14 Months

Rachel turned 14 months old yesterday. She seems like she is getting so old so quickly. She is acting so much older recently. She wants to communicate so much with us. She is now nodding yes and not just no anymore. If we ask her if she wants something she will nod yes if she wants it. If I ask her if she wants something that is in another room, she will run towards it if she wants it. I have taught her a little bit of sign language and she uses it as needed. She can tell me if she is hungry, thirsty, tired, or wants milk. She loves the cats. She gives them hugs and kisses all day long. I think she wants a puppy too. Every time she sees a dog, she says puppy over and over and wants to go up to it. Too bad for her that Tim and I are not dog people.

She has been riding her train backwards a lot for the past week or so.

When she gets tired, she pulls the boppy off of the couch and lays down on it.

She is just so happy most of the time. If you ask her if she is happy, she will say "happy".

She has been doing this goofball smile so much recently. When we were walking through Target the other day, she would smile like this at every single person we would pass. Everybody would say that she is such a happy girl. I think that she LOVES the attention that she gets in the store.

Her hair is getting out of control. The pieces that go over her ears often swoops onto her face and looks ridiculous.

She has really taken an interest in books recently. We will look through one and then she will run and get another for me until we have gone through all of the ones that are out and then go through them all again.

Mother's Day at My Mom's House

We celebrated Mother's Day with my mom last Sunday. We had a nice and relaxing time as you can see.

I think she likes her Uncle Tyler. She is playing with the measuring spoons that we all played with as kids. I think they are antiques by now :)

She wore her pigtails for the first time. They looked so cute on her. It is still so hard to do her hair. She doesn't like me messing with her hair and shakes her head no and it is still so fine that it slips out so easily. Oh well, we will have plenty of years for me to play with her hair.

Daily Adventure

As soon as I get home from work everyday, Rachel wants to go on a walk. Today, she was stomping her foot on her shoe that was on the ground and trying to put her shoes on herself.

As soon as I get her shoes on every day, she runs towards the door. She has become really good at getting down the steps on her own. She turns the corner and is off and running.

I usually give her the freedom to go where she wants to. We go all around the condo complex and I follow behind. She usually goes the same way, but today we went to explore some other areas of the neighborhood. We usually go to the swings at some point, but not today.

My job the whole time is to follow closely enough to make sure she doesn't put anything she shouldn't into her mouth. Her favorite thing that she tries to pick up is cigarette butts.

At least today it was just flowers that I had to take out of her mouth.

She did help to get them out of her mouth today. She did not like how the flower tasted.

Her favorite place to go is to see our neighbor Logan. She absolutely loves to play with other kids and Logan loves to play with us. He is always asking to play with Rachel, although most of the time he just wants to show off his bike riding skills.

They have a little puppy that Rachel isn't too sure about. She wants to play with him but is nervous because he jumps on her. She has his ball and is luring him closer.

Ha. She got him to come closer.

They have this big ball that she loves to play with. She was rolling it all over the grass.

We usually spend an hour to an hour and a half outside roaming around. Rachel is definitely an outdoor kid.

Jaylin's Birthday

Jaylin turned 13 today! I can't believe she is a teenager! We celebrated her birthday with my brothers at my dad's house.

My dad forgot to get candles, so he used this candle for Jay.

I got her a cute little Roxy dress. She really seemed to like it.

Rachel was hamming it up the whole time. She was so tired because she wouldn't go down for her nap today. She was go go go the entire time because she knew if she stopped, she would fall asleep (which she did in Tim's arms at the very end).

Tyler and I played outside with the kids quite a bit. He wrestled with them and gave them atomic wedgies...but they kept coming back for more! We played tackle football. It was Tyler and Kyle against Jaylin, Allison, Nathan, and I. We weren't keeping score, but according to Nathan, we won!

Kyle was really good with Rachel. If she got near anything she shouldn't touch, he would run and grab her. He would quickly run her towards me and she would laugh the whole way.

Happy 13th Birthday Jaylin!

Palm Tree

A couple of days ago in the bath I realized that Rachel's hair was finally long enough to put in a hair tie. I tried it the next day, but it was hard to do when it was dry. It doesn't help that every time I try to do her hair, she shakes her head no the entire time.

So today, after her bath, I put Rachel's hair up.

When it dried, it became a palm tree. She is getting cute little curls in the back as it grows. Her hair is really starting to hang over her ears, so I need to figure out something to do with it while it grows out.

The aftermath of putting her hair up :)

A Few Video Updates

I have not put any videos up in awhile, so here are a few recent ones.

So I wrote that Rachel has a couple of TV shows that she likes. One of them is Jungle Junction and you will see in this video how excited she is about it.

The other show she really likes is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She can't take her eyes off of it, and this is one of the only things that can keep her still for a few minutes. She often dances to it as you will see at the end of the video.

Rachel is putting so many new sounds together. She is saying full sentences, though we don't understand any of it. She definitely knows what she is saying though. She will repeat the same string of sounds over and over again. She has said "up" for quite awhile now, but just recently she turned it into "uppy" and often it is "happy" as you will see at the very beginning of this video. She rarely says "up" anymore and even if I say up, she changes it when she repeats me. Then she starts making a bubububu sound in the video which is her vroom sound for cars and her train.

She loves to talk on her cell phone. She always puts it up to her mouth (and never her ear) and just talks into it.

Happy Vegas Weekend

Tim and I went to Vegas this weekend with some friends. It was so nice to just get away. We flew there and when we got there, we didn't know that Nicole had reserved a limo for us.

It was such a surprise to all of us.

We enjoyed Champagne in the limo.

That night we went and saw the new hotel Aria.

On Saturday we enjoyed a cabana all day. We played some cards, had some drinks, and enjoyed the pool all day.

I took this picture from my lounge chair. It was such a pretty view. Too bad that a bird kept on dropping seeds from the trees on me.

Sitting in my lounge chair enjoying the sun.

We had a spa suite and enjoyed the spa in our room the second night. The view from the spa was of Excalibur all lit up. It was really pretty.

The boys at dinner. The "L" that Tim is flashing is apparently for Lakers.

The girls at dinner.

Tim's mom watched Rachel for us for the weekend. We can't thank her enough. She sent me a couple of pictures throughout the weekend which I appreciated a lot. She said that Rachel was such a good little girl, as always.

My mom came over on Saturday for a few hours and together they took Rachel to a craft fair and to my grandparents house. It sounds like all-in-all that everybody had a great weekend.