River

First Starbucks! It's just warm foamed milk....but SO much fun.

She really enjoyed her beans, rice and cheese.

On one of Caesar's days off we took her to the river where she had so much fun splashing in the water and she didn't want to leave. We will definitely have to go back, it was a blast.

Afterwards we went and got ice cream, and Evie had one of those little sample spoons. She would hand it to me and sign please, then after tasting mine, do the same to Caesar. And back and forth, back and forth.

There were the prettiest flowers by the river so we took some pictures.

I was asking Evie for different signs to try to get her to look at me. This is "please".

This face. She can't fool me....I know her tricks. :)

Kissy, affectionate girl.

Grandad, Evie and I went to the restaurant at the little Santa Rosa airport. We sat outside on the patio so she could see all the planes cause she had just started signing "airplane." She had fun watching the planes, and she had some of Grandad's garden burger and some ice cream and berries for dessert. And THEN, when we were getting ready to leave she spotted a baby at a nearby table and was so excited. So much excitement for one day! We stopped and said hi for a few minutes and she just loved seeing another baby. I need to set up more play dates for her....

I was tickling her and she was trying to escape. She's so funny though, whenever she DOES get away when we are tickling, she stops and signs "more." She loves to laugh.

(I do have Easter photos, they're just not uploaded yet. Next time!)

 

Dandelions and Puddles

So serious.

We are currently three nights into getting Evie to sleep by herself, in her crib, in her own room, for naps and overnight, with no more night feedings. Yikes. She has been sleeping with us and we would give her a bottle when she woke up in the middle of the night. She's doing really well considering what a huge change it is. We feed her and put her in the crib, then sit nearby and ignore her till she goes to sleep. If we leave the room completely right away she freaks out, so that will come next. I'm thinking we might take this opportunity to go down from two naps to one. She has been going to sleep so much easier when she's really tired and the past couple days that hasn't necessarily been at nap time.

Speaking of changes, I started transitioning her from breast milk to regular milk around her birthday. She never got the hang of nursing so I have been exclusively pumping for the last year so that she could still have my milk. As of about a week and a half ago she is only having cow's milk. And I am SO happy to pack up the pump. I added it up and in total I pumped approximately 25 days. Solid. Over the last year. That's a lot. Goodbye pump! Thanks for helping me feed my baby, but I am DONE with you now!

Building more towers

Aunt Meg came to visit and taught Evie the very important business of blowing dandelions.

And today we went for a walk during which I taught Evie about puddle jumping and how fun splashing is. No pictures of that unfortunately, cause we were busy jumping.

Is this the cutest rain coat you've ever seen? From Uncle Julio and Aunt Laura. Me and Evie need to get ourselves some rain boots now.....maybe we should have done that before we went puddle jumping. Ah well.

 

Oregon Trip

Just chillin in the swing Grandma and Grandad got for her birthday

We went up to Portland to visit Mark last weekend...we stopped in Ashland to spend the night on the way up, but drove back down all in one day. SO much driving. Evie's longest road trip yet, for sure. But she did a great job being patient and we had fun while we were up there seeing her Uncle.

She woke up when we got to Ashland at 2am...it was SUPER fun getting her back to sleep...

I wedged Caesar's phone between the headrests for part of the trip. Yay for Netflix!

Mark actually lives in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland, and we found this BEAUTIFUL yarn store....walked around in circles there for quite a while before settling on what to get. We also went to Powell's Books where Evie chose The Fluffy Duckling book and made friends with a little boy.

Playing peek a boo in the car

We stopped in Redding on the way back for dinner and to stretch at Barnes and Noble. Evie had a gift card from her cousin Anthony and her Aunt Thuan and Uncle Marco and she picked out a cute cloth book called Good Night Teddy. Has a little bear to tuck in bed. That didn't use the whole card so we also got her this little light up octopus that casts stars on the ceiling. It uses batteries and the buttons are very simple so we showed her how to turn it on and off herself, which makes her very pleased.

One year old doctors appointment. Shots and everything :(

Oh, and she is now 27 inches tall, and 19 lbs.

My mom got a bread machine so we made a pizza a few days ago....Evie loved it

Watching Cali catch the frisbee

Me and Evie were watching Grandad throw the frisbee and I mentioned how I had heard somewhere that you have a one in 10,000 chance of finding a four leaf clover. He started telling me about how you can actually buy seeds now that only grow four leaf clovers, and literally while he was talking I looked down and found one.

We took Evie to this pond where she saw real ducks for the first time...very exciting. And geese too!

We spotted a dove in the willow tree

Turned around for two seconds and she built this tower all by herself...first one!

Also, she signed thank you, and please....she knows a lot of signs now, and understands pretty much all of what we say. When she is trying to communicate something but doesn't know how she just runs through all her signs one after another, milk, more, all done, please, thanks, yay. She is just going to start chatting away one of these days, full sentences and all.