Birthday, Birthday and More Birthday

This is Phia's newest expression. Almost everytime I look at her this is the face I see. If you look at her like this she will do it back to you. My dad was calling her pumpkin nose this evening because of her little turned up nose when she does this face.

Phia loves to assist in laundry folding. She makes sure that it takes me twice as long as it should by unfolding the already folded clothes. She wouldn't want mom to get bored now, would she? This is the scene I walked into after putting dish towels away in the kitchen on Thursday.

Birthday time......I thought it would be a wild and crazy day since Shane had to see patients that morning and didn't get home till 11:00. I got her cake decorated on Wednesday night and in the freezer and her cupcakes done on Thursday. I really enjoyed the decorating and everyone said the cupcakes were delicious! We also mopped, swept, vaccummed, cleaned base boards and cleaned out her closet before we had to head to the park. We took her old toys to the basement that were babyish and washed 18 month clothes, folded clothes that were too small and her closet feels wonderful now! We also put all of her books in the top of the closet because she could get to them where they were previously and she needs supervision with books. All you have to do is open her closet doors and she will have her toy shelf emptied in nothing flat! We took some of her stuffed animals downstairs and just kept the ones she is attatched to upstairs. I was trying to get her to decide between 2 bears but she hugged them both so they both got to stay according to Shane.

She wasn't sure what to do with the presents and wanted to play with each toy as she oped it. We had to hide them so she could continue to open gifts. My mom got her a cabbage patch doll, named Alli Bianca and a cute Costco outfit. Great Grandma Freeman got her a teddy bear, Little Mermaid bathtub book and 2 cute shirts.

Aunt Mary got her the little teddy bear, two books and 2 darling outfits from Oshkosh. She loves all stuffed animals and has to give every one a hug and shake them back and forth as she is doing it.

Grandma Freeman got her some hair clips, shirts, shorts, stacking ABC blocks and a Grow n Go Giraffe that is a rocking horse type thing.

Aunt Mandy got her the bead thing from IKEA and some little finger puppets. My mom has a bead thing and Phia has loved it! I am sure she will have fun with hers.

Shane and I got her a drum/musical instument set, a Fisher Price activity table and a Fisher Price barn with animals that make sounds. They are all quite noisy!

BJ and Haley got her a Mary Englebreit Nursery Rhyme book that she will really enjoy!

Heather and Steve got her the stuffed giraffe which is so cute! Great Grandma and Grandpa Schow got her a shirt and toy. Todd and Meg got her some cute little colored rubberbands for her cute hairstyles, some tub toys and a little piano! She was sure spoiled rotten! I told Shane we need to cancel Christmas this year because not much more will fit in her room and closet!

This is her cake that I decorated for her! It was bigger than I thought from the picture online. Shane brought the pan home after I had made cupcakes for everyone and I was thinking we were going to have tons of leftover cake.

She wanted to touch the cake....

We sang Happy Birthday to her...

Then she needed a drink of water. She would only take little fingerfuls of icing but loved eating ice cream and cupcakes off my plate!

The cupcakes I made to serve!

This is her Grow n Go Giraffe. We put it together when we got home and sat her on it. She was so cute I had to get a picture. I got the camera and before I could get a picture she was no longer sitting on the seat, but standing up on the seat and holding the handlebars. She does know how to make it rock though and shen she wants off she just dives off the side onto the floor.

This was our living room last night. I just wanted to get everything put away since we are leaving for Bear Lake on Monday and Shane had inventory tonight at Costco. I hate having a messy house, it puts me in a grouchy mood.

As soon as she got up this morning she wanted to play with her activity table. It does learning, spanish, music and playtime stuff. She loves to walk around and around it and open and shut the laptop computer. She does a little dance when she presses a button and music plays.

Just some goofy pictures of my girl! Shane was paying pat-a-cake with her this morning but she got shy when I got the camera out! She is so busy it is hard to get a picture of her looking at the camera!

Today we came up to Salt Lake early and finished shopping for Bear Lake, got her some shoes to wear so that she can stand up to things and walk on vacation, got me 2 boxes of...

for .50 cents each! I have been wanting to try it because the best part is the bunches! There is a $2 off coupon on the post website and Walmart sells it for $2.50! Excellent deal to try a box of cereal.

We also found out that she loves chili cheese casserole and graham crackers and she has 9 teeth! 4 on top and 4 on bottom with one bottom molar that has broken through!

Doodling

Just a random post of what we have been up to lately.....

Delphia loves to play in this cupboard with the tupperware and all the lids. She strews them across the whole floor and I have to try not to step on them while I am baking. It really is quite the feat to cook a meal and not step on a single lid or container!

Toast.....it's what's for breakfast as of late. She was really liking Eggos but then I gave her toast one day. Now if you have toast that's what she wants even if you already fixed her something else. I think she likes it because she can hold it and munch as she wants. Oddly enough she never throws her toast on the floor.

We went the the Childrens Garden on Tuesday since it was only $2.00. We went with Meg and Chloe, Ashley, Ruby and Emma and my mom. There was a big Noah's Ark as you enter with water jets and spraying water. With Phia's history with the swimming pool I highly doubted she would enjoy it and I was right....she shrieked the secong I set her feet on the wet pavement. Odd....you can dump water right over her face in the tub and she doesn't mind. She just goes on kicking and splashing. You can spray her with the spray bottle and she just takes a breath and smiles. Last night Shane even sprayed her with the hose while he was watering the garden and she didn't cry or shriek once. Chloe, Ruby and Emm sure had fun though. Phia had fun, just not in the water!

Phia after eating yogurt at the Garden! What a face!

Enjoying her goldfish while we strolled around the park!

A new hairstyle we tried the other day. I really enjoy doing her hair and she doesn't seem to mind too much for the most part. She just likes to throw everything off the bed that I give her to play with.

This is the cake I am making for her to smash and eat at her 1st birthday on Friday. I decorated it last night and it turned out pretty good for it being my first cake. I am quite happy with it. I kind of doubted that I could decorate a cake, but I had my heart set on it and we went to a ton of work trying to find the pan. However to my surprise last night I didn't have a problem decorating even with my hand that doesn't work. On Tuesday I made the cupcakes and cake at my mom's. The cupcakes came out no problem, the cake on the other hand was a different story. The instructions said not to use non-stick spray, but to grease and flour it. My mom did that but when it was time to remove the cake it wouldn't come out. We ran a knife around the edge a couple times and it finally started to come out, only problem was that it was in pieces. Shane and I ran to Roberts that evening to get Wilton Cake Release and I made a new cake yesterday and luckily it came out with no problem.

These are what we are serving for cake with some ice cream. They are in the freezer waiting to be frosted tonight as soon as Shane gets home.

Almost 1....

There you have it. My little Phia is almost one and I just can't believe it. She is almost (gasp) a toddler and won't be a baby much longer.

We went and got her 1 year pictures done along with family pictures yesterday. Here are the results:

We ended up orderin #2 and #5 for our walls. She was so good for the almost 2 hour process. She wasn't in a very smily mood however and the photographer had a tough time getting her to smile. She had a primary colored feather duster that she tried to get her to smile with initially but when that didn't work she grabbed a stuffed dog. Phia however wanted the feather duster so she was reaching for it up on the shelf. She got the feather duster and tried again. Several times she tried to switch toys but Phia just wanted the duster, the camera button and her name badge. When she was getting her pictures taken by the ladder she was grabbing the flowers and chewing on them, moving them and tossing them.

She loves this ball! She used to roll it back and forth with you, however now she rolls it the opposite direction and then crawls after it. She also loves it when Grandma Cook helps her kick it and I roll it to them. It tires Grandma out though and so we have to take breaks every so often.

No one could ever imagine how grumpy she was the day this picture was taken! Right after this picture this is what happened.....

Tantrum time!

She still loves books! She really likes this book as it has punchouts in the pages that are various shapes. In fact, if a book is sitting where she can see it on her dresser, good luck doing anything else. Whatevere you do don't try and get her to sleep if there is a book in sight, it won't happen and you will end up reading the book and letting her look through it.

This was her hair yesterday after we took her ribbons out for pictures. Today Shane had a real difficult time getting it to lay down for church. It was pretty funny and just stuck out from the sides of her head.

Last week my Grandma came down from Idaho and we had a good visit on Wednesday. Ash and her girls came over along with Meg and Chloe. We had lunch together, along with fruit salsa and cinnamon sugar chips and carrots and celery with laughing cow cheese. We had impossible tuna pie for dinner, rolls and a yummy fruit salad with an awesome dressing! It was fun visiting and made me wish that we lived closer so we could see them more often.

On Thursday Phia and I went to Enrichment night and one of the classes was on Kid Friendly foods. They made Empanadas with taco meat, sloppy joe meat, egg, cheese and onion, pepperoni pizza, hawaiian pizza, dulce de leche and a mango puree. They were yummy and now I am on the hunt for the empanada pasta rounds. This is how she made her dulce de leche:

Ingredients:
1 can sweetened condensed milk

Remove the label from the can of condensed milk. Do not open the can yet. Take the can and stick it in a pot. Cover it with water. Put the pot on a stove and turn up the heat. Let the pot and can simmer gently for about one and a half to two hours for runny dulce de leche, or up to four hours for solid dulce de leche. Add more water, as necessary, when the level boils down too much. When it's done, let it cool for a while, and then carefully open up the can and eat directly (for the solid variety) or use as a dessert spread (for the liquid variety). The resulting product should be colored tan or brown.

NOTE: You need to keep a close eye on the can. If it shows any signs of expansion, immediately remove it from the heat and let it cool. If you are concerned at all at the high-pressure nature of the recipe, you may poke a small hole in the top of the can, and lower the water level so that the can is not completely covered. This will allow the internal pressure of the can to be released, but it will also make the recipe take longer (since high pressure reduces cooking time).

She decided that it was time to give up the bottle last week so we switched her to whole milk. She just decided that she was sick of her bottle. I would make her a bottle, she would drink 2 oz and toss it off the bed. It was getting to be a joke as we were just throwing away expensive formula. We got her whole milk and she wouldn't drink it at first, not out of a cup, not out of a sippie cup, nada. Finally Grandma Cook had her drinking water out of a straw and so we went to Target and got the cup that have the straw but it tucks inside and they are insulated. She loves them!

It has been quite the feat to figure out what she will eat however. She will no longer eat cereal for breakfast and won't eat oatmeal. She will eat french toast, waffles, pancakes, toast, muffins, pretty much carbs! She does like tuna sandwiches, mini corndogs, rice, cheese, yogurt, otter pops, sweets, fruit, spicy anything...it just depends on the day. She loves goldfish, animal crackers, fruit snacks, vanilla wafers, pretzels for snacking.

Grandma and Grandpa Freeman just left after planning our Bear Lake trip the end of August! It should be lots of fun but I have a lot to do between her birthday and getting ready to go camping.