We have a climber!

Silly girl! Ben took Jade into our room and next thing I know she had opened my bottom drawer and climbed right in. She only had a little trouble getting in and out and then she would do it all over again! She loved it. She has also recently started climbing onto our couch and then standing up and "falling" face first onto the love sac right below the couch. I say "falling" because she literally propels herself forward and does a face plant into the love sac. We better watch out just in case she decides to do it one day and there is no love sac, yikes!

Last week of summer fun...

This was my last week home all day with my baby girl before I went back to work. Yucky! So we lived it up and had lots of fun together. Enjoy some of our random fun moments!

Jade has recently started playing peek-a-boo on her own, she will cover up one eye or both, or her ears, or just a random spot on her face or head whenever we say "peek" or "where's Jade?" Sometimes she just does it whenever she wants. She loves this new game!

I finally got a good shot of her top teeth, she now has 4 total!

Happy girl, couldn't resist this shot...

Another game of peek-a-boo, where's Jade? She loves putting buckets and things on her head and then she laughs like crazy!

Daddy and Uncle Cole with their matching plaid shorts. I thought this was a fun picture because the boys matched!

My brother Cole visited us for a few days this week and he thought it was so hilarious to stick Jade's bath letters all over her body...

She had lots of fun this week playing with all of her new toys that she got for her birthday!

She had an absolute blast crawling through this tunnel and into her play tent. She gets lots of exercise going back and forth, laughing all the way!

"Is this the right shape mommy?"

Jade has recently started blinking on purpose. She will watch Ben or I and then copy us while blinking her eyes lots. This is not that great of a picture but you get the idea. It is fun to watch her discover how things work.

Good Morning Beautiful! This is what I get to wake up to each morning, I love going in to get her because she is so happy to see me. (probably more happy that I feed her milk, but hey it still makes me feel great!)

Jadee figured out that if she dropped her pacifier down through the holes on the cupcake holder it would go all the way through and she could pick it up at the bottom. It was fun to watch her learn as she experimented with this. She learns so much every day!

Fun with Food!

Jade has always loved to eat and up until now has never been too picky!! Now she somewhat refuses to eat her veggies. She is so funny because she will put a piece of food in her mouth and decide if she likes it or not, if she does not then she immediately scrapes it off her tongue and throws it on the floor.

Here is Jade eating peas, so hilarious because she has to mush each one with her finger before she will eat it. It is likes watching someone pop bubble wrap and it takes her forever. Such a funny girl!

The finished product...

First time eating corn on the cob, well we actually just let her suck and chew on the cob. She did pretty good until she bit a big chunk of it off!

Still loves smoothies and almost dives in head first to the cup each time!

Let's face it, Jade would rather play with her food than eat it. One day after she was done I put her down so I could clean everything up and this is what I found...

Jade's 1 Year Stats

Today we went to the doctor for Jade's one year checkup. He said she is just blossoming and he is pleased with her progress as well as all the things she can do. Her are her stats for one year:

Weight: 24 lbs. 14 oz. 90th percentile
Height: 31 inches 97th percentile (she is one tall kiddo, and everyone comments on her height!)

Here are some things that Jade can do right now and things that I want to remember about this stage...

• says me, me, me, me, me (this is my fault because we listen to a song almost daily that sings about me, you and we!)
  
• screams (literally screams) "daddy" when he walks in the door from work, it is the cutest thing! Then she follows him around, crawling at his heels, whimpering until he finally picks her up.
• can stand on her own for 5-10 seconds at a time
• she drinks her bathwater and then as if that is not enough, she sticks her mouth under the faucet while I am filling the tub and opens wide!
• will sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" with me, it melts my heart when I hear her sweet little voice
• dances like crazy to music--shimmies her shoulders
• points at everything and says "yah" or "dah"
• as soon as we unbuckle her from the carseat she flips over, stands up and proceeds to dance until we pull her out!
• FINALLY loves to point and look and lift the flaps in her books instead of just eating the pages!
• cuddles with me before I put her to bed for the night, I treasure this time!
  
• eats ice, popsicles and anything cold (I think this is due to the fact that the poor girl is cutting 5 teeth at the same time!) She now officially has 4 teeth, the 2 top and 2 bottom ones.
• likes to stack things inside each other (cups, toys, herself!)
  

If you want to see more pictures of Jade that were taken, go to this link and look for my name:
http://cheapshotsllc.blogspot.com/

Jadee Lady's 1st Birthday Party

Here is the birthday girl on her big day! It is still hard to believe she is one year old already! Time flies when you have so much joy in your life from this little lady! We love you Jade! Happy Birthday!!

Enjoying a birthday swing from Great Grandma...

I decided to go with a monkey theme for her birthday because she is our little monkey who gets into and climbs on everything. Sometimes she even makes monkey noises like ooh-ooh and aah-aah! We love our little monkey!

Here are the monkey cupcakes...

A close up...

We made chocolate and vanilla monkey suckers...

Jade loved her new sunglasses...he he!

and someone was sitting in Jade's high chair!

We decided to eat all of Jade's favorite things...

Enjoying her watermelon...

and her pasta...

"All Done Mommy!"

All of her party guests... Thanks for coming everyone, it was so much fun!

We decided to open presents before cake because we knew what she would look like after the cake! She didn't really know what to do with the presents. At first when we set her by them she just kept crawling away to go play on the cement. Eventually though after Lena and Nicole and I showed her how to rip the paper, she opened a few.

This is all she really wanted to do with the presents though, climb on top of them!

Cake Time!
I loved her face when she first saw the cake, it was like "give me that now!"

Then as we sang happy birthday to her, she just looked around at everyone with this scrunchy face as if to say, "what are you singing about?"

She started out very daintily just picking at the frosting...

The both hands went for it....

Then there was no holding back, it was into the cake and total annihilation...

Do you want some, Uncle Cole?

She just had to rub her eyes, I think chocolate is a good color on her, don't you?

Yummy!!!

When she was done and I had taken the cake away, she started clapping, it was so cute!

This is all that was left of her cake...
Cousins Nicole and Lena took care of what was left of the cake. Lena was mortified the whole time Jade was tearing in to the cake and let a big sigh of relief when I finally took it away.

She enjoyed riding in her new wagon from Heidi and Michael.

Aren't these two cute! Jade just loves her daddy!

Jade is into screaming really high pitched these days and she was practicing on her daddy!

Awww! We had to pause for a family picture.

The birthday girl with her balloons. She didn't quite know what to think of these and eventually ended up trying to bite them!