Pretty much just some pictures.

I wanted to have a real photo shoot for Eleanor's birthday, so I booked with Camera Shy again and my lovely cousin Rachel took these lovely pictures of these lovelies:

Eleanor

Well, I didn't hardly take any pictures from mid-July to August, which is really too bad, seeing as my big sister was here from Texas and my little brother got married. So until I can beg, borrow, or steal some pictures that other people took, I'll skip ahead to the end of August.


Eleanor turned one. It's nuts.

She had a good  birthday; I'm pretty sure.

Mim was a good helper and opened all her presents for her.

She likes cake.

Some other milestones that I've been terrible about recording:

*She started walking around 10.5 months- earlier than I was ready for, that's for sure.

*She's taken off verbally. She started with "dada" and "mama" and "kitty" at around 9 months or so and is adding a new word almost every day, it seems. Today she apparently said "dance" (or whatever her version of it is)several times to my sister while she was doing her little stomp dance. Yesterday she started saying quack for her ducky. It's just amazing how fast she's learning.

*She throws tantrums. She's no longer at that passive age where Mim could take stuff from her without her caring, and has even moved past when Mim could take something from her and give her something else to play with to appease her. Now she wants THAT TOY and keeping the peace has become a big part of the full time job around here.

*Tantrums usually involve her stomping her little feet and flapping her arms, so it's hard to be too frustrated by them. She has occasionally thrown herself to the floor.

*She might have tantrums, but she's also extremely happy and contented the other 95% of the time. She's been a champ at new situations and meeting new people, which definitely has made my life easier.

*She's taken a real shine to her Grandpa. She runs to him to give him hugs every time we see him and says "Ga-pa." Today while I was changing her diaper I told her we were going to see Grandpa and she immediately started craning her neck around to try to see him, yelling, "Ga-pa! Ga-pa!" It's the sweetest thing.

*Her love for her Grandpa just might be overshadowed by her love for her daddy, though. Usually  some time after her afternoon nap she'll start looking for him, wandering through the house yelling "Dada! Dada!" and knocking on our bedroom door, the bathroom door, and the basement door. Sometimes she checks the back door, too.

*She's not as scrawny as I thought! After spending time with her brawny (husky, chubby, fat, roly-poly) cousin Asher that's 5 months old and definitely outweighed her, I was sure she must be the tiniest little tiny thing. Not so. She weighed 19.75lbs at her one year checkup, which is almost exactly average. She is a shorty- I can't remember exactly, but it was around the 10%tile. And of course, she has a giant head (94%tile).

*We're transitioning from two naps to one. Not my favorite thing.

*She's my little baby tornado right now. Picking up things, toddling to the next room, dropping them, picking up different things, and repeat. All day.

*She goes to bed about 6:30 every night, which is lovely. She sleeps until about 7:30-8:00, too. Of course, that kind of depends on if Mim wakes her up or not. (I'm very anxious for the basement to be finished so they can have separate rooms.)

*She gives loves and kisses. Big, wet, open baby mouth kisses.

*Probably her favorite phrases are "uh-oh," "yay!" (while clapping), and "q-q," which is how she says thank you. She says it when she gives me things as well as when I give her something. Heartwarming for sure.

So that's Eleanor. She's wonderful.

July, part 1

We didn't do anything for the 4th of July this year. Kind of lame of us, but we were still recovering from vacation. I decided that even if we weren't going to do anything, it was still a holiday and we should get a treat. I went to JCW's for some shakes and got a good view of the Thanksgiving Point fireworks on my way there and back, as well as a good look at the American Fork Canyon fire. Wow.

Mim loves playing out in the rain and for once I got some pictures of her doing it.

{Quite a pose, huh?}

See that dark stuff in the picture above? That's Mim's hair. Her little child safe scissors are pretty good at cutting hair, as it turns out. Even though it looks like some good hunks, it was from little front pieces that were easy enough to blend a little and make look like intentional layers. (She cut her hair again today, in a way that will require a professional fix. Yay.)

Now for all the June stuff...

June was good. I can't remember anything that happened at the beginning, but towards the end we left for a vacation with all of Mike's family to the Oregon coast. Our original plan was to leave incredibly early on Friday morning and do the whole thing in one day (Mike wasn't as gung-ho with me on that one), but because of a health scare with my sister we ended up leaving Friday afternoon instead.

We stopped for lunch in Idaho Falls. Eleanor needed to nurse, so we just parked in a deserted parking lot facing the gorge and Mike took Mim for a walk to get some wiggles out.

Eleanor and I joined them at a scenic viewpoint, where we watched some base jumpers. We saw the first one go and Mike and I looked at each other- wondering if we had just watched someone commit suicide. Then the chute came out and we were both pretty relieved.

Pretty crazy. I could/would never do it; I'm 100% sure.

Both the girls were total champs for the drive. Mim got pretty whiny about two hours after her bedtime on the way to Boise, but then I remembered popcorn. Eleanor was 3 hours late to bed, but she just quietly sucked her thumb until right when we pulled up to our hotel for the night.

We got to the beach house late on Saturday. We went to church with everybody the next day and then took a walk down to the beach with Kati and Jon & co., which then turned into playing in the water.

Yeah, Eleanor loved the beach.

So did Mim; I could hardly get her to stand still for a picture, much less actually look at me.

We stayed in Kati and Jon's beach house and it had a BEAUTIFUL view. It was gorgeous. Stuff like this every night:

I missed this day trip, because all the missed sleep was really catching up to Eleanor and making her a cranky baby. I stayed home while she slept and Mike and Mim went with everybody to the Clatsop Fort (one of Lewis and Clark's). Apparently Mim was a big fan of these stuffed birds that call/sing/quack when you push on them; here she is trying to hold all of them.

Tidepool day!

{Mike, wearing Eleanor like a boss.}

{She wrote that herself, folks.}

The day before we left (maybe it was 2 days before?) the weather was gorgeous and the warmest it had been the whole time we were there. Definitely a beach day.

{Oh, Matt. I can't believe he's in the MTC now.}

{She really wanted to be buried.}

{Right before we all split up to make our own ways home.}

So, my picture record is woefully incomplete. Some of the highlights I didn't get pictures of:

*Mim's reaction to our "hotel house." She was dead tired in the car, but as soon as we got to the room she got her second wind. Eleanor caught it from her and both of them ran (or crawled, in Eleanor's case) around everywhere just squealing and laughing.

* The dinners. Everybody took a turn and it was delicious.

* Our date. We went out one night to the Wayfarer in Canon Beach (which is where we went 5 years ago when we were out there) and it was sooooooo good. And fun (we doubled with Nate and Rach). Mike got to eat a whole crab, which was pretty much his only goal for vacation.

* On the second day of driving out, we stopped for lunch in Baker City. We had stuff for sandwiches and we stopped in a park to have a picnic. As we were finishing, a parade came marching by (a small parade- a band, jugglers, stilts people, clowns, and dancers) which was cool, but then they turned and stopped in the park and played another song and then announced they were a vaudeville troop that had a show that night and they were going to do workshops there for the afternoon. It was super cool. Mike got a few pictures with his phone; maybe I'll get them added to this post some day.