Sharing the cuteness

So Jillian has done a few things the past couple days that have either brought tears to my eyes with pride or from laughing hysterically (or trying not to.) I thought I would share...

1. I've been reading this little book to her all summer called "The Little Hen." It has pictures of animals in it and a little story about a chick looking for other chicks to play with. I like to add animal sounds to it because I've been trying to get her to learn animal sounds all summer to no avail. Well yesterday I was reading the book to her and I turned to the page with the cows on it and all of a sudden she pointed at the cows and said "moo moo moo." I was so excited, but I didn't want to get too excited in case it was a fluke. Then I turned to the next page with horses on it and she immediately pointed to the horses and said "neigh neigh neigh!" I seriously had to go back and forth between the pages several times testing her to make sure it was real! I was so excited that she's actually been listening to me all summer! Such a proud Mommy moment!

2. We've been trying timeout with Jillian lately for various reasons...biting (ugh!), throwing tantrums or not minding us when we tell her not to do something. Tonight she was playing in the fireplace (a place we tell her not to play in all the time even though there's nothing in there that could hurt her now, there will be in the future) and we went through the whole ordeal of telling her no and she continued to play in the fireplace. Frank went to move her away and she grabbed on to the grate in the fireplace and wouldn't let go. Frank said "Jillian, do you want to go to timeout?" She let go of the grate and nodded her head. So Frank said, "Ok, go to timeout." She walked over to the place on the wall that we sit her, backed up to it and sat down. Frank and I could barely contain our laughter! She sat there for a minute like always and got up and went to Frank like she's supposed to. Hilarious! Either this timeout thing is working for us or it's starting to backfire. Guess we'll find out soon enough!

15 months

On Saturday, July 3rd, Jillian turned 15 months! This is such a great age. She is learning so many things.

What is she up to?

• She is still wearing all 12 month clothes.
• She is still wearing size 3 diapers.
• She wears size 3 shoes, but we think she's about to need size 4.
• She has 10 teeth, 4 front top teeth and one molar on the top, and 4 front bottom teeth and one molar on the bottom.
• She is eating very well for the most part. She has days that she will eat everything in sight and days that she just picks.
• We got her on the bathroom scale and she's weighing about 20.5 lbs. Who knows how accurate that is, though!
• She loves to play and read books. Daddy got her first real (not the stuffed one she's had since she was born) babydoll for her and she loves it! She pushes it in her stroller and kisses it and loves on it.

• She loves ice and ice water. She will drink it non-stop if we let her (just like Mommy.)
• She saying so many more things now that I don't even know where to begin. I think my favorite is "Blugh" with her tongue sticking out for blue or blueberries (her favorite food.) She will repeat a lot of the things we say and she sometimes surprises us with saying things like "thank you" when we haven't prompted it.
• She learning her body parts and will point to ears, eyes, nose and mouth on her doll or someone else, but she won't do it on herself yet.
• She loves to dance or "boogie, boogie" with me during the day. She thinks is so fun to spin around. Of course she does it so much that she gets dizzy and falls down, but it's still fun!

• She's very good about telling us when she is ready to go to bed. She grabs one of her blankies and walks to the stairs and stands at the gate until we get there to pick her up and take her to bed.
• She loves swimming and water. It doesn't matter if it's her tub, a big swimming pool or her little splash pool. We took her in a big swimming pool this past weekend and she wanted to take off swimming on her own like the big kids. I don't know why we were surprised, she's always been a little dare-devil.
• She is still 100% a daddy's girl. She loves me, but if daddy is around wants to be with him and I could go away and she wouldn't care or notice. I was concerned that we would have problems this summer, with me staying home with her, but we've had a great time!
• We have gotten rid of the noise machine that she slept with since she was born. I was planning on gradually getting rid of it, but the cd started acting up a couple weeks ago and stopped working all of a sudden. She's been without it ever since with no problem. In fact, we think she might actually sleep better!

It's amazing how fast she is growing and learning new things! I don't know where my little baby went, but I sure do miss her! No baby anymore, we have a BIG GIRL now!

1st Haircut

Little miss was long overdue for her 1st haircut. While I was kind of sad to see her long hair go...it was starting to get pretty scraggily looking.

BEFORENot the best picture, but you can at least see how long her hair had gotten.

DURING

Do you think she liked it???? :)

Not even The Wiggles could help!

AFTEREnjoying the sucker she got for sitting still.

And the back.

Excuse my house. Jillian makes it a little difficult to keep things neat (not that I was the best housekeeper before.)

We've got our work cut out for us...

Let me explain this picture...she's throwing a fit because I wouldn't give her the camera to play with. The reason I was taking the picture was to show her newest obsession...the green jellies. She wants to wear them constantly. And watch out if you try to take them off, another fit ensues.

Already wanting to drive Daddy's truck (or press the buttons on the steering wheel.)

14 months already?!?!

I can't believe Jillian is 14 months already! She is just a sponge right now. She is soaking up everything around her. What is she up to?

Not so easy to get her to sit still...

• She's wearing some 9 month clothes now, but the 12 month clothes are finally starting to not look like they are swallowing her.

• She wears size 3 diapers.

• She has 8 teeth and is working on getting her first molar. I saw it poking through her gums tonight.

• Her main way of getting around is walking. And little miss thinks she can run too. Too bad it always ends up with her doing a face-plant.

• Girl has an appetite on her still. I have no idea where she puts it, but she loves fruit and bread right now. The other stuff is ok, but not her favorite.

• She is obsessed with toilet paper. We've found this on many occasions lately...We've learned to keep the toilet paper off the holder and keep the doors to the bathrooms closed due to this newest development.

• We pulled out her splash pool on Memorial Day Weekend and she LOVED it! Beach Baby

Having fun in the pool

• I think I've mentioned a few times that Jillian loves to climb...especially on the stairs. She has no preference as to how she climbs them either...

I'm too cute to get mad at me!

What do you mean this isn't how I'm supposed to do it?

• She loves spending time outside. This past Saturday when I was at work, Frank took her to Challenger park and she had a blast!

Hanging out on the park bench


Chatting with Daddy

And yes Marissa, those are Nike Shox...


Today was my first day home with her for Summer break. I'm so excited to be able to spend all this time with her. I've missed my little munchkin so much and she's at such a fun age!

13 months

This little munchkin turned 13 months on Monday! She keeps Frank and I cracking up all the time and on our toes. So what has she been up to??

• She's still wearing 9 month clothes. I actually think she's finally tall enough for the pants to actually fit her without us having to roll them up. I'm still putting her in some of her 12 month clothes because I'm scared that the weather will change before she grows into them and she won't get a chance to wear them!
• She has got a major appetite now! She will eat anything if we are eating it too, but her favorites are macaroni and cheese (as evidenced below...it was all in her hair and in her ear too,) yogurt, yogurt melts, freeze dried apples, cereal bars, anything with bread, green beans, squash, zucchini and turkey lunch meat. The girl can put away some food, but she doesn't seem to be gaining much weight. I guess she's burning it all off...

• Speaking of burning it all off. As of Thursday, April 29, our little girl is finally doing this....
  

She has improved so much in the past week. She started off taking at most 5 steps in a row, but now she's just going anywhere and everywhere! We're so proud of her and she's pretty proud of herself too. She loves to chase after the animals...they aren't too excited about this new development, however. Such a big girl!

• She's started giving us kisses. She's given Mason kisses for a while, but every time we'd ask her to give us kisses she's turn her head away. Now she thinks it's so much fun to give us kisses, too. We think it's pretty great, also...little slobbery, but great nonetheless!
• She absolutely loves playing with other kids. We've decided she definitely needs a brother or sister...but an older one. Anyone want to donate one to us?? :) She thinks big kids are the greatest! We had Jacob, Justin and Blake over last weekend and she loved chasing after the older boys. Our best attempt at a group picture in the wagon (Jillian, Justin, Blake and Jacob pulling)

• Her vocabulary is definitely increasing. She now says "bir" (bird, or anything outside, really,) "ca" (cat,) "ba" (ball,) "mama," "dada," "dah" (dog,) "ssss" (shhh,) "uhoh," "bye bye," "yes," and a few more but I'm drawing a blank. She's pretty much try to imitate anything we say if we say "Can you say ______?" We're definitely trying to be more cognizant of the things we say because we don't want her picking up some of the not so nice words that Mommy and Daddy say frequently.
• We think she might be trying to transition herself to one nap a day. She's started taking very short naps during the week at my Mom's house and this weekend both days she only took one morning nap. She gets a little fussy around 3, but she gets her second wind and is happy until bedtime. I know most babies drop their morning nap, but we're going to go with the flow and see if we can slowly but surely push back the morning nap. If it doesn't go too well now, I'm not worried. I'll work on it over the Summer.

We are so proud of our little munchkin! She brings us more joy than we could possibly have ever imagined. We love watching all the new things she is learning and spending time with her more than anything else! I can't wait to spend the whole Summer with her (only 4 more weeks!)

1 year portraits...just a little late!

Better late than never!