14 Months

Our sweet Makaela is 14 months now!! And actually, as I type this, she is closer to 15 months than 14 months. That seems just crazy to me. The past month, a few fun things have happened. The most fun thing is actually for Mom and Dad and that is that we moved Makaela's little cubby-hole shelves of toys into her room. And now instead of having to always pick up all her toys for when company comes or when piano/voice students come, we don't have to worry about it!! It's so wonderful! Especially since her way of "playing" with her toys right now is to take them all out and leave them on the floor. :)

Recently (within the past week) she has started to stand a lot more voluntarily! She even tried to take a few steps toward mama!! So, now, I seriously think she will be walking soon. Before, we were coercing her to stand by having her stand then putting something into her hand to distract her, but now she will just let go of furniture and stand or let go of us when we move and stand. She is a smart girl though and she probably also realizes that the quickest way for her to get anywhere right now is to crawl since she does that at turbo speed. :) But, I'm sure before too long she will be walking...maybe even before our trip down to California!!

Last night, she gave herself her first BIG goose-egg! Oh my it was huge! She plays around and crawls all over and climbs all over anything and everything on the couch. She is also very good at getting down from the couch...always going feet first. Last night we were all sitting up on the couch and i got up to move all the laundry that was folded to the laundry basket to be put away. Before I knew it, I heard this thud right next to me and a little shriek, followed by that "silent crying" before the really loud scream. I don't know what she was thinking, but she dove head first off the couch right into the corner of our ottoman. Thankfully our ottoman is one of those leather storage ottomans so it wasn't hard wood that she hit, but she did still nail the corner. I saw the little dent in her forehead and before long it was the giant goose-egg. She was such a strong girl though....only the one really loud scream after the "silent cry" and then she calmed down. She even laid still while mama and dada held her to put ice on it. Today, its a little less large, and a bit more colorful :) But she isn't bothered by it at all.

She is still communicating with us A LOT! She asks questions about what everything is by pointing and saying "a-dah?" Every morning when she wakes up she says "a-dah?" and uses her sign language to tell us she wants her milk. Just this morning I made the connection that she reminds me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo saying "mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine" as she says "a-dah, a-dah, a-dah, a-dah, a-dah" repeatedly (even with the same inflection as the seagulls!!) until we acknowledge what she wants or is pointing at. This morning it was her sippy cup she could see on the counter :) She looks at pictures of all of us and says "dada" and sometimes will even point to him in the picture. She also loves to look at pictures of herself (so vain, I know :)). She will pull down her little photo album and just look through all of the pictures of herself.

She continues to learn new things everyday and is just a bundle of joy and fun!! Here are a few pictures from the last month, lots from her high chair. I suppose that's the place she is most confined which makes it a little easier to snap some shots :) Enjoy!!

A quick bath in the sink before leaving to go somewhere.

I love to throw my mom off and do something that requires

NEEDING a bath before we can leave when it wasn't in the original plan!! :)

Mom, is that you behind the camera??

(she often tilts her head like this trying to see around the camera to see our faces :))

Life doesn't get much better than this :)

Check out my Chompers!! 5 of them total!!

This is my current claim to fame!!

Video Overload

I am just going to throw all the videos into this one post. Here we go :) :)

Just a little fun in the bath.

Makaela wakes up and is in her crib for quite a while before she starts to make much of a fuss wanting to get out. She talks and plays and I think this is what she is usually doing in there. She just loves to play with her blankie!!

She follows the inflections in our voice when we say things to her. For a while she would just repeat "mah" starting low and ending high. Very funny. She doesn't do it as many times in this video, but you get the idea.

13 Months

Going on 14 months. WOW! Time just keeps flying, but of course everyone knows that. Makaela is still not walking--we can see that she totally could if she wanted to, but is just being stubborn. She has just blossomed over the last month or so. Her random babbling has turned into babbling sounding sentences. She is trying SO hard to communicate with us!! It's so cute. We just look at her, give her a "teachable" face like we totally understand what she is saying, and when she's finished we say "yes" like we understood everything :) Cute. She is picking up some sign language pretty quickly. She knows "more", "please", and she sometimes does "all done". Sometimes she claps for all done, but sometimes she does the correct sign. She knows how to wave and does so when she hears "hi" or "bye". She knows how to blow kisses and when we say clap, she will clap. Also, as of late, when we say "love you" she will 95% of the time respond with a 2 syllable sound (sometimes "ra-ra" sometimes "ah-da" something of the like). It's so cute.

She LOVES boys (oh great). At church, often times ladies will reach their arms out to her and she will cling to me, but the moment a man reaches his arms out for her she can't get to him fast enough!! She just loves the attention.

She loves to play on our piano, and lately she's been walking around pushing the piano bench. So much for those fun little toys she has to walk with--she walks with the piano bench :) She's also lovin' on Pooh Bear all the time. She has 2 of them plus a little Pooh lovie and she loves all 3 of them. She crawls around with the Pooh lovie in her mouth all the time.

Anyway, she is just loving life and we are just loving her! Here are some pics from the last month.

Makaela LOVES bath time and has just recently started crawling around and "swimming" around on her tummy in the bath. She just has so much fun!!

Concentrating very hard on standing!!

Makaela LOVES to crawl around and climb all over the couch!!

She also loves to pull down all the pillows and anything else that is on the couch.

All worn out from playing so hard with all my toys!! Sleeping with Pooh

Dear Sweet Husband

I will put up a post with pictures and Videos of Makaela as soon as they are all finished uploading :) I just have a few things I wanted to mention.

1. I love my dear husband so very very much!! He is so sweet and thoughtful. I find myself often praising God for him, but especially yesterday. I'm so thankful for him and his job, and I'm so thankful that he loves his job. He had SO much to accomplish yesterday with both choir and band practice approaching quickly. Makaela and I arrived at church around 5 with dinner as we do every Tuesday, and he was trying to pull things together for rehearsals. He said he was running "very behind" but he was still able to finish things up (with a quick 5 minutes to inhale dinner to boot!!). This may seem like such a trivial thing, but what I'm getting to is how encouraging it was to see him working hard, all be it stressed out, but with a good attitude and in a manner that was pleasing to the Lord. And when all was said and done, he led both the choir and the band in productive, diligent, and God-honoring rehearsals. What a blessing to see him finish so well given the business and stress of the day. Thank

you Lord for encouraging him to have you on the forefront of his thoughts and actions in everything he does!!

2. I love my dear husband so very very much!! Monday was my birthday and in his sweetness and love for me, he got me a pair of aquamarin

e earrings that have a little diamond as well. They are so beautiful and I love them and appreciate that token of his love for me.

3. I love my dear husband so very very much. He rocks. Thats all :)

Strawberry Cheesecake Pizza

So, I watched a show on Food Network the other day called Outrageous Food. (bad idea...don't ever watch anything like that!!) One of the things they showed was a pizza place that does over 60 kinds of pizza plus dessert pizzas. Really creative things like Mac'n'Cheese Pizza, Baked Potato Pizza and any other combination of things you could think of!! That had me interested. Then they started talking about their dessert pizza's and their chocolate pizza dough. If I wasn't hooked on the show, I was now!! I was ALL EARS!! And eyes :). They made a "dirt" dessert pizza with the chocolate dough, chocolate pudding, crumbled up oreos and worms. I saw other things on there, one of which was a strawberry cheesecake pizza. Y.U.M!! So after the show was over, google became my best friend. I found a recipe for this delightful treat and decided to try it out. Plus, I already had all the ingredients on hand so I figured that was a sign :) It was Delicious!!! I really enjoy cheesecake, but I enjoyed that this wasn't as dense and heavy as cheesecake. I made it for my birthday (a little strange to make your own birthday dessert, but it was so worth it!!). It was a pretty easy thing, not too time consuming, and worth sharing the recipe!! I'm sure this will be repeated at some point :)

For something fun with it...you could throw some blueberries on there and you'd have a tasty and festive treat for 4th of July. Here's the recipe :) Enjoy and indulge sometime...

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons margarine, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling

• 8 ounces light cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 cups fresh strawberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 2 cups crushed strawberries

Total Time: 1 hrDirections

1. 1. Cream together margarine and 1/2 cup sugar. Beat for two minutes. Beat in egg and extracts.
2. 2. Combine flour, baking powder and salkt. Gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
3. 3. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. Then, on a floured surface, roll doll into a 13-in circle.
4. 4. Transfer to pizza pan (the recipe says ungreased but I used Pam).
5. 5. Bake at 350 degrees for 18 - 22 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool.
6. 6. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Spread over crust. Slice two cups of the strawberries and arrange sliced strawberries on top.
7. 7. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and crushed berries until blended. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. (It wouldn't boil for me, I just cooked it for about 5 minutes until it was nice and thick). Cool slightly. Spoon over strawberries. I spooned it over the strawberries just before we ate it instead of cooling it on there, but you can probably do it either way.
8. 8. Refrigerate until serving

Emerson Video

Saw this on a friend's facebook page and Nathan and I laughed so hard. It was definitely worthy of the blog, so I thought I'd pass it along. Enjoy :)

This was way too cute not to share :)