Almost One!

The big day is almost here for our little girl...we are going to have a one-year old on Thursday!  Everyone says how time flies when you have children, and I'm beginning to understand exactly what they are talking about.  Lately, when I see or hold a little baby, I can't even remember Meredith being that small.  Crazy how time flies!

Meredith advanced to the next nursery room at church on Sunday....#tear.  She went from the "God's Gifts" (for crawlers) to the "Works of Wonder" (for walkers) classroom.  Since I also volunteer in the Works of Wonder classroom, I was sure to tell the next hour volunteers that it was my baby girl's first time in this room and to ask that they keep a special eye on her.  I was most concerned about the slide that is in the room.  Of course, I never thought about it being an issue when I watch the other kids in the room, but when it's my own baby I think about all the things that could go wrong from a fall to an injury requiring stitches....ah, but alas she survived and gave us a big smile when we came to pick her up after church.  That melts my heart!

Other than putting the final touches on her birthday party next weekend and planning our upcoming trip to the Dells/Mall of America, not a ton of new things going on in the Prentice household.  I'm planning a special post to honor a "year in the life" of our little Mer-Bear, so that should be coming later in the week.  In the meantime, I will leave you with this picture of Meredith all ready for the Dells trip:

She still loves to hold shoes (refer to my previous post entitled, "Date Night")!

Big Girl

"Big Girl" is the best way to describe this post.  Meredith stepped up big time over the past few days and it's something we never would have expected from our 11 month old.  It started on Thursday night - I was feeling really nauseous, light headed, and sick to my stomach.  Turns out, I ended up with the stomach flu.  No warning whatsoever that it was coming...ugh!  I didn't sleep at all that night and when I asked Chad what his work calendar looked like the next day (I didn't see how I could manage watching Meredith from the bathroom), he said, "I think I may have to take a sick day too."  So, Friday, we both had a terrible case of the stomach flu and could barely stand.  With no one in town to watch Meredith, we wondered how this would work.

First, we summoned ourselves to the living room and kept Meredith in with us by blocking off both exits with the ottoman and high chair.  Pretty creative if you ask me.  Next, we watched to see what she would do.  Other than the occasional pull at the window blinds or the pounding of the TV screen, she did phenomenally well.  What a Big Girl!!!  She was able to entertain herself by turning pages in her books, chasing a ball around, and of course, perfecting her walking skills by going in large circles around the room.  I probably should let her entertain herself more often like this in the future so that she isn't always dependent upon me for her entertainment, but hopefully I won't be deathly sick like this again.  I didn't take any pictures to mark this occasion, because the house was much too messy!  Thankfully, Meredith has not yet caught the stomach bug and hopefully never will.

Here are some other things she has begun to do over the past week:

- She is PACI FREE!  We've tried "paci bans" in the past, only to end up giving in after a day or so.  Well, this time, she has gone one week without a paci.  I think she's old enough now to understand how to calm herself down, usually by sucking one of her fingers.  We never used a paci a ton with her, but it was a crutch for us (primarily when in public places) and her and I'm hoping this continues.

She usually likes to suck on her middle finger or ring finger.

- She can now drink from a straw!  A sippy cup straw that is....

- Yesterday, we noticed that she is indeed learning words from her videos (the only TV we let her watch is her "Your Baby Can Read" videos, twice a day).  When you ask her to put her arms up, she will put one or both straight up in the air.  It's really funny to watch when she does it while also walking.   Also, when one of the girls on the video looks at her hand, Meredith will put her hand in front of her and turn it from side to side.

- She getting another tooth! :)  Her second one in the top middle is still coming in and yesterday we noticed that she has a third up top starting to come in.  I use to wonder if she would ever get teeth, since her first didn't come until 8 months, and now we're wondering if we should begin a special fund for braces.   

- She also now figured how to climb (on objects other than the stairs).  I was in denial that this would happen.  Not that I wanted Meredith to never be able to climb into a chair or bed, but I'm now picturing accidents around ever turn.  Here are her action shots (Note: she was supervised - notice my hand in the pictures?  While my first thought was "whoa" she's climbing and going to hurt herself, my close second thought was that I needed to grab the camera!)

Date Night

Meredith is nearly a year old and we finally did it!  What, you may ask?  Well, Chad and I had our first official "date night" this past Friday, to celebrate our recent birthdays.  Sure, we've gone on "dates" before since she was born, but it was usually while our parents were in town to visit and we would sneak away to a quick movie after she was already in bed.

My friend, Theresa, has a baby that is right around Meredith's age and when talking one day, we thought it would be nice if we could switch sitting for each others kids, so we could each have a date night.  It's a neat idea and I would love to do it larger scale one day, with several couples set-up in the scheduling ring.  Basically, we sit for each others kids (right now, every other month, so that one of us has a date night each month) and there is no cost involved, since we are swapping services.  Kind of nice when you don't have family in town and you're on a budget!  Also, we think it is so important that we connect and get out of the house by ourselves occasionally.  Of course, I love spending time with Meredith and really don't like leaving her with other people, but it's such an important part of our marriage to make these commitments.

Chad and I went to Olive Garden (one of my favorite places!) and then bowling.  I couldn't even remember the last time we bowled - it was nice, but boy was my wrist sore the next day!  One of the gifts we request of our parents each Christmas are restaurant gift cards.  Eating out at sit-down restaurants can be a budget-breaker and something I normally see as a frivolous expense, so we enjoy having these gift cards.  I have so much stuff around the house, that I really don't need or want home decor items, etc. for gifts, but would rather remember a nice meal/experience out instead!

Not a lot of new stuff going on with Meredith, other than she is walking really well and gets back up every time she falls.  Plus, she likes to try to climb the stairs anytime she thinks we're not looking.  And, she is getting her fourth tooth up top and has learned to grind her teeth - argh, like nails on a chalkboard!  Oh, and she loves to pick up our shoes and walk around the rooms with them.  Ok....so, maybe there is a lot of new stuff going on with her!  Here are some photos from the week:

I got Daddy's shoe!

Yay!

I'm strong!

I love the stairs!

My first birthday as a Mom!

Easter Happenings

Boy, these weeks sure do fly by!  Chad said yesterday that Meredith seems to learn something new everyday and I believe it.

• She is now becoming quite the walker.  It's very weird to see her toddle around, when it seems she learned to crawl just yesterday.  Over the past few days, she has really begun to advance in her walking abilities.  She can now squat down to pick up objects and get back up unassisted (e.g., without falling back down and crawling).  She also seems to enjoy walking more now, so we imagine she will be walking fairly well by her first birthday. 
• She can also now kind-of-sort-of wave!  It's quite funny - when we wave to her, she raises one or both hands straight up over her head.  It sometimes comes with a squeezing of her hand, but it's most funny when her arm just shoots straight up :)
• Okay, this isn't exactly a milestone, but I think it's funny and proves her awareness of surroundings.  I was at Fazoli's this week with a friend and as I was preparing to order, I noticed that she kept looking past me and opening her mouth really wide.  She then would close her mouth, look at me, and look past me and do it again.  I finally looked over my shoulder and could see why she was doing this....there was a picture of a girl eating spaghetti and she had her mouth wide open!  Ha!  Meredith was just trying to copy what she looked like.  I got a good laugh out of that.  This is a reenactment she did later of that face:

• Finally, this wasn't exactly the milestone I wanted, but we have moved her to the kitchen sink for bath time.  She seems quite content here and though it is weird to think I wash her body in the same area I wash her dishes, it works and is much better than our bathtub disaster (see previous Blog post, Milestones)!  I'm sure this solution won't work for long, though, since she will be too big soon.

For Easter, we invited both of our sets of parents over to help us celebrate.  Also, this year Easter fell right in the middle of Chad and my birthdays, so that was another reason to celebrate.  I was kind of excited to be able to cook a nice meal for everyone, since my cooking skills have increased substantially since my single-hood days.  Plus, I LOVE crockpot meals.  I made pot roast in the crockpot (my Mom provided the recipe - the BEST I have ever had, and no I'm not just saying that because I made it), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes/gravy, and rolls.  Yummy!

We realized that this was the first time Meredith's grandparents have all been together since the day she was born.  Here is a picture:

Chad and I decided not to do an "Easter Basket" for Meredith.  I guess we just feel that she won't remember it now anyways, plus I think it kind of takes away from the true meaning for the Holiday.  We were talking about how we can kind of understand Santa and his purpose (gives out presents to children that are good), but what is the purpose of the Easter Bunny?  I mean, they don't even lay eggs that the kids hunt for.  We think most of the Easter Bunny's in kids pictures are a little freaky looking.  Not to mention it's around $20 for the cheap picture package at our local Mall.  What a rip off.  So, we instead let our parents get her gifts - she got a few books about Easter, an Easter dress, and a stuffed Easter bunny.

Fun New Toys!

Miss Meredith in her Easter dress

Milestones

Over the past week, Meredith has had a few important milestones to put under her belt.  Both good and bad! - I should probably start with the good:

She is now a walker!  Though she is still unable to fully stand up on her own, that is, without the aid of a couch or pushing off of mommy and daddy's bodies, she is a MAD walker when she is up.  At times, she even appears to run.  She really is a fearless little girl.  She still stumbles quite a bit and can't fully figure out how to balance (kind of reminds me how I look on roller skates), but when she does fall, she just gets back up!  I wish I had that courage.  She still prefers to crawl most places, but I know it won't be long before she walks/runs everywhere. 

Another good milestone, at least in my mind (not too sure whether she sees teething as this eventful), is that she is cutting her first top tooth!  This will be tooth #3.  With each tooth, I think she is beginning to look more like a little girl and not like a gummy baby anymore!

With good, I suppose there is always a little bit of bad.  So here it is - we had our first "bleeding" incident, as Chad coined the phrase.  One of our favorite times of day with Meredith is when she wakes up from a nap.  This is when she is at the peak of happiness - she is well rested and loves seeing us enter the room to pick her up.  She gets so wound up in the crib and is a hoot during this time.  Well, I was getting ready in the bathroom and heard a terrible cry and heard Chad say, "Oh no".  I rush in to find Meredith bleeding from her mouth!  Not exactly the site I wanted to see.  Of course, I had to take her away from Chad and hold her to console her myself.  She apparently lunged her head forward into the crib railing and her bottom teeth hit her top gum line.  She had a small cut that looked like a paper-cut on her gum - surprisingly, after just a few minutes, she was back to her old self. 

Another bad milestone we have hit is with bath time.  When Meredith was very small and still a bit colicky, bath time was one of the few relief moments for us because it always got her to calm down!  Chad even thought she was going to be the next Michael Phelps and we had big dreams of her Olympic debut.  For 11 months now, we have all loved bath time!  Well, this past week, she decided it would be more fun to stand up in the baby tub.  This caused us a bit of nervousness, since we know she can't stand up on her own in the tub without slipping, but she doesn't know that yet.  We moved her to the big tub, hoping that would change her behavior, but it's almost worse now.  We are hoping she gets over this phase soon, because she may soon be the dirtiest kid on the block if we have our way (we are thinking of boycotting bath time).

Here is how we both look/feel during bath time.

I hate to end on a bad note, but there is one more bad milestone that happened.  I thought we still had another year or so for this one, but apparently not.  We think we entered the "terrible 2's".  What, you may ask, has happened?  Drum roll please.....Meredith threw her first temper-tantrum yesterday.  I was babysitting Meredith's little playmate, Lauren, and that's when it happened.  She actually did really well playing the first two hours or so, other than the occasional 'I'm going to steal your toy, even though I'm already holding one in my hand and there are a dozen others on the floor'.  I chalk that up to kid stuff and the fact that Meredith is pretty outgoing and aggressive when it comes to toys.  After some time, she must have realized I was not providing her 100% one-on-one time and she threw a fit.  Anytime I would hold Lauren or talk with him, she would want to sit on my lap too or would come walking/crawling towards me hysterically crying.  She also wouldn't let me leave the room without wailing.  She did fine when Lauren's parents watched her on Saturday, so I'm thinking it's because she is not used to me being in the room with her and another child or because it was at our house, where she is surrounded by her toys and has her routine.

Meredith wanting the basketball hoop AND Lauren's bat.

Well, I just can't do it - I can't end on a bad note.  It wouldn't be fair to Meredith and her normally good demeanor :)  We have gone walking quite a bit over the past week, since this normally crazy, unpredictable Illinois weather has been absolutely lovely.  Now who couldn't be happy when looking at this little girl in her stroller....surely, this precious baby couldn't throw a temper-tantrum, right?: