Today I'm 'With It'

I'm totally doing a blog post with pictures I took today - I don't think that has happened for 2.63 years. Don't know whether to celebrate or to be sad about my past record...

(Pics are SOOC - but still cute...)

Eden was wearing a cute Sunday dress but decided to poop and scoot after her nap after church and the poop squeezed out onto our rug and her dress... So we changed clothes. Love my life.

We definitely felt lucky to have a Sunday with some time with Dadadadada. Just had to pull out my camera to document it.

Eden is standing without bursting into tears - hooray! Don't be fooled - Dadadadada is helping her balance in this pic - you better believe I'll be telling the whole world when she can do it on her own.

We had a busy week! Highlight was a visit from Grandpa Wayment and Uncle Blake! The guys got some fun golfing time in and we all enjoyed delicious food and time outside. It was a short trip (they are always too short...). Eden was feeling a little under the weather and it took her some time to adjust to two new people in the house but she was feeling comfortable just in time for them to leave... Guess they just need to come back again soon.

Last picture with Blake before his mission to the Czech Republic

Oh dearie - Eden's face... She totally gets that look from her Dad ;)

They're definitely not related or anything...

New favorite picture ever!

 

Another face expression from Ry...

Blake is going to be such a fabulous missionary! We are looking forward to hearing about his experiences and feel lucky to have such a fabulous role model for ourselves and for Eden.

Our Eden Girl

Eden is almost 1. It's making me really nostalgic. I cannot believe how much both she and I have grown up the past year.

Purpose of this post is to document a few Eden-isms from the past month or two. Text complete with pictures to keep it somewhat entertaining.

Eden is a very concentrated observer. Whether she is checking out a new toy, reading a book, people watching, encountering a new situation, she usually responds with a face like the one above. Lots of processing going on in that little mind. She also loves to read books! Definitely loves having us read them to her but will also sit and look through a stack of books by herself. It is interesting that a few of her favorite books from her earlier months of life (the ones we read like 20 times a day) are no longer her favorites. When I pull them out she flips through a few pages and then gives me a look like 'Mom I know this book already' and closes it and reaches for another less familiar option.

Eden's favorite chore is helping me make the bed. Before we make it, we play in a fort under the sheets. I'll wave the sheets really fast so it makes lots of wind and she laughs and kicks them with her arms and legs. After that and a few rounds of peek-a-boo she'll sit on the floor and make sure I make the bed up to her standards.

These are Eden's fake smiles. The ones she gives 98% of the time to people at the grocery store and my camera. Every once in a while she's in a special mood and will give her 'real' smiles to strangers and my lens. She really is a super happy baby - but not so much in large social settings. Actually, I should give her more credit, she is starting to do a lot better in situations we've encountered before. She just needs time to observe and figure out how she fits into a situation before she's comfortable (just like her Momma - random fact you might not have known about me - bonus).

This is how Eden feels about gross motor skills. We were so close to have a pediatric therapist come help us know what to do to get her to use her muscles. Until two weeks ago, we thought this girl might be happy to just sit on her bum the rest of her life. Well she kind of proved us wrong when she started scooting on her bum to get to things. Of course she picks the cutest way to get around... We have some exercises we are doing to help her build arm strength and try to figure out new ways to make standing fun. Progress is being made! Here's a little video of the Eden scoot. She has gotten a lot better at it - I'll have to get some updated footage. Lots of baby proofing going on over here

Not possible to talk about this girl without mentioning food. She eats soooo much! And poops it out like 5-6 times a day - man, this girls metabolism is crazy. She loves almost all fruits and vegetables and prefers them over everything except spaghetti or sweets. Her food staples are sweet potatoes, avocados, broccoli, peas, pears, kiwis, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, kidney and black beans, brown rice, quinoa, green smoothies... This is probably not interesting... But maybe it will be to her someday.

Here is a list of what she eats in total on an average day -

1/2 a large sweet potato

1/2 an avocado

1 pear

1 kiwi

Big handful of blueberries

4-7 strawberries

1/2 cup broccoli

1/2 cup peas

1 cup brown rice formed into little balls

1/4 can kidney beans

1/4 can black beans

8 oz green smoothie (ingredients: pear, apple, banana, spinach - in addition to already listed amounts)

1/2 cup oatmeal for breakfast

1/2 banana

and probably more... I feel like this is sort of unusual, but she is just happy to eat all the time and she seems to be a perfect weight and not have any constipation issues so we go with it. Eating time, going down for nap time, and dancing/playing with Mom and/or Dad time are definitely her favorite parts of the day. She is the most vocal and excited during these times. She is extra exciting when she is eating if there are kids playing outside on the street - I'll turn her high chair around so she can see out the window and she loves to just watch them while she eats. Looking forward to lots of good people watching with this girl in our future :).

Seriously, she is the cutest baby ever!

Love her little toothy grin.

Eden is getting quite the list of tricks. I picked this picture of one of them because not only does it show how cute her trick is - but you can also all feel sympathy for me and the messes I get to clean up after she eats her crazy amounts of food... It's like a 10 foot radius of scrubbing after every meal/snack time.

Anyway, back to Eden's tricks. This is one we learned from her buddy Asher. Whenever we say "how big is Eden?" she puts her hand straight up in the air and we say "SOOOOO BIG" and then she claps for herself - well she claps for herself after all her tricks. 

Another favorite is her high fives. She will give high fives to ANYONE - so this is the thing we do at church in the grocery store etc. so people don't think we're raising an unhappy child. 

Eden gives the sweetest slobbery kisses and definitely knows what we want when we say 'give mommy /daddy kisses' she saves those for us and for Grandma.

Eden is great at lots of fun things from Kindermusik - keeping the beat by tapping her legs or tummy, twisting her body, clapping, stomping her feet, beating objects together to the beat, just to name a few.

She is learning animal names and noises. If I want a smile out of her, all I have to do is say tiger. She immediately whips her head to look at me and gives me a huge grin waiting for me to RAAAWWWR in her face. She does the cutest monkey noises and will sometimes meow or bark. She has also said cat clear as day a few times - I think that is actually her first official word - either that or dadadadada.

It is so fun to see her starting to understand our words and anticipate patterns of events. When we lay her down for a nap, she has to have these little blanket type things we call her nubbies. She needs one for each hand and we play lots of peek-a-boo with them before we snuggle them up to her face so she can sleep with them. She gets so excited when we lay her down and immediately starts searching for the nubbies to play peek-a-boo. I keep a pile of binkies in the top right side of her crib and as long as she can find them during the night, she soothes herself back to sleep. She only uses binkies when she is sleeping.

Sorry for all the typos and grammar errors - just typing like a speak. Try to ignore them. 

Until next time!

Experiencing SNOW!

Oh boy was it magical! And deep. Sorry for the millions of pictures but this is a 1/117th of the number I actually took so you're welcome for filtering them that much.

Take us back!!

**This experience made possible by Caden & Conner by lending us their old snow suit. Cousins are the best!**

Christmas with Cousins (this will make you giggle)

Eden is working on her social skills...

Back tickles

In a few minutes we begin one of my least favorite things... Plane rides with Eden. En route to one of our favorite things... Being with family!

We'll be doing lots of this -

Reading Zoom Buggy for the 43rd time that morning...

and this -

Treasure hunts and stories on her back - she loves this.

In hope that we can avoid this -

And this -

It's exhausting. But worth it to spend time with these folk -

And other family I don't have time to find pictures of right now :).

And to wear these clothes -

And help Dad play basketball (although the court may be covered in snow at the moment...) -

Goals for our time away -

Enjoy time with fam

Organize our pictures

Watch some movies

Eat food yummy enough to justify putting on some holiday chub

GET EDEN TO CRAWL!

Meal planning vs. Christmas cards

I should have been meal planning during Eden's nap times today but I decided to design our Christmas cards instead. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Here's a preview of the back to brighten your day - but not to get you in the Christmas mood yet because we have THANKSGIVING next week. Silly.

I was going to just use the picture on the card - but her face expression is too perfect to not have a caption with it. Don't you want to devour all of her - especially the chubs on her legs? Can't get over this girl.

I'm going on round three of a new meal planning system that is changing my life in the kitchen. Still working on finessing it but it's been fabulous. Basically I plan 20-25 meals, make this crazy ingredient/shopping list sorted by grocery store section in Excel, shop for all the meals, take a few days to prep and freeze what I can - and then hardly have to spend anytime cooking until we've used all the meals. I still end up making a trip to the grocery store once a week - but just to grab produce and any other misc. stuff we need. I'm kind of procrastinating this round because - well I don't know what the reason is. Whatever it is it's not a good one because it's not too hard to do... I'll be on it tomorrow.