First Birthday

For Amelia's first birthday, we all traveled to Moab to celebrate. Ben, Brina, Mariah, and all of their kids came have fun with us. We were so glad to have most of Amelia's cousins with us. We did miss Nicole and her kids, but hopefully we can see them soon. Uncle Joe and Dean and Sue also joined us for dinner and cake. Amelia got a big kick out of Sue!

Amelia wasn't too into opening presents, but she loved playing with her new toys and books. The twins even got into the action and helped her break in her new toys.

She finally decided it was fun to rip the paper.

After a yummy dinner made by Amelia's Daddy, we let Amelia devour her very own cake.

 At first, she didn't quite know what to do. . . 

 . . . But it didn't take long to start to really dig in.

 She was even kind enough to share with Grammy.

We had a ton of fun for Amelia's birthday. It's crazy how fast this last year has gone, but we've loved every day with our little one. 

With this birthday, came the ability to walk. She watched her cousins cruising around and decided that she could do that too. She was a little timid at first, but now she barely crawls at all. With walking, came the ability to carry things and hide various objects. Somehow, my shoes have ended up in the kitchen and the guest room. 

Amelia is a little animal lover. Sometimes I think she's more excited to see General than Mommy and Daddy. For her birthday, James's parents gave her some stuffed animals and she's hardly ever without a stuffed dog, sheep, or monkey in her hands. 

She loves to eat. Bananas are her favorite. She goes crazy if she even sees a banana, it's almost fun to just tease her with a banana. She doesn't turn down any fruit and is starting to like meat a little more, but there's not much that little one will turn down.

Despite her love of food, she's still on the small side but following the growth charts pretty well, so we're not worried about her one bit. At her last Doctor's appointment, the doctor declared her as still perfect and I couldn't agree more.

Fun videos

Amelia is growing so big and is being so cute that we just have to share a couple videos.

Here she was just paying with a toy and couldn't figure out how to squeak the squeaky ball. Sufficient to say, she found a way.

At my parents, she found a little wagon and really enjoyed being pushed in it.

This month she turned 9 months. Oh how the time flies. At her 9 month checkup, she was 16 pounds 1 oz and was 26 inches long. Right about the 15th percentile overall. Today she started clapping her hands and yesterday, she started climbing the stairs. She can wave bye (when she wants to), and we can hardly keep up with her crawling. She can be a little stinker and is starting to show a little bit of a temper. If she doesn't want something, she'll take it from you and throw it away. But she is a happy little girl most of the time and is a joy to be around.

A trip to the zoo

James and both had time off, so we decided to take our Little Miss to the zoo. The aquarium and the gorillas were the biggest hits, but she seemed to enjoy looking at all the animals and when she wasn't watching the animals, she was busy people watching.

We started in the jungle. We thought she'd be excited about the monkey's but they weren't very active and she wasn't too interested in much at the jungle. But she did like looking at all the water that was there.

After the jungle, we hit up the aquarium. Amelia loved the aquarium. She was especially captivated by the jellyfish.

She was happy to share her Cheerios with the ginormous koi.

And she liked the sea lions and lemurs.

 And she loved the gorillas

That is until one actually looked at her.

The giraffes were cool too

After all that sightseeing, there was only one thing for a little girl to do . . .

Take a siesta on the way back to the car.

Happy Easter!

Dehydrated baby food

This year, I gave my sister and brother-in-law a 72 hour kit with homemade and dehydrated baby food. As I've been telling people about it, they wanted to know how I did it, so I thought I'd try my hand at a tutorial blog.

To start, cook (I prefer to steam) your fruits or vegetables  I've used spinach (below), carrots, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, rice, and butternut squash. This seems to work with anything.

After the food is cooked, puree it. If you're just making baby food, this where you stop.

Now you can dehydrate the baby food. I lined my dehydrator trays with saran wrap and also tried the liners that come with the dehydrator. Either way works well. I did find that the thinner the puree, the better it dried. If the puree was thicker, I found it didn't dry as well because there would be parts where I wasn't able to spread it thin enough to dry evenly. Also, it was at this stage that I realized that spinach wasn't the best because it doesn't look the most appealing.

Once it's dry the baby food will look like one of the two pictures below. Sometimes it dries in a big circle and sometimes it cracks. Both of these are just fine.

Once it's completely dry, put it back in the blender and grind it to a nice powder. I found that the flat blade works best. The other blade threw too much in the air and didn't pulverize it well enough. 

In the end, you'll get a nice powder. To reconstitute  just add water. It only takes about 1 Tablespoon to 1/8 to 1/4 cup water.

There ya have it. Easy peasy dried baby food. Perfect for camping, traveling, and 72 hour kits.

Bath Time

Amelia loves her bath time. She loves to kick and splash in the water. 

It's so much fun to watch her play in the water. 

Don't you just love that smile?

Blowing raspberries with chattering teeth

All dry and happy!