The big ONE

A year later, my baby doesn't really even resemble the baby we first met....

I've tried all month to ignore it, but it came anyway. My baby is 1 and I couldn't stop it. So instead we decided to celebrate.

Pathetic isn't it...the iphone at it's finest...

She loves babies and stuffed animals and hugs and kisses them.

She also loves cars and dinosaurs. Ammon put together all of her favorite toys for her as a gift.

Taryn and Gwyneth, 4 weeks apart...

We had our friends Pinegars over to celebrate cake and ice cream with us. Their baby Gwen and Taryn have known each other from the womb.

Taryn started her day a little rough, like many of our birthday children seem to do. She had an awful diaper rash and is teething. I couldn't wait to put her down for a nap. Then she woke up after just an nap, and I just knew the prospect of a happy celebration was dim. But somehow, when I decided to go and nurse her after getting her up because she was SO grumpy....she went back to sleep. And she slept...and slept....and slept....until we woke her up 3 hours later because our guests were there and we were all ready to eat. This past year has been the fastest year of my life. I really don't know what happened to it. It's such a battle of sadness and happiness as we have so much fun seeing Taryn learn new things and develop more and more of her personality, and yet she is growing so fast that this little baby will soon be gone forever. Taryn is walking everywhere now. I don't remember the boys just going from taking steps here and there one day, to just walking everywhere. I lost the videocamera for a couple of days and that was the end of her one and two steps. At least I caught her with the unbalanced "new baby" walking before she was running like a pro, the way she may being doing by next week.

Other great talents:

DROOLING--I have never seen a baby drool so much

Waving--she loves to wave and has all kinds of different forms of waving, she waves hi and bye, and come here, and "may I please have that"

Clapping--she is always pleased with the attention she gets from this one

Playing catch--one of her favorite games

Giving luvs--so much fun

Making messes--she loves to empty and scatter anything that looks somewhat orderly

Eating--this girl loves to eat. She seems to be the happiest and nicest baby ever as long as her tummy is full and she has had a good nap. But then her tummy seems to empty itself very quickly, and she doesn't like that.

I don't know what she weighs, but I am pretending it's around 20 pounds because we just pulled out her big girl car seat on her birthday. She is so happy about it...

Fabulous February

If February was so fabulous, why did I let it go by with almost no pictures? I remember many times of looking for the camera in a tender moment and not being able to find it. Then I started to realize it was the last month before my wee little baby girl turned ONE and I buckled down in my efforts to find and keep track of the camera. But even so, most of these pictures were just in the past couple of days, which means March and not February.It's late for a nice Christmas posting, but I didn't see this paper of Kaden's until it came home with him in February. These are the moments amidst all the worry and panic of raising kids, that you think they might be okay after all, and that there is hope for them in this scary world.

Lucky Micah got to come with me to Kaden's class to decorate gingerbread houses. Yes, this was in February and I am still not sure why. But it was still so fun for them, maybe even more because they didn't try to squeeze it in with all of the other holiday activities going on.

Bedtime at the Passey house....and I wonder why I feel like I will never pull things together and have a clean house. But look at how creative they are and how much fun they are having...

By big standing girl. I have actually been thinking she would walk early because she has been standing and balancing without holding onto anything for a couple of months now, even sometimes bending down to pick something up and getting back into standing position. Just this week, though, she has started always walking before crawling and usually making it 5-10 steps before falling. And she has gotten herself from sitting to standing without holding onto anything a few times. I love how her brothers still flip out and come yelling whenever she takes a step or just stands. They are so impressed with her.

Noah's state of Virginia project.

Kaden's first basketball season....

I know these little curls won't stick around, but aren't the so cute?

I also love how Taryn loves her brothers. She gives them the greatest hugs and squeezes. She loves to hug them and wave as they get on the bus in the mornings, too.

Her first ponytail--this morning. It stayed in just long enough for the picture. How in the world do people put little piggies in a babies hair. I had to pull it way too much and she did not like it, and then it wasn't tight enough for her tiny bit of hair.

Does Micah look super old in this picture? I'm telling myself it's just the angle...

More love.

Glimpses of January

Ammon is constantly making and building things. This is a net made with paper and tape and a chopstick and maybe dental floss?

I could eat her up.

T looooves her brothers.

This was a self photo by Noah.

Another picture by Noah, because Travis balanced the broom and obviously it was a picture moment. You can't even tell it's standing by itself in the picture, though. What a talented husband I have. He can do all kinds of cool and crazy things.

Ammon's new obsession is wanting to sleep in weird places. He had built a fort in his room and take apart mattresses, etc, and asked if he could sleep in it. I gave in, and Noah came down later to ge the camera and said "Ammon is the deepest sleeper I have ever met. He is sounds asleep with a mattress on his head. He didn't even wake up when I picked the mattress up and dropped it again!" I went up and moved the mattress off his head.

This is my only picture from the pinewood derby, until I get copies from my nice friend who let me take her camera and go crazy (after my battery died). Kaden got second place! That was kind of fun and unexpected, especially since I let Trav go tdy before he put the wheels on the cars and I had to do it. Scary.

My birthday flower from my awesome childhood and lifelong friend, Val. Oh if I could be a better and more considerate birthday person. Trav was still in Florida on my birthday, and I was totally fine with the normal day that birthdays are anymore. But a friend surprised me with a birthday cake, 2 of my cute boys hid under the table making bday pictures for me to hang on my door until morning, and Noah got up early to make breakfast for me (but then felt like throwing up and had to go back to bed--he DIDN'T throw up, though, so yet another birthday blessing...), and 3 wonderful friend arranged a babysitter and took me out to lunch. It was a pleasantly wonderful day..

This was a less wonderful moment when I was cooking too many things at once and thought the timer went off for the soup, and an hour and a half later, wondered wear my batch of bread was. Oh yeah, it was still in the oven getting hard as a rock. My very smart and resourceful kids got the idea that the middle would still be edible though, so we scooped out the middles to eat with soup that night. That made me feel a little better.

The gingerbread houses we made for Kaden's class. Kind of strange that they were decorating them in January (actually Feb 3rd) but they still had a blast doing it.