Baby Sign Language

We have done a little bit of baby sign language with Penny and they teach it to her at school. I was kind of unsure about it at first, but it really works! When she was still taking a bottle, she would do the sign for milk. Now that she's older, she uses it a lot when she eats. The two we use the most are "more" and "all done". It makes feeding her a lot easier! She also knows "cracker" and we are working on a few more.

More!

All done!

Penny's Birthday Party

A child's birthday party is a funny thing. I spent months and months planning Penny's first birthday party and hours putting it all together. When look back at the pictures it's nice to see, but it doesn't look like it would have taken so many hours. And she won't even remember it. :) At least she can look back on the awesome pictures!

We had the wonderful privilege to have Heather Lily from Heather Lily Photography, come and shoot Penny's party. She was amazing and it was nice to not have to worry about one of us missing something while being behind a camera. The shots came out amazing!

So here's t he party in a nutshell! The photo's are in random order,  ran out of patience trying sort them. 

 I made this wreath to hang on our door every year for her birthday.

Balloons to look like a caterpillar

More caterpillar balloons and the keepsake book we had guest sign

Most of the food had little signs that went with the story

Cake close up

Caterpillars made from laterns

Her cake, it was from Walmart and turned out awesome!

The main table

She cried the whole time we sang to her, it was kind of cute

She didn't get into the smash cake too much

Opening present after a nice bath

She was one tired little lady at the end of the day

Penny's First Birthday

I can't believe that Penny's first birthday was over a month ago! Time sure does fly! Her actual birthday was on a Wednesday. I have to admit, I cried a little bit that morning. I just couldn't believe that our tiny baby was already 1 and not really a baby anymore.
Jessyel sent me the cutest picture ever of our little birthday girl.

We tried unsuccessfully to take her out to dinner that night after we picked her up from day care. She cried almost the whole time and we ended up taking our food home in boxes and eating it cold after she went to bed. It's a funny story now! The restaurant gave us some ice cream to take home, I think our waiter felt bad for us, so we gave her that and sang to her that night. Overall, it was a nice day that I'll never forget.

First Time Eating From a Bowl

Our pediatrician warned us at the one year visit that sometime in the near future Penny wouldn't let us feed her anymore. I think that day is very near. Today, I made her some eggs and tried to feed them to her. She immediately spit them out on me. So, I tried putting some on her tray. She gobbled them right up! My next thought was hmm... maybe she could eat out of the bowl. She dumped the bowl out all over the tray and then put her banana it. Then, I got nervous that she would throw it on the floor and break it so I took. Just another tiny moment that means she's getting bigger and bigger.

Zoo Fail

Today is the last day of my summer break so I wanted to do something fun. So we decided to go to the zoo! It was supposed to rain so we opted for a morning zoo trip. Two hours later, we were finally off! On the way, I realized that we had forgotten to take the stroller from my car and put it in Jessyel's car.  Jessyel said that he would just carry her around.  Upon arrival, we found that we also had forgotten her hat. So, here we were at the zoo with nothing to cover Penny from the sun. We bought her a hat at the overpriced gift shop and then looked into renting a nasty zoo stroller. The strollers at the zoo don't have sun shades, so off we went. It felt like it was about 1,000 degrees and it was made worse by the fact that we had to carry a baby and a giant diaper bag. We went straight to tropical discovery in the hope that since it is indoors it wouldn't be as hot.  Well, it was still pretty hot and the tropicalness made for some lovely humidity. Penny did seem to enjoy herself though. That is one of her favorite exhibits at the zoo since she can see the fish and other stuff up close. After that, we decided to try and go see the elephant show. It started in about 30 minutes. We walked over found a spot and started to feed Penny. We got some lunch for us too. These chicken bowls. Penny was eyeing our chicken. So of course we gave her some.  She apparently did not like the chicken and proceeded to throw up the chicken, a bottle, and two things of baby food all over herself, me, the ground around us, and a little on the lady in front of us. Whoops! Luckily she had on one of those bibs with the food catchers on it, so on the second round of throw up I was able to catch it in the little pocket. She filled it all the way up to the top!!  So Penny had throw up all over her hands, arms, and pants. And did I bring a change of clothes, nope! I had it all over my shirts, pants, arms, hands, and in my hair! Gross!  And luckily when I washed my shirt off in the bathroom it became very see-through. After we wiped off as much throw up as we could and tried to avoid the judgmental stares and comments from the people behind us, we slinked out of there and decided to call it a day. Perhaps we should try again next week and not forget everything!