Year Well Check

Maylee had her year well check today. I officially know that she is still to little to be facing forward in her car seat, but oh well, it makes her happier and it's already getting to hot for her to be rear facing. She is just a little tiny thing at a year old. Stats:

Weight: 17lbs 8oz --- 4th percentile

Height: 29 inches--- 48 percentile

And best of all... her head... 45 centimeters, which puts her in the 49th percentile...YEAH!!! Her head isn't huge and not growing too rapidly

Dutch and I worked on the alphabet today with our block fence and sidewalk chalk. Dutch thought it was fun to draw on the wall and I enjoyed working on the alphabet in a new fun way.

One Year Old

Maylee celebrated her first birthday today. Since we celebrated on Sunday we didn't do anything special today (I know I'm terrible but I figure she won't remember). Instead we spent the day at home taking naps and doing the normal routine. We did get her chocolate chip cookies but that's where the excitement ended. I really can't believe that my baby is a year old already. It happened so fast and she is just such a tiny little peanut that it doesn't seem possible for her to be a year old. With Dutch I wanted him to meet all the next milestones and was so excited for him to grow up and with Maylee the last thing I want is for her to grow up. I realized Dutch grew up to quickly and I want Maylee to just stay my baby. But she is definitely growing up. She is taking a lot more steps on her own now, still not walking for her only form of transportation, crawling is quicker but she'll be there soon. She loves to start fights with Dutch. Not so much that she likes to fight with him but she wants everything that he has and he doesn't appreciate that very much. She babbles all the time, she always seems to have something to say. When we sing songs with Dutch, she joins in with her babbling, which is just adorable. She is so funny, she isn't fearful or shy at all, she is willing to try anything, stand or climb on anything which terrifies me, I'm just sure she'll be my kid to break an arm. She is finally tall enough to press all the buttons on the TV and she is obsessed with them, we can't seem to ever distract her from those dang buttons. She finally was able to upgrade to a forward facing car seat, which is so much better. She screamed for 12 months straight every time she had to get in her car seat. Now she laughs, giggles and kicks her feet since she has been turned around, driving places is so much more enjoyable. Maylee is our precious baby girl and we are so grateful to have her in our lives. I love watching Dutch and Maylee play together and I love the concern Dutch shows for his baby sister. When ever we are getting ready to leave Dutch always makes sure we remember to bring Maylee. It melts my heart to watch them together (at least when they are playing nicely). I truly feel so blessed to have little Miss Maylee Jane as part of our family. She is so precious to me and I couldn't image my life with out her. I can't get over how much she looks like Dutch in this picture

Maylee's first birthday

We celebrated Maylee's first birthday today. Her real birthday is actually on Tuesday but today worked out with all the of the family getting together. I absolutely love having family over to our house and getting together and visiting. I wish we would all do it more often but I'll take what I can get. We just got together and munched on snacks, visited and had some fun activities for Maylee. Dutch of course had a blast with his cousins over. Today he got really attached to his older cousin Amber. She played with him all evening and he was just devastated when she had to leave. I love watching him interact with his cousins, although it makes me sad to think of leaving family when we move and him not being able to really know his cousins. Anyways on to the birthday party, we had Maylee open her presents before eating cake (you'll see why in a second). She of course wasn't super interested in unwrapping the gifts but she did enjoy pulling her cute little outfits out of the gift bag. Dutch enjoyed unwrapping the gifts for her. The activity table she got seemed to be a big hit with all of the kids. After opening and playing with her gifts for a few minutes it was onto the birthday cake. For Dutch's first birthday he didn't really get into the whole cake eating thing, so I was really interested to see how Maylee would do. She did really good. She loved her cupcake, it took a few minutes for her to dig in but then she did really good. Then Dutch decided that he wanted to eat some cake. But he wanted to eat the cake Maylee was eating, he wouldn't eat his own cupcake. But of course he had to use a fork, no way would he get dirty like Maylee. It was a great party and we are so grateful for all the family who came to help us celebrate. I can't believe my baby girl is a year old!

Crumbs in my bed...

For Valentine's day I bought David and the kids the really fluffy sugar cookies and I let them eat them for breakfast in MY bed, crazy I know. But it was a huge hit. Maylee loved them and had no problem digging in. Dutch is my little clean freak and hates to be dirty, but he really enjoyed eating cookies for breakfast, in Mom and Dad's bed. Although he was very stressed that Maylee was making such a mess. Let's just say I had more than just a couple of crumbs in our bed. For Valentine's Day we watched our friends kids Friday night so that they could go out to dinner and then they were awesome enough to watch our kids on Valentine's Day in the afternoon so that David and I could hike Camelback mountain. I was so excited. I have only hiked one other time since Maylee was born and I miss that mountain. David wasn't as thrilled as I was to hike but he enjoys going with me. However when we got to the mountain we realized that everybody else in the state of Arizona had the same idea to hike, so it was packed. The closest place to park was about a two mile walk, so David was amazing and suggested that he drop me off and let me hike and he would just run an errand that he needed to do. So I still got to hike. It was the prefect weather for hiking and I felt so good, it only took my 29 minutes to get up to the top, I was on a high when I got down. I couldn't quit telling David what a great hike I had and how happy I was the he let me hike. So for his Valentine's day gift since he didn't get to hike with me, he got to take a long nap when we got home. I have always felt that Valentine's day is way over rated and cheesey (all the chocolate and stuffed animals) but spending that day like we did was awesome. It was so much fun to get out.

Dutch has become very territorial lately. If he is sitting on his Dad's lap and David picks up Maylee as well Dutch will say, "My Daddy, Mayner Mom." He lets us know which kid belongs to which parent. It is definitely funny but we try very hard not to laugh and to let him know that Daddy is Maylee's daddy as well as Dutch's daddy.

Last night was one of the worst nights we have had in a really long time. Maylee has been sleeping through the night like a champ then all of the sudden the last two nights she hasn't been doing so great. The first night she was only up for about a minute no big deal and then last night she cried for two hours straight. We didn't think anything was wrong, so we just left her in her crib and kept patting her bum and laying her back down. Finally after two hours she fell asleep again. Then of course she was crabby all day, I was crabby all day, who wouldn't be after be up so long in the middle of the night. Tonight was our Ward Valentines party, they had a nursery so of course we went. It was a ton of fun but at the very end of the night when we were all standing around chatting Maylee let out a cry and when I looked in her mouth, it was covered in white, Thrush I thought. So I took right down to Good Night Pediatrics. Yep it was thrush, poor baby, that made me feel just terrible for being so irritated with her in the middle of the night last night. And since I was down there I decide to just go ahead and ask the doctor about her terrible smelling urine. Oh my gosh, this girl's pee has been so incredibly stinky. It started about a week ago but I haven't given much thought besides wow her pee really stinks. So bad that we can't even tell when she's pooped because her pee smells even worse. You would expect her to have a soaking diaper by the way she smells but then when you feel her diaper it's hardly wet at all. So I mentioned it to the doctor and she said they could test her urine if I wanted them to. Well they'd have to catheter her, which I know from experience that it hurts SOOO bad, so I hesitated a second but then I said, sure we are here lets just do it. And she ended up having a UTI. My poor baby girl. I also know that a UTI is extremely painful, so I just feel so bad for her. So they gave her a bunch of meds to take for 10 days and hopefully it'll make everything feel better.

Green Drink

I took all of this produce... And blended it in my wonderful Vita Mix... and got this wonderful drink.... I know it looks really scary to drink a green drink that is full of vegetables but it is actually really good. I love it. I use to drink it all the time before I had Dutch but when I was pregnant with him I threw it up once and that was the end of that for awhile. But David and I were at the store today and he said something about making green drink so I decided to buy all the ingredients and I am so glad that I did. I love getting such a large serving of veggies a day. So if any of you are brave enough to try it I'll put the recipe on here. I know it's scary my roommate drank it all the time in college and it took her forever to finally get me to even taste it. And even after I tasted it once it took me another year or two to decide that I was brave enough to try it again. But the second time won me over and now I am a huge believer in the wonder of green drink.

1 quart juice (apple or pineapple)

1 cup almonds

1/2 to 1 bunch kale

1/2 bunch collard greens

2-3 celery sticks

1-2 carrots

1-2 apples

small bunch parsley

ice Blend juice and almonds together. Slowly add vegetables in any order. Add ice as needed to keep drink cold. Do NOT let it get hot, it will cook the vegetables.

Suggestion: if making it for only one, cut recipe in half or even in fourth, drink will keep up to 3-4 days in fridge after that veggies will start to go bad.

Store in an air tight container in fridge, preferably mason jars.

May add other veggies or seeds such as: bell peppers, mustard greens, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, etc. You taste buds are you only limit.

Enjoy!!!

I made it just as the recipe stats, except I did flaxseeds rather than almonds because that was all that I had. It really is delicious.

She's Walking

I had a YW presidency meeting tonight and when I first got to the church building I told the other leaders to look at Maylee's new trick and then I had her take a few steps. As of Sunday she has been able to take about 4 good steps walking in between David and I, not on her own. Well then during the opening prayer at our meeting I was watching Maylee (yes my eyes were open because she was making me nervous) she just kept standing up. She would squat down and then stand up about three times in a row. And she even did that a couple of times today. Well David picked the kids up at the church building during my meeting. When I got home about 40 minutes after David, he said that Maylee is standing up and walking. And sure enough she is just standing up on her own in the middle of the room, not holding to anything and walking. She is walking a good six to eight steps before she falls over but then she gets right back up and does it again. I am so excited, I wanted her to walk before her first birthday and she is doing just that. So now I am thinking I just need to give her a few days and she'll probably be walking as her only form of transportation knowing her.

Some of her other tricks lately have been climbing into and onto everything. About two weeks ago, Dutch was taking a nap and David, Maylee and I were in the office. David and I were cleaning and talking when all of the sudden David heard Maylee making some funny noises so he went to find her. I had left the door to the dryer open and she was just sitting inside of the dryer playing and when we found her she just looked at us like, what's up. Then today I was unloading the dishwasher and she kept crawling on the door and sitting there. So I would take her off and pull the bottom drawer out, hoping to distract her. Oh no she would have none of that. She would get so mad and push the drawer back in and crawl up there again. So I finally just had to give up. As for Dutch he is still just be his cute, mischievous self. The other day we had to go to Toys R Us and Dutch found the Lightening Mcqueen car. He loved it. He bawled when we had to leave. He honestly cried for about 20 minutes after we left. We kept thinking he would forget about it but no such luck. I have been babysitting a little girl named Abby, she is four years old and loves to play with babies. After having her around for awhile Dutch has picked up on her love for baby dolls. He is so good with the babies. He rocks them and puts them in his bed all covered up and comes out, shuts the door and says, "shhhh, baby sleeping." He really just loves baby dolls now and I think it's pretty cute. And of course he is still just falling asleep anywhere. Last week I was at a friends house and when I left I really needed to run into the grocery store for just a couple of things. It was nap time but I figured I could make it in and out real quick. Well Dutch was sitting in the basket part of the cart and I was standing there looking at something, when all of the sudden his head bobbed. You know when you are in school and your head bobs really far, so much that you almost hit the desk and it jerks you awake. Well Dutch's head bobbed in the cart, the problem was the lip of the cart was right there and when his head bobbed it slammed on the side of the cart. He starting crying and he ended up with a big bump on his forehead. It was really sad and really funny. I laughed pretty hard and even called David to tell him how sad and yet so funny it was. And today he fell asleep on the couch reading a book. I love how he can just fall asleep anywhere, I wish I was like that.