Sleepy Eater

Tried to rush through lunch because Hadley was getting sleepy.  Didn't quite make it...

Hadley Marie: 18 Months

Our big little girl Hadley Marie is 18 months old.  She is 34 1/4" tall and 29.7 pounds which puts her right at the bleeding edge of the charts for each.  She's a big girl, but she's proportional.

Every so often we capture the illusion that they're not always picking and poking (and pulling hair - Hadley!) at each other.  Makes my heart happy!

She loves to color just like her big sister.  Anything her big sister does, really.

We went sledding for the first time.  She yelled "mooo" (her version of "no") but then squeeled in delight once she was going.

Our little monkey.  Always climbing onto anything she can get to.  I don't have a picture, but the way she climbs up onto chairs is to flop across on her belly and then drag her body up (Dave calls it her Shamu impression).

My good eater.  I made some oatmeal and handed her a spoon and she just started shoveling away.

She didn't require much assistance at all for her first Easter egg hunt, she was spying them on her own just fine.  I should have suspected since she's always into EVERYTHING.

Her first ponytail!

She's cut three more teeth this quarter - all within the space of a couple of weeks.  She's always climbing, running (with crazy legs flying in all directions and a giant dimpled grin on her face), and dancing.  A little non-stop ball of energy.  Lots of new words have been added - "bay-bee" is so cute when she says it.  She knows most of her body parts and will point out her own or other's belly button, nose, mouth, eye, ears, etc...  She seems to be fascinated with socks and shoes and repeatedly says "sock" or "shoe" when it's time to put them on.  She surprised me with a very clear "'scuse you" when I said it to her after she burped a little.  If you catch her in the right mood she'll lay some big ol' open mouth baby kisses on you!

I sing to her when I put her to bed each night, always beginning with Row, Row, Row Your Boat.  She's started asking to be sung to by saying "woa, woa, woa" - so super cute, and I'm pretty sure she's the only one who's ever asked me to sing.  I have no illusions that I have a nice singing voice.

Hadley Marie: 15 Months

Now that Hadley has passed a year, I'll do quarterly updates until she turns two.

Since her birthday, Hadley:

Attended her first parade.  We went with gMa & gPa Sunshine to CMU's homecoming parade.  That's my sorority house in the background.

Went Trick or Treating for the first time.  She is so definitely an extrovert.  She was waving to passersby the entire time, often with both hands.  It was like her own personal parade.  Hi-larious!

Started walking.  The week before Thanksgiving she took off and never looked back.  She also weened about the same time.  It was her choice and it went very smoothly.  

Traveled with us to Chicago and met Aunt Jean and Uncle Matthew.  She had a cold and the beginnings of an ear infection and slept through most of the commotion.

Found Thanksgiving dinner to be most enjoyable.  She was incredibly suspect of the mashed sweet potatoes until I managed to get some on her tongue and then she was smitten.

Helped set up our feeble attempt at outdoor decoration for the Holidays.

Was WAAY not into Santa Claus.

Was simultaneously confused and excited by our little New Year's Eve celebration.

During this span, she also cut six new teeth; three of them within the space of a week.  Ouch!  And graduated completely from bottles, another smooth transition.

She took a little break from working on her vocabulary while she was perfecting walking, and is now back to jabbering away.  She's at that stage where she's stringing an unintelligible litany of gibberish with full expectation that we understand her.  Sounds more like Chinese, and I've heard "she she" or thank-you in Mandarin multiple times which only provided more evidence.  She's also displaying baby signs with proficiency - "more" being her favorite.

See you in three months!

Hadley Marie: One Year

I've had this post saved as a draft for over a month, waiting to do the final photo and collage on the quilt.  It's just not happening, so I'm going to just finish it before I forget what I want to say and come back later if I ever get the collage completed.

1 year.  52 weeks.  365 days.  525,600 minutes.  31,536,000 seconds.  And so many more moments and memories of Hadley's first year.  From the moment of her most impatient and timely arrival I have been completely smitten.  I think like most mothers of two or more children, I worried how I could love two daughters when I only knew Arden thus far.  Not a problem.  When you hear that love multiplies and grows, it's true.

She can be serious, but it's a different kind of seriousness than Arden.  Arden needs some time to get used to a new situation or environment, and sometimes she's just moody.  Hadley seems to be sitting and taking eveything in, waiting for the right moment to start squealing or bopping around.

Her hair is getting long enough for some creative hairstyles.  I'm still debating whether to cut bangs like Arden, or to let them grow out.  So far I'm leaning towards no bangs, or just light fringe.  Hadley doesn't have quite as high of a forehead as Arden, so I think it will look nice and give the girls a different look. 

At her birthday, Hadley had six teeth.  Shortly after, she added one more so she's sporting seven and has two more pushing their way through.  At her one year visit she weighed 24.8 lbs. and was 31 3/4" long.  That puts her in about the 98th percentile for weight and off the charts for height.  She's pushing the limits of some of the smaller 18 month clothes.

She's trying so hard to keep up with big sister.  Arden mostly lets her participate - I love her elaborate picnic set ups!  She has a thing about Hadley grabbing at her though - she'll wine "I don't want baby hands on me"!  Hadley's vocabulary is pretty strong for a one year old.  She says:  hi, hey, yah, da-da, mum, yum, (either Arden or "all done" - we're not entirely sure which, but either is impressive), some version of dog, and a squeely "kittie".  She also waves like Her Royal Highness wherever we go.  You know the screwing in a lightbulb beauty queen wave - yeah, that one.  Once she starts, she just keeps going, and going and going...

Aside from sleep disruptions when she's teething or growing, she sleeps solid from around 7:30 PM until 6:00 AM with a quick feed and then back down until 7:00 AM.  The six AM thing is almost scary, because she wakes up every morning almost exactly at the stroke of six.  Once in a while she'll be off by ten minutes, but that's the most her little clock is off.

She gives the best baby (or do I have to say toddler now? wah!) hugs and snuggles.  She sort of pats your shoulder while you carry her.  I think that's from my side.  We always say hugs come with pats and rubs, and Hadley has the patting thing down pat!

On to the next 31,536,000 seconds.  I hope they bring as much fun and laughter and adventure as your first, dear Hadley.

Hadley Marie: 1st Birthday Party

We could not have asked for a more perfect day to host Hadley's 1st birthday party in our backyard.  70 degrees and sunny at the tail end of September is a rare treat in Michigan!

In keeping with the bird/tree/nature theme I was going for, I decorated with burlap as the table coverings and also to cover the straw bales I used for seating.  The wrapped and embellished "H" was featured on the cake table.  The Happy Birthday banner I made for Arden's pink party made a reappearance as part of the little backdrop I made with our old wooden fence gate behind.

The cakes were made by Linda Lewis, owner of Once Upon a Wedding Cake.  I was thrilled to have her make cakes for Hadley's party as we were so pleased with our wedding cake she made five years ago.  The little smash cake for Hadley was French vanilla cake with whipped cream and fresh blueberry filling.  You'll see below that Hadley went nuts for it!!  The bigger cake for the rest of the guests was lemon cake with raspberry filling; the same combination we had at our wedding - yum!

For food, I made spaghetti "nests" by twirling angel hair pasta on a fork and then setting several fresh mozzarella "eggs" - little perline mozzarella balls into each nest.  There were also gummy and sour gummy worms, a fruit and yogurt parfait station, fresh veggies and dip, cocktail weenies and a special dish called pigeon droppings.  It's just onions, mayonnaise, mushroom stems & pieces, and swiss cheese in a pie plate and baked, but if you've ever had a near miss with a pigeon or a seagull, you know what it looks like...

The birthday girl looked a picture of loveliness in the party dress I made her, if I do say so myself!  It sure was a good thing I used elastic for the button loops, though because she sure is stretching the boundaries of the size 18 month I made her.  I did decide to add an orane flower to the waistband, but in the business of party prep, I forgot to pin it on her.  Her little headband ended up around her waist for part of the party, so that worked just as well.  The headband was some more of the elastic from Pick Your Plum and an orange denim rolled fabric flower, a turquoise rolled fabric flower from some dress scraps, and a little singed petal version with a button in the center.  She left it alone for long stretches and then suddenly would decide it had to come off - now!

Our birthday gift to her was this little Pewi ride on by Ybike.  She has taken to it strongly already and uses the front part as a walker and also straddles it to ride and scoot around.  It's on caster weels so she can go wherever, and they roll well enough to even go on grass.  The only drawback so far is that Arden also really likes it and wants to ride on it, causing a few tears on her part.

Hadley was true to her nature and played the perfect little hostess; smiling and waving to everyone.  We had fewer guests than we were planning for, which contributed to a nice low-key event.  The only downside is we have a ton of yummy cake left - oh darn!

So here are the best part of any first birthday party - the cake smash series!!  Hadley put on a perfect performance - tentative at first, looking at us to see if we were really going to let her have at the cute cake I set before her...

... the first taste, with only her fingertips catching some of the yummy frosting ...

... "hmm, that was tasty - maybe I can just put the whole thing in my mouth?" ...

... and finally double fisting handfulls of cake and smashing them into her mouth ...

Here's a little gif file showing the smash in motion.

The aftermath.  Both Dave and I sampled her cake and those fresh berries and whipped cream were to die for.  Hadley found those and mined for them the rest of the time.

Daddy giving her some off a fork - how civilized!

This photo is hilarious because it looks like she's saying "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!" and about to lose her tummy, but really we took it away shortly after the photo above and she was fine and dandy the rest of the day.

Hadley Marie: 11 Months

A little catch-up with Hadley's monthly photos - I don't know why some months these are so hard to get photographed and blogged.  Anyways:

It's getting harder and harder to get her to lay still on the quilt to take these.  Add to the fact that she's now longer than the center part of the design and I spend half my time putting her back in the middle and making goofy faces and sounds to try to get her to look at the camera.

Whoops!  There she goes again!  I don't have official measurements, but on our home scale she's somewhere around 24.5 pounds and she's super tall!

Within moments of learning to crawl, she started pulling up to stand and basically crawls from place to place to stand. 

She loves playing in Arden's little play kitchen.  It's so cute sometimes with the two of them standing at the sink while Arden makes elaborate "recipes" and Hadley tries to "help".

This is the best picture I could find of the little scrunchy nose snorting thing she's been doing.  It's so stinkin' cute!

Two more teeth made their arrival this month.  She now has four on top and two on the bottom.  Ther's a pretty good gap in between the two front teeth on top, so sometimes I call her "Goober".  This girl has had quite the variety of nicknames.  She has an uncanny attraction to shoes and clothes.  Each morning I'll lay out Arden's clothes for her to put on, which Hadley promptly drags all over the room.

She's a serious water baby.  At swim class she kicks her little chubby legs and reaches for the edge of the pool.  She's 90% able to pull herself up and out of the edge, a skill that makes me very happy.  She's still a super good eater and is self-feeding most of the time.  I just give her spoon foods to round out her meals if she doesn't get enough on her own.

Gah!  I love her smile!

Hadley Marie: 10 Months

Well, Hadley is ten months old (or... nearly 11 months - at least I'm consistently late!).  Capturing her picture on the quilt was literally an aerobic activity this month - every time I got her on it and picked up the camera, she'd roll over and crawl off.  Then I'd have to put the camera down so I didn't whack her in the head with it, drag her back and start over.  I called in reinforcements which sort of helped - Dave pretty much laughed at us and then stood far enough to the side that she's not looking at the camera at all.  Oh well, at least she's on the blanket.

This month Hadley has learned to clap and to wave hello/bye-bye.  It's pretty hilarious taking her to the grocery store because she pretty much spends the entire time waving to everybody.  But not just any old wave - the screwing-in-a-lightbulb Her Royal Highness style wave!  She's a super-speedy crawler, and makes her rounds pulling up on everything she can get to and then doing a little bit of cruising.  She's still working on those two top teeth; they're giving her all sorts of fits - poor baby!

I seem to have a bit of an obsession with taking pictures of Hadley while sleeping.  I can't seem to stop, even though I really think she's going to have alien abduction dreams from the flash going off in her face!  The bottom right was taken at our new local spray park, but it's right on the bay and it was really windy so she's all bundled up in towels.