Annabelle's 1st Birthday Party

We were able to celebrate our sweet Annabelle this past weekend. It was a small, family party, but I still had a blast decorating for it. I chose the theme 'Winter Onederland'... this theme seems to be popular now, but I thought it was so cute, so I went with it. 

I got most of the decorations by buying a file from someone on Etsy. Its very fairly priced and then you can print the number of decorations, etc. that you need. I was quite happy with the way they turned out.

First up, the invitation. I loooved her invitation. :)

For the decorations, I printed and cut out the 'Happy Birthday Annabelle' banner.

I made the 'Watch me Grow' timeline of pictures. 1 picture for each month (plus a newborn picture). It just so amazing to see how much a baby changes from newborn to 1! The canvas snowflake prints are courtesy of my SIL, Neely. She made them to decorate at Christmas time and let me borrow them for the party.

 I found glittery snowflakes at walmart for quite cheap around Christmas. We had 60 of them on string and then taped to the ceiling. Mark and his dad helped out with this task. The snowflakes are still up in my dining room because they just look so pretty in there that I can't stand to take them down.

 

 If you look closely at the windows in this picture, you will see that there are window clings on the windows. Those were Jonah's decorations. I found the snowflake clings on clearance after Christmas and just knew Jonah would love to get to help, so I scooped them up.

The white pilars in this picutre are also a clearance find. They were like 0.50 cents each. The glittery snowflakes on top were another borrowed from Neely item.

 

The food.... We had chicken minis... which I named 'fried snowball sandwiches'. I forgot to take a picture of them though. We had chips and Que'sno', and veggies and snow dip (just white ranch dip). to drink we had water (melted snowflakes) and chocolate milk (muddy snowflakes). We had a hot chocolate bar which I called (hot muddy snowflakes), but again, I didn't get a picture of it. The cake was from Publix bakery. It was white cake with fresh strawberry in between the layers. The cake was pretty and delicious! Publix also gave us a free 'smash cake' with our order.

 

 

                                                        Annabelle's smash cake

                                                         The main birthday cake

 

                                      Annabelle in her high chair, getting ready for her cake.
The party hat was something I printed from the stuff I ordered on Etsy.com... I added the ribbon to make it a little fancier. I couldn't believe that Annabelle left it on long enough for us to get a picture of her.

 It was all down hill from here. She was NOT a fan of the cake. She did not like having the icing all over her hands and made that very apparent to everyone at the party. poor thing.

                                                                  Not a happy camper.

For the favors I made peppermint bark with pink candy melts instead of white chocolate. I got the molds and pink candy melts from Michaels. I sprinkled crushed peppermint in the molds before pouring in the melted candy to add some sparkle to the front of the snowflakes. My grandmother used to always make molded candy for parties and occasions, so I was glad I could carry on her tradition at Annabelle's first birthday party.

 

 

My SWEET 1 year old!

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 months

Happy Birthday Annabelle Naomi!

Its hard to believe that it has already been a year since you have come into our lives. What a fantastic year it has been. At the same time, it seems like you have ALWAYS been a part of our family. You really are so special to us. What a blessing you are and each and every day of my life is happier because you are in it.

Weight: 17 pounds 1 ounce (3rd percentile)
Height: 29 inches (50th percentile)

Sleeping Habits:
Hallelujah! Annabelle is now sleeping through the night. I finally 'bit the bullet' and let her cry it out (not that I hadn't given that a try once or twice before). It was a rough couple of nights, but she is now sleeping 12-13 hours at night. How glorious for both of us! She is still napping twice during the day. Once around 9:30-10:30 and once from about 2-4.

Eating Habits:
I am still breast feeding Annabelle. I have started to wean her just a little bit, but she doesn't seem too thrilled with any other type of milk. She is nursing 3x's day right now and I will probably keep it at that until I can get her drinking milk better. Her weight is on the low side, so the pediatrician wants me to make sure she is getting plenty of calories. She is eating pretty much any and all table food... whatever she sees us eating, she wants. She is less picky than her older brother was at this age. She likes yogurt, crackers, peas, carrots, applesauce, chicken, cheese, rice, veggie patties. She eats quite well so I am not sure why she is so little. We'll keep working on it though.

Places I went:
We went up to Kentucky to see Mark's family over Christmas. We stayed for about a week and had a great time. We were able to see Mark's parents, all of his sisters and their families. It is so nice to be closer to them too... of course we wish we were even closer, but we'll take what we can get. Annabelle also had her first visit to The Varsity, one of Atlanta's famous restaurants. We took her there for her birthday lunch with Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Susie. We had a fun time! Annabelle had her first visit to Santa's lap, which did not go over so well. She was not a fan.

New Discoveries:
Annabelle is scooting all over the place. She does a one handed scoot which is quite fast and she gets where she wants to go quickly. She is pretty cute doing it too. She is waving all the time... some times at no one. She just likes to wave, I guess. She also says "bye bye". She loves taking a bath and pretty much every night when I take her upstairs to get her ready for bed, she points to her bathroom and says "Ba" for Bath. She points and says it over and over again. I give her a bath almost every night because of this. She still says 'Dada' all the time. She tries to say juice, "Jus". She does the signs for 'more' and 'please'. She loves her stuffed animals and baby dolls. She picks them up and gives them hugs and kisses. She also loves whatever her older brother is playing with. She gets her hands on his trains and garbage trucks anytime she can.

                                             Playing with big brother's garbage trucks

My sweet, spunky, little one year old. We LOVE  you!

11 months

The months are flying by! Annabelle is nearly a year old and I don't know where the time has gone!

Weight: 17 pounds (at a sick visit around the age of 11 months)

Sleeping habits: Annabelle is taking 2 naps/day. One around 9:30, for an hour or so, and the other around 2 for about 2 hours. She is a pretty good nap taker and I am not ready for her to give up her morning nap! She is still not sleeping fully through the night. I know I really need to work on this, but it is hard! Until we are ready, I will still just get up and nurse her in the night. She is usually pretty quick and will go right back to sleep. With that said, it is still disruption in sleep for both of us, so it has to come to an end eventually. Annabelle uses her paci to fall asleep but then it falls out of her mouth and she doesn't really seem to use it. She is a tummy sleeper for the most part and of course is always precious when she sleeps!

Eating habits: Annabelle is eating 3 solid meals/day and is also still nursing 4-5 times in a 24 hour period. She is still on the small side, so the pediatrician said to let her snack often. She is not as picky as her older brother, but apparently she is not eating enough! She likes crackers, applesauce, veggie patties, peas, rice, chicken, yogurt. Sometimes she will be picky and not want a certain food, but generally she is easier to please than her brother... although, he is getting much better.

New discoveries: Annabelle is all over the house now... she scoots to find her brother in the playroom and then will scoot back to the kitchen to find me. She loves to be playing with whatever her older brother is playing with. She really likes music and seems to bop her head whenever she hears it. She is still saying 'DaDa', has also started saying 'bye bye' and waves her hand when she sees someone and when she says goodbye. She still is a bit clingy to mommy, but is maybe getting slightly better about letting others hold her. She is usually happy when mommy is not in sight, but the moment I come in the room, she fusses till she gets to me.

Places I went: No major trips during this month. We did celebrate Annabelle's first Thanksgiving. We had about 22 people here at our house for the meal. Our dear family friends, the Nawyns (&Wilson's) were here with us. We had a great time and it was so fun to be able to celebrate in our new home!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am excited to soon be celebrating Annabelle's first birthday, but there is a bit of sadness or sentimentality there as well, as I will no longer technically have a baby. She will be out of infancy and into toddler-hood... which bring mixed emotions. What a joy you are sweet Annabelle!

10 months

So I am a bit behind on my monthly blogs for Annabelle. Time has really been flying by!!

At 10 months I had to take Annabelle to the ENT doctor to have a check up for her laryngomalacia. We did not have a regular well baby check up for 10 months, but because of the ENT check up, we were able to get an 'official' weight. Her weight was 16lbs on the nose when we went to the ENT. Thankfully, everything checked out great at the ENT. We had to have her hearing test redone because she had never fully passed her newborn hearing screen. Thankfully she easily passed. Yay!

Sleeping habits:
Sweet Annabelle still likes to see her mommy in the middle of the night. She is just a night owl, I suppose :) She is taking 2 naps during the day, 1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. She naps anywhere from 1-3 hours. She is a pretty good nap taker and that gives mommy a good break.

Eating habits:
As Annabelle gets older, she will have less and less to do with any food that is not just regular food that she sees everyone else eating. She likes to be independent and feed herself. She is not as picky as her brother when it comes to things she will eat, but she is picky about how they are served to her... like does not want things in little peices, but would rather have the large peice of bread just like everyone else. She loves applesauce, yogurt, waffles, and she likes veggie patties, (kind of like veggie burgers). She will eat pretty much anything I am eating and often will only take bites from a regular sized fork or spoon, not the baby ones. She definitely has an indpendent streak in her :)

New discoveries:
Annabelle is still not crawling. She is scooting more and more. She gets where she wants to go for sure! She is babbling more and more. Says 'DaDa' quite often. Will also make other sounds like 'Ba' and occassionally 'Ma'. She smiles a lot and is generally a happy girl. She has 4 teeth on the bottom now, but no top teeth. I am sure we will be working on those soon enough! She has started getting up to a sitting position from a lying position quite easily and confidently now. She will often be sitting up in her crib when i come in to get her out after a nap or in the morning. Annabelle likes to clap, she also does the signs for 'more' and 'all done'. We are working on a few other signs as well.

Places I went:
No major trips between months 9-10. We were busy here at home getting ready for the holidays. We were enjoying our regular schedule of taking big brother to school, having some mommy and Annabelle time and then getting to pick big brother up at 1pm. Annabelle loves her big brother and is always excited to see him, especially when we pick him up from school.

Annabelle is a momma's girl. She will be perfectly content for someone that is watching her, such as my mom or aunt, or Neely... they will say she was happy and playing and hardly fussed while I was gone, but the moment I come in the door, she will start fussing and reaching for me. I am not sure why she thinks she needs to fuss for me, but she does. I love that she feels so attached to me. I love her to pieces and wouldn't have it any other way!

I am having trouble uploading pictures to this blog post, so I am going to go ahead and post this without pictures and I will try to post a 10 month picture later. :(

10 months!

 

 

The Laundry Room

Decorating a house takes a LOT of time, money, and energy. I think I have finished 1 room... The laundry room. It has taken me about 3 months just to get the laundry room in a finished state, so who knows how long it will take to get the whole house in a finished state.... it will probably never happen :)

Anyways, for those of you who are interested, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my laundry room. I love it. I know you are probably thinking, 'why in the world would you spend time decorating your laundry room???' Well, I guess there are a couple of reasons 1. why not? 2. it was a small space so it seemed like something that wouldn't take forever to complete 3. I had a vision.

I painted stripes on the wall... inspired by my very creative friend, Christiane. The darker color was the color that was already on the walls, so I just measured and taped the stripes and painted the lighter color. My SIL Susie helped me do the actual painting, which was fun to do together and made it go by much more quickly! The photo on the wall is a picture I took in a laundromat in Jackson, GA. I spray painted a peice of fiberboard a metalic brown color and then modpodged the photo to it. I was very pleased with how it turned out!

The Laundry room sign is vinyl lettering. I ordered it from an etsy shop. I just applied it to the wall and it adds a pop of color and a bit of humor to keep me smiling while I am doing my laundry! ha!

The laundry room is pretty small so it was hard to get a picture far enough out of the whole thing. I also have a lime green rug on the floor to add a bit more color to the room. It was a fun room make over! Next up, the kids' bathroom!

9 months

Annabelle is 9 months old. This really doesn't seem possible to me. It is amazing how the 9 months that I carry a baby seems close to an eternity, whereas, for me the first 9 months of Annabelle's life seemed to have happened in a blink. Just doesn't seem fair.... I have enjoyed every moment though. I looove babies!

Annabelle's weight at her 9 month check up: 15lbs 6oz, which is 5th percentile.
Height: 27 inches, 25th percentile.
Her growth curve slightly declined from her 6 month appointment, so they have told me to let her eat as often as she wants to. fun times! ;)

Sleeping Habits:
Ever since Annabelle starting teething, about 2 weeks ago, she has decided she doesn't want to sleep through the night. It was a nice 2 month stretch where I was getting solid nights of sleep, but it is not so anymore. She is waking up atleast once, sometimes 2 or 3 times. ugh. Let's get this back to how it was sweet Annabelle. Although, I will always admit, I love the sweet sleepy moments in the middle of the night when she is cuddly and will sleep on my shoulder... she won't do this otherwise.
She is taking 2 naps during the day, each one is up to 2 hours long. She takes nap around 10am and 2:30pm. Shealways lets me know when she is ready for her naps and she goes right to sleep most of the time.

Eating Habits:
Annabelle basically wants nothing to do with baby food. She wants to eat whatever we are eating. She will eat pretty much anything I give her that is 'real' food. She seems to be eating a lot, so I am not sure why she is not gaining weight better. She isn't as interested in nursing as she once was. She nurses really well in the morning and at night, but during the day she is too busy and/or too interested in what everyone else is eating to be into nursing. Her favorite foods right now are 'mum mums', peas, and spinach pancakes. She also likes cheerios, pickles, french fries, and chicken.

New discoveries/development:
Annabelle is not crawling yet, but she is scooting some and seems to get to where she wants to go (within a short distance) somehow. She is a very busy girl, she is going to be into everything once she gets moving. I am enjoying these immobile days while they last. Her two front, bottom teeth have broken through. Soon she will have a toothy smile I am sure. She has started saying 'dada'. Whether or not it is in relation to Mark, we are not sure. She will say it when we ask her to. Its pretty cute. We are also working on the signs for 'more' and 'all done'. She is doing them some and it is really cute. She will also make a kissy face and sound when told to 'blow kisses'. Also very cute. She is developing such a personality and it is so fun to watch. Such a sweet girl and definitely a Mama's girl at this point.

Places I went:
We went on a family vacation to TN & NC (as mentioned in previous blog post). We had a great time and Annabelle did great on the trip. She also made it to SC while we were on our travels. Annabelle has started a music class, which is held at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church. It is a music class for babies where they are able to play with little musical instruments - like shakers, etc.- and do little baby activities, 'sing' baby songs. It is really cute and Annabelle seems to love it. She bops up and down and grins really big pretty much the whole time. I am enjoying watching her enjoy it!

Between months 8 & 9, we had several out of town visitors. First was Mommy's friend, Jenny, from graduate school at Ohio State. She came and stayed with us for several days and we did lots of fun things! The kids loved her and we were all sad to see her go back to CA. Next was Mommy's friend, Courtney from undergraduate nursing school at University of Kentucky. She is also loved by the kiddos and again we were sad to see her go. Next was Daddy's sister, Susie, and her friend Sarah. They came to run the Atlanta - Brookhaven 1/2 Marathon with Mommy. We had a great time with them here and again, the kids loved having them around. Its so fun to have visitors!

Happy Girl!

My silly girl often rides around in the stroller with her leg straight up like this..

Jonah wanted to be in a picture with her :)

Annabelle @ 9 months

Jenny with Annabelle

Jenny with Jonah & Annabelle

 

Happy 9 months my SWEET Annabelle! Mommy loves you!

Mountain City, TN

I don't think I ever thought I would go to Mountain City, Tennessee on vacation, but I did. We just got back from a great trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. We stayed in a cabin owned by a friend of my aunts and it was perfect. We loved it. The view from the cabin was great! Based on the cabin and the view, you would think you were somewhere much more exotic than Tennessee.

We left on Monday, late afternoon, when Mark got off from work, so we stopped for the night in Asheville, NC. We did a few things in Asheville on Tuesday before continuing on our trip. Asheville is a cute town, we really liked it!

One of our stops in Asheville was Double D's Coffee and Desserts. I have to say, the coffee wasn't anything to write home about, but the experience was worth it. Jonah thought it was soooo cool that we were eating in the bus.

Annabelle was excited to be in the bus :)

Jonah loving on his sister. <3 p="p">

On our way to the cabin, we stopped for dinner in Mountain City at a pizza place.... The pizza was mediocre. The main event at dinner was jonah losing his dinner at the table. At this point, day 1 of vacation, I thought we were in for at least a day or two of illness, but luckily, Jonah only threw up one more time and then he was over whatever bug he caught. Fortunately, no one else ever got sick. We made it to the cabin in time to watch the sunset -- the picture above is the view from the cabin at sunset and the picutre below is the early morning/sunrise view. It was gorgeous.

 

On Wednesday, we went to Linville Caverns. Jonah was pretty excited about seeing the inside of a mountain. The tour of the caverns was quite interesting. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Here I am drinking 'cave water'. Apparently the water that runs through the caverns is purified by the limestone inside, so it is safe to drink... at least that is what the tour guide told us and for some reason, I trusted her. Tasted ok to me :)

The fam inside Linville Caverns

After the caverns we went to a little town called Blowing Rock. It was a very cute little town. We walked around and went in several of the shops. The time in Blowing Rock ended with playing in the park where we found this scarecrow and took a couple pictures of the kiddos.

After Blowing Rock, we went to a gem mine. Jonah was apprehensive at first - didn't want to get his hands dirty or wet... I know, what is wrong with him?? Anyways, he finally decided he wanted to do this and had a lot of fun doing it. He found several pretty rocks, the most notable was a fairly large amethyst gem. He is going to take it for 'show and tell' at school tomorrow. He's excited to tell his friends and teachers about his mountain vacation.

 

On Thursday, our first stop was Grandfather Mountain. It has a mile high suspension bridge. I was not too thrilled to walk over it, but I did it. Jonah thought it was pretty cool to be up so high. He and Mark 'explored' all around the top of the mountain (very carefully - at my request). Annabelle rode around on my back and was content most of the time. I have realized that because Annabelle is not a city baby, like Jonah was, she certainly isn't used to riding around in the carrier. Jonah was always content in the carrier, but he was used to it. I must admit I miss having the need to use the carrier. I enjoyed that part of city life -- always having the baby close and snuggly during transit.

 

On Friday we went to an Amusement Park called 'Tweensy Railroad'. It was perfect for Jonah. Of course, as most of you know, Jonah loves trains. There were many train themed rides and activities, so he was fully in his element.

 Tweensy had a little petting zoo where you could feed the animals. Jonah was really into this, he has been apprehensive with petting zoos before, so it was fun to see him really enjoying it. He got very tickled by the deer who were continually 'fighting' over the food. Annabelle seems to love animals. Anytime she sees an animal she starts shrieking and kicking her legs... its really quite cute. She was constantly reaching for the goats and wanted to be a part of the action.

 

Mark put some of the food up on Jonah's head and the llama ate right off the top of his head. It was quite amusing and Jonah thought it was great.

This is one of the rides Jonah finally decided to ride. We tried to convince him he would like it (although, I honestly wasn't sure he was). Well, once he got on it, he loved it and yelled to me the entire ride 'I told you it'd be fun mommy!' He would not let me correct him and tell him that I was the one who told him that he'd enjoy it. We rode it more than once :)

                                      

 

Here we are on the actual train. It was a short ride on a steam engine that included a cowboy and indian show. It was enjoyable but a bit hokey and possibly scary for younger kids. Jonah just enjoyed being on the train.

Here is another ride that we finally convinced Jonah to ride. He wasn't sure about riding something by himself, but once he finally got on, he liked it and I think he was pretty proud of himself for getting on it.

 

Me and Annabelle on another little train ride.

 

 

Another fall photo op :)

 

On Saturday morning, we packed our stuff up in the cabin and headed out. We had a hotel again in Asheville to break the drive up. We had a couple of planned stops along the way. The first stop was a hike at Linville Falls. This was probably my favorite part of the trip. It was about a 3 ish mile hike (round trip). Jonah walked some and rode in the pack some. Annabelle did better in the carrier on this hike as long as we kept moving.

                             You can't see it, but Linville Falls is in the picture behind us. :-)

 

Linville Falls

During the hike we found this tree stump and sat the kids on it to take a picture. I told Jonah to hold onto annabelle like he loved her and this is what he did. That boy loves his sister. Its so cute!

Here's one of the whole fam. Although the kids aren't looking at the camera, I think its pretty cute that they are looking at each other and smiling. <3 p="p">

 

After Linville Falls we drove to Mt. Mitchell state park in hopes of driving to the top of this mountain around sunset. Mt. Mitchell is the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi river. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get to the top of the mountain. There was a pretty bad accident that involved a SUV and a motorcycle with 2 people on it. The accident was blocking the road so that no one could come down or go up the mountain. The people involved in the accident were injured severely enough to necessitate a life flight to the hospital. We watched 2 helicopters land, load the injured people and then take off. We hope and pray that those injured are going to have a full recovery after this accident.

Here are a couple of shots of the sunset from close to the top of Mt. Mitchell

Another stop at a waterfall, 'Looking Glass Falls', that was close to the side a road, we didn't really have to hike to get to this one.

                                                

 

This was on the way home on Sunday. We wore Jonah out! :)