New Playroom

Ok, not really a room, but don't tell her that! Last week I cleaned out Alex's closet. There were a ton of clothes that no longer fit her, stuff that I just pile up when I don't have time to hang it or fold it and well, it was just a mess! I cleaned out her built-in shelves and put some of her board books on the bottom shelf and 2 Boppys on the second shelf. She goes in her closet everyday now to read. She pulls the Boppys down, sits on them and reads her books. She loves it! The only bad part, she can see her shoes on the shelf and fusses and points at them until I lift her up to pick out a pair to put on.

A little cut

Alex's hair was getting really really long! Her bangs were constantly in her eyes if I didn't pull her hair back and even if I did, it would still slide out of the rubberband and fall in her eyes. I decided to give it a little trim. Not an easy task to do alone, but I was armed with a cup full of puffs and Handy Manny!

I mean, there is just nothing cute about this!

The after...a few days later! She still needs to get a real hair cut sometime, but this will do for now!

16 Months Old

Alexandra is 16 months old today! She is still into everything. With her new found ability to open doors, it forces us to keep all the rooms picked up since she now has the run of the house. A few of her favorite places are the laundry room, where she turns the washer and dryer off and on, the office, where she loves playing on the keyboard and with the mouse, and our bathroom, where she loves playing in my drawer where I keep a ton of cheapie jewelry that she puts on. She knows when she isn't supposed to do something because she will look at us and shake her head no, but it doesn't keep her doing it 2 seconds later.

She LOVES dancing! She bounces, steps side to side, spins circles and tries snapping her fingers. She loves dancing with Josh, he will hold her and she will put her hand up so he can hold it while they dance...she may have seen dancing with the stars one too many times!

She and Cooper are soo cute together. They play all the time. They take each other toys to play with. Alex is very bossy to Cooper. If he is in her room and she doesn't want him in there, she will push his rear end until he gets out. If we are going outside and she doesn't want him to come she will push him away from the door, or if she wants him to come, she will push him so he goes outside.

She is getting good at understanding us. If I ask her if she wants milk, she will go to the fridge and try to open it, if I ask her if she wants to watch Oso, she will go to the coffee table and try to open the drawer where we keep the remotes. When I close the blinds in her room and turn on the white noise machine, she hauls butt out of her room so she doesn't have to take a nap.

We are working on self feeding with a spoon. She will pretend feed herself with a spoon, but if there is food on it, all she wants to do is pick up the food off the spoon with her fingers to feed herself.

She has gone back to waking up at night every few nights. We will have a day or two where she sleeps all night, then a night she wakes up. It is usually pretty easy to get her back down, I'll rock her for a few minutes the put her back in her crib and she will go back to sleep. If Cooper comes in to check on us, it's a different story. She gets all wound up and wants to play with him. I am still praying the up at night is due to teething. She was sleeping through the night every single night until she started cutting teeth.

While she was at Nomi's she started taking 2 naps a day again, since she has been home, she's back to one!

She seems to be at a standstill with growing. She is still wearing 12 month pants, jammies and dresses. 18 month pants fall off of her. She had to move into 18 month tops because 12 months were too short. She can actually still wear some of her 9 month onesies, pants and dresses.

every once in a while, you can catch her winking at you!

Her monthly chair picture!

Her bitty baby is wearing one of her preemie outfits that she used to wear!

I can not believe she was that small!

At Last

Josh and I made it back from Vegas last night. We had a blast. We started our vacation a day early by heading to Austin to see my best friend, Shannon, and her husband Neal. We went to The Hula Hut for drinks and Homeslice for pizza! While we were in Vegas, we ate, gambled, shopped, ate some more and gambled some more. I' m not going to lie, it was nice to try and sleep in (even though I was wide awake at 6am every morning), not be on a schedule and just enjoy spending time with each other, but I don't think being away from Alex for 4 nights is something I'll be doing again any time soon. We were kinda lame and spent a lot of time in our room, relaxing, watching TV and I read a book. We pretty much stayed in in a 2 block radius from our hotel. We have both been to Vegas several times so we didn't feel the need to sight see or anything. I had so much fun just eating! We had some great food and dessert with dinner every night. I think I gained 5 pounds while we were there since we would eat huge dinners at 9:30 or 10, then go to sleep.

Even though we had a blast, I missed my baby girl. It wasn't a bad miss, like I wanted to go home immediately, but I just missed holding her. I got tons of pictures every day. I loved seeing what she was up to. I knew she was having a good time with my mom, so that put me much more at ease. I could not wait to get home to see her. We got home around 7:30 and Alex was beyond tired. She was in the kitchen so I went in and sat on the floor. She kinda looked at me like she didn't know what to do, then came to me and hugged me. She stayed with me for a few minutes then wanted Nomi. We let her stay up a little later to play then she was more than ready for bed. She was up at 5am so I brought her to our bed and she slept until the alarm went off at 6:30. It was soo great to have her back in my arms. We spent our day just playing and hanging out. She was soo sweet and giggly, but didn't want me out of her sight. It's weird going 5 days without seeing her. She looks more like a little girl than a baby to me now. I guess I never noticed as much because I was so used to seeing her every single day. Josh and I are looking forward to our weekend at home with our pumpkin and no plans!

While we were gone tooth #9 popped up! She now has her first top molar on her left side.

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated Halloween last weekend at my parents. They have a party every year and it is always fun! We missed last year because Josh had a work event the same day so we were soo excited to go this year. I wanted our costumes to incorporate Alex. My main thing was for her to be comfortable so I found cute thermal jammies, added a bunny tail and she wore bunny ears. I was a playboy bunny and Josh was Hef!

I am sad to admit, we didn't do anything for Halloween. I love our house, but our neighborhood consist of 2 street with 8 houses and everyone is older, like no kids, only grand kids. The larger neighborhood we are connected to are all huge lots that sit back off the street and there really aren't street lights so I didn't want to take Alex through there. I really don't know if people trick or treat through there or not. Alex wore her Halloween shirt and went to the door with me for the one group of trick or treaters we had. This is one of the times I wish we lived in a younger neighborhood that did activities for kids and families. That's something I will definitely think about when we look to move. (Not that it's happening any time soon!)

Tomorrow we are meeting my parents in Waco to switch cars so they can take Alex and Cooper to their house until Thursday. Josh and I are then off to Austin to stay the night with my best friend, Shannon, and her husband. Monday morning, we are going to Vegas. I am sooo excited about Vegas, but so sad about thinking of leaving my pumpkin for 4 nights. I cried putting her to bed tonight because I know it will be 4 nights before I am the one putting her to bed again. As much as I know I am going to miss her, I know she needs to spend time away from me. She is totally and completely a mama's girl. I took Cooper to the vet this morning while Josh stayed home with Alex and she had a fit. When she saw Cooper's leash, she went to her stroller because she thought we were going on a walk. When she realized we weren't she stood at the door waiting for us to go somewhere. When I left without her she cried and cried. I was gone about 45 minutes and Josh said she cried off and on the whole time. While I was in the shower earlier, I could hear her crying outside our bedroom door. She busted in and was happy to play in the bathroom until I finished. She can not stand not to be where I am. If Josh is giving her milk before bed and I leave the room, she wiggles and squirms until he lets her down and she follows after me to see where I am going. If she is eating and I leave the room, she cranes her neck to see if she can see where I went. If Josh and I are both home and I go into another room and shut the door without her noticing, before I can count to 5, she is banging on the door. It doesn't matter what room I'm in, she always knows. Josh said she can smell me! So, a break from me will be good for her...and me! It may be hard for Nomi, but I know my baby girl, she loves her Nomi and she will have a blast with her!

for now

I know it's a poor quality pic, but I'm too lazy to upload pics from my camera so this is from my phone. Anyway, we went to my parents this weekend. They have a Halloween party every year. Due to scheduling conflicts, they had it a week early which worked out great for us since we are going to Las Vegas this Sunday!!!

I'm sure you can tell from the picture, but Josh was Hef and Alex was a little bunny. She lasted about 30 minutes, then crashed and was out the rest of the night despite all the noise from the party. I have a ton of pics, but I'll wait until Halloween to post them!

Alex is still going great on one nap a day, which I love! Abby is still taking two naps so during her morning nap, Alex and I get to spend some quality time playing! She is such a busy bee. She learned how to open doors today. She has been trying for about a week and couldn't quite reach the lever, but tonight she got it! She has to get on her tip toes and reach as high as she can to open it. The whole family was playing in Alex's room this evening and Cooper was just being a pain. He wouldn't let Alex come near us without him being right there so I put him out of her room. She could see him under her door and he kept sticking his paw under the door and she thought it was the funniest thing ever. She would put her hand under the door trying to get Coop's paw or nose then he would lick her hand. Josh and I watched them for about 5 minutes, cracking up the whole time! I love that they play so well together. Cooper is always taking one is his nasty chewed up toys to Alex so she will play with him.

We've let Alex start going to sleep with a toy. Her glow worm stays in her crib now. I don't know why I haven't thought of it before, but she will lay in her crib playing with it for a while until she falls asleep and in the morning she will play with it when she wakes up until we get her. Last night about 30 minutes after she went down, she started screaming and crying like she was hurt. I went into check on her and realized she was upset because the batteries died in the glow worm and he wouldn't play music or light up. It took me a while, but I put new batteries in and by that point Alex was wide awake. We let her stay up until 8:30. We were watching Dancing with the Stars which she LOVES. She stays glued to the TV, dances while the stars are dancing then claps when they are done. She is soo cute!

We have molars!

Tooth # 7 and 8 popped up in the last day! In addition to all four central incisors, 2 top lateral incisors she now has her first molars on the right side, both top and bottom!