Aurora's First Birthday!!!

Aurora's first birthday was June 16!

We were at a family reunion (more on that later) in the Outer Banks, NC so we had 24 other people to celebrate with us! My parents had to leave on June 16, so we had cake and ice cream the night before. We had a rainbow chip cake with rainbow chip frosting with rainbow sprinkles (Do I need to spell out the theme?). Aurora is actually a very neat eater. After I gave her a bite so she'd know what it was, she started picking off crumbs one by one. Greg had gone inside so I ran to get him so he could see her eat it. When I returned, her face was covered in frosting. Had she decided to dive in? Nope. Uncle Mark, my brother (under the direction of Aunt LaDonna), had smeared frosting across her face. She eventually got the idea and started taking bigger handfuls, but the ice cream was just too cold to encourage her to eat it with her hands. I can't believe she's 1!!!

The pretty cake. HUGE thanks to my mom and sister Kimberly for writing on it. I need more practice!

Happy Birthday Our Sweet Girl!

Creating Monsters

New parents have a way of creating monsters out of their children. Aurora already has quite the drama streak, and sometimes we accidentally encourage it. The first video is of this accidental creation of a monster. The second video is less dramatic, but I created the monster by laughing at her, which encouraged the behavior. I didn't purposely teach her to act like a dog.

Rory and Rajah

Rory and Rajah are finally learning to respect each other. Sure, there have been a few scratches and a few yanked tails (she actually prefers to hit him), but slowly they are learning how to play. Evidence below. And no, I have no idea why Rajah likes attacking books. It's not just the Barney book, either.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us. I love that Easter helps us remember Christ rising from the dead and the Atonement. I also love that Easter always comes when the Earth is coming out of Winter and everything is growing again, because that means warmer weather is coming soon!

Thanks to Grandma Harbertson for the adorable Easter dress and sweater! :)

The Last Year...

...of Greg's 20's began this past week. Greg turned 29 on April 21. He wanted an Oreo-shaped ice cream cake. Although making the cake was an adventure, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be and I'm glad I got the chance to make an homemade ice cream cake. Happy Birthday, Greg!! Oh and if anyone wants some of the cake, let me know because over half of it is still in the freezer.

Can you decipher the message? It's written in chocolate chips...

The center is a hot fudge and Oreo cookie mixture surrounded by two layers of vanilla ice cream.

And topped with hot fudge!

Updates and Aurora's Milestones

I know, it's been months. I've needed to cut off all other distractions in order to get a craft project done--more on that later. The point is I'm finally to a point where I can focus on a few other things so I'm updating the blog. We had a great Christmas here at home and an uneventful New Years. We got a new bishopric at church but Greg is still serving as second counselor in the bishopric. I got two new callings: Relief Society instructor and Assistant Ward Girl's Camp Director. Girl's Camp isn't until August so that's not a big deal yet. I teach Relief Society the third Sunday of the month so Aurora gets to hang out with Greg during that time. Most of the time she hates that third hour of church (she won't nap at church anymore) so it gets exhausting.

Other things that have been happening are Greg's brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Cori, moved to sunny Mesa, Arizona at the end of February. We're missing them but Cori and I already have plans to meet in Vegas for the 8th and final Harry Potter movie in July or August. My mom had surgery to remove part of her colon as a final measure in treating her colon cancer and is actually still in the hospital right now. The surgery went well though so hopefully with a 1-2 more chemo treatments she'll be cancer free.

Some milestones and other developments:

Aurora has learned to army crawl so fast that I don't think she sees the point in learning to really crawl, though she does get up on all fours and rock back and forth.

She got her first tooth this week and won't let me see it to take a picture.

She's refining the pincer grasp and loves to feed herself, especially cheese or deli meat.

She's starting to recognize words. She says mama and dada but doesn't necessarily know what they mean.If we say "Where's the kitty?" she looks down at the floor or looks around until she sees Rajah. Then she bolts for him. He's learned to tolerate her and will move 2 feet away at a time until she chases him out of the room and down the hallway.

She loves his food and water, any ideas on how to babyproof that?

She also loves to be upside down, dancing, and is super talkative all day long, even more so when she's tired.

She's also very ticklish when she's tired. If she's lying on her back and you hold your hand above her and move your fingers, she gets excited and smiles and coos because she knows you're going to tickle her.

She can go from sitting to crawling to sitting again.

She can pull herself up from the right position but we don't have many pieces of furniture that encourage that so she doesn't get to practice much.

She can stand on her own while holding onto the couch...until she gets ambitious and tries to turn around while only holding on with one hand.

Now her stats since birth that I've never posted:

Birth: Weight: 6 lbs, 11 oz; Height: 20 in.; Head Circumference: 34.5 cm

2 months: Weight: 8 lbs, 12 oz; Height: 22 3/4 in.; Head Circumference: 36.4 cm

4 months: Weight:10 lbs, 4 oz.; Height: 24 in.; Head Circumference: 37 3/4 cm.

6 months: Weight: 13 lbs, 6 oz.; Height: 26 1/4 in.; Head Circumference: 40 cm.

9 months: Weight: 15 lbs, 13.5 oz.; Height: 28 1/2 in.; Head Circumference: 41.4 cm.

Except at her 4 month visit when her weight dropped because I'd had my surgery and my milk supply struggled, she's very consistent in her growth. She's always in the 7th or 8th percentile for weight (currently 7th), between the 70th and 85th percentile for height (current 82nd) and the 1st percentile for head circumference. When I asked her doctor at one appointment how she was doing growth-wise, he replied "Well, someone has to be the smallest." LOL. I don't have any problem having a small baby. She's tall and I don't have any problem with her being a tall, slender kid (if only I could get pants to be long enough and skinny enough though!!). In the meantime, she's 1 1/2 in. from being half my height and getting kind of awkward to hold. :)

I have recent videos and pictures but I can't get them from my phone to my computer so hopefully I can get those on here soon.

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We finally put Christmas decorations up in our condo. But, having a cat and a daughter trying to learn to crawl, we were a bit paranoid about the possible (let's face it, the likely) destruction of our decorations. Greg had a solution in mind, and I finally agreed when I realized baby stuff had overtaken our living room and there really wasn't any room for the tree on the floor. Now that it's done, it just makes me smile. What do you think? (Hint: The title of my post is "O Christmas Tree" upside down) And yes, Aurora's stocking is different. I'm making her one to go with ours but haven't found good fabric yet.

Several people have asked "How did he DO that?" There was already a hook in our ceiling (like the kind used to hang potted plants), and Greg IS an engineer, after all. The branches on the Christmas tree automatically collapse when tipped upside down, so he bought some wire and wired the middle of the tree to each branch to get the branches to stay up, then wired the tree to the hook. The decorations actually all stay on by themselves, including the star. But, Rajah realized he could get the star to fall if he pushed the tree (it swings). So, now the star is wired to the tree as well.