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!