What a joy it is to celebrate our baby girl's first birthday! Even though her "big day" isn't until November 25th, we celebrated here in Kentucky with our friends a little early because we will be out of town on her actual birthday. Abigail loved having some of her sweet little friends over to enjoy celebrating with her. They were so cute playing around together.
We were blessed to be able to use our apartment's community room to host everyone. They have been adding tables, chairs, and such to help build community as well as they have a great little kids play corner that Abigail loves to go play in!
Here is a picture overview of her party. Enjoy!
Our big birthday girl!
The table all set with strawberry cupcakes, strawberry ice cream, red punch, and hot cider.
A picture progression of her as she has grown month-by-month. So glad we took these each month!
Her little gift table. Balloons inspired by Pinterest (of course!).
Excited about her party!
Singing "Happy Birthday!" to Abigail! She was so cute as she just stared at everyone singing to her.
She liked her pretty cupcake!
"Ooo... what's that white stuff, Mommy?"
"Oh, yummy!"
"Maybe this is how you eat a cupcake?"
"Or, maybe this way?"
"This is so yummy, Mommy!"
Present time...
Opening her gifts
"Ooo... I like this!"
Her little buddy Laedin decided to help too! So cute!
Her first real baby doll! She loves this and carts it around all the time now at home! I am so grateful!
She enjoys her little stroller too and pushing her baby in it.
Our baby girl is growing up so fast! Oh my goodness... just the thought of her being almost a year old is amazing! I was out looking for birthday and Christmas gift ideas today with a good friend whose daughter is the same age and we agreed that its crazy that they are old enough now for big kid toys!
Abigail is growing and changing so much! Although still petite (someone at Costco today asked me if she was 6 months old... really??? haha... She's not THAT small!) weighing in at about 18 1/2 pounds, she is very active, very attentive to people, animals, and things, and loves to watch and interact with people. She is rather shy though and it blessed this Momma's heart today when someone started talking to her and she quickly walked over and grabbed my leg, hugging it tightly, and borrowing her face in it, while still watching the lady. It was so cute and a first that she could actually walk to me to hide by me. :-) I want her to be friendly to others, but I love that she is quiet and not willing to go to just anyone!
Her personality is full of spunkiness, stubbornness, independence (although at the same time very attached to Mom and Dad), joy, smiles, enthusiasm, and inquisitiveness. She loves to explore new things and her little blue eyes just sparkle when she's happy and excited!
She does love to snuggle with Momma and Daddy when she's tired or being shy... so sweet!
Abigail adds so much life and fun to our little family. She is always busy doing something... Getting into something... like the trash can, eating and shredding toilet paper, emptying her toy basket, etc... haha!
The last two weeks Abigail has really taken off with her walking! She, of course, does best without shoes, but we're encouraging her to walk more and more while we're out and about to help strengthen her feet and legs. She did really well today walking around Southern's Campus in her new boots.
She has learned to wave "bye-bye" now and we're still working on her sign language of "please" and "all done." She seemed to have mastered them pretty well and then she learned how to dance and now she tends to just dance for what she wants. haha... Or just wave an arm (which we accept for "please"). She loves when we turn music on the TV and will stand or sit there and dance along.
I LOVE THIS STAGE!!! Abigail is at such a super fun and interactive age. I'm just loving it so much. It is harder, granted, because of learning how to discipline her now and tame her stubbornness, but it's still so much fun to watch her comprehend things and learn.
Abigail is a very big eater! We have been blessed with a fairly non-picky eater... although for some reason she has stopped liking green veggies. :-( For breakfast she can easily eat a whole banana, handful of grapes, and two egg yolks. For lunch she can put away half an avocado and an entire sweet potato. For dinner... let's just say we've started looking for restaurants that have "kids eat free" nights. ;-) She can eat almost an entire Chickfila kids meal now! That includes a grilled chicken breast and a small fry. She has only had a kids meal there once, but man did she love it! She does not eat "baby food" any more but eats pretty much what we eat. Still with the exception of grains. I tried a few gluten free grains with her (gf oats, rice, and corn) and they tore her little system up giving her really bad diapers and horrible smelly breath! So her little system is just not able to process them yet. I'm fine with it though because I believe she is healthier without them at this age. I plan to try her on raw goats milk and eventually raw cows milk after she turns a year old. I'm really hopeful that she will be able to handle dairy! She is a huge meat lover! I'm so glad too because we work hard to only buy healthy, free range, non-hormone laden, grass fed, nitrate free meats. So I know she is getting healthy proteins and fats through them. Yay!
Here are some other random cute pictures of her to leave you with... Obviously, I could hardly keep her still in the chair with her sign and puppy... so here are other shots for you. :-)
She loves to play with Baby Roland's bouncy seat. :-) Always makes her smile! Notice how big she looks next to it!
Her favorite thing is to pull the bananas to listen to the music...
Still only two teeth! :-)
Silly girly!
Oh... and the big question still remains... "What color is her hair?" Well, the best we can tell it's going to be a dirty/strawberry-blonde. In some lights it looks really blonde, in some lights it's a light red, when it's wet it's really brown looking... so who knows! We're sticking with dirty/strawberry-blonde for now. It's absolutely beautiful... whatever color it is! :-D
Abigail is excited to tell that she is going to be a BIG SISTER in the spring! We are all very excited about this new blessing that the Lord has given to our family! We are due May 5th, so that puts us at 8 weeks along. Nausea has been my daily companion for a while now and the exhaustion has really been increasing recently. However, the Lord is being gracious to give strength and grace each day. We went last week to our midwife's office and the baby has a strong, fast heartbeat. Praise the Lord!
Now, on to Abigail at 10 months. :-)
*She is becoming so verbal! It's so cute to hear her talk to her toys, in the car, or just wherever! :-) I'm sure she will probably be quite the talker when she is older!
*She says: "da-da" and "da-dee", "ba", and "ma ma" (although not often, haha)
*Her biggest accomplishment is that she can walk! Slowly, but surely she is able to take a number of steps without help. She's not quite confident enough to walk all the way around the room, but she has been able to make it a few feet on her own, which is very exciting! It's fun to turn around and see her walking towards something.
*She still has two teeth, however, this past week she has been SUPER cranky, fussy, clingy, and crying a ton, with a draining nose and so I believe (hope) that more teeth are about ready to come through. :-) Yay!
*She pretty much eats everything we eat now... except grains, dairy, and sugar. This has really challenged me to make sure that every meal I cook is healthy and varied, especially without being able to feed her grains. :-)
* This month we have begun to see a little bit of fruit from our daily training of her. She is finally beginning to understand and respond correctly when we say "no ma'am" or "no touch"... At first I wondered when she would ever understand. Yet after much repetition on our part, she is actually doing well with being more obedient! She does not pull up on the lamp, get into the trash, or unroll the toilet paper nearly as often now! :-) haha...
Abigail is such a blessing to us! Our love for her grows deeper by the day! She is teaching us so much about our own lives and hearts. It's amazing, wonderful, and humbling how the Lord uses our children to refine us!
The last few days Abigail has had a little cold and yesterday she was really cranky! Today she seemed to feel better but we stayed inside and just enjoyed a "jammie-day." In trying to think of something fun and different to do in our home with her, I decided to make a little play fort. My brother and I used to make these as kids and would spend hours playing in them. I was amused to see Abigail's excitement at playing in ours today! I really want to help cultivate her imagination, even at a young age. This was perfect!
Abigail got so excited when I made our little fort in our living room.
"Is it safe to come inside, Mommy?"
"Ok... I'll come in!"
"This is so fun, Mommy! I love it when I have someone to play with!"
No fort is perfect without snacks!
Abigail enjoying her raisins.
I'm so grateful that I am able to stay home with our sweet baby girl and spend my days investing in her little life. She is such a blessing to us and her enthusiasm for life is contagious! She makes us smile every day and adds such life to our little home!
It's crazy to believe that Abigail is 9 months old today! These 9 months have gone by so much faster than my 9 months of pregnancy! haha... Even though she is a petite little thing, her big personality sure makes up for it!!! She loves to laugh and play with Mommy and Daddy and especially loves when Daddy comes home from work because he lays on the floor and lets her crawl all over him. He's the best Daddy ever! :-)
Milestones:
*She's definitely cruising around the room now, crawling and walking while holding onto her walker, moving around her play table, the couch, etc...She loves to hold our hands and walk around the apartment too.
*This past week she has started being able to stand for a few seconds without holding onto anything. It's adorable and she loves to raise her hands above her head, waiting for us to clap and say "yay!" Haha... She's so proud of herself.
*Her words consist of: "Da-Da"... "BaBa"... and "Hey"... although she has no idea what "hey" means. Haha... But one day I showed her a picture of Kyle on my phone and she said "hey!" She says it like: "heeeeeyyyyy"... haha!
*She enjoys playing Peek-a-boo... is ticklish... and loves to "tickle" us too!
*She loves to eat... and eat... and eat! An average breakfast consists of 1/2 a banana, a small handful of blueberries, and an egg yolk with sea salt. She LOVES sweet potatoes (especially sweet potato casserole!), and enjoys avocados, fruit, coconut flour muffins, and basically anything she gets from my plate! :-) Oh and did I mention that she LOVES french fries? Ok... definitely not something I want to give her from just anywhere... but she does love them! Probably because that was an entire food group for me while I was pregnant with her! hahaha...
*Her smile is so contagious! She loves to be around people, although she still struggles with "separation anxiety" and hates to be away from Kyle or I. So it's just become part of life that she goes everywhere and does basically everything with us and we love it! We love having her apart! Besides, who could turn down that adorable smile? :-)
Abigail is doing great walking around the living room, pushing her walker. She loves it!
She can go pretty fast too! haha... I have a feeling that when she does start fully walking, we're gonna be running behind her to keep up! :-) Can you see that smile on her face?
She still looks so much like her Daddy but people are starting to say that she is beginning to resemble me too. That makes this Mama's heart happy! :-) She definitely has my petite build as she was ranked in the 30% percentile at her doctors appointment today. She weighs 17lbs 14oz. and is 27 1/4 inches long. I love that she is our small little girl!!!
Abigail's First Grain-Free Banana Coconut Flour Muffin
Now that Abigail is eating "real food" it's been a chore to come up with things for her to eat that do not contain grains or sugar and that are not highly processed! She has a big appetite too!! I'm trying so hard to keep her off grains until she turns a year old and I don't want her having much white sugar period. (If you have questions about why we are not feeding her these, read here and here for some info. I certainly don't think someone's a bad mom if they do feed their baby grains! Please don't think that! I just prefer to keep Abigail from them at this time.) Also, the fact that I have many food allergies and she is already showing allergies to dairy, nuts, and apples helps me keep her diet even more strictly!
For breakfast this week Abigail has been eating 1/2 a banana, a handful of blueberries, and an egg yolk with sea salt on it. I've been trying to decide what else I can give her for variety and I don't want her only eating fruit (we do things like avacados, squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, green beans, etc... for lunch and dinner). Then it dawned on me last night that coconut flour is not a grain. Many people, including myself, who go on grain-free diets use coconut flour to make breads and muffins instead. Coconut flour recipes tend to be super nutritious due to the coconut, which is super healthy for us, plus they use a lot of eggs, which if you're using pastured eggs... from chickens who actually roam and eat in the grass... they are also super healthy for us!
All this to say, I decided to make Abigail and I some banana coconut flour muffins for breakfast. They were very yummy and she ate a whole one and kept asking for more! (Even after eating a whole banana while I was cooking the muffins! haha...) I used this recipe and then tweaked it for what I had and wanted to use.
Banana Coconut Flour Muffins
3 Eggs
2 Tbps. Coconut Oil
2 Tbps. Coconut Milk
1/4 cup Coconut Sugar (a scant 1/4 cup)
1 Whole very ripe banana
1/4 tsp. Sea Salt
1/4 tsp. Vanilla
1/4 cup Coconut Flour
1/4 tsp. Baking Powder
Mix together wet ingredients. Add in dry ingredients and mix. Pour into 6 greased muffin tins. Bake at 400 for 15-16 minutes. They will be moist and a little spongy.
Her newest accomplishment is learning to "cruise." She can't walk on her own yet but she certainly can holding our hands, pushing her walker, or even helping me push the stroller. It's adorable!! She's pretty proud of herself when she does it. haha...
