To Hannah at 11 months

Sweet Hannah Girl,
You have reached (and passed) 11 months now and I am amazed at how this number seems to speed your development! You are growing into a happy, beautiful and playful little lady.

I love the new games you like to play with me! Especially peek-a-boo! I usually give you the clean diaper to play with as I change your stinky diapers and recently this has turned into play time for you. You love putting the diaper over your face, peeking those beautiful brown eyes out at me, and then giggling when I catch them. You also love us pretending to catch you as you push your walker across the floor. This usually results in hysterical laughter.

Your gross and fine motor skills are getting stronger by the day. I was surprised the other day when I caught you putting the balls back into your musical elephant as they popped out and onto the floor. You are also very good at getting your cheerios out of your little snack container (the kind that has a couple slits on top for you to reach through to get your snacks out of). This is like a fun and rewarding game for you. As I mentioned before, you love walking as you push your walker and can now walk along furniture. This is more of a game for you though and your preferred mode of transportation is still crawling. You can, however, stand alone for about 30 seconds. You are slowly learning the convenience of not needing to hold onto or lean against something all the time. However, you still prefer to sit down if we put you down standing up. That's okay. I'm enjoying keeping you on the ground a little while longer.

You still want to be taken care of in many ways. You can be very defiant and will only do things when you decide that you are ready. We found this when we wanted you to self feed and we are finding this again with you holding your own bottles. You are strong enough and have shown us on occasion that you can do it. But you want to be taken care of. You also refuse to drink out of a sippy cup. I don't know how many different  cups I'm willing to buy to see what you'll like. You are very particular. This has definitely been our most difficult challenge with you. Sigh. I guess that there are many other things that I am grateful that you don't struggle with. I just fear your teenage years. Maybe you'll grow out of it?

You love to eat, however you are more particular about what goes into your mouth. If I offer you a spoonful of what I'm eating, you close your mouth and only after a little bit of coaxing will you open it and skeptically taste it. Most of the time you like it enough. Your favorites are definitely bananas and strawberries. You get very excited when you see me bring those to the table. You also love celery, zucchini, apples, cheerios, rice cakes, oranges, plums, grapes, black beans, chicken nuggets, and mac & cheese. Also I noticed yesterday that you are getting a new tooth! In addition to your 2 bottom teeth, you will have one on your top left.

I'm pretty sure you also know and call me Momma now. It is always said in a very whiny, needy voice as you chase me around the house. But I got to be your first word :). You also like to make the "ba ba" sound frequently. Sometimes it sounds like you're saying "book" when you're playing with them. Maybe this is your second word? I'd have to pay more attention though to be sure.

A couple of other new things that you do are clapping and pointing. You love your new discovery of clapping! You clap to music and just to hear the sound of it. And you love to point at anything in a picture or a book. That little finger seems to be out quite a bit! You also seem to be figuring out what pens are used for! Whenever you can get your hands on Lydia's magna-doodle you know that the pen is supposed to make pictures. You are very good at drawing things and you also try to do it when you get a hold of other pens as well.

You also have experienced a lot of first things this month. Your first Easter, including an egg hunt, your first ride down a slide (not much of a fan of this!), your first time to play in the sand at the beach (you absolutely love the sand, but are terrified of the water even if we are holding you), your first time in a swimming pool (you were terrified at first, but eventually relaxed in your floatie) and your first haircut! It was a fun month to experience new things with you! You always seem to be timid and unsure of things in the beginning, but most things you seem to warm up to eventually. And you are so dang cute with your new little haircut! I love it!

Hannah Girl, this has been an amazing month! You are growing up so fast and learning new things constantly! I love you and wish I could slow down time a little bit, but I relish in the moments that we do have together. Stay sweet little angel!

love,
Momma

Home, Sweet Home

These past couple of weekends we have made visits to Temple to check out houses. Our first day looking there was long, but productive. We found two AMAZING houses that I wanted to mix together to make the perfect home. One had incredible storage in the attic, bedrooms and closets galore! Plus we may have been able to finangle an awesome play place out of it. But the other one had a formal dining area that comes off of the living room (aka: a play room for us). Unfortunately, we couldn't get the best of both worlds. So, we had to make a choice. We chose the one with the "formal dining" area because I desperately wanted somewhere to keep the girl's toys out of my living room (and I know that even if I had a designated "playroom" down the hall, the toys would always be in my living room). And, with some of my upcoming construction skills, I could create more storage space in this home. So, we put down an offer, did lots of back and forth negotiating, and got it! Wow! I can't believe we are buying a house! I'm still really nervous about it, but we knew that we wanted to after running several numbers and comparing the cost of renting versus buying.

So, without further blabbering, this will be our new home as of June 5th!

 

It's a brand new home from Centex. 4 Bedroom, 2 Bath. It's the Brooks floorplan, if you are interested.

Straight ahead is the front door, so it opens up to a hallway with a couple bedrooms and laundry. This is the part of the floorplan that I thought was weird at first, but it's actually lit very well and not as long as the floorplan and pictures make it look.

This is the front bedroom to the left. I think that this will be used as a guestroom initially and eventually will also be my office/craftroom.

Main bathroom

And the 2nd bedroom. This one will be Lydia and Hannah's bedroom. Lydia is VERY excited!

This is the laundry room. It's kinda an L shape, so the dryer is ahead and to the left is the washer. And the garage door is on the right.

And here is the garage. With sprinkler system :) 

And then it opens up to the formal dining, living room, kitchen and "breakfast" area. However, first I'll take you further to the right where there is the 3rd bedroom.

Ta Da!

Okay, now this is the formal dining nook. Perfect for toys! I can totally picture the play kitchen, dollhouse and book cases here. We're planning to switch around some of the light fixtures, so that one will be moved to our real dining area.

And here is the kitchen! So open and spacious!

And the breakfast area is a nice size too, for our big table :)

And the living room. They will be putting ceiling fans in here and also in all of the bedrooms. That was part of all the negotiating :). We also were able to get them to add a fridge, garage door opener, and blinds on all of the windows.

Looking out from the kitchen to the living room.

Lydia enjoyed running around the house everywhere! I think she is amazed by all of the open space!

And this is the master bedroom, it comes off the living room/dining room.

And the master bathroom. We plan to put some cabinets above the toilet. As I mentioned, there wasn't a ton of storage. No linen closet. Bummer. But we're figuring stuff out :).

And a nice size backyard. Awesome!

Lydia and Hanna really enjoyed running (or crawling) all around the house! They are so excited! Lydia keeps telling me that she wants to move to her new house now!

They had a lot of fun.

 

 

Another perk of this house is that just a block away we have this!

I am so excited! It's a really nice neighboorhood and looks like Lydia will be able to find tons of new friends there! I'll definitely have my work cut out for me getting everything organized and built. But I am so ready!

This is definitely our new Home just waiting! And I am already in love with Temple! It is the perfect town for us! Still a little country, but developing. It has a mall and all of the main shopping you need. Plus Austin is just an hour away! Hooray! 2 months can't go by fast enough!