12 months-Happy Birthday Mallory!!

11/3/13
Hard to believe that a year went by so fast...little Mallie is getting so big! I always liked the parents who threw big parties for their kids, and since we waited so long for Mallie to come into our lives, it seemed only fitting to throw a huge party for her being around for a year (even in the midst of my Nutcracker madness). So, here are her birthday festivities in pictures. Happy birthday my sweet girl!

Grandma and Grandpa Wardell came to visit...and they brought presents!

Thanks to Pinterest, I decked the house out in butterflies. Notice even the veggie and fruit trays look like butterflies. Overkill? I think not;)

First time renting a bounce house...thank goodness it fit in our backyard!

Here's the birthday girl!

She had soo much fun bouncing around in the bounce house:)

With godfather Charles

Mallie didn't quite know what to do with her cake. She tried it and ate some when Eric and I would feed her, but that's about it. She wasn't too keen on getting her hands messy, I guess.

Some more birthday presents...which we opened after most of the party guests had left. It was so much easier to just let her lead the way with opening gifts.

The aftermath...was apparently more fun than the actual party according to this little girl. She loved playing with all the balloons that were floating on the ceiling.

Catch up...

I've had BLOG on my to do list for what seems like forever. Unfortunately, it always takes a back burner to everything else going on...and it's not easy to get pics from my phone into each post:( For the new year, I'm going to try to give myself a break a little bit and lower whatever expectation I have of myself and what I can accomplish. So the several posts that I've been meaning to get to are all going to be shortened and put into this one catch up post...ok maybe two (I have to give Mallie's bday it's own post now!) So here goes...

Feeding the Ducks at Penitencia Creek Park
August 2013
Mallie loved to feed the ducks. Hasn't quite mastered the art of throwing the bread to them yet, but we're working on it.

Mallie getting her front teeth
August 2013 and October 2013
Mallie got her top left tooth in the middle of August. I swear that tooth was ready to break through the gums for like weeks...it must've been giving her some trouble! Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, her top right tooth did the exact same thing, but took a lot longer to break through. So Mallie has walked around for several months smiling like a hillbilly with a single front tooth. Even to this day, the left one is so much farther down than the right one...so she still has a (very cute!) one toothed smile!


Waving
September 2013?
This is why I'm mad I couldn't stay more on top of blogging. I know Mallie started to learn to wave to people sometime in early fall?, but now I can't remember exactly when it was or what I even wanted to write about her learning to wave. I wrote it down on my to do list to blog about, so it must've been worth a mention. Again...trying to lower my expectations here.


Swimming
September-October 2013
We signed Mallie up for mommy and me swim lessons through our local YMCA. I was so excited to get her in the water and splash around with her, especially after her reaction to being in the pool in Puerto Vallarta! Well, Puerto Vallarta was apparently a fluke because Mallie did NOT like swim lessons. Maybe she is still too young, or there were too many people around? She basically cried the entire lesson, every lesson. Minus one lesson where we got there so early and she was able to ease into it a bit. But at 9am on a Saturday morning, mommy and daddy were not very good at being consistently early:( At least we got some cute pictures out of it!

Saying da-da
At some point during September or October, Mallie finally uttered the "d" sound. She is a daddy's girl after all, so it was only natural that her first "d word" would be da-da. I think it just about melted Eric's heart when her heard it come out of her mouth!


Baptism
October 13, 2013
After months of not really agreeing on the whole baptism thing, I was finally able to "convince" Eric that baptizing Mallie was important enough to me that he should give in. We attended the baptism class through the church and had a wonderful ceremony with close family and friends at the church, and then a reception at our house after. Mallie looked so cute in her dress and was an amazing little girl during the ceremony. Godmother Mari and Godfather Charles got somewhat emotional as Mallie was being blessed, which of course made me emotional too!

We have a walker!
October 24, 2013

Halloween
October 2013
They have the cutest costumes at BabiesRUs...and the cutest one by far (in my opinion) was the strawberry! Mallie loves strawberries, so naturally, that's what she'd be for halloween. OMG! I know I'm biased, but my daughter is seriously the cutest little strawberry I've ever seen. We took a Sunday morning trip to Uesegi Farms in San Martin to check it out and get some pumpkins. This was just after Mallie started walking, and she just wanted to explore that whole (huge!) farm. Mari, Andrew, and Aiden came over to go trick or treating down our block on halloween night. Mallie had no clue what was going on, but she enjoyed going through her candy after we got home! (I think the crinkle sound did it for her).

First Cold
November 2013
Right around Thanksgiving, Mallie started having a runny nose, and you could just tell she was feeling under the weather. She was stuffed up and having trouble breathing somewhat, so we decided to get the humidifier out. That worked a little, but I kept reading things about ear infections...sometimes they were symptomless, or the kid only had a runny nose. After two weeks of a runny nose, and Mallie playing with her ear (which we now know to be a sign that someone is tired), I took her in to see Dr. Ketterman. Her ears were waxy (all normal) but looked fine. The only remedy was to keep doing what we were doing...use saline drops, the humidifier, and the bulb syringe to get all that snot outta her! What a relief!

10/3/13-11 months!

Hard to believe my baby is almost a toddler! She is really starting to show her age...she points to stuff now, almost as if asking "what is that?" Mallie is ridiculously close to walking...has even taken a step or two on her own! She also throws full on tantrems now...

Here are Mallie's 11 month pictures...

Mallie did NOT want that sticker on her onesie this time around!

My most favorite milestone so far...giving kisses!!!

9/3/13-10 months!

Obviously late here again...10 month pictures

She was a happy girl this month!

Raspberries!

End of July (just a little late on this one...:()

Mallory has discovered how to "blow" raspberries with her mouth. It's been very tricky catching her in the act on camera though...

Viva la Mexico!

July 6-13, 2013

Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year, Mari asked about our next vacation. Eric and I needed to use up some time share points, so we thought sure, let's do it! We were officially planning our next big family vacation...and our first with little Mallie! 

As a family, we decided to go to PuertoVallarta...because the Marival Residences looked amazing (ah-maz-ing!), because it was on the same coast line as us (no traveling ALL day to get there), and the hotel was all-inclusive and didn't cost us very much up front:)

Here's what we did on our family vacation...

We left on the morning of Saturday, July 6th...my dad had coordinated a shuttle to pick us up at our house, then pick him up, and take us to the airport. Leaving the house is always hectic, but luckily our flight was NOT at the buttcrack of dawn. Still, a 945am flight means we were up at 5am, especially since I was so afraid we were going to forget something for Mallie. We were all actually ready to leave the house on time and were sitting around waiting for the shuttle...waiting...waiting...waiting. He was 15 minutes late and drove right past our house...my mom actually ran outside and down the street a bit to get him to come back to our house. Minor hiccup.

We got to the airport where we met up with Andrew, Mari, and Aiden, checked our luggage in and headed to the gate to wait to board our flight...

I was super nervous about how Mallie would be during our flights. Was she going to be one of those babies that just screamed the whole time? Would she be too wiggly? Nope! She was great...not really an issue even...as long as she was fed, she was a happy camper!

We had a short layover in Phoenix before getting on a second plane and arriving in Puerto Vallarta...talk about tropical! Flying in, it kind of looked like a big jungle...and the humidity! The PV airport, at least where we landed, didn't have the walkways to get on and off the plane, so as soon as I walked out of the plane, the heat hit me like a ton of bricks...and then I had to try to make my way down the stairs with Mallie in the baby bjorn. I'm lucky I didn't seriously injure the both of us;)

Going through customs is always a pain, but it was relatively easy...and then we got to the timeshare room. I had explicit instructions from our hotel to walk straight through, ignore everyone and everything around you, until we saw the people from our hotel transportation company, wearing a light blue shirt and tan pants. Um...every which way you looked, someone was trying to get your attention...and I didn't see a sign with our name on it anywhere. The very last desk called me over, as if they were trying to help me find my way, and I was suckered in.

Thank God my brother kept looking for our name on a sign, and he found our guys on the other side of this gate. My dad bailed me out with the timeshare folk and we were on our way. Our luggage (something like 12 pieces!) barely fit into the back of the van, but at least it was a short trip to the hotel. The weird thing is...we had to go into a different state, and technically a different time zone, to get to our hotel.

Upon arrival at the Marival Residences, we were greeted with drinks and seats in a nice cool (air conditioned) lounge. We were already so impressed with the place! The staff gave us kind of an orientation to our hotel, and explained how to get to and use the facilities at the sister hotel, the Marival Resort. Eric and I were roped into attending this time share meeting the next morning, but we were there and ready to start relaxing!

The bell boy walked us to our room, a 3 bedroom/4 bath suite! He tried to pull a fast one on me and say that he really hoped we liked our room, like there was any question whether we would like it or not. The room was ridiculous...in a good way! Huge living room, ocean view, with plenty of room for everyone...this was going to be a sweet home for the next week!

 

I'll spare you the details of our timeshare meeting...it was long, my dad tried to bail us out...enough...time for vacation! We had to get all sunscreened up to go out in the Mexico sun and check out the pool...doesn't Mallie look cute in her sun hat?

Mallie loved being in the water soooo much!!!

After spending the afternoon in the pool, we had to check out fajita night!

The next morning, we had to check out the rooftop pool and restaurant...after pausing for a quick photo op in front of the cool fountain:)

More pool time...

Mallie loved her floaty so much, she wore herself out and fell asleep on mommy.

The next day we took a short golf cart ride over to the sister hotel of where we were staying. They had a VIP area right on the beach for people from our hotel. We grabbed a cabana and enjoyed the the sun, food, and service from the cabana boys.

Mallie had a little too much excitement for one day...

Mallie learned how to pull herself up to standing really well on the cushioned furniture that was in the hotel living room.

We were able to spend lots of time in the pool. Mallie is going to grow up to be a little fish, just like I was:)

We ordered room service one night...quite a spread!

On our last day, we decided to check out downtown Puerto Vallarta and do a little shopping.

Mallie got a little tired...as usual...

A little last minute pool time...even though Mallie was asleep for most of it, hehe.

Our last vacation dinner, at the italian restaurant in the sister hotel...the food was amazing!

A great trip...can't wait to do it again when Mallie is a little bit older!