String Bean

Noelle had her 12 month check up on Monday.


Overall she's doing good.  Noelle knows the doctor now (she holds it together while he's talking to us and then cries the second he lays a finger on her).  She's a string bean right now.  She's in the 75th percentile for height (almost 30 inches) and is really low in her age group for weight.  The doctor suspects a combination of being more active and mom's milk being less nutrient rich is the cause.  

He's not concerned because she's healthy, but Noelle's diet is going to include more fatty and calorie rich foods.  We have a sheet of suggested foods to add to her diet and I think her food is going to be tasting much better these days (mayo, butter, cream, salad dressing, whipped cream, peanut butter, etc).  Don't we all wish we could be on her "diet" :)


Along with the above Noelle has the green light to eat just about anything, and Dr's orders to drink whole milk.  Noelle still doesn't know about whole milk, but we're working on it.  She does like vanilla yogurt so I found some higher fat yogurt (with cream on top!) and she has been eating that well in the mean time.


In other news my garden is going ok.  We've had some spinach, lettuce, basil, and cilantro already.  My cilantro has started to seed due to the heat so I'm going to need to figure out how to eat it quick.  The tomatoes are already bigger than my fall/winter harvest, they look like they will be tasty.  Corey and I can hardly wait (Noelle has no comment).  My cucumber plants look pretty sickly, but are still alive and the onions are doing well too!  Can't wait to try everything out.

Happy Easter

We hope everyone has had a wonderful Easter Sunday!  We are finishing up our day by having dinner with some nice friends that go to school with Corey.  

Today was Noelle's first Easter.  Last year Easter was early April, so she just missed it by a hare... sorry, couldn't resist the joke! 

We decided it would be fun to "hide" the basket for her.  She found it pretty quick and dove right into her goods. 

  
After everyone was ready we took some pictures outside.  It was the perfect morning for pictures.

We wish it were easier to get a good picture of all three of us!  Instead we made sure Corey and I both got some cute pictures with Noelle.  Her dress was so cute, and she even kept her little hair clip (I made it) in most of the day.  Apparently hair clips are the way to go for Noelle.

 Here's our best shot together.

During church Noelle figured out how to climb stairs (she has been working on it for a few weeks).  She was pretty wiggly for all three hours so Corey and I spent a lot of time in the hall.  She isn't satisfied sitting on our laps any longer.  Only six months until Nursery!

Happy Birthday!

Today Noelle celebrated her first birthday!   


She had a fun skype birthday party (pictures of the party coming later) and enjoyed seeing all of her grandparents at once (as well as some aunts who were visiting home).


Here's the customary present shot.  She sure got some great things!

Noelle has already had fun playing with her new toys.

 Thanks everyone, I love my new things!

Countdown

Less than 24 hours until our little Noelle turns one!  We can hardly believe it.  She's growing up and there's nothing we can do about it.

She's fully comfortable trying to pull herself onto everything.  Especially cabinets full of cool things like strainers and pots.  She isn't against trying to climb over Corey or I if we are in the way of something interesting to look at.

We most often find her like this after a nap.  I'm up, get me out!

Noelle found her binky in the toy bin and decided to try it out the other day.  It lasted for about 15 seconds and then she was chewing on the other end.  She's loosing interest in some of her "baby" toys.  She's on to bigger and better things (tear tear).

We can't wait for her Skype birthday party tomorrow.  It was fun to make some cute invitations and send them to her grandmas and grandpas.  

It will be fun having both of her grandmas and grandpas webcam-ing at the same time (as long as we don't run into any tech hiccups) watching Noelle getting covered in cake.

Activity

Noelle is pretty active these days.  It's rare that she's in one spot for more than a minute or two.  She is getting better at putting herself to a standing position and has been crawling (real crawling not army scooting) a bit too.  


Amy gave her this cute shirt when her and my mom came to visit in February.  It's a little big but she'll be able to sport this for a while.  I might have to make her a BYU shirt too, just to even out the playing field, ha ha.  Noelle, we will love you no matter where you go to school.

The following is a typical view of Noelle's activities.  Hey, mom arranged my books next the couch.  I should mess them up.

Maybe I'll look at this book.

Nevermind, I'll look at this book.

Nevermind.  See ya, I'm going over here.

And she's gone.  Hey mom, come and play over here!  

That was about 60 seconds of my day.  She is going to be a tornado once she's walking.  I'm tired just thinking about it :)

Spring Crafts

I've been working on projects here and there but haven't documented it yet.  Something about spring makes me want to do crafts and sew.  Okay, okay, really I like that stuff all year long.

I've seen star burst mirrors and clocks pop-up a lot recently.  Although mirrors would have been fun and bright the store didn't have the right size when I went so I decided cork boards would be cool and a little different.  I had fun making the star burst frame, the hardest part was finding a round frame.  Inspired by Chris (she's good with wire) I decided to make a wire frame for the other message board.  You can stick messages in the loops, like a paper clip.  I have a vintage (I think?) embroidery hoop hanging up too--I still need to make something to hang in it.  Working on it.

Thanks to the moss next to our house I decided to make a little moss terrarium.  If I run across any more cool jars I'm going to make a few more.  Corey doesn't have the same enthusiasm for moss as I do--but he lets me do weird things like this.  I've made them before but this time I bought some activated carbon (buy it near the pet stuff) so it won't mold or smell icky.

I've also been making some little shirts.  Most of Noelle's shirts now have a lovely grey dirt smudge thanks to her love of cruising the kitchen floor, so I wanted to make her a few new ones.  I found this sweet bag of 90's knit bias tape at D.I. and I thought it would jazz up a onezie-type top.   There was tons of it--I might have to go back and get a few more rolls of it.  They are pretty quick to put together (especially if you use existing hems), I'm going to be making a few more I think.  Here's the first one I made with the bias tape and an old pj shirt:

April

We've had a nice April so far.  


Conference weekend was great and Noelle's naps allowed us to watch and focus on most of conference.  

We loved seeing the camera pan over Temple Square during conference showing the blossoms.  There's a serious lack of tree blossoms down here.  Despite this we are enjoying another kind of blossom--the cactus blossom.  A little cactus right by our front door is bursting with blossoms.  It's fun to come out each morning and see how many more have opened.  Right now there are about 20 blossoms on the plant and a whole lot more to go.

They are quite pretty.  We are going to try to go on a hike in a week or two to see if we can see lots more blossoms.  We'll report back any findings.

Noelle continues to cruise around the house.  She has a good collection of bruises from pulling herself up on things or opening cupboard doors.  Noelle likes to sneak up on us from under the coffee table...Surprise!

Noelle sported pigtails for another few minutes last week, and then her hair was all funny when we took them out.

Along with my garden (did I mention I started my garden yet?) I decided our house needed a bit of character.  Something not brown.  So I planted some daisies and a little lavender plant in my planter box next to the front door.  It needs frequent watering, so to be lazy and smart at the same time I stick it under the water spigot (it drips a little) while I'm watering the garden and it gets watered too.  Nice.