Birthday Party Recap

We had E's birthday party with his grandparents the weekend after his birthday. He was a little surprised to wake up from his nap and find the living room filled with party guests, but it didn't take too long for him to warm up to everyone.

Here he is checking out a sparkley birthday card from my mom. It is still fun to touch the sparkles a week and a half later! E is also wearing a necklace with a lucky jade charm from Hubbo's parents.

 

Birthday cake made by Mommy!  I used this recipe for the cake, and this one, more or less, for the frosting. The cake was not exactly light and fluffy, probably because I used almond milk instead of cow's milk, but all in all I think it turned out as well as one could expect for the first cake I made from scratch. Luckily I have a whole year to devise a birthday treat for next year!

 

Mmmm cake.  I would say that the majority of the cake ended up on the floor or on the highchair, but E did eat some of it.  He liked it well enough, but he likes to eat just about anything these days!

 

One Year Old!

Happy birthday, E!  It really is hard to believe that it's been a year already.  We remember the days in the hospital and the early days at home like they were just a few months ago...

The day itself was full of our usual activities: breakfast, playing outside, nap, picnic lunch, nap, taking a walk with Mommy in the carrier, dinner, and then ... presents!

Okay, this one is actually from our Labor Day cookout

What could be inside?

 

Hammer balls!  Want to play?

 

I'm pleasantly surprised that this toy seems really developmentally appropriate for a just-turned-one year old. E has just started experimenting with putting objects on other objects, and once in awhile inside them, so putting the balls back in the holes is great. He doesn't quite get that he's supposed to use the hammer to knock them down, but he has a lot of fun just pushing them out with his hand and putting them back in.

A birthday post wouldn't be complete without a blast from the past, here's our little guy at 24 hours old:

 

Official Walker

It's official, E is walking! This post is about a week overdue, but he is roaming all over our (ranch) house now without any assistance from us or the furniture.  He still likes to have a hand to hold when we're outside, for now.

Here's an action shot, he likes to keep that arm up :)

One of E's favorite walking games is to lead me by the hand in to the bedroom, and then he hides behind the bed, and I crawl out the door and around the corner.  Then he comes chasing after me like the wind!  He can easily play this game six or seven times in a row, whew.

Mr. Man also has enough balance to stand on his tiptoes now, to reach just that little bit higher when he sees something interesting. He's absolutely wearing himself out these days with his newfound skills, too. I think that might be why his appetite for solid food seems to be increasing a bit.

Complete: Selbu Modern

A hat! Not just a hat, a winter hat! Yep, I knit myself a wool hat (and not just any wool, but Shetland wool from Shetland sheep living on Shetland and processed in to yarn there too) in the summer. =)

 

This pattern is called Selbu Modern, and for some reason I always read it as the French "moderne," although I don't think that's what the designer intended. The hat was my first stranded (i.e. using two colors at once) project. My tension is a little wonky in some of the parts that alternated single stitches of each color, but overall I'm really happy with it. Using two colors essentially creates a hat of double thickness, this one is really warm.

The knitting was completed in just under a month, faster than I expected.  I knit like a fiend while E was napping.  The entire hat was knit while he was sleeping - I think I tried working on it once in the car while Hubbo was driving, but E needed some distractions, so that didn't last.

 

Ravelry info is here.

 

Doesn't this rose look like it's just peeping out at you from behind the wall?  The camera's auto-focus had a really hard time with this one, it wanted to focus either on the wall or the bushes in the background.  Luckily I do know how to switch it to manual!  Not as easy as you might think, because you have to set both the camera body and the lens to manual focus on our camera.

Superbaby!

Making Waves

What have we been up to lately? Well, little E now has almost 5 teeth! Three on the top (two of those are still coming through), and two down on the bottom. He has also just started waving! I actually didn't realize he was waving, until we saw our neighbors on their bikes, and E waved at them, and the neighbor said, "He waved!" He'll sometimes wave if you say "wave," but "bye-bye" gets a wave more often.

In our classic book, Pat the Bunny, Paul and Judy wave bye-bye at the end, and E loves that part. So far, he's also happy to pat the bunny, look in the mirror, and read Judy's book.

 

Unrelated, I made this furniture polish. I didn't polish our wooden furniture last summer (I don't know why I thought I'd have more time for that this year ?!?!), and finding a "natural" furniture polish recipe has been on my radar for awhile. I stumbled on this one from a blog I don't usually read, but who's author just released a book called A Year of Pies. I'm not a big pie person (unless it's pecan), but the book also has savory pies (i.e. chicken pot pie), so it's on my list if our library gets a copy!

All that to say, it was pretty random to find this recipe, but it only has 3 ingredients, and they're not too weird (that is, Whole Foods had them all). So far it seems to me to work as well as Old English. One less fatal-if-swallowed thing to have around!.

 Coming soon, I made myself a way cool hat, I just need to get some pictures of me wearing it.

Onze mois (eleven months)

Happy eleven months, little E!

 

This month:

• You took your first vacation
• You started pointing at what you want
• Your third tooth started peeping through
• You're happy to cross a (small) room to walk to Mommy or Daddy
• You can pull yourself up from laying to standing!

Sitting on a bench in Montana

Baby's First Vacation

We recently took our first vacation as a family of three to visit my sister in Bozeman, Montana, where she's in grad school. Here E and I are looking out the window at our airport:

 

You can just see them, check out his shoes!  They are these "Robeez" leather slipper-like shoes.  I replaced the elastic around the ankle because as they were, they totally squashed his poor self.

Here we are with E's auntie at the Hyalite Reservoir.

 

The reservoir itself:

 

Mountains!

This puppy wanted to play fetch with Hubbo.  Not much of a dog person, he was quite impressed that the dog kept getting the stick and bringing it back.

 

Checking out the picnic area:

 

On one of our two (very) short hikes.  Check out those cool leggings on Mr. Man.

 

The apples at the hotel's continental breakfast were a big hit.

 

Everyone resting chez sister.

 

Playing during our (don't remind me) three hour delay at the Bozeman airport.

 

All in all a successful trip. E did very well on the first plane ride and was even able to take a good nap during it. Sadly, because of the delay, he missed his afternoon nap on the way home and was a bit whiny on the plane. We were very lucky and shared our row with a lady who had traveled a lot with her kiddos when they were babies, and she was very encouraging at the end of a long day.