It's been a while since our last blog update and we've been busy, we even have the pictures to prove it:
Ayden's first birthday party was lots of fun. Amelia was a bit overwhelmed, but she might have just been jealous that he got to have his party the day before hers!
Amelia's first birthday party couldn't have gone better. Amelia enjoyed our homemade cake so much that she decided to throw the whole thing on the floor! Never fear though. Once the ice cream made it's way over to the booster seat she started to catch on pretty quick! The sweet tooth is developing nicely. The other day, Amelia even figured out how to suck a milk shake from Dad's straw.
Of course, there's been lots of playing!
We started a new tradition of Dad taking Amelia on a date to celebrate her birthday. This year, we got all dressed up and headed on over to the Cracker Barrel for some mac and cheese (the new all time favorite food) and some hash brown casserole. Note to self, dressing baby up for mac and cheese is not a good idea, especially when you are flying solo and trying to enjoy some country fried steak.
We spent some time playing in the park and then headed over to Gentry's Farm for a Fall photo shoot.
We even took a quick vacation to the beach with Terri, Nette Nette and Grandpa Skip.
On top of all that, we even bought a house. We've been doing some work to clean it up and update the kitchen over the last month, but we should be ready to move in next week! Hopefully then the craziness will subside.
Of course, the biggest piece of news is that Amelia is now officially a walking fool. The crab crawl is almost completely dead, to be replaced by the slightly diagonal walk. She took her first real steps around Sept 15, by Oct 15 she was able to pretty much walk across the room. Today, she can walk wherever she pleases! With this new found freedom has come new found danger. It seems like she is constantly finding way to fall into things to bruise her face.
Amelia has even learned to dance. Whenever she hears music, she starts to bounce up and down. Don't ask me where she learned that from, but she's already a better dancer than her Dad!
She seems to be learning to communicate better and better. She can consistently identify, Mom, Dad, dogs, banannas and sometimes cats. I think she was a bit over eager to try out her new communications skills the other day when she crank called a random phone number. The husband of the woman she reached called back shortly after we realized what had happened and hung up the phone. He wasn't too happy that his wife heard somebody breathing heavily into the phone.
And speaking of getting into trouble. Our little stinker had a run of a few days where her favorite game was pulling the wall paper border off in her nursery! Yes, I'm not sure how we're going to explain the big gaps in the wall paper when we start to show our condo.
We have a whole host of new games these days. Peekaboo of course remains the all time favorite. Now Amelia will hand us a blanket and expect us to hide behind it. Then she will hide behind it and expect us to act surprised to find she's really there. She loves to open and shut things, especially cabinets and doors. She's also mastered the tub drain, which she will promptly close if you've started to let the water out before she's ready to get out of her bath. She loves to hand you things now. We like to think that she's sharing, but she's probably just asking us to hold her stuff for her. She loves to empty everything in sight...drawers, purses, the cabinets, etc. We are just getting to the point where she has learned to "clean up" her messes! She loves to put things on her head and if you say "honk" she will start looking for somebody's nose to pinch. She's actually started to show some interest in books (finally), but her favorite game with them isn't to read them, it is to slam them shut and slap the cover as if to say "done!" (this is after page 2).
