What A Difference A Year Makes

A year ago today... life became REALLY exciting! My! How 365 days passed by fast. Here's a look back...

We got to know her lungs very well from the beginning.


First look of the world through one eye.

Ryan always knows how to calm her cries.




First camping trip. She was awesome!

Dr. Seuss was a favorite before she learned how to rip paper.

Mohawk naturale, pre-nanny days and pre-us knowing how to fix her hair.



Lazy motorcross Sundays with dad.



To present day and abundant amounts of hair now.

We had a few pre-birthday cakes for her to practice blowing out the candle. This was a family get together with a joint birthday fun with her cousin K.

Yes, indeed... ONE singular sensational year for all of us.

Hanging Out at the Ol' Oak Tree

Getting ready for her morning walk - check out those shoes.


Taking a little break at the ol' oak tree. She's walking (mostly assisted) completely around the house, and up and down the driveway. Since the driveway is around 200 ft long, she's probably doing about 1/8 mile. My back is looking forward to when she can go unassisted.

Baby Stunter

I think she has a bit of a wild side...

Stumped

We've been slowly babyproofing the inside of the house, but the outside also needs a lot of attention to make this place as kid-friendly as a place like this can be. There will always be things to get hurt on, but we'll try to keep them to a minimum.

Several weeks ago, I removed all of the remnants of the old barbed wire fence, and the redundant secondary wire fence. I also removed all of the random steel rods that were driven into the ground in various spots for unknown reasons. And all of the abandoned pvc pipe stubs sticking out of the ground have been cut off, and capped below ground level.

For the past few weeks, I've been doing some not-so-fun grunt work to fill my spare time - removing tree stumps. Some of these stumps have been around for a while so they've partially rotted away, and are not too difficult to get out. But this one was fairly massive, and took quite a bit of digging and Paul Bunyan work.

Finally out - it's driveway destroying days are over.

Another casualty...


I've removed about 20 so far, but still have 24 to go - yes, I counted them :^(

The trees along the perimeter of the property have probably never been trimmed. Some of the trees had grown right through the chain link fence. So I did a bulk trimming, and ended up with this humongous pile of branches and limbs. I'll get a guy out here with his diesel wood chipper, and this will all be turned into mulch. I've been doing this with trimmings since I moved into this place, and it's been a good way of obtaining mulch for weed and erosion control.


Next project is an outdoor infant swing hanging from the ol' oak tree :^)

The Next Step...

... in walking is to be able to stand up unassisted, and stroll away...



... and maybe walk with your arms by your sides, oh well ;^)

My Little Valentine...

and her Valentine fun.. =)

The Park

It was a nice day out this past weekend and we decided to take baby to romp around the local park. We've never taken her to a park before since she's not really old enough to play on much. While she is still not big enough to play on most things AND she picks up and puts in her mouth everything she finds, all of us managed to have a great time at the park. Em LOVED the new experience, had lots of fun and managed not to eat too much dirt... with lots of assistance from us. =) The swing was her favorite!






We had to watch her closely with the bark. She managed to grab two fistfuls all the time and loved giving the bark to us and then grabbing more.



It was hot for a winter day, so we found some shady grass area which Em loved almost as much as being on a swing. She picked up everything in sight and was very good with stopping short of eating things with coaxing from us. She crawled all over the grass and loved the new yankable, texture in her tiny hands.

The Walking Video - Finally!

We've been trying for quite some time now to get a decent video of Emilia walking. But she just hasn't been cooperative. When we're ready with the camera, she refuses to walk. And when she does walk, we're not ready with the camera.

Well, I finally tricked her into posing for the camera today by using the old banana trick. You'll catch a glimpse of the banana lure at the start of the video in the upper left side of the frame. This isn't one of her better walking sequences, but she's still sorting it out as you can see by the abrupt drop-to-butt stop.



And here's one of her impersonating a gorilla. She likes to lug things around with one hand. She was carrying this toy around with two hands and walking around, but I wasn't ready with the camera :^(