To my ONE year old

My dear sweet, sweet Violet,
Today you are one.  A marvelous one, and my how the year has flown.  I want to say it's gone by faster with you than it had with your sister.  It doesn't help that you turned one at the busiest time of the year.  But it's been a great year. A fun year at that.
To start off, you officially have 8 teeth!  Yes, another one just in time for your 1st birthday.  Four on top and now four on the bottom.
You haven't started crawling yet, but your interest in it has begun.  You do love to pull yourself up to a standing position though, and that seems good enough for you at the moment.
One of your favorite activities is to push things around the house.  Anything really but your favorite is a wicker basket from the bathroom.  You'll get up on your knees with your hands on the basket and do a half crawl/push thing.  You love it!  That is, until you get the object you're pushing stuck against a wall.
You don't say much, just a lot of yaya's, da's, ma's, zaza's, and ssssss's sounds like a snake.
You love cheese and to push pureed foods out through your front teeth.
We're still nursing like champs.  You love every minute (and so do I).  So much in fact, that it's hard for me to get you to let go even after you've fallen asleep.
You're not a great stay-asleep-er.  Nap time only lasts about an hour and you'll still wake up every two to four hours at night.  Sometime (but rarely) six if I'm lucky.  But that's a blue moon kind of deal.
You've just recently learned how to get up to sit up from a laying position.  It was nice that way.  I could change your diaper without much of a fight.  But now you are a squirmy wormy and will take off as soon as I lie you down.  You think it's HILARIOUS to take off naked.  You'll even turn around a strike this funny pose as if you want me to chase you.  And I do.  You're too funny to not chase down.
Your first birthday wasn't a huge extravaganza.  I wasn't sure how it was going to go with Christmas and all.  Plus we weren't at our house for that day. But next year I'm sure I'll have a better plan and we'll have a little more of a party for you.  However, do know that you did have three parties and lots of gifs, hugs, loves, and kisses.  You didn't go unspoiled.
And just a couple of weeks before you turned one, you gained a new cousin.  And once you met him you LOVED him.  Kisses galore. You also got mad when we took him from you so Amelia could have a turn.  Good thing we'll be spending a few more days with him in a week!
That's another thing, you love giving kisses.  And it's the sweetest!
We're also working on sign language so until you can tell us what you want/need, you can just sign it to us.  We're first working on "please".  That one is take a bit, however, after just a few times of showing you "all done" you've got it! So now I'm starting to think you don't want to do "please" just because.
Sometimes you'll still get mistaken for a boy since you still have hardly any hair.  Even when I dress you in pink and purple!  People are so funny sometimes.
You have a great laugh and will laugh at the funniest times.
You love to rock baby dolls and sing them songs.
You also love to sing at worship time while daddy is up on stage leading it, or in the car while we listen to music.  You've loved the Christmas songs.
You're beautiful, and charming, funny, sweet, loving.  Oh, how you love to give hugs!!  Especially to your aunt Emily.
I just love you, sweet Violet.  I am forever changed since you've come into our lives.  And I'm so ever grateful to God for blessing my life with precious you.

Love, love, love you,
Momma

24/30 Things: Childhood and Family

{To know what I'm talking about, and to see previous 30 Things posts, start here}


24. Describe the family dynamic of your childhood vs. your family dynamic now.

Well, when I was a kid, our family was kinda small.  And when I say "family" I mean, my mom, my sisters, my mom's parents, my mom's sister and husband, and my mom's brother.  We'd all get together for every event, do everything together. My grandparents were younger so things were much easier for them to get around and such.   We were small and compact so activities were simpler, like going to the amusement park, the rodeo, birthdays, holidays.  
Now, two of us three girls are married.  And the two of us have 3 kids between us.  My aunt and her hubby have two kids. My other uncle passed away.  My mom is remarried and he has three boys.  My grandparents are a bit older and a little slower moving but still up and at 'em.
That's a lot of people.  When we were a small family, we'd invite people to holidays and events.  That was easy. We still do invite people to our holidays and events, just not as many people.  
We still play games, we still go places, we still get together for everything.  We're just bigger.  And I love it.  I love my family.

23/30 Things: My 5 Hobbies

{To know what I'm talking about, and to see previous 30 Things posts, start here}


23.  List your top 5 hobbies and why you love them.


Art
It helps me to create what I'm feeling. 
Feel a sense of accomplishment. 
Bring beauty on canvas into my home.

Photography
I love capturing moments.  
To create something beautiful from a glimpse in time.
To have these precious memories to look back on when the moments has passed.

Baking
It's delicious.
And fun.
And delicious.

Crafting
I can make adorableness in the form of a card or scrapbook.
They make great gifts.

Organizing
I love the cleanliness it brings.
I know I can find things when I need them.  
And easily.

11 Months and My Oldest

Nothing like running late in real life and on this blog.

Miss V turned 11 months on the 24 of November!  She's getting so big and will be ONE in only 21 days.  Wow.  I will have a 4 year old and a 1 year old.  Why do my babies get so big so fast?

So here's my update on my littlest one:

• Her words consist of "zazazaza", "vavava", and "yaya" (which I do believe is dada).
• She will go to the bottom of our staircase and yell up "yaya" to her daddy knowing he's up there working.
• She likes to whisper and scream right along with you.  It's her way of talking with you.
• She's feisty and a temper tantrum thrower.  Yay. (ha)
• She's getting faster and faster at crawling.
• She's attempted a stair.  She can do it at the church where there is only two stairs that lead to the stage but hasn't yet attempted it at home.  Where there are lots.  Lots of steep stairs.
• She's gotten yet another tooth.  She now has a total of 7!
• She likes to walk if someone is holding her hands.  She's not terribly interested in it, especially when A "helps" her.  But if Bryan or I'm helping her she'll do it for a bit and then get bored because she knows she can go faster if she crawls.  She does like it when she does it though!
• She celebrated her first Thanksgiving last month.  On the same day she turned 11 months!  She enjoyed a bit of the food.  I'm kinda slow going on getting her more and more on solids but the last months she has been enjoying it a bit more.  
• She loves to be snuggled.  She's been giving tons of hugs.  
• She's so smiley.
• And when she gets excited she'll throw her hands in her lap, curl her back, straighten her legs and toes, and give us a huge grin.  It's flippin ADORABLE!!
• She's so charming.  People will actually stop in the store just to talk to her, make her laugh or talk to them, or just to see her smile.  I know this happened with A and I'm sure this happens to other babies, it just always makes me grin to see them want to talk to V.  And sweet A will tell them that her name is Violet and she is her baby sister and that her own name is Amelia. It's so sweet. 
• Her eyes are getting darker all them time.  She no longer has blue eyes but a hazel of some sort.  
• She does this adorable face (that she's done forever but still does) where she makes an "ooooh" sound and makes it look like she sucking on a straw while her eyes get really big.
• She pulls herself up onto things into a standing position.  
• We're working on getting her to sign "please".  I was late on teaching this to her too but we're working on it. 
• She's getting better at sleeping at night.  I have a noise machine that I turn on to drown out all the other "surprising" noises.  It seems to help.  
• She's also still down to one nap a day.  That'll last anywhere from 1 hour to two but it's usually the former.
• She's always busy and loves to play, but if Sesame Street or Veggie Tales are on, she'll play in front of that and watch in awe.  
• She loves to dance and bounce and toss her arms around to music.  She loves music.

As for my oldest one:

• She is enjoying school.  Loves it!
• We're doing 24 days of Christmas.  It's kind of like an advent calendar but with activities to do every day.  We have a lot of random acts of kindness and buying/giving away/making gifts for others, and then fun events to attend. Plus things like camping out with daddy, movie night, and ice cream with a friend.  She even remembered this from last year.  I was surprised that she did! (If you follow me on facebook you'll see pictures of the activities we have every day.)
• She's learning to write her name.  At the beginning of the year it was just scribbles but now I can make out the A the M and the I.  Super impressive.  
• She had a Thanksgiving program for her school and it was adorable.  She definitely likes to be in the limelight.  
• She's become quite the storyteller, she'll read us books and make up stories to go along with it.  
• She's also become a very good artist.  She can draw houses and people and they actually resemble them so that you know what they are.  

Anyway, there's my update.  Hopefully I can actually write a blog post that doesn't involve once a month updates.  Ha!