My 15 Month Old

Now would probably be a good time to let you all know that there is a 15 month old living in my house. She is quite clever, mysterious, sneaky, lively, loud, jovial, funny, and sensitive.

Here's a bit about Julia Claire
- She knows her ears, mouth, eyes, and hair/head
- She is INDEPENDENT
- Says very distorted sounds for horse, dog, and sheep (all sounding like you're clearing your throat with your mouth open)
- She can actually feed herself with a spoon (most days) but makes a big mess all over her face eating yogurt, applesauce, or oatmeal.
- Julia's loves are: little figurines, her squeaky shoes, getting messy, her daddy, and Milo (her stuffed animal)
- She rests her hands on her head when she's done eating, dirty hands and all.

Julia you make us all laugh and bring so much joy to the house!

Table Top Fun

For a while now, I've avoided doing art projects with Ellie for fear that Julia would confiscate our materials and do unforeseen damage before she could be caught (not that she's that fast, but she gets out of "lunging" range pretty quickly). One day I decided to put Ellie at our kitchen table, which is waist-high on us grown people. This worked quite well for a few times before Julia decided we were doing something fun up there. I put her in her seat and the fact that she could participate in mess-making projects made her immensely happy. She now sits at the table for all art projects and is quite the budding artist. And of course I am happy with this arrangement because it's as much as control as I will ever have over Julia and art supplies. As you can see from the pictures, it's not very much control.

Ellie got some princess stickers from Dan a while back and she had been holding on to them for the perfect project. She deemed dot-a-dots as the project of choice. The completed piece is hanging on our refrigerator as the prize piece of artwork that it is. She also got herself dressed this particular day and is sporting two dresses in this picture.

Julia is content to use crayons for a while, then she is content if she can just eat them.

Gluing has been a consistent favorite, but we're just now getting into gluing piece after piece after piece on top of each other. Our gluing pieces are now sculptural!

This was a new activity and Ellie adored it. I drew tiny circles and placed wax paper on top, then she had to put purple dots inside the dots I drew. Quite simple and she did it about 10 times and managed to do it perfectly (which is how she likes everything).

Julia likes stickers almost as much as she likes eating.

J was not much of a fan of painting, she would rather have finger painted, but I decided not to put that idea in her head this particular day (I wasn't feeling too adventurous). Ellie filled up the paper and was done.

Normally I wouldn't have let J try markers, but she was NOT satisfied with crayons while Ellie was getting to use markers! So as you can see, she thoroughly enjoyed using them and even got confused as to what they are intended for (paper) from time to time.

Zzzzzzzzz......

As of Monday, Julia no longer takes a morning nap. Boo. And Yahoo. Boo because the morning nap was my down or work out time. I either ran on the treadmill, did a workout video, or just sat on the couch with Ellie while she watched a video and had her downtime. So, double Boo, because Ellie and I both don't have a morning downtime any more. Yahoo because she has started sleeping later in the mornings, like, an hour and a half later. I attribute this to the fact that we unplugged the lamp in their room and now turn off the fan light by the fan pulls rather than use the light switch. All this due to Julia's older, more "morning" sister and her effervescent tendency to hop out of bed at Julia's slightest resettling peep. Oh the joys of sharing a room! Anyway, back to the present topic. Julia isn't taking a morning nap any more! She's almost 15 months old and growing up!

Here she is laughing about something with Tudi.

Tudi and the Rocks

Julia found this pile of rocks at Pop and Tudi's house. Who knew sitting in a pile of rocks would be so much fun? Or that they feel so funny when they rub your leg? Discovery!

Julia's First Birthday Bash

It's a good thing Dan is watching Iron Man 2 tonight, otherwise I might have never got around to this...

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine asked me if Julia had turned one yet. Well... as a matter of fact, she had back in August. And then I realized that I hadn't put anything on the blog about it yet. Ah! It's NOVEMBER and she'll be 15 months soon. I'm a bad parent, aren't I? Yep. You know you're thinking it... Anyway.

I'd put off posting about Julia's birthday party because I hate postings that contain mass amounts of pictures. I am never quite sure what to do with all the images, so I procrastinate posting at all. Goofy, I'm sure, but a very real issue for me. Maybe I should see a counselor.

We decided to throw Julia her first birthday party back in Louisiana with all of our family present. Julia seemed like she would enjoy the "carnival" theme, so that's what we went with. We had a few games (ping pong toss was a big hit), lots of yummy snacks, and a most incredible cake made by Aunt Carol. Julia's great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and immediate family were all present! To say the party was a lot of fun would be a serious understatement.

I went ahead and opened a Flikr account to put all of the pictures in because there are close to 200 from the party. I did not edit a darn thing, so sorry if you don't like your picture, family (and to be fair, there's a picture I don't like of myself in the mix). We love you and are glad you were there!

Just click on the link below or copy and paste it into your browser. Enjoy!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55676570@N02/sets/72157625219417691/

Halloween 2010

We've never been huge Halloween people around here, so guess how we celebrated? For starters, Dan and I ran a half marathon that morning (with almost NO training, what were we thinking? Hm.) Oma & Opa brought Ellie and Julia to the finish line where Dan and I crossed at 2:12. We came back home and basically Dan and I were good for nothing during the middle of the day. Thankfully the girls took obscenely long afternoon naps. For dinner we hit the one and only Pazzos for some pre-trick-or-treating dining. It was awesome, as usual.

We headed home and once we turned into our neighborhood, candy-begging was in full swing and Ellie was anxious to get her costume on. As the first sentence implies, we aren't big costumers around here, I had neglected to make Julia a costume. She was originally going to be Flounder to match Ellie's Ariel costume, but we went to Louisiana the week before Halloween and I didn't take a bit of sewing with me. So we threw on a ballerina skirt, her slippers, and she was ready. And when I say ready, I MEAN it. You would have thought Julia trick-or-treats every day the way she would just walk up to everyone's front porch and hold out her bag. Ellie... not so much. Shy Girl was out and didn't want to mutter a single "trick-or-treat" to anyone. And I mean anyone. Julia left big sister in the dust. [Side note: It was freezing, by the way, and Ariel refused to wear her jacket. Oh the price of vanity! Freezing arms!] So, about the time we were ready to call it quits, Ellie decided that this whole candy thing was fun and that we needed to go to a few more houses. Thankfully, there were a few on our street that had plenty of candy to share.

We got back to our house and dumped out our candy and had a good ole time looking at all of it. Up until that time, Julia was content to just hold a piece of chocolate candy (fully wrapped) in her hands while she walked. Then she realized that there was actually something IN those wrappers. My oh my!

Everyone sampled the goods and then once the sugar high wore off, the girls were off to bed!

J's First Chalkboard Drawing

We've got this chalkboard that we don't use near enough in our playroom. Ellie was at school one day and Julia decided she wanted to draw on the chalkboard. So she did! And I realized it was a "first" so I blogged about it. :)