Ahnie Turns 1!!

On April 28th our baby girl turned 1 year old!  I can't believe we don't have a baby anymore...  I think she looks so old these days and is on the go!!!

This past month she has mastered walking and is everywhere and into everything!!!  It makes playing outside so much easier.  She loves to crawl up steps but we still are working on how to get down.  She loves to go down the slides and swing at the park!  She is always trying to keep up with her brother!

Ahnie said bye bye to her bottle the day after her birthday.  I was very excited to be done washing bottles everyday and done buying formula!  I was a little nervous how she would make the switch to milk though but she has done great!  She was not a good cup drinker but once the bottles were gone she switched to a cup very easily.  I think she is even a better milk drinker than AJ was at this age!

This month we went to Des Moines with the Hofferts and Ahnie got to enjoy the waterpark and the zoo much more than last year!  She loved being in her floatie walking around the pool by herself and swimming in the deaper section with mommy.  We tried a few of our songs from AJ's old swimming lesson and she loved it!  At the zoo she was a little more laid back and tired.  We went right after lunch which is normally her nap time so she hung out in the stroller much of the afternoon.  But she did help feed some animals and at the Monkey cage after I was making monkey noises at her she started making them back!  It was so cute!!

Ahnie had her "fun" one year check up and did GREAT!  She was not a fan of the shots so I forsure thought she would hate the finger prick but she really did good!  She just sat and watched as the lab tech kept squeezing her finger.  I was impressed how they could get that into such a tiny vile.  As for her stats she is still top of the charts.  She weighed in at 24lbs (75th-90th%), Height was 31.5(95%) inches and Head was 17.5(25th%).  It was funny they first measured her head at like 17.75 inch and when she put that in it said the percentile was really high.  So she remeasured and with only .25 of an inch it dropped down to her normal percentile.  We also found out that Ahnie had low iron so we are now on an iron supplement so hopefully it will check out higher at her 15th month check up.

She got her 4th tooth this month and this one snuck in on us.  Finally not to much trouble to get this tooth.  Usually it is a big ordeal with her!

Ahnie signs 'please' for everything and is starting to point at everything.  She said a hi sound while she waves and says d-d for daddy.  She talks all the time but we can't make out to many words yet and the ones we can I don't think anyone else would pick up.  Hopefully in the next couple months she will be talking a little more.

Ahnie is wearing 18 month clothes and just grew into a size 4 shoe.  She is wearing size 4 diapers.  She is forsure a big girl and we hope she starts to slow down!!  :)

I did finally decided to give her hair a few snips.  Brett was against me cutting her hair so I did it the Sunday morning after her birthday while he was at work.  It looks so much better!!  I just took a few snips from behind her ear and now everything looks much more even.  I still don't know what to do with the hair on top but hopefully it is getting long enough it will start laying back a little bit and not always in her face!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mama's out there!!!  I feel pretty blessed to be called Mom by these two cute little kiddos!!!  We had a great day around the house just hanging out as a family!  Couldn't have asked for anything more!

A Quick Getaway!

Thanks to Deal Garden we purchased an amazing package at our favorite hotel in Des Moines, Ramada Inn.  This hotel has an indoor waterpark that we tried out for the 1st time last summer.  They have a little kid area with 4 slides our big kids can do on their own with a fun pirate ship, 2 big slides they can enjoy with an adult a normal pool and a hot tub.

Our deal included a poolside room, pizza and pop for dinner and breakfast for 4 up to $10 each.  All of this is for the price we paid for just the room last summer!  If this deal goes out again we will be jumping on it!!!  The best part was we went with the Hofferts!

We went 2 weeks ago after work on a Monday.  We headed straight to the hotel, enjoyed the pool, cleaned up, had our dinner then had popcorn and M&M's (AJ and Madi's fav) and cuddled up to watch Fox and the Hound.  AJ and Madi were so cute!!!  They cuddled the whole movie.  By that point my camera died but it was the cutest thing ever!!!!  Finally, after all 4 kids were sleeping the parents snuck out  and we actually got to hang out together without kids!!!  In the morning we had breakfast, went swimming again then checked out picked up some lunch, had a picnic at the zoo then headed in to see the animals!  It was a perfect trip!!!

Excited to go to the WATERPARK!!!

Ahnie's mode of transportation

TT loved it!!!!

Here come the alligators

Brett and AJ going down the big slide

Can you find them?

All 4 kids getting cleaned up

Popcorn

Madi reading to AJ...so sweet!

movie time!

Zoo Time!!!

Lets go!

Nemo!

the pirate ship

Here are some pictures of our trip!

My Goal Setting Little Man!!!

I love continuing to learn more and more about my children's personalities everyday!  Thanks to a little insperation from pinterest and my creativity I have come to the conclusion that AJ is a boy who loves to work towards a goal!

If you have followed my blog in the past 4 months you would know that we have been working on potty training.  I did a 3 day potty training over Christmas break and I would say it went pretty good and for the most part he was potty train when it had to go with going pee.  Pooping was a whole different story.  We could not find anything that was working and I think he even started to get scared to go on the potty.  I was beyond frusterated and it seemed like nothing I said or did worked...

My friend showed me this race car incentive chart thing on pinterest where when they did something they weren't suppsed to they had to take a pit stop and then could enter the race later.  I thought about this for a  long time, trying to determine how I could make something like it for AJ.  While, his love for hockey started and this is all we talked about, played, watched etc.  He even played hockey with peas and carrots.   I decided to make my own incentive chart based around hockey.  It had a place with velco on the ice and one in the penalty box.  Then it had a score board with 10 pucks that he could color in every time he "scored a goal" (go poopy on the potty)  And yes we do refer to it as scoring a goal and making shots on goal.  :)  What ever works right?!  When ever he has an accident then he has to move the hockey player to the penalty box.  When you are in the penalty box you can't play hockey so this means anything hockey goes up...  Wow did that work!  And when he colored in all 10 pucks he got a brand new hockey set!!  He was so excited about the hockey set!  When ever anyone came over we would have to get out the box and show them!  I will say 10 goals was a lot and a big goal to reach and everytime we colored on in we did have a little melt down because we had not reached our goal yet... BUT then we DID!!!  Wow that was  a GREAT day!!!  AND we were done having accidents almost completely!  We took our hockey sticks everywhere with us!  And he knew if he had an accident they would go away...  So for 2 weeks we were almost completely accident free!  It was amazing!!!

Then we went to Des Moines over night and the bathroom was always too far away and that really messed us up...shoot!  So we are back to the chart.  I really wanted to make sure I was not buying him something every time and making sure I wasn't bribing him but really talking about setting a goal and how we are going to make good choices to reach that goal.  After being a teacher I have seen far too often children that won't do anything unless they get something in return.  So I want to be intentional about how we afirm our children and give rewards.  I dont' want it to be for everything...  

So, AJ and I talked yesterday about how we really need to work on going potty in the potty everyday!  And how we can't keep having accidents.  Then we talked about how that is our goal so we are going to start using our hockey chart again.  I asked him what he thought would be a fun thing to do when we reached our 10 hockey pucks.  He has loved watching soccer games and seeing the girls practice when we drive on University.  So I asked him if he wanted to go to a real soccer field and play a family soccer game when he reached his goal.  He got very excited and with in minutes pooped on the potty!  Then again in the morning!

AJ has always been a determined little boy!  I remember saying that when he was learning how to stand and now again with potty training.  It is a great strength to have and I love that I have figured that out about his personality.  Setting goals is a great skill to learn and I am so excited that we are having these converstations already at 2 1/2!  I can't wait to see how these goals change through the years!!!