Thanksgiving! And Beyond!

I know this is behind, but we had a great thanksgiving. We watched the Macy's day parade, made a gingerbread house, had cinnamon rolls for lunch and had 14 people to our house for dinner. We had such a great (and busy) day that I hardly took any pictures. But here are the few that I did sneak in.

That night I was here.....

Thats right, thats me at Walmart on Black "Friday". I never thought I would be at WALMART on black friday but there I was. I'd like to say I'll never be back as it was terrifying and I got elbowed in the face-but I may if there is a deal that is good enough. And I got the kitchen I've been searching for on Craigslist for months, brand new at the same price its going for used. So I'm happy!

Then we decorated for Christmas. I realized that decorating with a tall, walking Hannah would be a lot different than any other year. We have much less decorations out than any other year and everything is about shoulder level or higher. 

This year. Notice everything is above the mantle. 

See how the stockings are hanging under than mantle and there is a small tree on the far right. Not this year! Not with Hannah and the other kiddos that are in my house frequently. It was much more simple to decorate this year.

While I was getting the tree ready for us to decorate, Jesse entertained Hannah with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" which was his favorite book as a kid. She was pretty interested for about 5 pages. But its a long book with a lot of LONG words so it didn't last long....maybe next year.

Hannah got to open an early Christmas Present from her GaGa, PawPaw and Aunt Ashley-A beautiful winter coat that is also perfect for Christmas!!! She loved the little purse that came with it.

And today, before church......

The next week, Pops and Poni (or as Hannah says Pop Pop and Pap-po) came to visit. Again I didn't take many pics, but we got a couple in-

Hannah snuggling with Pap-po

Hannah and Maddy playing "Hop on Pop". They loved this game!

Well, thats all I have for now. Hopefully I'll get another post in before Christmas, but if not, enjoy the day with Family and Friends celebrating the birth of Christ. 

Silly Talking from Hannah

Yesterday, we were doing shopping for a Christmas Donation program through my church-Operation Christmas Child-and I was trying to tell her about God's blessing. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Hannah,  God has blessed us with so many things:our house, our dogs, food, clothes, toys, and blankets. 

Hannah: Yeah

Me: Hannah, what has God blessed you with?

Hannah: Peas!


The whole time we were shopping for the little boy and girl I had to keep reminding them that these toys were going to a boy and girl who didn't have any and needed these. She seemed really okay though out shopping, paying, and packing up all the toys. She seemed very confused though when we handed the boxes of toys over to a 40ish lady at our church. I guess I forgot to explain to her that we wouldn't be taking them directly to a child in Mongolia or South Africa and that we were just dropping them off at church.

I worked over-night last night and am very tired today so I'm being "lazy-mommy" and....

Me: Hannah, do you want to pick out a movie to watch? 

Hannah: Apple. Pea.

Me: What?

Hannah: Apple. Pea.

Me: Show me....and she brought me a Veggie Tale movie....OH! Apple and Pea! ha! 




And earlier today...

Me: Hannah, what should we eat for lunch? 

Hannah: Poo

Me: Poop or Winnie the Pooh? 

Hannah: Yeah.

Me: You can't eat Poo!!

Hannah: Yeah. 


And Here's a quick video for your viewing pleasure which has nothing to do with our silly conversations but I think is cute. This is my most recent Garage sale find-$7!!

We have our Computer back!!!

Hello all 10 of my readers, who I'm sure have been holding your breath while awaiting my next blog. Our computer is fixed!! Our virus erased our whole hard-drive so we basically have a brand new computer inside an old shell. I need to get the little info we had backed up loaded on here and all the pics from the last month and a half loaded and I will have a LONG update for you.

I am pretty sad b/c I'm not sure what pics of Hannah's life will make it through. Fortunately I have a lot of her first year saved to walgreens.com and different places. It will probably just take time for me to get them all reloaded on our computer and OF COURSE saved to our external hard drive like they should have been all along.

This morning Hannah and I are headed to a holiday craft fair to support the local high school. Not sure what we will find but hopefully it will be enjoyable. On Thursday I am helping my friend Amie at a craft fair. I love her products and her so I'm looking forward to this-go check out her blog and see her amazing things!

I'll get back to you quickly!! I'll leave you with a glimpse of blogs to come....

Computer STILL broken.....

I'm getting very frustrated. It's been over 3 weeks without our computer. Still waiting on a new hard drive from apple. I tried to email pics to the iPad to upload on here but it doesn't accept the pics on my blogger. So many times I've wanted to share-our Cabo trip, pumpkin patch, silly day to day moments, hannahs first time playing in the snow, driving a tractor and being in Houston while we were in Cabo, and most recently our Halloween festivities!! I am getting further and further behind on hannahs scrapbook. I NEED our computer back!

I just hope we can recover all the pics of our daughters life. I really don't care about anything else on there. Trying to be patient!

Enjoy this first day of "the holiday season"!! Thanksgiving is in 3 weeks and Christmas is in 8! I'm watching A Muppet Christmas Carol right now!!

Computer broken

I really want to blog about our trip to Cabo and Hannah's time with her grandparents but our computer contracted a virus and is not working at all! Jesse is taking it to the doctor after work today so hopefully I can show you pics and tell you stories soon. Thanks for your patience! :) -Hunter

Sent from my iPhone

A blog for doting grandparents

Disclaimer: Many of you probably won't care about this blog at all, but I know all of Hannah's grandparents and a select few others want to hear all these stories.

For all of you who have persevered, cried, and fought towards the goal of only taking one nap (wait! that may only be Hannah and me)-We Have Conquered!! It has been about 2 weeks now that Hannah has only taken one nap a day. It was a rough transition but we've made it. Finally! She may be the only 19 month old still taking 2 naps a day-at least among all of our friends she was.

During this transition though, she seems to have lost the ability to fall asleep on her own. She wants us to leave our hand on her back till she's asleep. Or just stand by her crib till she's asleep. Jesse and I have been frustrated by this-she has always gone to sleep on her own and has regressed. So, we are trying to work back to just laying her down and leaving the room. Today I was trying to just let her cry herself to sleep. I let her go for 20 minutes while I cleaned the kitchen. She was screaming really hard and gagging and decided I should go in and calm her down. I laid her down and got her calm then left the room. I wanted to see what she did so I watched her from the crack in the doorway. She instantly sat up and started crying. Then, she did the unexpected! She started nodding off while screaming. She fell asleep mid-scream and sitting-up! She stayed that way until her head bobbed then she would start screaming again with her eyes closed and nodded off again. This went on for 10 minutes. I was trying not to laugh! It was so funny to watch her fall asleep sitting up and then nod off. I kept hoping she would just lay down and pass out. After 10 minutes I went in her room, pointed to her mattress. She laid down and I never heard from her again. She was out! I wish I could've video'd it.

On a side note: I'm watching Toddlers and Tiaras from TLC and to keep an 18 month old awake they gave her a bottle with "special juice" in it-ingredients: Red Bull, Apple Juice and Coke!!!! I think that's child abuse. Just sayin'. 

I have been working on getting all the baby stuff in the house organized and put away. Hannah had so much fun playing with all her old baby toys! She loved it. I also showed her the box of dress up clothes I have been accumulating for her. She didn't want to put on any of the clothes but she loved the Sleeping Beauty shoes and her necklace. She has worn this necklace almost everyday for the last week no matter where we went.

This is what happens when you eat strawberries and then go play in the sandbox:

Shopping at the mall and playing with mommy's glasses:

Hanging out with daddy on college football's opening day. Fortunately I was at work so I didn't have to watch endless hours of football like Hannah did. Poor girl...

Two Blogs in one day!

A little friend of Hannah's was over today and they had so much fun! Miles and Hannah played in the baby pool, ran around the yard and played on the slide. Here are two videos of the slide-they are basically the same video so if you are in a hurry just pick one :)
Slide 1
Slide 2

Here is one of Hannah thoroughly enjoying herself!
Drinking Water

And here are the pics!!

Later in the day, after nap, after miles went home, Hannah was running around the house in just her diaper then she came over to me shivering. I guess with the air conditioning on and not having any clothes on, she was cold. I was doing a lot of laundry today so I pieced together what I had in the living room, being too lazy to go up stairs and get something. This is what I came up with-

 The shirt and skirt made sense, we keep her elmo slippers in her toy box in the living room, and I had recently found the hat and gloves at a garage sale so they had just been washed. She loved it!

 I liked the little "tail" under her hat!

 She went on to play for a good long time with the whole outfit on and continued to wear the slippers for the rest of the day. 

Then I ended the day by building a beautiful tower out of Hannah's ABC books. I was pretty proud of my accomplishment and wanted you all to be too! (Hey, its the little things!)

Funny things Hannah does now

There are several things hannah does that make me laugh right now.

1) She blows her lips when she's mad or frustrated. Right now she is lying in her crib blowing her lips over and over. I know I shouldn't think her frustration is funny, its just the way she expresses it.

2) Our bedtime routine is to read a book, sing a song, say a prayer. Though lately whenever I (or Jesse) start to sing she shakes her head no and says "dadadadadada". I would be offended if it was just me she was shaking her head no at, but it's Jesse too. Apparently she doesn't like our singing anymore and tries to talk over us. So then I thought maybe she knew that bedtime was coming and thats why she shook her head no. But she does it anytime I sing-in the car, during playtime, anytime. She just does not like the singing lately. Its really funny when she does it though. (since writing my draft of this post two days ago, she has also started shaking her head at her Veggie Tales CD we listen to in the car. She does not like singing right now. If I don't stop the CD quickly, she'll even begin screaming!) What happened to turn her away from music?

3) She will hold her sippy cup up to her baby dolls and make a sucking noise with her lips as they "drink" her milk. She also has taken her dolls for walks in her little doll stroller. She is getting into a doll phase in the last few days. In the church nursery, she rocked the baby dolls in a bassinet.

4) Hannah has lots of great toys but she loves rocks! In our neighborhood there are a lot of granite landscaping rocks. Hannah likes to collect them. She puts them in her doll stroller; fills the cup holders of her wagon, holds as many as she can carry in her hands, fills buckets from her sandbox with them, basically gets them any way she can! I don't let the rocks come into the house but occasionally I find them in her toy box or stuck inside toys. She is sneaky!

5)She plays peekaboo behind the kitchen curtains all the time and for long periods of time. She loves to look out the back window and sits here and just watches the world.

Not so much "funny" as just some info I thought you'd like to know:

Just in the last two days she has started really experimenting with her vocal chords. Making all kinds of sounds and vocal inflections! She has added the word "nana" to her vocab though I don't know what she is referencing. It seems to be just anything she wants, she points to it and says "nana". I'm sure my mom who is Hannah's Nana will get a kick out of that when she hears hannah say it.

She also started making the "Wa" sound in reference to water (in the baby pool and in her sippy cup) and her baby dolls crying (waaa waaaa waaaa). This is a great improvement! I am very thankful the speech therapist at her evaluation gave me some tips on how to work on sounds with her. She seems to be blossoming already! Its only been a week since the evaluation and the in-home speech therapist should start coming to the house next week. I can't wait to see how quickly she progresses!

Hannah's GaGa and PawPaw (which are Jesse's parents) were here to visit last week for about 5 days. We had a great visit which included the zoo, a trip up to a lake in the mountains, getting A LOT of projects done around the house, taking my mother-in-law to her first consignment store, going out to eat, Jesse and I have a date night, and many hours of bonding for Hannah and her grandparents. Sandy took a lot of pics so hopefully I will get them up soon. Also during this trip we learned that Jesse's cousin got engaged and will be getting married next year in Minneapolis. I have never been to the Minneapolis/St Paul area so this will add a new "stamp" on my map! Congrats Aunt Susan on gaining a daughter!

The Dada Dance!

For a long time, Hannah has been a strictly "mommy's girl" but recently this has changed. Hannah gets very excited to see Jesse if he is still home in the mornings and even more excited when he comes home from work. In this video he has been home about 20 minutes and she has been saying "Dada" for most of those minutes. She is in a full on "daddy phase" right now!

Dada Dance!

Play time with Daddy

So, normally I don't work on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I could be home with my family but we had to make some schedule changes for this week because of a work meeting Jesse had and lack of babysitting. So I had to do a roundtrip to Calgary, Canada yesterday afternoon. When I arrived back in the good ol' US of A, I received a picture on my phone that made my day! It made up for my one hour delayed flight, not arriving home till 11pm, grouchy passengers and a frustrating encounter with a coworker-it erased it all!

She had pigtails in her hair and denim shorts on earlier but these must have been shed during her afternoon nap. Jesse built her an airplane! She loves airplanes right now. And I'm only guessing her and daddy had a lot of fun playing legos and building this airplane together. I'm glad they had this time together just them while I worked. Love everything about this pic!

Hannah's 18 Month Appointment

Now that Hannah is feeling better we were able to have her 18 month scheduled check-up. And guess what I learned?!

Hannah is in the 99th percentile for height!! She is the average height for a 26 month old. I knew she was tall because she grows out of her clothes way before the month stated on the tag for sizing. But I had no idea she was that tall! People are always commenting on how tall she is and I guess they are right.

She was also in the 66% for weight at 25lbs 6 oz. And had a head circumference in the 86%.

The doctor said she was "long and lean" which is what she has always been, though never this long before.

We also went through all the different verbal skills, fine motor and gross motor skills, personal and social communication skills that are standard for an 18 month old. The doctor thinks (as I have thought) that she is having some difficulty with her speech. The doctor referred me to a speech therapist who will come to our house to observe and recommend a course of action. She didn't seem too concerned but said this was the next step to make sure she is doing okay.

I'm trying not to worry about it and just see what the ST says when they come to our house.

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

Garage Sale Finds 7/29/11

So, this morning we woke up and Hannah didn't feel like she was on fire. I took her temp and it was 100.9-she is usually warmer when she first wakes. This made me so happy! She had slept all night with no meds and no waking. An hour later I took it and she had absolutely no fever whatsoever! After playing phone tag with the Doctor I wasn't sure if I should still come for her 10:30am appointment. I hadn't heard back from them by the time we needed to leave so I loaded up and headed over there. On the way the Doctor's nurse called and said I didn't need to come. Well, we were already in the car and it is a friday so why not stop at the community garage sale in the neighborhood just west of ours?!?

This is what we accumulated in our spontaneous trip:

I love knowing what kind of savings I'm getting so I will list here (in this order) the price I paid followed by approximate retail price and then a description or story of the item. You may not care at all, but I do! :)

1)The Kangaroo with baby in pouch-$1; $12; Hannah is really getting into Winnie the Pooh and there are Kanga and Roo as characters so I thought these could fill in for those characters. Hannah picked this out herself at the garage sale. She carried them over to me saying "hop, hop, hop".

2) 3 Winnie the Pooh Books-$.75; $7.50; More winnie the pooh books to read!

3) Once Upon a Potty-$.25; $8; my mom and dad read this to me and my sister Blaire when we were potty training. Our library has about 20 copies of it which we have checked out before but for a quarter, I couldn't pass it up. If you haven't read this book, even if you are potty trained, its a cute read.

4) Wings- $.50; $9; I have been working on a "dress up box" for Hannah for when she's ready for that in a couple years. I figure find good costumes and clothes now for cheap don't have to buy them at full price later. I already have a snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty dress and some play shoes, pretty dresses and tiaras. Now I have wings.

5) Black Patent Leather Mary Janes-$2; $27 on OshKosh website (same brand)-she is always needing the next size up and these are in almost perfect condition! Good for winter.

6)75 piece set of Toddler Legos-$8; Amazon said $499.99 (I'm guessing that's a typo!!); $19.50; What kid doesn't "need" LEGOS?!

7) Two Elmo's World Movies-$4 total; $22 total; Hannah loves "The Best of Elmo 2" that we checked out from the Library so I figured she might love these too.

8) Purple Coat-$3; guessing $20; this is 2T so she will wear it this winter. And duh, we live in Denver, we need coats!

So I spent a total of $19.50. If I had bought these new and not on sale I would have spent $125! So I saved about 85% off of retail! WOO HOO!

The Open Space

One of the things Jesse and I loved about our house when we bought it was the fact that it didn't back to any other houses. We really like the view of the open space behind our house. Summer, Winter, Spring, Fall. We like looking out and seeing the field.

But what I don't like about living on open space is the creepy crawlies we get as visitors!

This guy caused quite a commotion yesterday. (for a witness please see my MIL, Sandy Clayburn, who was on skype at the time) The dogs were outside and started yapping and snapping. So I went to check and I see this snake sitting 3 feet from my feet, right outside our back patio door. I try to get the dogs to come back inside by calling them but they are too freaked out about the snake to listen. So I jump outside, literally throw cassie into the house, grab parker, run with him inside, the whole time screaming which causes Hannah to start screaming from across the room where she is still skyping. Then Maddy starts screaming from her bed upstairs where she was napping. The dogs are freaking out barking at the snake through the glass door. I take a pic and text it to Jesse then call him.

I tried to get my neighbor to come over and help me but he wasn't home. So I just watched Mr Snake- while feeding the girls lunch, still skyping and trying to calm the dogs down. He slowly made his way out the backyard and under our gate back to his home. Phew! Our yard is snake free once again. I hope it stays that way for a long long time! He should spread the word to all the other critters that we are not a "visitor friendly yard".

18 Months Old-Baby Book Entry

Height: 34 1/4 inches
Weight: 25.3 pounds


Sleeping Patterns-I sleep basically from 7pm-6:30am. I like to nap from 9-9:30am and from 12:30-2pm. We are working on transitioning to only one nap a day but I really like my morning nap.

Eating Habits-I love to eat (except when I'm sick). Spoons and forks are my latest challenge. I like the idea of using them but normally gives up after a few tries to use my much more efficient fingers. Mommy wants me to practice drinking out of a regular cup but I really like my sippy cup so I usually just make a big mess out of the regular cups contents.

New Foods I like-Nana just introduced me to plums and apricots. I love them! I also really like flavored yogurt, macaroni and cheese, broccoli, any fruit, and mommy's cereal.

New Discoveries I Made-I love balls. Throwing them, rolling them, swinging at them with golf clubs. I think anything thats circular is a ball. I've also just learned that you don't just have to walk forward; I can walk backwards too! Mommy always laughs at me when I do. I checked out a Winnie the Pooh book at the library and loved it so mommy gave me her old Winnie the Pooh stuffed toy. Now I've noticed that he is also on my diaper and on the calendar in my doctor's office. One of my most scary and exciting discoveries is all the airplanes that fly over my house. Sometimes I love them, sometimes they scare me. But I always point them out to mommy no matter how far away they are.

My Accomplishments-I can walk across the "shaky bridge" at the playground all by myself. I can climb a slide and go down it alone (if its small and mommy lets me). I can get on and off furniture without any help. I can color in a coloring book all by myself. I'm also pretty good at following directions and helping mommy clean up my toys before bed and naps.

Places I went-I went to my first water park, Pirates Cove, with mommy, daddy and our friends Sarah, Kyle and Holden Hunter. It was so much fun! I also went to Oklahoma City for my Aunt Lauren's wedding. I got to hold my mommy's bridesmaid bouquet.

Special Friends I Made-I haven't really met any new babies but I am starting to enjoy the friends I already had a lot more. I like to give hugs to my friends and sometimes I even share my toys with them. My closest friends right now are Maddy (because she comes to my house every wed, thurs and friday); Miles who I get to see a lot and he has lots of kitty cats and dogs; charlie who likes to play with my baseball and bat and shares his snacks with me; Holden plays with me while his parents and my daddy play softball; Brooklyn who doesn't interact with me a whole lot yet but she is learning to scoot so pretty soon we will be able to play together more-right now its just easy to take her toys and snacks.

Words I can say-
moo
neigh
quack quack
wooo (elephant trunk)
ruff ruff
baaa
oink
roar
fish
yes
daddy
doggy
up
duck
please
bye bye
hi
shoe
hat
hop hop (for bunny)
ball
elmo

And I (hunter) think she is just starting to say "what's this"!


Hannah girl, its been a great 18 months! I love you so much!

One Month!

July 26, 2011-18 Months

Hannah is 18 months old!

For some reason 18 months seems like a really big month "birthday" to me. I guess because the first year you really pay attention to each month milestone but then its just 1 year...18 month....2 year....3 year.....4 year. This is the last big "month" to celebrate.

Unfortunately she is very sick and there's not much celebrating going on but I still wanted to do a little update. Here are a few pics of our morning so far:

Don't let the smile fool you, she spent 30 minutes of screaming before the cereal and there were about 8 other pics where she was definitely not smiling. This is her first bowl of cereal EVER. She has eaten out of my bowls of cereal but never her own. Notice that she's not using the spoon and there's milk running down her belly

She had about a 10 minute period where she actually wanted to play with her "new bracelets" 

or old stacking rings

This is how she has spent a lot of the last few days. Or in my lap reading books and cuddling. In fact, right now she's sitting in my lap so I'm typing this one handed while she sits on my lap holding bunny and watching Elmo and the computer rests on the arm of the recliner. 

Stay tuned for my other 18 month update.....