12 month stats

Sugar bear had her 12 month checkup today and as usual she is healthy as a horse. She saw the nurse practioner today because her normal doctor was on vacation while I was out for the holidays. Anyway, the nurse practioner said that she loves to see babies who have not had any sick visits in their first year and that it is usually a good sign of a healthy kid for years to come! Yipee! I hope she is right and that we don't have to walk in the sick door. :) The bear weighed in at 22 pounds 8 ounces which is the 75th percentile and was 30.75 inches long which is in the 90th percentile which means she must be taking after her father. I was suprised her percentiles where this high becasue everywhere we go people always tell me she is so small but maybe it is because she is long and lean. Anyway, either the shots she got today were more painful or she was more bothered by them because she cried hard and took longer to calm down. Poor sugar bear. :(

My little ladybugs first birthday party!

Bailey's birthday party went great! I had spent many nights laying in my bed thinking about how exactly I wanted the party to go and what I wanted and I think everything lived up to that. I even managed to squeeze 2o people into our not so big house..ha! I think sugar bear had a good time although she was quite serious at the party. I don't know if it was all the loud noise or her nap wasn't long enough but she wasn't giving anyone too many smiles. Anyway, I am about to overload you with pictures here but hey I need them in my blog book and I learned the hard way that it takes forever to go back and add them later. If you would like to see all of the pics then you can go here http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IbuGrZyycMQS . There are so many good ones that I had a hard time narrowing it down so check them out.

Like I said I really had put some serious thought into this party so I will share you a few pics of the decorations so if you weren't here you can see it and I can remember it. More of the action pics down below.

Cake table - I cute holes in a red table cloth so that the table would be spotted! :)

I thought this pull string pinata was so cool. It is intended for younger kids and since Bailey loves strings I thought it would perfect. More on the failure of this "great in theory but not so great once you actually use it" in a minute.

Since most of Bailey's guest were adults I thought that the would need a little game themselves. So, I had this board with pictures from each month of Bailey's first year. You had to see if you could figure out how many months she was in each picture. My dad claimed it was too hard but Shelli and my sisters Karen and Melody took away the prize with only missing 4. I guess I can see who keeps up with their blog reading! HA!

Of course I have always loved (and been miserable at) guessing how many whatevers are in a jar. The winner of this was my niece Hanna.

Bailey's high chair and balloons!

Bailey's ladybug cupcake cake

Ok Ok now enough braggin on my decorations now onto the fun pics....

Kels and the bug

Kels, Bear, and Hope

Sweet bear

Crawling bear

Give me the camera!

Bear got lots of wonderful gifts. I am not sure she really grasps the concept of gift opening even after Christmas and her birthday. Of course she had many little helpers ie. cousins "helping" her.

The fam

Cake time

Hmmm....whats that?

GROSS!!! Bear was not a fan of the cake and did not want it on her or to eat it. She obviously doesn't take after her mama.

She did have fun getting the icing everywhere!

Pinata time!

Bears friend Kai trying out the pinata

So, allegedly the pinata is suppose to fall whenever a person pulls the correct string. So, all the big kids somewhat took turns pulling all the strings and when the last one was pulled...NOTHING! HA!

So, we gave the oldest kid a hammer and had to resort to the old fashioned way! That did the trick!

The evening ended with a special treat for the bear! Fireworks!

It was a perfect ending to a great party! Thanks to all of you that came! Maybe for her second birthday I can let her daddy plan the party and do all the work! HA!

Happy First Birthday Sugar Bear!

Dear Sugar Bear,

As your Dad would say, you have made one full trip around the sun. What that means is that you are one year old. The last year has been one of the best of my life. I have loved watching you grow and learn so fast. Having you discover the world around you is the best gift in the world. I wasn't sure how I would feel the day you turned one. Would I be sad? Would I be happy? I must say that happiness and delight fills my soul to the brim. Tonight as I nursed you before bed I was taken back to last year.

You were born around 4 pm after a long, hard labor and me and your dad were very exhausted. Having you there though was a high like nothing else. We couldn't put you down to save our lives and you didn't really care for the bassinet that much anyway. Your daddy could swaddle you up better than the nurses and it made you real happy. I had to unswaddle you to feed you to keep you awake. We were both discovering nursing together. I wasn't quite sure I was doing it right but it seem what you needed and you nursed most of the night or slept on my chest. well except for when daddy took you had held you on his chest so mommy could get a little rest. I truly couldn't imagine loving you anymore that day, but is seems I have loved you more and more everyday since then.

The first couple of weeks were great. Everyone had told me that it would be hard and there were times that were but I knew those moments of you being so small and little would go by way too fast. I actually felt like being your mom and tending to your needs was easy. Your Aunt Melly called me a natural". I guess she is right though, being your mom has been very natural.

The next few months I stayed home from work and me and you spent a lot of our time at home and running errands. You would fall asleep in your car seat and I could do a whole shopping trip with you dead asleep! :) You wouldn't dream of doing that now because you can only stay asleep in a moving car for about 20 minutes and would never sleep in Wal-mart! He He! Everyday I couldn't imagine leaving you and going back to work. I did miss teaching but I couldn't imagine anyone else taking as good care of you as I did. So, I extended my maternity leave a few more weeks and went back to work when you were almost 4 months old.

I had 9 weeks back to work before summer break. I think those were the hardest 9 weeks in the past year for me. You were still so young and would take a bottle but really preferred me so you ate the bare minimum and nursed frequently in the night. I was exhausted and my kids at school were ready for summer to so dealing with them on minimal sleep was tough. I did learn to nurse you laying down and towards the end of those 9 weeks I learned that I could be a working mom.

The summer was so much fun. Your dad and I took you to the beach with your Aunt Melly and cousins. You had so much fun in the swimming pool and being held by everyone on the beach. I can't wait to take you on many more beach trips! We also went to Colorado to visit family and we had a lot of fun there too.

After summer mommy had to head back to work. It was a little tough for me but nothing like it was back when you were 4 months old. Now you were about 8 months old and eating solids so you not getting all of your milk was not a huge deal. I knew you would start getting up in the night even though you had slept through the night all summer long. At first I was a little afraid of this but then I actually learned to crave it and was happy to have you nurse in the middle of the night because it has been some of my favorite times with you. You are so calm and so close to me and I love every minute of it. Especially these days when you really just want to be on the move not being cuddled.

You like your baby sitter Marjorie and have fun playing there while mommy is at work. I think you enjoy watching the other kids especially a little boy named Landon. He is about a year older than you and I think he is your long lost brother. :) Mommy misses you at work but also knows that you are having fun while she is there.

Soon after I returned to work you started crawling and I think the fall has been my favorite time of watching you learn. It seems that everyday you get to discover something new. You are not walking yet but have can stand pretty good on your own so I think you will walk in the next few weeks to a month. I hope that your daddy and I are teaching you and letting you discover all that you want. We try to take you to many places. We have taken you camping and canoeing and I know over time there will be much more.

We are having your first birthday party tomorrow so I wanted you to be able to experience something special for your actual birthday. It is pretty cold here today so we took you to the mall to ride on the carousel. It was a beautiful carousel. Daddy rode with you first and then mommy rode with you. You loved it and I loved it too. It made me smile so big to see you having such fun and to reflect on how much fun the last year has been. The pictures when the carousel are moving are kind of blurry but I can still see the smile on your face. Your daddy and I love you so much and had so much fun riding the carousel with you today. It was perfecting ending to a perfect first year with our sweet little sugar bear! :)

Love,
Mommy

First Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas and Sugar Bear enjoyed every minute of it. She didn't quite grasp the concept of everything going on but did enjoy her gifts and of course playing with her cousins. Sugar Bear's first Christmas turned out to be white Christmas and it was pretty much everyones first white Christmas around here too. Here is my sisters house on Christmas morning as proof that snow does occasionally fall around here. :)



I am glad that my sister got a picture of sugar bear on Christmas eve in her cute Christmas pjs because her diaper leaked that night and she had to get her day clothes on to see what Santa brought her.

Speaking of Santa this is what he brought sugar bear. She is crawling in to check it out.

Hmmm....a car and you can even keep stuff inside!

...and you can even push it too! :)

She hasn't learned to ride it yet but LOVED for Kelsey to push her around on it.

Well as you can see Sugar bear loved all of her gifts. As we drove home last night from having a wonderful Christmas with family my mind I was taken back to Christmas last year. Trev and I had anxiously been awaiting the arrival of the bear and were pretty disappointed that she was not here. It was all we really wanted for Christmas. Then that evening I went into labor and the next day we would receive the best gift in the world and now here we are this year getting to share Christmas with the best gift in the world. So, I guess in hindsight it is pretty neat that this was her first Christmas and not last year when she would just be entering the world!