May and 15 months Update!

                May has been a crazy busy month, but it has been so much fun.  We have spent a lot more time together as a family and that has been such a blessing.  After the stress of April, we really needed the quality time together.  Some fun highlights of the month have been celebrating Mother’s Day, our 5^th anniversary, and my birthday as well as getting to have my parents in town for about 10 days.

                Mother’s day and our anniversary happen to fall on the same weekend this year (and most years in fact).  So Saturday May 12^th for our anniversary we made a family affair of it.  We are pretty predictable and ended up spending the morning at the farmers market as a family, then heading to Mellow Mushroom for a wonderful pizza dinner, and then Kilwins ice cream for dessert.  A very yummy and perfect celebration of the last 5 years if you ask me. J  For Mother’s day all I really wanted to do was spend the day in downtown Charleston and get free ice cream.  Since I know we are only going to be here for about one more year, I really want to make sure we take advantage of living in such a gorgeous city.  We packed Alethea into the stroller and just had fun walking around and people watching.  Alethea even got to run around in waterfront park and a little bit of playing in the fountain.  We finished off the night with dinner at Southend Brewery and I got some super yummy veggie ravioli.  What a fabulous way to spend my 2^nd Mother’s day!

The best of our Mother's Day photo attempts

Had a blast with Daddy chasing her in waterfront park

Love this!

                The next weekend was my birthday (the 19^th) and my parents were in town for that. Yay!  We actually even made a continued anniversary celebration while they were here too.  Friday night Ben and I went out for burgers at Sesame and then went to see The Avengers in IMAX 3D.  The food, company, and movie was a perfect, baby free night out.  Then on Saturday, Ben had to go to class in Columbia so I spent the day with my parents and Alethea.  We went to the farmers market, then my mom and I went shopping for clothes, and for dinner my Dad and Alethea went to Moe’s for my birthday dinner.  Yum!  And the best part was to finish off the night my parents had made me a homemade ice cream cake that included layers of homemade vanilla ice cream, red velvet cake, and Oreos.  It was AMAZING!  The best cake I have ever had!  Oh and I also got some great presents, my favorite of which being a coupon to pick out a sewing machine.  (Unfortunately the one I ordered I just found out is on back order. L)

Mamaw and Papaw brought toys that Mommy played with at her 

Granpeg and Grandaddy's when she was little

Crazy to see her playing with toys I did as a kid (Daddy made her a car)

and a slide

Helping Mamaw with dishes...AKA playing in a bowl of water at the end

reading with Papaw

Walking to the farmers market

Posing for a bday picture

Helping Papaw make Mommy's cake

Boo!

YUM!

                Now onto what has been going on with Ben.  He has still been working hard on grad school.  It has been a bit more time consuming of late than he would like it to be, but he is just thankful for the opportunity to get the degree and what that will do for his future career options.   He also finished off in his old department this month and has now taken over as division director of the enlisted math department.  And the best part about that is that he loves it!  He is excited to see how this position with stretch him and teach him many new leadership skills that will be valuable in his future.

                I have been enjoying all the family weekends this month and it has been a much needed change from last month.  We have really been able to spend quality time together and I love it.  This month marked the milestone of turning 27.  Three years from the big 3-0! I also began my first garden this month.  It is a container garden because we don’t want to dig up the ground knowing we are moving in about a year.  I planted several squash, a tomato, some bell peppers, and some spinach.  The squash, tomato and one of the bell peppers are doing great.  However, one of my pepper plants croaked and the spinach just hasn’t taken.  I think it was too late in the season for spinach.  We will just have to try for the fall!  The biggest thing, besides around the clock care for Alethea, that is keeping me busy is helping with the preparations for Mission Charleston.  I am doing a lot of the organization and notifying about our churches mission outreach for the summer.  It’s a lot of work, but strangely enough I am enjoying keeping busy. J

                This month Alethea turned 15 months old.  She is losing more and more of her baby-ness with each passing month.  It’s crazy!  She is such a little person now and though she doesn’t use many words now, she communicates quite well.  At her check-up this month the doctor said she is doing great.  She has met or exceeded all of her developmental milestones.  Her stats were 24lbs and 33inches.  She is off the charts in height and about average in her weight.   This month she also added tooth number 8 on May 6^th (her bottom left tooth).  She now has 4 on the bottom and four on the top.  I love her toothy little grin!

My big girl wanted to wear one of Mommy's tshirts :-)

                Her vocabulary is expanding all the time.  She regularly uses her signs for more, all done, eat, and help.  Help and more tend to be used most often with a lot of pointing to give specifics, but it works for her so I am not complaining.  This month she has also begun using some fun words such as thank you (tee-too), hi there or hiddee (ha-duh), ball (bah), dog bark (buh!), horse neigh (don’t even know the phonetics for this one), uh-oh, and she continues to say da-da when she sees her daddy (though she uses that sound for many more things too).  It’s crazy how much she understands though.  She is able to point to her nose and her belly button, and sometimes to her eyes.  She recognizes dogs in pretty much every book and babies too. 

Playing out in the sprinkler and demonstrating her dog bark

                She has quite the motor skills as well.  She will climb on pretty much anything which has created some very interesting, sometimes scary, situations.  Her most recent was pushing her blocks up to the front door so that she could try to open the handle while standing on it.  She always pushes up a chair or stool to help me with dishes and sometimes cooking.  It is her goal to be doing whatever Mommy is doing and most of the time I love that!  Though her ability to push a chair or stool up to the counter (or up to anything for that matter) has its pitfalls when she is grabbing everything off the counter when you don’t want her too! She also loves to give high fives which really makes her Daddy and Papaw happy. 

helping Mommy cook...and making faces too!

She even uses a stool in her own kitchen, lol

                She is still a very outdoorsy kid.  We try to get out at least once a day so she can run around a bit, eat some dirt, carry around some rocks (or whatever else she finds), and sometimes play in the pool.  This month I even got brave and let her play in the rain, which turned into playing in the mud, which meant a huge mess.  Thankfully it was super fun watching her enjoy it!

At the pool for the last time with her buddy Theo

Future gardener

mud!

What a mess!

                Her eating is pretty good.  She still won’t really eat finger food veggies so I am still offering that in pureed form for now to make sure she at least gets some.  Fruit is probably her favorite food group and she will eat most any type of fruit you put in front of her.  A new favorite is fresh blueberries from the farmers market.  I think she would eat the whole carton in one setting if I let her!  She is still a huge pizza and grilled cheese fan, and we have added quesadillas, spaghetti (not with spaghetti noodles, usually whole wheat rotini), and beans to the favorites list.  Meat isn’t high on her priority list, but thankfully I can sneak that into her pastas, pizzas, and spaghettis.  She still is not a milk fan and right now I am taking a break from even buying it because no one else uses it and I was having to use whole milk in stuff instead of our normal almond milk just to be able to use the stuff up.  So we offer LOTS of cheese and yogurt in hopes of filling that calcium, vitamin D, and fat gap.  She is still nursing twice a day (first thing in the morning and at bedtime) and we are in no rush to get rid of those times, especially since she doesn’t like cow’s milk.  But I honestly can’t blame her because I don’t like the stuff by itself either!

Pasta face

                One last thing to mention is that Alethea is a ham!  She is such a smiley girl and I love it.  She simply melts my heart and I don’t think we can pass by anyone without getting them to crack a smile.  I have a little social butterfly on my hands (though she does have her shy moments too).  It is such a joy to see her develop into a beautiful little girl with such a sweet personality.  I am enjoying every minute of it and even the crazy stressful moments (after they are over and I get to look back on them and laugh).   God has truly blessed us with a wonderful daughter and I am so very thankful he has entrusted us with her care.

Loving her baby doll

cooking with ice

matching toes!