My Lady Lou

My sweet baby girl turned 1 a couple of weeks ago.  I can't believe it has already been a year!

A few things about my girl from her first year of life...

 I'll never forget this moment.  Here she is, just minutes old.  It is amazing how one tiny person can hold so much of your heart.

And here she is, only a day old.  I remember this moment as if it were just yesterday.  Trent had left for a little while, and it was just the two of us.  I couldn't bring myself to put her down, even for a moment.  I just couldn't get enough of her.  She kept looking at me with her dark, dark blue eyes; the deepest shade of navy; looking at me with all of the trust in the world.  I was smitten.

 She was blessed by her daddy when she was 2 months old, on Father's Day no less.  :)  My mom made her blessing dress, and it turned out absolutely beautiful.

2 months old

She was such a little cuddle bug.  (Still is.)  And a great sleeper to boot.  I spent many of her nap times with her in my arms instead of putting her in her bed.  I just felt like the rest of life could wait for a little while if it meant I got to snuggle with my baby.

3 months old

These are some of the first pictures I took of her using something other than my cell phone camera.  It took me long enough, I know.

 

 4 months old
She has always been a very happy and smiley baby.
 

Even in her sleep.

 I just had to throw this one in.  She was such a little peanut.  What is it about babies and kids when they are sleeping?  They look so angelic and peaceful.

5 months
Still smiling.  Don't let her fool you though.  This girl has had a temper from day one.  She has always been very content and happy, but the second she became (becomes) bothered by something, you best watch out.  There is no in-between with this girl.  We're talking 0-60 in less than 2 seconds.  No warning whatsoever.  We are very lucky that 99% of the time she is all smiles and happy.  :)

5 months
Her first taste of a lollipop.  We only let her have 1 or 2 tastes.  Yep, she loved it.

6 months

She loved her first taste of cereal.  She had no problems chowing it right down.

 However, she was not that thrilled with her first taste of squash.  I used to make homemade baby food all the time for Trenton and Colson.  I don't know what my deal was with Vivi and Preston.  I guess I got lazy, but I was determined to make homemade, organic baby food for Jilly.  Except for the fact that she wouldn't eat it!  The little stinker.  I tried several different foods.  All to no avail.  But when I would giver her the same foods from a store bought jar of baby food, she loved it!  Oh well, at least I tried.  She'll eat anything you put in front of her now though.  I was eating a Caprese salad for lunch the other day, and I swear she ended up eating half of it.  She LOVES food!  It literally makes her giddy.  I can't blame her one bit.  I feel the same about food.

6 months

I love her chubby little cheekies.

6 months

It's just like her outfit says... This girl is "wild" about her daddy.  She loves him to pieces!  When she was just a tiny little squirt, she would just stare and stare at him whenever he was in the room.  Her eyes would follow him wherever he went.  And she could totally recognize his voice from the time she was just tiny.  It's probably from all of the talking he did to my belly when I was pregnant with her.  She is definitely a daddy's girl.

 My girl at 7 months old.  She had finally just started sitting up!  I love all of her chub!

 Jilly and I on Christmas Eve.

Her first Christmas.  The kids were more excited to show her how her new toy worked than they were about their own toys. :)

 In their new Christmas dresses grandma Guercio made them.  This was right after church on Christmas day.  Jilly was in serious need of a nap.

7 months
Her new trick.  She still does this sometimes, but not as much as she used to.  I love it.

 7 1/2 months
She wore this hat all winter.  So cute!
 
 Her first rally.  She would start clapping every time people would cheer.  She loved Mitt Romney! :)

 8 months old and still just sitting up.  Although I have to say, I was totally content with her not being able to crawl yet.  I was not going rush her on that one.

 8 months
She started doing the funniest thing.  Whenever she was tired, she would reach up and lightly run her finger tips back and forth over her eyelashes.  She also started reaching up and doing the same thing to my eyelashes when I would rock her to sleep.  She was really, really gentle too.  So cute.

8 1/2 months
She finally started to get up on her hands and knees.  She wasn't completely crawling yet, more just scooting, but she was really close.  She took off a couple of weeks after this and I actually had to start thinking about how to keep her out of things. ;)  

 Between 10 and 10 1/2 months old, she got a whole set of teeth.  She got two bottom teeth within days of each other.  About a week later, her four front top teeth came in, all within a week.  So she got 6 teeth all in about 2 weeks.  I love her little teethums.  Adorable!

11 months
Her first time in the swing, and she absolutely loved it!  She laughed hysterically! 

 Just shy of 1 year.

 She loves her siblings so much, and they love her to pieces!

And now she is one. 

Here she is, coming through her streamers the morning of her birthday.  We went downstairs after this, and the older boys, who really, really like their food, asked, "Are you going to make waffles?!"  I had just planned on giving Jilly a banana for breakfast (her favorite), but the boys quickly reminded me that waffles are our birthday tradition.  Needless to say, we had waffles.  We also turned on the "Birthday" song by the Beatles for Jilly, to which Preston promptly said, "Hey!  That's my birthday song!"  After a minute, he agreed to share it with her. :)

Standing at the sliding glass door, watching the older kids play on the deck.

Cake time! As we sang "Happy Birthday" to her, she looked around at all of us with pure confusion on her face.

I think she liked it though.

She didn't know what to think when we set the whole cake down right in front of her.  She spent a few minutes poking her finger in the hole where the candle had been.

When she finally started to dig in to the cake, we all started cheering really loud.  She loved that!

Getting her first really good taste.  Yum!  It was a pretty tasty cake if I do say so myself.  Strawberry Coconut cake with cream cheese frosting.

She did a pretty good job on her cake.  Funny story:  As Jilly was going to town on her cake, Trenton said, "I wish I could do that on my birthday!"  Uncle Sean started cracking up and said, "What... You wish we could strip you down to your undies, put you in a high chair, and let you dig in to a cake with your hands?!"  That brought on quite the mental image, and we all started laughing hysterically.

After getting nice and messy from her cake, Jilly got a bath in the sink.  Also a 1st birthday tradition at our house.

  All nice and clean.
 

Getting ready for the balloon launch.

The whole gang.

Jilly has been such a blessing in our house.  We all love her so much and can't imagine life withour her.  Happy birthday sweet girl!  We love you to pieces!

DI State Finals

 On April 14, Colson and his team participated in the DI state finals.  They did really well!  There were 24 teams total in their category, and they placed 8th out of the 24.  Not bad at all!  They won't be moving on to Globals in Tennessee, but they all seemed okay with that.  It was a great experience for these kids.

 The moon man.  :)

 The competition took place on Auraria Campus, and we ended up being there pretty much all day.  During breaks in between DI challenges, we spent some time walking around the campus.

 The kids had a great time climbing all the trees.  And I do mean all the trees.  I don't think they missed a single one.

 It was a great way to get all their wiggles out.

 All the munchkins.

Jilly was a really good girl the whole day.  Thank heavens she's pretty easy going.

 

We are so grateful for the wonderful experience this was for Colson.  He really learned a lot.  We are so proud of him and his team mates for all of their hard work.  We are especially grateful for their team manager, Deanna.  She was truly amazing through this whole process and really helped to push the kids to do their best.  Way to go Destination Dominators! :)

Easter

I love this time of year!  Everything starts to turn green.  Bulbs are popping up out of the ground.  There are beautiful blossoms on trees.  The days are longer.  There are more warm days than cold ones.  The birds on our deck are constantly chirp, chirp, chirping away.  (Jilly LOVES the birds!  One of her favorite past times is to stand up to the sliding glass door, her face pressed against it, and talk to the birds like she knows exactly what they are chirping about.  So cute to watch.)  I love Spring!

It was a beautiful weekend here this Easter.  The kids enjoyed a fun Easter egg hunt at my mom's house the day before Easter.  My mom is so much fun.  She had the kids over at 10:00 that morning, and they all spent the afternoon dying dozens of eggs.  At 2:00, the hunt was on!  Grandma and grandpa Stock came over to watch too.  Grandpa was so nice to hide all of the eggs.

I'm glad my almost 13 year still isn't "too old for these sorts of things".  He loves it just as much as the younger kids.  :)

The whole family.

Jilly had fun watching all of the goings on.  She loves to observe.  I love this girls teeth!  I just want to eat her up!

On Sunday we went to church, then came home to make Easter dinner for all the family.

I got a few snapshots of the girls in their new Easter dresses.  The boys were too fast for me though.  They were in their pajamas before I even came in from the car!

Jilly wasn't too happy when I put her in the grass.  She is most definitely not a fan.

We had a lovely afternoon with the grandmas, grandpa, and uncles.  We're grateful they live so close by.  :)

Her Mission: Search and Destroy

Jilly is quite the mess maker.  There is just something in her that needs to make chaos out of order.  Anything that can be turned into a mess is quickly done so.  And with one of her more recent discoveries (being able to open cupboards and drawers), there is no stopping her.  She has a basket full of toys, but it is very rare to ever find her actually playing with them.  She mostly just likes to empty the basket.  Then we put it all back, and she returns to toss the contents of it all over the family room again.  And I do mean toss.  She literally stands up, holding onto the basket while she picks toys out of it and chucks them behind her as fast as she can.  Walking around in the kitchen is like walking through a mine field.  You have to be very careful to not step on or trip over anything.  It's hazardous!  As I get ready in the mornings, I am constantly shuffling from side to side so as to block her every move at trying to get into the bathroom cupboards.  And if there is a book shelf in sight, every book is sure to be on the floor within seconds.  And she does all of this with a look of sheer determination on her face, like it is her mission in life to create a chaotic mess wherever she goes.  It's a good thing she is so stinking cute!

Here she is at my mom's house, caught in the act.  Grab and toss, grab and toss.  And yes, she made the huge Cheerio mess on the floor.

 Eating as she goes.  That's how she rolls.

Spring Break

We sure had a fun Spring Break this year.

 Great Grandma Chapman came for a visit.  It was so good to see her!  Hopefully we didn't wear her out too much.  She sure has quite a bit of spunk and energy.  She was such a good sport to go on so many outings with us.  Jilly sure enjoyed the time with her great grandma.  (Darn it... This is the only picture I got of her while she was here!  I have been horrible about taking pictures lately.)

 We went to the zoo for one of our outings.  Last time we went, Jilly was only a few months old, so it was fun to see her reaction to things this time.  She was pretty fascinated by all of the different animals.

 Trent was able to get the week of Spring Break off from work, which was sooooo nice!  We loved being able to spend so much time with him.

 Jilly was not a fan of the sun hat.  She took it off every chance she got.

 Colson was all smiles after he got to eat a foot long hot dog.

 Best bros.

 Viv and Buds on the carousel.  From the minute we walked into the zoo, all Buds talked about was wanting to ride on the carousel.  Once the carousel ride was over, all he wanted to do was go home!  Good thing we saw most of what we wanted to see before the carousel ride.

 Jilly's first time on the merry-go-round.

And that is the extent of my pictures for the entire 2 weeks of Spring Break.  Oh, except for these:

 We got some snow one of the days.  The kids played outside in it and built a snowman.

By the next afternoon it had warmed back up and this was all that was left of the snowman.

The boys and Trent also got to go with the grandmas to the museum and see the reptile exhibit that is here right now.  (Vivi was home sick.  Poor girl!)  I guess Trent was quite enthralled with all of the different species of reptiles.  A little known fact about Trent; when he was a teenager, he used to breed snakes.  He had over 30 different breeds in cages in the basement of his parents' home.  Boy, was his mom ever nice to have all of that down in her basement!  He LOVES snakes and other reptiles.  A few years ago, we found a rattle snake at the end of our driveway.  It was about 10:00 at night that we were walking some friends out to their car when we saw it.  I was ready to get in the car and run the thing over pronto, but Trent wouldn't have any of that!  He called animal control, pulled out a camp chair, caught the thing on the end of a 2x4, then proceeded to wait for animal control to show up.  Every time I would go out to check on him, he would marvel at how amazing the snake was, what beautiful markings it had, and try to convince me to come take a closer look!  I wasn't inclined to get any closer than the front porch.  After waiting close to 2 hours for animal control to come, to no avail, Trent decided he needed to return the snake to the wild himself.  I was still all for running it over with the car.  He enlisted my help in locating a box, as he still had the snake coiled up on the end of the 2x4.  He got the snake into the box, loaded it up in the car and drove it out to the middle of nowhere.  By the time he got back, it was well past midnight.  Luckily we haven't seen a rattle snake in the neighborhood since.

Anyway, back to Spring Break.  The kids also got to go swimming at the Rec center a couple of times.  They had lots of sleep overs with the grandmas.  Trenton got to go on a camp out.  One of his favorite things in the world to do.  Since he is in Middle School, he only got one week off instead of the two weeks the younger kids get.  Such a bummer!  It's tempting to just keep him home, but I was a responsible parent and sent him to school.  :(  Colson read almost 3 books over the two week break.  He's really into the Harry Potter series right now.  I think he had 2 solid days where he sat on the couch reading all day, besides all of the other reading he did.  It reminded me of when I was a kid.  I always had my nose in a book any chance I got.  Vivi, the poor girl, was sick for part of the break, but she made up for it by having shopping dates and tons of sleepovers with the grandmas.

 Here is a picture of her and great grandma while out shopping.

We also spent lots of time playing outside.  The weather was actually pretty decent most of the time.  It was so nice to have the kids home.  It is always kind of a let down when they have to go back to school and we have to resume a schedule.  About midway through the day on Monday, Preston looked at me and said, "Wow mom.  It is really quiet in our house."  Ah. Quiet.  On second thought, sometimes a schedule isn't so bad after all. ;)