Home on the Grange: 2013

For what it's worth, I wrote this in the actual month of October. I am a slacker.

Spoiler Alert!!! ;)
October was such a fun month for us! First and foremost, our baby girl turned one year old! Does that make her a toddler? I dearly hope not. I want to prolong having my “baby” as long as possible J We also went to some great soccer games, had a fantastic Halloween, made some little changes to our house, attended a Western festival in Wellsville and discovered Aleah’s sweet tooth. And that’s it in a nutshell.

Slow-mo version:

My little, 5 pound baby is now a one year old. How on earth did this happen? I swear it was just a few days ago that we brought her home from the hospital and put her in her newborn-sized fleece sleeper only to find that she could get totally lost in it while we laughed and cried over trying to figure out how we ever managed to survive without her. Weird.

Her birthday was just so dang fun! I’ve compiled pictures from various wonderful guests who attended since as this blog proves, I’m terrible at taking them.

Aleah has always gone crazy with excitement every time I have made chocolate frosting in the past; so naturally I smeared it all over her cake. However, she was so weirded out by eating cake while surrounded by people gawking at her, that she totally lost interest in the frosting. Thankfully she did end up eating it, but not nearly with the zeal I was expecting. We kept the party low key with family only and for record-keeping purposes, here’s who attended: both grandmas and grandpas, Uncle Jake and Aunt Kristin, Aunt Kinli and Kelsi, JoAnna and Greg, Merlynn, Great Grandma and Grandpa Thompson, Great Grandma Grange, Aunt Stacie and Uncle Kelly, Kirtlyn, Deacon, and Great Aunt Patty. The rest of the party will be easier to explain with pictures so I’ll leave it to captions to tell the rest. It really was tons of fun though and such an exciting time for our family.

Aleah’s 12 month check up went very well. I’ve been looking forward to this for the past few months because I love seeing how much she has grown each time. Dr. Watts told us that Aleah has advanced motor skills and is growing very well. She weighed 21 pounds, 4.5 ounces. She was in the 50^th percentile for her height and the 55^th for her weight. This was weird for me to hear since she was so incredibly low on the charts when she was born, then beefed up from all that creamy milk and quickly rose to the top of the charts. Now that she is in the middle, I can say that in the past year, she has spent time in each zone of the size charts J

Aleah is getting better and better with her soccer playing skills. She also conquered her shape ball for the first time all by herself, has started doing “quick feet” with daddy, can pick out red, blue, yellow, and green, has fallen in love with purses, and is sleeping much better (most nights anyway). Big strides this month!

Aleah also got to dress up for her first time this Halloween. I had the most awesome peacock costume all planned out to make. Then we saw those soft, warm Carter’s Halloween costumes at Costco that were considerably less than we were going to spend on the peacock costume. I couldn’t justify spending more on the peacock so we ended up with this cute pumpkin costume that Aleah loved. She got so excited whenever we got it out to put on. She always ran up and tried to put her arms through the leg holes. We chose not to take her trick or treating this year since we didn’t want her eating all that sugar and she would have no clue what was going on anyway. We did however take her to a fun ward party and out to see family and she ate it right up.

We’re still finishing up some projects that have been in the works since we moved in. Here they are:

It has just occurred to me that this entire post is about Aleah. Haha! I remember being mildly annoyed by other people who only wrote about their children in the past. Then I became a mom. Guess what? This little girl is my life! Her joys are my joys, her bad days become my bad days, etc… So yes, this entire thing will probably be about her. But I’m so totally okay with that. Anyone who is not, can stick it. Haha!

In mid-October, we attend the Western Festival with Tyler’s family in Wellsville. Here we made a doll out of corn stock that looked eerily voodooish, rode on a train, petted an obese horse, looked at goats and chickens, watched a cowboy skit, listened to cowboy music, and slid down a big slide. It was a lot of fun.

For my next comment about the festival, I’m going to give some background. For those who don’t know, I’ve been learning a little bit about babywearing. I love it! I think it’s crazy that women all over the world wear their babies except here. It seems like the large majority of our culture here thinks that babies ought to be transported by carrying car seats and pushing strollers. I like babywearing much more for many reasons. Some of those reasons include spinal and hip development, ease/convenience, baby/mama bond, prevention of over-stimulation on baby’s part, and pure enjoyment. In the process of learning about some of these things, I bought a Boba 3G carrier. It has girly print and Tyler has wanted very little to do with it. However, he voluntarily wore it at the Western Festival for the first time and I think I’ve converted him now too. It was so cool to watch him give it a try and to feel all the benefits that I’ve been telling him about it for the past few months.

The remainder of the month was filled with yard sales, soccer games, and fun with friends and family. Speaking of which, Rachel and I saw “The Drowsy Chaperone” together at a theatre I’ve been dying to visit for years now. It was tons of fun! Did we take pictures? No. I’m terrible. I rest my case.

The holiday season is approaching now and we are anticipating lots of fun family and friendly gatherings in upcoming months. Yay! In the meantime, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed spending October together this month and are loving being a little family in our new home. TTFN!