Blog Archives - leblogsite

Halloween

10/31/2011

This past Friday our PTA had an event at Walnut Place Nursing Home for our little ones to come dressed in costume and to visit with the residents. Luna was a little overwhelmed but was excited to get some candy and see her friends!

Today, we went to visit my friend Penelope at Southwest Airlines' Headquarters. They go all out for the holiday, taking the day off and they require they each dress up for Halloween. Each department also puts on a show and there is a judging committee. We walked around and they had so many things for the kids, caricatures, balloons, face painting, haunted houses, bounce houses, hot dogs and tons of trick or treating throughout the building.

Here is Penelope in her big number, InterGreaseAtion about Air Tran merging with SWA. Luna was mesmerized and could not take her eyes off them!

We also met up with our friends Michelle and Brad and their little ones, Mitch and Quinn

For Halloween night, Aunt Erika came over to trick or treat with us. Luna was super excited to get started.

We walked down to a neighborhood party for a little bit and grabbed some food before we headed out to Trick or Treat.

We then decided to meet some of her neighborhood friends at the Highlands neighborhood down the street where they block off all cars, so we felt super safe walking around and all of the homeowners sat out front and handed out the candy.

Luna was obsessed with this ball with a moving skull in it. She kept coming back and back to see it!

She also was stunned while watching this skeleton robot thing light up, fall down and then raise back up! She was not afraid of it at all! Overall, Luna had a great Halloween and was ready to call it a night as she put her head on my shoulder on the walk back home.

Halloween Party

10/26/2011

Luna and I hosted our play group's Halloween party on Wednesday. We had all of the toddlers come dressed up and rushed as fast as we could to get a picture. We knew that getting them all to stand still for a photo op was just not going to happen, so we all jumped in for a picture. Thanks to Leigh Ann's mom for taking our picture! Luna is an Owl this year and was actually the costume I wanted last year but it was sold out by September, so I rushed to order it this year in August from Pottery Barn. Next year I am going to go the more creative route and make our own costume!

We had such delicious food, sweets, yummy appetizers, spiced tea and a spiked ghoul punch! I made spider cupcakes, inspired by Bakerella!

I also had a little table set up for the kids to decorate pumpkins and paper with stuck on pumpkin stickers and dot art. Luna apparently is drooling over her friend Ella Grace's artwork.

At the end of the party, all of the tots had striped down to their onesies and were entertaining themselves by banging on our garage door. Amazing what kids will find fun to do!

Halloween Carnival

10/23/2011

Saturday morning, our LH PTA hosted a Halloween Carnival at White Rock Elementary. There were bounce houses, fun games, cookie decorating, face painting and yummy food from Chick-Fil-A. I decided not to dress Luna up in her costume for fear it would get stained before the big day. So she was sporting her little Halloween Kitty outfit. She was a little too young for the games and face painting, and not quite ready for the bounce houses, but she loved the excitement and the Chick Fil A cow. Her favorite things? Eating the Chick Fil A sauce with her hand and trying to escape out of the cafeteria!

Ella Grace and Luna

Luna and her sauce

Houston Road Trip

10/15/2011

My sister and I and Luna headed to Houston to visit my dad and Sherry. Todd of course had to work, so no weekend trip for him.
We had a great time visiting and Luna loved playing with their dachshund dogs Vienna and Kaiser. And she LOVED their staircase. They have a 3 story house and she was constantly wanting up and down them. She did well sleeping there thankfully, because we had to put her pack in play in the closet- if she sees me in the same room, she wants out and wants to play!

On Saturday we went to breakfast at Epicure and then went to the Butterfly Gardens. She loved seeing all of the pretty butterflies! There were so many flying around and then she stumbled across a huge iguana and made a doggie sound, since she had no idea what on earth kind of animal it was! We had a great time and then went to grab lunch at Pollies and then nap time.

After nap we then went to eat at Pappadeaux for dinner. She loved my Tilapia and Greek Salad and watching the Lobsters in the tank. Excuse the candid shot, thanks to the iPhone again :)

The next morning before we left, we met our longtime friends Dave and Cindy for brunch at Cyclone Anayas. We have been eating at Cyclone's since 1988 and it has really come a long way since then! They have moved out of their hole in the wall location and opened new locations in Houston and even a few in Dallas!

We had a great visit to Houston and hope to be back soon!

17 Months

10/13/2011

My little angel turned 17 months on the 13th! These monthly birthday updates are just flying by, and not to mention all of the things she is doing new every day, it's hard to keep up compared to when she was more of a newborn.

Physically, as for keeping up, she is on the move all the time. Loves climbing up on anything she can reach, climbs up our ladder on our playground now, and climbs up on her chairs. Each month she gets more skilled at throwing her balls and kicking them and is now able to put her shapes in her shape sorter.

Eating, she loves using her fork and spoon and it works like magic in getting her to eat more because she thinks its fun to put it on the spoon and eat it. She is still NOT the best eater, eating peas for veggies only although we keep trying, and loves cheese and yogurt and is now drinking milk if I mix it with some Almond Milk.

Sleeping still from 7-7:30pm but I am thinking she may be moving closer to 7:30pm for bedtime and eating at 6pm because she is taking longer to settle while in her crib. She kind of sings to herself for 15 minutes and then finally falls asleep where as before, as soon as we put her in her crib at 7pm, she was out! She is napping from 12-3pm and we are not complaining!
We also worked on getting her to stop nursing in the middle of the night this week. I know, it took us forever to try, but I was just lazy. It was so much easier to just get up for 5 minutes and nurse her and she'd go back to sleep, than to spend a few nights letting her cry and going in and out patting her back for hours, but we finally decided it had to be done. I was not getting good sleep as I kept waking up and she would go back to sleep but sometimes I had a hard time going back to sleep myself. So far she is doing well, the first night was a long one as we took turns sitting in the rocking chair letting her know we were there but not going to get her up and she finally fell asleep. Each night has gotten better and now she only wakes up if her paci has fallen out of the crib.

Language, is still coming slowly. She can now say 'car', 'back', 'apple' and pronounces 'bubbles' really well now.

MDO: She is still doing Mother's Day Out on Wednesdays and screams when we leave her now because she has gotten clued in to where she is going and that Mommy is not going with her into her room. I still pick her up at 12pm before naps which they keep encouraging me to leave her for naps, but why when I know she will sleep so much better at home. Most of her friends sleep maybe 1 hour that day and she is a 3 hour napper. Plus, I usually rest when she naps too, so I would rather stay at home with her and not have to rush off at 2:30pm to pick her up, but maybe next semester I will try it out. She is also majorly clingy when I pick her up for the rest of the day and does not want anyone near her, even her daddy. She is definitely in the prime of Separation Anxiety right now!

She is growing up so fast! And her looks are changing daily. Some days she is a dead ringer for Todd but at others she looks like my old baby pictures. See what I mean below. The first pic is totally Todd:

And this one looks like my old baby profile

Fair Play Date

10/11/2011

Luna and I ventured out to the Fair again today and we forgot our good camera, so you'll have to deal with the iPhone versions :( We met her friends Caden, Alex and Jack and their mommies. We first visited Elsie and her baby Beauregard, then Luna had her first taste of ice cream, a free ice cream sample from the Food and Fiber Pavillion. She did not want to give it up, and was in Heaven! Great, I tried to curb her sweets since she started solids but I guess there is no going back now.

Then we moved onto the Petting Zoo, Luna loved the pigs the most and wanted to climb in there with them!

We then headed to the stables and saw some horses. One of the owners was there and brought his horse over to see the little ones. Then we went back to Big Tex for a Fletcher. Luna had some of the corn part and spit it out, not quite ready for one this year I guess. Can't wait to see what she will enjoy next year!

The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You

10/10/2011

Ok, well the Tx/OU game was, ahem, well, not so good. I was so angry watching it, that we changed the channel. As we do every year, we headed to Michelle and Brad's Annual TX/OU party down the street. We didn't get tickets, and so glad we didn't because I would not have been happy to have paid anything watching that game. ;)

Luna had a great time, except for a meltdown photo op with little Mitch and Quinn, it was nap time for sure. After nap she was good to go!

Halloween Craft

10/10/2011

So I found this new blog that has crafts only from Dollar Tree. A few of them are misses, but this new one for Halloween was so cute, I had to do it. They are gold pumpkins made from gold pushpins, foam pumpkins and a can of spray paint (not from Dollar Tree). So easy a 5 year old could do this. I'm so excited I was crafty and it actually turned out!

State Fair 2011

10/6/2011

Luna headed out to the State Fair with us on Wednesday after her nap. She had a tough day at MDO, so she was happy to get out and have some fun with us. Check out her picture from last year's first trip to the fair, compared to this year, she has grown so much!:

Luna loved seeing all of the animals: Camels, ostrich, cows, pigs, zebras, oh my! She also shared her first funnel cake with her momma and she also loved meeting Elsie the Cow.

Arboretum Monday

10/5/2011

Todd had the morning off on Monday, so we jumped in the car to get some good pics of Luna and the Pumpkin Patch. This year the theme is Cinderella. I decided to dress her in her game day attire. It's a divided house so we had a Longhorn dress and then a wardrobe change into her Alabama crimson. And once again, no smiles from Luna- maybe next year!

Cinderella's Carriage

Notice me waving the Burnt Orange pompom here, just to add a little bit of UT.

Luna loved the petting zoo they had too! Lambs, bunnies, goats, chickens and donkeys