second picture is days 17-31. I'll do a little narration of what I took pictures of in the month of January.

1 - playing outside Meme and Poppa's storage bin
2 - crazy hair right after waking up
3 - first day of school in 2012
4 - reading 'Green Eggs and Ham'
5 - sleeping in the car on the way to Pennsylvania
6 - not feeling well and snuggling with mommy
7 - all bundled up because it was really cold our last night in Pennsylvania
8 - a stop by Lake Erie on the way back from Pennsylvania
9 - playing on cousin Hannah's slide in Berryville
10 - having fun eating chili with her hands
11 - just finished eating spaghetti with her hands
12 - just woke up and ready for school...that's her 'mom, don't take my picture' face
13 - silly face before school
14 - snacking on Ritz crackers...all day long!!
15 - 'riding' her dog, Cora
16 - swinging at the park on a nice warm day
17 - first busted lip
18 - eating yogurt with her hands
19 - kisses for daddy
20 - happy girl ready for school
21 - watching 'Momo' (Elmo) on Saturday morning
22 - a walk around the neighborhood on a nice afternoon
23 - eating her Poptart before school
24 - ketchup face at Chick-Fil-A (she learned how to dip her chicken in ketchup)
25 - 'playing' drums at church
26 - brushing her teeth by herself
27 - snack time
28 - woke up from a nap in a super happy mood!
29 - shopping trip to Target with mommy
30 - playing with the basketball outside on a nice afternoon
31 - sitting like a big girl in the chair eating a snack while mommy fixed dinner

Supposed to be Napping

I'll start this blog by saying usually, Sara Kate is great about going down for naps and the same can be said for going to bed...you can gauge where I'm going with this based on that statement and the title of this post. :-) Last night Chris' mom kept her while we went to a concert on Dickson Street. I LOVE me some Pat Green!!!! My friend Matt took me to my first concert when I was in grad school and I've been hooked ever since. I have only missed one of his shows since then and I think it was when I was pregnant.

A BIG thanks to Meme for keeping Sara Kate so we could go, but apparently she didn't sleep very well. We dropped her off after we ate dinner so she had play time and bath time at Meme's. She must have been wound up because she didn't want to go to sleep. Then an hour after she was asleep, she woke up wanting to play more. So Sharon just put her in bed with her and they slept together. She woke up once during the night upset but Sharon calmed her back to sleep. Not a good nights sleep usually means easy nap time! She was in such a good mood when they got to church, and she did great when I dropped her off in the nursery. After church, we went grocery shopping and it was evident she was tired because she just wanted her daddy to carry her around the store. We got home, unpacked the groceries, and fixed lunch. Can you hear 'apple juice' in the video?

When we finished eating, she was very tired (as she was perfectly content to just sit in her high chair!) but I did not seize the moment, as I was quickly trying to get some soup in the crock pot for dinner. I looked back at one point and her eyes were closed...they had probably just been closed for only like a minute! Chris got her changed real quick and I went in to put her down. But did she want to go down?? NNNNOOOO!!!! Of course not!

She wanted to do a little of this....
(please excuse the status of her room...it's a mess at the moment!)

And a little of this...

Which quickly turned into this when the block tower fell and I said it was time for nap...

She fought me really bad but eventually caved...

Only an hour and a half after we initially said it was time for nap!!!

Hope she gets a good one in as Chris is busy all afternoon and she and I have to make a Target run later! :-)

Talking Up a Storm!

Sara Kate's talking has really picked up lately. Not that I've been concerned about her talking or lack of saying alot of words, but I remember my niece saying many more words by this age and I read other blogs and for example, my friend's daughter is 5 months younger and has a vocabulary of 50+ words. But over the past couple of weeks, Sara Kate seems to be picking up many more words, and she's repeating everything we say. Chris has been trying to teach her to say 'I love you.' He starts with 'I' and she says 'I' and points to her eye, and then he says 'love,' and she immediately says 'dada!' It's very cute, and she will do that over and over again. If you ask her if she loves mama she nods her head or she will say 'mama!' Tonight she was sitting in my lap and I started saying 'I love you' and she started repeating me! Of course, it still has quite a bit of baby jumble in it but I knew what she was saying and she knew she was repeating me and that made her happy. I tried videoing it with my phone but she started acting silly and wouldn't repeat it. You can hear it towards the end of the video, maybe around the 23-24 second point. I did however record a really good audio clip with my phone, but of course blogger won't let you upload audio clips. But my super awesome tech savy husband just transferred the clip into iMovie and got it to work so it's a video with no picture, just sound. And when I say 'really good audio clip,' keep in mind that I am talking about baby talk so you can use those terms lightly. :-)

In other talking/trying to video her talking news, the other night she was drinking apple juice. Chris asked her what she was drinking and she repeated 'apple juice,' and once again we knew and she knew what she was saying. She repeated it over and over again, but of course when I grabbed my phone to record all she wanted to do was act silly and eat her french fry (we had a special mid-week treat from Chick-Fil-A!). Maybe you can hear it at some point towards the end of the video, I have no idea when. Or maybe you can just observe the silliness that we see daily!

Sara Kate repeats me when I say 'one more,' as in 'one more Hershey Kiss for dessert.' Then of course she walks around saying 'one more, one more.' In the mornings when we leave for school, I say 'good girl' when she gets in her car seat and is patient waiting for her Poptart, and she likes to repeat me. She knows I'm talking about her when I say that and it makes her happy. She can say her teacher's name, Tasha, for Natasha. When I picked her up the other day she gave a boy a hug (who wasn't Remy, ha!) and I asked who it was and she said 'Boston' clear as day (yes, that's his name). She's repeating her letters when we say the ABC's and she repeats me when we count 1-10 (and she can actually say 8, 9, and 10 very well!). Believe me, there's still a plenty of jibble jabble talk that we can't understand which can still get frustrating but we sure are hearing her say much more, and that's exciting!

Here's one talking story that absolutely cracks me up...one day last week when I picked her up from school, her teacher told me how she did so great that day and she didn't need the paci at all (they really work on weaning them in her new class). BUT they ended up having to give her her paci at nap time because she was being such a jabber mouth and wouldn't quit talking to the kid next to her. They had to give her the paci so she would shut up and let the other kids sleep! HAHAHA!! My parents say they have NO idea where she gets that from! :-)

Some Things This Week

This has been a long and busy week, and I sure am glad it's Friday!! I should be in bed (stayed up way too late last night not being able to sleep thinking about Sara Kate's birthday that's still 3 months away! Silly mommy!), but I wanted to make note of some things that happened this week.

First, I'll start with the bad.

Sara Kate got her first busted lip Wednesday night. She's so silly, and she likes to spin in circles and make herself dizzy. She thinks it's HILARIOUS!! Well, she was doing this and I told her to be careful not to fall and hurt herself. The other thing she likes to do is throw this little pink blanket over her head and pretend she's a ghost and we play the 'Where's Sara Kate?' game. Well, she combined those 2 things and somehow managed to fall and bust her lip. We aren't even sure how it happened since we couldn't see her face and at first we thought she was laughing. Nope! And then we saw blood. We had a minor freakout, wanting to make sure her teeth were still in her mouth, and of course, she wouldn't let us get close to her mouth the rest of the night. Poor girl. But she bounced back like a champ!

Now for some good!

We had some beautiful, albeit VERY windy weather on Monday before a cold front pushed in. The wind had subsided by the time I left work so I decided to take Sara Kate to the park to play on the way home. She got SO excited as soon as we pulled in and she saw what we were about to do! It was adorable. We went to the swings first, then to the slide/playground area, then back to the swings, then back to the slide/playground. She was getting upset about leaving until I told her it was time to go see dada, and then she got really excited.

I posted this picture on Facebook and I got several comments about how big she's looking. I'll agree, she does look so big in this picture, but I also think it doesn't exactly look like her for some reason. But I love the look on her sweet little face, just taking everything in.

Another big thing that happened this week (not really big but a thing) is that Sara Kate has decided she likes to hold the fork/spoon during dinner, but it's much more fun to eat with her hands. Every night.

This is especially fun since she has been wanting yogurt every night (she's not getting it for breakfast any more during the week)...and she wants to eat it with her hands!!!!!! While holding a spoon!! Please tell me, what kind of sense does this make and when will she grow out of wanting to eat everything with her hands?? :-)

One thing I want to remember (no pictures to accompany this little gem) is that Sara Kate knows who Elmo is!! Several of her books she got for Christmas that play music are Elmo books, and my mom got her an Elmo Valentine's book last Valentine's Day. Well, we were reading the Valentine's book a few nights ago, and I pointed to Elmo and said 'who is that?' She said 'Mo-Mo.' What?? Over and over again, every time I pointed to him, 'Mo-Mo,' 'Mo-Mo.' My baby is so stinkin' adorable and so smart! :-) Now, when I point to Big Bird and ask her who that is she still says 'Duck, quack quack!' Elmo has a name, but Big Bird doesn't. Ha!

Sara Kate's hair seems to be growing so much right now. It's getting long in the back (think long mullet, ha!) and it's getting long on top. You can see in several pictures from the week, I've forgone the headband/bow combo in favor of the little bow with her top hair swept off to the side. She likes those little bows by the way, and even got mad one night when I took it out before she was ready for it to come out! Miss Opinionated! Anyway, this hair growth (which I absolutely love!!) is causing some SERIOUS bed head in the mornings. Actually, it just cracks me up to see what the state of her hair will be in the mornings. Note the big poof that you can see over the bow and the sides sticking out. And all that was after I tried to comb it. Nice.

I'll end this post with my most favorite memory from the week and one I'll always remember because I caught it in a photo. Thursday night we were all playing in Sara Kate's room. Chris was laying on the floor (still recovering from tonsillitis), I was sitting in the chair, and Sara Kate was throwing her ball around and being silly. She came up to me and I told her to 'go give daddy kisses.' So she did. Sweetest thing ever.

Hope everyone had a great week and has a happy weekend!

Our weekend in iPhone photo's

Chris and I decided not to get each other Christmas presents this year because we were going to save up and get the new iPhone 4s. We've had our iPhone 3's for almost 2 and a half years, and while it's been a good phone, mine was starting to crack out. Chris has been checking around town and they haven't been in stock until recently. I had said no I didn't need a new one (despite the cracking out) just because of the cost, but I woke up Thursday morning to a surprise on my nightstand! A new iPhone! A big reason he got it was I am constantly using my phone for pictures and I almost always have it by my side, and the new 4s has a really great camera on it. And my phone was cracking out. And he thought Siri was cool. But see a trend with the cracking out? I didn't have much time to mess with it Thursday, but I've been taking pictures with it all weekend. Chris has been sick this weekend so Sara Kate and I have spent lots of time together. We haven't even left the house except for going to the grocery store and to church. She's been lots of fun, and we have had lots of good play time. So without further ado, here's our weekend in iPhone pictures.

Friday...
Time for school...very stoic to start the day...actually, this is her 'mom, I don't want you to take my picture' face!

Dinner time! She decided she wanted to eat all my tomato soup. And she decided she wanted to drop whole crackers into the container. Nice.

After dinner play time...the animals go well on top of the manger, don't you think?

Saturday...
Breakfast! Of course, by herself.

Time to change clothes! While eating a snack (which she did all day long! Growth spurt?).

We managed to rouse daddy for a few minutes to do her 21 month photo shoot (a few days late).

Sticker off, overalls on...and more snack. The kid ate like half a roll of Ritz!

Time to go grocery shopping. With more snack.

Dinner time! All by herself. Of course.

Sunday...
Time for church!

After nap play time...coloring while Cora supervises.

And end of the day play time...time to ride her dog! I was folding her laundry and she climbed on like this all by herself and said 'ta-da!' Sweet Cora just laid there and took it.

And that's a little look at our weekend. Like I said, we had a whole lot of play time and a whole lot of nothing else! I have tomorrow off, but I'm so behind at work and Sara Kate's school is open so I'm going to drop her off and head to Bentonville to try and catch up.

On another note, I'm doing Project 365, which essentially is a picture a day...this is where the new iPhone camera (really, just the camera in general) comes in super handy! There is an iPhone app that makes it really easy to click on the day of the month, go to your photos, and add in a picture. It's neat to have basically a whole years worth of photo's all in one place. And since my days are all about Sara Kate, my Project 365 is pretty much all her...it's neat to see how she changes from day to day, from month to month, by just scrolling through. Go check it out!

21 Months

Sara Kate, you are 21 months old!! What have you been up to?

- You are a big girl now at school! You started the new year by moving up to the next classroom...you are now a Pygmy! We were sad for you to leave Miss Allison (she's always been your favorite) and the other teachers in the baby rooms, but we are happy that you are growing, learning, and thriving at school. You are back with your best friend, Grayson, and your new teacher, Miss Natasha, tells me that you girls are so happy about that. Several of your other friends moved up classrooms at the same time as you so you are still able to be with your same group of friends (like Remy). These pictures are from your first day of school in 2012 and your first day going to your new class.

- With a new class comes a new daily schedule. I wake you up around 6:50-7:00 if you aren't already awake and playing in your bed, and we get dressed and head to school. You arrive around 7:30 and go to your class. Your separation anxiety is terrible right now. Between being gone lately and the move up, you cry so hard when I drop you off. I've been giving you your cereal bar right when we get there so you can eat, since that is somewhat of a comfort. Your school schedule looks like this:

You work on things like letters and numbers and tracing them on your activity sheets, learning different shapes (like trapezoid!), certain gross motor skills and fine motor skills every day, there is a song of the day (which your teacher told me you love song time), there is a story of the day, and alot of fun play time. You are so excited to see us when we pick you up, which is usually between 5-5:30.

- Dinner time is a MESS these days!! You are VERY into doing things yourself so we have been letting you because it makes you happy and you have to learn. You have been eating very well lately, but some weeks are still not so good. Some dinners you have had lately that you ate up include salad, pasta with sausage and broccoli (and you actually ate some broccoli!!), ham and potatoes, chili, spaghetti, tomato soup, eggs and toast, lobster bisque, and pizza. You still love yogurt, breakfast bars, graham crackers, Cheerios, grapes, green beans, Gold Fish crackers, Ritz crackers, and apple sauce.

- You have been snacking like crazy lately!! It seems that everytime you get home (from school, after nap, from church) you have to have a snack. You are so funny because you will yell 'Mama' and run to the pantry. We open the pantry and you point to exactly what you want. And sometimes you just pull random things off the bottom shelf that you think you want (like a box of uncooked pasta!).

- You are exhausted by the end of the day!! Your bedtime routine starts between 7:30-7:45, we are rocking by 8, and you fall asleep immediately. Some nights you wake up crying during the night but you can put yourself right back to sleep and some nights you sleep all night without waking up. During the week, you are awake between 6:45-7:00, but on Saturday's you can sleep until 8:00-8:30, and on Sunday we get you up around 8:00. With all the traveling we have done lately due to the holidays and the funeral, I have learned that you are a major wiggle worm at night!!

- You have been teething lately and you have 2 new teeth that have come through the gums within the last week! You now have your 4 top teeth, your 4 bottom teeth, both of your top 2-year molars, and your new teeth are both of your bottom 2-year molars.
- You love reading and your new favorite book is 'Green Eggs and Ham.' We read it all the time. You got lots of new books for Christmas, including some that play music, and you love those, too! Also, you like to have a book in the car with you.

- You LOVE music! We hear you singing to yourself and doing the motions to song by yourself. We sing lots of songs with you and you do the motions, and when we are doing this you always say 'more.' Some favorite songs right now include 'The Wheels on the Bus,' 'If You're Happy and You Know It,' 'Itsy Bitsy Spider,' 'Head Shoulders Knees and Toes,' and 'Old McDonald.' It is so precious to see you doing the motions to these songs.

- You talk all the time but alot of it is still gibberish. Some words you say regularly include mama, dada, cat, dog, duck, this, that, that one, more, hi, bye bye, night night, ball, bath, again, all gone, Poppa, Pop, and eye. You are very into repeating what we say. Daddy has been teaching you to say 'I love you,' and you always point to your eye when you say 'I.' We are also teaching you how to say all your vowels, and you can say them all but 'u.'

- You are such a smart girl, and you seem to pick new things up so easily. We love seeing you learn new things! You know where your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, teeth, hair, tummy, hands, arms, and feet are. You can make the animals sounds of a cat, dog, tiger, bear, monkey, duck, elephant, and cow. When we ask you where Sara Kate, mommy, daddy, Meme, Poppa, Pop, Gran, Hannah, Hayden, Cody, and Cora are you can point to them. You can count to 3. You know what 'time for bath' means. You know what it means when we ask 'if you are stinky.' You know what 'go to the car' means.
- You are very good at following directions...like pick up your toys, put the blocks away, go give this to daddy, go give mommy a kiss, etc. You seem to beam with pride when you do something that we ask you to do.

- You are so silly!! You are always doing silly things and you know how to make us laugh! I mentioned that you are into repeating what we say, but you are also into copying silly things we do, which you think is hilarious!

- You are learning how to 'smile' on command, like during picture time. It doesn't always work that way but you do know what 'smile' and 'cheese' mean. And it's so cute when you give a big ole grin!
- You are wearing size 18 month clothes and size 18 month pajamas.

- You are wearing size 4 diaper.
- You are wearing size 4 shoes.
- You are getting so big, and we can't believe you are getting so close to 2! You are so beautiful and so funny and so smart, and we just love you so much!