One Year

One year ago today I was debating when to wake Jeremy up to tell him I had been in labor all night.  Six hours later I was having to convince myself that the wailing baby on my chest was, in fact, the creature that had been living in my belly for almost ten months.  I can't believe it's been a year.  It's a bittersweet day for me.  Every day is more fun with Eliza, she's learning so much so fast but good gracious it's going too fast!

The changes over the past month have been astounding.  Eliza started signing, which is stinking adorable.  She can wave hi and bye, sign "doggie" (which she also uses for cats), "more", "eat" and - her favorite - "all done!"  She will walk if you hold her hands - I'm sure she could do it on her own if she wanted, but she finds crawling to be much more efficient.  Her favorite place to crawl is up and down the stairs which is more than a little nerve-wracking.  She babbles constantly, and mimics anyone who coughs, sneezes or yawns.  She sniffs flowers and plays "night night" by laying down if you say it.  She gives huge slobbery open-mouthed kisses and sweet hugs.  She loves her pets and gets SUPER excited when she hears the dogs coming.  We go swimming once a week and she really digs it - recently she's started kicking on her own and no longer screams bloody murder when I put her under the water.  She absolutely LOVES books.  If it were up to her I think I would spend all day reading to her.  Her favorite pastime is to pull ALL her books off the shelves and systematically bring them to me one-by-one to read.

Sleeping has improved somewhat - she can now put herself to sleep and doesn't have to be rocked, however in the past week or so she has gone from waking up twice to three or four times.  I'm hoping it's a tooth and we'll be back to normal soon.  When I start to get sad about her turning one already, I just remind myself - I'm one year closer to a full night's sleep!

We are having a big old birthday bash at the Inn this weekend and cousin Erin is going to do a cake smash photoshoot, so I promise I will get pictures up soon.

And now, as per usual, a zillion pictures from the past month!

Bathtime!

First haircut!  She was pretty upset at first, then calmed down and by the end was having a blast!

When the Basharas visited we went to the Ice Castle in Silverthorne.  Beautiful!

Zoo Day!

I love the way she sleeps, arms sprawled

She does this "crazy" smile when she gets super excited

Puppy Love

Looks so big sitting in her chair!

Boxes are awesome!

Cruisin!

Always wants to go outside

Playtime with cousin Malcolm.  I love the look they both have like - "Whadduyu want?"

Mastering the stairs

Family shot

Auditioning for KISS

Sunday morning hike, princess on her litter

Happy girl

Favorite pastime

A few weeks ago, E learned how to stack rings on a stick.  For the first few days, she decided there was only one good way to remove them.  So weird!

Bouncy fun!

She looooves to give herself kisses in the mirror :)

(For some reason sometimes this video plays sideways, but YouTube is making my brain hurt - I give up, sorry!)

Austin jaunt

We got late last week from a last-minute trip to Austin.  Jeremy's work schedule suddenly lightened up (read: 40 hour weeks instead of 60 hour weeks) and so he suggested we book it to Texas before their summer kicks in.  We still had two days in the low 90s while we were there, but overall it was a very pretty time to visit.  We drove overnight both there and back and Eliza did remarkably well.  We have a good little traveller on our hands.  Funnily enough I was worried about her sleeping even worse than normal in a new place but she slept better in Austin than she had been at home.  Of course now that we're back she's resumed her insomniac ways.  I wish I could figure out why!  Ah well.

Josh, Chandra and Izzy were awesome hosts as per usual and didn't bat an eyelash when we decided to stay an extra few days.  We had planned to be in Austin for a little over a week and when it came time to leave we just didn't feel like we had seen all the people and done all of the things that we wanted to, so we stayed on for another four days and it was the perfect amount of time.  We were happy to get home but didn't feel too rushed.

Pretty much all we did on our trip was stuff ourselves with Tex-Mex (ooogh tight jeans!) and visit friends and family.  My cousin Charlie and his wife Kari had their second little one two days before we arrived so we got to snuggle a brand new baby.  Eliza had a lot of fun playing with other babies and old friends.  She is a pretty happy baby these days - as long as she has mom or dad nearby.  Stranger anxiety makes it so she doesn't like to be held by new people but as long as she's in our arms she is happy to play peek-a-boo and flirt like a pro.

We came home to much colder weather, but I was excited to find my iris and tulips starting to poke up in the front yard.  Which means - time to get my act together for the garden!  Now that I'm home with Eliza I am determined to buckle down and be more organized about my vegetable beds in the back - up to now I've just thrown things in higgledy-piggledy and had mixed results.  I have a feeling that by planting time I'll have Eliza back there with me toddling around.  She's cruising on the furniture pretty well and I bet she's walking before we know it!

Peek-a-boo!

Playing with Dylan - mostly trying to steal his toys but D stood his ground!

Jeromy making E cry!

Playing with friend Asha's giant bear

Izzy's concert

Watching some cartoons

Playing with cousin Brooke

New baby Samuel

Our baby has a big head!

Sleeping SO peacefully in Austin

Jammin out

Enjoying the sunshine

Bunny ears from Anton

Rocking out on the drive 

Isabella can make her laugh like no one else!

10 Months

I can't believe it's been a month since I last blogged, it has flown by!  Eliza is so much fun right now.  She is getting into everything and having fun 99% of the time.  She likes to bob her head and "dance," clap, play peek-a-boo, eat all kinds of solid foods and pull up on everything she can crawl to.  She is desperately trying to master climbing the stairs - while I try to sit back and be zen about it even though all I want to do is go pull her away from them!  We went to our third swimming lesson today and it was the first time she was actually happy in the water.  The first two lessons she just put up with it but today she actually had fun kicking and splashing around.  I do feel like I should get an award for having to haul my 25 pound baby out of the water for each shot when we play water basketball while all the other parents nimbly pluck their mere 15 pounders out of the water :-p

Not much else is going on in the Grolnar household other than watching the time speed by through the growth of our little one.  We're trying to plan a trip out to Austin here soon before it gets too hot there, but other than that we're just hangin out having fun.

All the cool kids climb the stairs topless

Showing off her tongue

Dad refinished the table and chair that my grandfather made for him and that we all grew up with.  He made the "F" on the chair into an "E."  I absolutely love this and Eliza does too!

Hanging out in her special chair

Of course within an hour she had figured out that it can be used for climbing purposes.  D'oh!

Almost too big for the Johnny Jumpup.  That's going to be a sad sad day for all of us.

Sleeping with her lovey - Jeremy named him "nom nom"

All bundled up!

Very dark video, but you can see some of Eliza's sweet moves

Playing peek-a-boo

Peekaboo again!

Swimming

9 Months

Today we went to Eliza's 9 month well check and she's looking healthy as can be.  She's still over the 97th percentile in weight and head circumference but hasn't grown much lengthwise and is at the 50th percentile.  She's trying hard to maintain that buddha-esque figure ;-)

It's been a month of changes and I am blown away by how quickly Eliza learns new things.

After a few weeks of trying and mostly failing with baby food I finally called the doctor - every night was a fight as E clamped her mouth shut at the sight of a spoon and promptly spit out anything we could sneak into her mouth.  We got the go ahead to skip baby food and move onto finger foods and that has been a huge relief.  While E still has trouble getting anything remotely sticky from the table to her mouth, she is doing great with rice puffs and loves freeze dried yogurt chips.  God forbid we try to put anything in her mouth ourselves though - this little girl is independent and wants to do it all herself!

Another big change we've seen this month is that Eliza is babbling like crazy.  She was pretty quiet (other than crying and yelling) up until around Christmas.  Now she has mastered pa-pa, da-da and ba-ba as well as the ever-amusing raspberry.

E is not quite pulling up all the way but can get one foot planted and the other knee up which is almost as effective. If you get her started she can stand for several minutes.  She got an activity table from Jeremy's sister and her family and she LOVES it.  It has really motivated her to get good at standing so she can bang on all of the instruments.

The big development came on her nine month birthday when she finally figured out how to get her little legs working and started crawling!  Little dingus waited until I was gone and did it for her daddy :-p  It is so cute, she still doesn't really know she can do it.  She'll just get really excited about something across the room, crawl to it and look around like "How the heck did I get over here?"  I'm sure that will only last for a couple of days and then all hell will break loose around here.  About that baby proofing I was going to do last month . . . . .

With all of the changes going on, Eliza has had a major sleep regression.  My champion sleeper from the early days has officially left the building.  A few weeks ago she started getting up every two hours to nurse, and then the last two nights she has decided that she must be held in order to sleep.  By me.  Only me.  I am pretty determined to avoid crying it out, so at this point am just surviving on coffee and the promise that there is sleep at the end of this tunnel.  Other than scaring the hell out of Jeremy with a 4am pillow punch and war cry the other night, I feel like I've been able to keep it together pretty well :-p

Alright alright, enough blabbing here are the pictures! :0)

Bahahaha toy explosion!!!

Fun with cousins!

She was so perplexed by the giraffes!

Boo!

Nasty food face!

Bananas require stripping down!

Fun Christmas toys!

Conquering friend Jack

Sweet face

Monster jammies

SO much fun!

She loves to bang her head on the wall!

Fun table from the Ullmanns

Crawling!