Haven Araya is ONE year old!!!

I can't believe that my baby girl is one year old already!!!!
Yes, her birthday was on Sunday.  Yes, I am posting this on Tuesday.  No, I don't have her update ready, even now! :(  I just can't do it.  I will, but it might take me a week or two.


She had a great first birthday though!!  It started out a little rough, we had to call Poison Control for the first time ever!  She woke up from her morning nap with stuff all over her and it ended up being the entire container of fish food that she had grabbed off her dresser and opened.  Not knowing what the heck is in that stuff, we had to call and it turned out it was fine... though it DID shake Jason up pretty badly.  
After that we went out to eat with her aunt and uncle and cousins and then we went to the Bear Den Petting Zoo, which is always a good time!  The weather was nice and Haven loved seeing all of the animals and she went on a hay ride too.  
 
 
Then we went back to our house where we had a fire and dinner with more family and she got to eat a cupcake for the first time!  She even blew out her own candle even though I had never practiced that with her before, I just taught her to blow on hot things! :)


Today Haven had her one year well check and shots!  She is doing awesome!!!!  I think her doctor used the term "amazing" at least 3 times, lol!  And I purposefully didn't even tell her all the things she can do! :)  Haven weighed in at 23 pounds (88th%ile) and was 32.5 inches long (100th%ile).  The doctor was laughing that she's so tall, lol!  Her head circumference was 47.5 cm.  She was not a fan of being at the doctor's at all.  She wasn't screaming or anything, but she had tears streaming down her face almost the whole time and her face got all red b/c she was so upset! :(  She did fine with her 2 shots though.  One was a combo MMR and Chicken Pox shot and the other was a half dose of the flu shot.  She's supposed to come back in a month for the 2nd half of the flu shot.  But, I may "forget" to come back, lol.  The nurse said that just having half would offer her protection against it.  I also "forgot" to ask about her lead test.  I just didn't want any more sadness from her!!!  Plus, I really don't think she has any lead problems.


She's beyond all of the things she should be doing, which I knew, but it's nice to hear anyway.  The only thing she needs to work on now is going DOWN the stairs.  Which fills me with absolute anxiety b/c I have an irrational fear of stairs.  I've let her go down a few times and she CAN do it (on her butt), but she likes to stand up and I am soooo scared she's going to fall, so I hold onto her hand while she does it most times.


We've been down to only nursing twice a day recently, and will continue to wean from here.  I've been giving her whole milk w/ all of her meals, so there is really no reason for me to continue nursing anyway.  It's bittersweet.  I love nursing, but am finding it kind of embarrassing like when we were in the waiting room and Haven comes over to me and says perfectly clearly "Mama, Mama.... milk!!!" while pulling at my shirt, haha.  The doctor was happy to hear that we made it this long.  Also, she supports my decision to Extended Rear Face Haven's carseat.  She suggests going until 15 months since Haven is so tall.  I mentally rolled my eyes at her, but I'm thinking that's probably how long we'll go for anyways. She goes back in 3 more months for her 15 month check up and shots.


Other random stuff:  She still has her umbilical hernia (which I knew).  Her top molars are definitely coming in (which I knew).  And her eyes/ ears/ hips, etc. all look good! :)

In denial...

I've been avoiding writing anything on here and avoiding looking at the calendar!!!!  I should have my baby's 1 year update almost done since her birthday is only a few days away, but I just can't even look at it!  If I don't think about it, it won't happen... right?!


Anyway, Venily drew the most awesome person I've ever seen while at the bank today!!!!!!!  It was amazing!  I almost cried!  They have a little kids area with toys at the bank and she drew it on their magnadoodle.  You have no idea how badly I wanted to steal it and bring it home with me or go back out to me car, grab my camera, bring it back in and take a picture of it, lol!  Since being in school she has really taken an interest again in drawing (she'd had stopped for quite some time).  I'm excited because I want to start working on drawing letters with her soon!

Week 2 of preschool!!

Venily finished her 2nd week of preschool!!!!  She LOVES it so much!!!  She gets so excited to go and loves putting on her backpack and her "preschool clothes" and "preschool shoes", etc.  :)  Each day she is so excited to go into her classroom and couldn't care less that I leave her there!  Words cannot even express how proud I am of her... you have no idea how her reaction to going is FAR better than I ever thought imaginable!!!  She is a quiet, "shy" (until she gets to know you) girl that has never left her mom before, but she is so independent and adjusts so well to new environments... it is such a shock to me!  Makes me feel like I'm doing something right! :)

I absolutely love hearing how well her day went and what cool things she got to do that day, what she ate for snack, who she played with at recess, what books the teacher read, etc.!  Venily has an amazing memory and is always telling me everything that happens in the books Mrs. Vivian reads to them! :)


She got a Scholastic Book Club order form today and an invitation to give to her grandparents for "Grandparents and Grand Friends" day so they can come and see her at school (not sure if my mom has to work that day), but how fricken cute is that?!


She is growing up so fast and she's not even 3 yet... and to think, she's (hopefully) going to be riding the bus next year and going to school 5x a week... it's so crazy!!!!

Here's just a few of her artwork pieces from school!  I'm just a little proud of her, lol! :)

A dinosaur she traced... (her teacher was really impressed!) :) 
Some hearts she traced...
A picture of a face she drew... (CORRECTION- I have been informed that it's a dinosaur!! lol.  She really loves dinosaurs right now!)
And some paper she cut...

:) 

Teeth pics

I got a better pic of Haven's 2 new teeth (click to see bigger)...

and a blurry one of her molar coming in....

1st Molar is coming in! :(

Haven's top right molar is coming in now! :(  I was hoping she'd get a little bit of a break.  She's been chewing her fingers like crazy still and I was wondering why since she completely cut the 2 teeth she was cutting a few days ago.  I thought they shouldn't be bothering her anymore since they were all the way through.  Soooo..... I looked in her mouth and sure enough, she has a giant blue bump on her top right molar.  (Venily's molars did the same thing... the first time I saw them I panicked and brought her into the doctor, I was sure it was something much worse, haha!)  It looks incredibly painful.  I hope we don't have to drag this process out! :(


On better updates, when you ask Haven what a train says, she now says "CHOO! CHOO!"  :)


And we have no more....Open mouth kisses from Haven!!  She was doing half and half for a while, sometimes open mouth, sometimes closed mouth with a kiss sound!  Now, however, she always kisses with a closed mouth and kiss sound!  She does the same thing when she blows kisses!!  Her open mouth kiss was so cute, but I love her closed mouth kiss too.... it was fun for a while b/c you never knew what you were going to get, haha!  She is a very loving little girl!  ♥

Finally, I'm also certain she understands the concept of "blue".  She has pointed to several different blue things now and said the word.  She has never said it while pointing at any other color either!!  Apparently BOTH my little girls' favorite color is blue, go figure! :)

Exactly 1 more month!!

Until my biggest little girl turns 3 years old!!!  And only 13 more days until my littlest little girl turns 1 year old!!!  And just under 3 weeks until their combined birthday party!!  We got their birthday tutus in the mail today!  Both girls are super excited about them!  Here's a sneak peek at them wearing their tutus:

(we also have another pink one and a purple one, lol)  I can't wait!!!!!  Venily asks me every day if she can go to her birthday party yet! :)

And another thing....

I wanted to remember....

The other day we were walking down the street to pick up Allison from off the bus (NOT going to be fun w/ 2 kids in the winter!!), and Venily said to me out of nowhere....

"Mommy, you're my BEST friend!"  It was so unexpected, lol!  Usually she tells me that Haven, Allison or Aubree are her best friends!  I love her! :)

Tooth #7 and Tooth #8!

Yay, 2 done at once!!  We had both bottom lateral incisors come in over the last couple of days, bringing us to 8 teeth total!  She's been teething like crazy this last week.  Luckily she wasn't too bad, just a little clingy and wanting me to hold her a lot.  She's also had her hands in her mouth almost constantly all week!


On Sept 10th she got her bottom right incisor in at 11m, 2w, 1d.  And yesterday, Sept 11th, she got her bottom left incisor in at 11m, 2w, 2d.  It's still bothering her a little today, hopefully it's all better by tomorrow!


After the first set of 8, Venily got her molars next, rather than her cuspids.  I don't know why, but I assume Haven will be the same.  Hopefully she'll hold off until after her birthday party.... I remember molars being way worse than any of Venily's other teeth!!

I wanted to get a pic of Haven's new teeth, but she is WAY less cooperative about it than she used to be, lol!  So.... I will have to wait until they get a little bigger and take a pic of her smiling! :)

Update:  Okay, here's the best I could do on a pic.... I will try to get a better one soon, it's kind of blurry but you can kind of see where the new teeth are!  

11 1/2 months old today!!!!

I think this will be my last "half month" update!  After a year, I'll do monthly updates from then on!! We'll see if I can wait a whole month, haha!

I reserved the pavilion at the park for the girls' birthday party!  It's all set for October 3rd!  I had to pull a few Jason moves in order to keep the cost lower (Jason can literally get anyone to do anything he wants!).  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  Now I'm just hoping for nice weather!!

Haven continues to add new words to her vocabulary each day!  A few new ones this last month include:
roll (while rolling her hands), weeee (when she wants to go down a slide or on a riding toy), out, Yay!, bib (she loves to take her bib off and say "bib!  bib!" lol, she also calls anything she puts over her head (like a necklace) a bib *(see below)), door (she loves doors!!), spoon (says it for spoon or fork), blue (not sure she understands the concept yet, but she points to the blue rock on her bracelet and says "BLUE!"), jump (while attempting to jump), na-night (as she lays her head on me or a pillow when she's tired or pretending to sleep, lol!  The other day we were in her room and she was super sleepy.  She goes over to her crib and points at it and says "na-night!" and tries to climb up on it!!  LOL!)  She also says a ton of more "words" that are just the beginnings of words like "bub" for bubbles, etc. and she tries to say grandma (her favorite person besides me, Jason, or Venily!)!


*Side story- This morning she was done w/ breakfast and took off her bib saying "bib, bib" and threw it on the ground.  Then she continued eating a few bites.  Then when she was really done she tried taking off her shirt and was saying "bib, bib" b/c she forgot she had already taken her bib off.  Maybe you had to be there to see it, but I was cracking up!! :)

She memorized her first song a few weeks ago!  She sings it all the time and gets it stuck in her head!!!!  We learned it in her Building Blocks class and she'll start singing it out of nowhere all the time!  It goes "Roll it, roll it... up, up, up.... roll it, roll it... out, out, out... roll it, roll it... clap, clap, clap... roll it, roll it... pat, pat, pat!"  I usually have to help her with what comes next, but sometimes she does the whole thing by herself!!!!!  She has also started to try to sing other songs.  She doesn't say any words to them, but she 'sings' while I'm singing, sooooo cute!


We've been to the zoo twice in the last few weeks and Haven just loves it!!  She LOVES animals so much!  And she loves to say what sounds they make!  She's learned 3 new animal "sounds".  Frog (ribbit, ribbit, while bobbing up and down), giraffe (what?!  You don't know what a giraffe says?!  lol.  She touches her neck b/c giraffes have a long neck! :)  ) and yesterday she FINALLY learned what a pig says (she makes the pig noise...hmmm.... not sure how you "spell" that, haha!).  That puts her at 19 animal sounds!!!!!  I wish I could get a good video of all of her sounds, but she is a crazy one.  Here are a couple that I took a few weeks ago...



And here's some pics from the zoos:

She is getting really good at answering yes or no questions!  She doesn't say "yes" yet, but she has the "no" down good!  Like I can say "Are you hungry Haven?"  and if she is, she'll say:  "Eat, eat, eat!" and runs to her highchair and tries to get in! and if she's not, she'll say "NO!"

Unfortunately, her frequent use of "no" means that she is arguing a lot more with Venily!  Especially in the car!  They go back and forth all the time.  Here is a video, but it gets a lot sassier than this, lol!  And one time Venily was busy doing something and Haven kept saying "NO, NO!!" (then wait for Venily to answer) then say "NNNNOO!" (wait) then she said "TES!" and then she was back to "NO!" again, arguing with herself! :)  And if she is playing by herself in the house and I hear her saying "no, no, no!" she is for sure doing something naughty, usually climbing up on something!


While I'm laying on the floor, she loves to run over and sit on my back and say "neigh, neigh!"  :)  HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I ABSOLUTELY LOVE HER?!  lol.  She has me laughing ALL day long!  She also rides anything else she can get on!

She loves washing her hands in the sink and whenever I wash mine she rubs hers together like she's washing them too!  She also dries her hands and face on the towel all by herself.  She is obsessed with stealing wipes and wiping her face and the floor and everything else she can find as well!  I guess there are worse things to love to do, haha!  Sometimes I just give her a wipe to "clean" things while I try to get chores done!


She is doing so great on whole cow's milk!  She has been drinking one cup a day with lunch and has had ZERO problems!!!!!  We are still nursing 3-4 times a day, and I'm trying to wait until her 1 year check up before I start trying to cut out more nursing sessions and adding in more milk!  But I don't see any problems at all with the whole weaning process.  The only time she every REALLY wants to nurse is sometimes in the morning and if we are ever out in public and it's past her nap time!  The other day at the zoo, she didn't get to nap and was pulling open my shirt saying "Milk! Milk!"..... kind of embarrassing, lol!  I think my sister and I are the only ones that noticed though! :)


On Tuesday she started cutting through tooth #7 (bottom left).  I just checked this morning and it's finally all the way through and tooth #8 (bottom right) is starting to cut through today also!!  Hopefully both the bottoms finish up soon!  I can't believe that she will have 8 teeth for her first birthday, since Venily only had 4! :)


There have been a few times now that Haven has said "poop, poop" right BEFORE she's pooped!!  One time I was able to get her on the toilet first.  Hopefully that's a sign of good things to come in the following months!


Her current favorite song= "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".  She likes to give me the animal sounds.  I will have to get a video.  Really, I should just get cameras installed all throughout my house b/c she's just so darn cute ALL DAY LONG!!!  ♥

And some "just because" videos I haven't put on here yet!!
HAVEN:


VENILY:

First Day of Preschool!!!!

My big girl is officially a preschooler!!!  I can't even believe it!!

She's been so excited and talking about preschool for several weeks straight now!  We got ready, dropped Allison off on the bus and headed to her school.  When we got into the parking lot, she says "Look at my legs Mommy!" (she was still sitting in her car seat and kicking her legs like crazy) and then says "I'm so excited about preschool!".  LOL, and then Haven was copying her... she must have been excited too!!  :)  She put her backpack on and headed into the school.  She hung her backpack and jacket up in her cubby and went into her classroom. She found her name at the little table and sat down.  I looked at her and she was so pretty and so grown up looking I almost lost it right there, haha!  I kissed her and hugged her and said goodbye.  She said goodbye to me and that was it.  No tears, no begging me to stay!  She was being really quiet, but that's usually how she gets in new situations.  As I was heading out the door I peeked back in on her and she was picking out a play dough color to play with (blue, of course!).  I had to go down in the basement and learn how to clock her in and out on the machine.  I checked back in on her without her seeing me, she was doing such a good job... I'm so proud of her!

I started crying as I drove home.  Then I would get it together for a bit and then picture her sitting back at that table and lose it again, haha!  Oh, she is just getting so big!!

I worried a lot for the 3 hours she was gone!  I kept thinking of all the things that could be going wrong, etc.  But when I came to pick her up, she ran over to me and gave me a huge hug!  She and her teacher (and the preschool director) told me that she had a great day!!!!  I am so, sooo, soooooo PROUD OF HER!!!!!!  The whole ride home she told me all about her new friends and what she did today!  She can't wait to go back next week!!  And she already has a whole backpack full of artwork that she did today, haha!  (P.S. I totally forgot to clock her back out... oops!)

This is the first time I've ever left her anywhere (besides with immediate family) and she did SO AMAZING!!!  I don't think there's anything this girl can't do!

******************

-As always, I have a lot of updates for Haven, but am saving them for her 11.5 month update on Friday!!

My big girl preschooler!!!

We went to open house last night and met Venily's teacher, saw the school again, and got to meet some of her new friends.  I really don't anticipate ANY problems for her first day (next Wednesday) at all!!  She wanted us to leave her there and didn't want to come home, haha!  As soon as we got there, she just went right up to a group of kids and started playing with them!  Her teacher, Mrs. Vivian, has been at the school for over 18 years, and has her education degree, so I feel very comfortable with her.   She only has 7 kids in her class (the max #) and Venily is the youngest of them all.  Most are already 3 and turning 4 this year, but she is so tall that you would never have guessed it, haha.  Plus, she is SUPER smart and will have zero problems keeping up.  I'm actually really hoping that it's challenging enough for her- they had told me previously that they will teach to her level (otherwise I don't think I would have put her in the school).  I have to keep reminding myself that my main objective in putting her in preschool is to get her used to the school setting, not to necessarily teach her academics.  How bad is it that I almost had a mild panic attack when I saw the alphabet up on the wall in her room wasn't in D'Nealian?!  haha.  I REALLY want to get her into 4k next year.  I really like the teacher in the 4k classroom at the school she'll go to and I have subbed for her numerous times.  Plus it's 5x a week and FREE!  It sucks that she misses the cutoff by a month and a half, but she should be able to EASILY test into it.  I still need to do some more research as to how the testing process goes... If I thought it was possible, I'd put her right into 5 year old kindergarten next year, but I don't think they can do that with such a young child.

Next month she goes to a field trip to the Apple Barn!!!  How fricken cute it that?!  I am tearing up writing about it!  Ahhhhhhh!  I really hoping I'm not the only mom crying as I walk out of her classroom next week....

Yesterday I scheduled her 3 year old check up for next month and also her very first dentist appointment!!  She is excited about it now, but tends to be VERY shy to adults at first (especially guys) and I don't know who her dentist is going to be.  Not to mention that Allison has off of school that day so I am going to be bringing all 3 kids to the dentist... that should be interesting! :)