12 Month

 One year. We got there. There was blood, sweat, and lots of tears (on both sides) along the way but what a wonderful year. I knew it would be so fun to have a kid but we just love it and talk nearly daily about how blessed we are that we get to be her parents. I have a feeling I will say this every single year of her life (maybe not so much those teenage years) but it just keeps getting better and better. We are learning about our girl and who she is. And she happens to be kinda awesome.

Alright let's do some stats:
Weight: 19lbs 14oz (30%)
Heighth: 29 1/4 in (54%)
Head: 44cm (38%)

-She has eight teeth and doctor said he felt her molars about to come in. Eeek.Poor girl.

-Still wears 9 month clothing, has a few 6 month outfits that still fit. Since she has been wearing the same clothes for many many months now, this means most of her clothes have seen better days, ready for her to move up a clothing size. At the rate she's going she will be able to wear the 18mo clothes I have for her this winter, next Christmas!

-Started doing some signing to us! She can sign "more" and "all done". It's pretty cool and I'm even more motivated to work on other signs now.

-Love music, taking things out of boxes, string of any kind, stickers, pretend talking on her phone, any kind of nursery rhymes with hand gestures, crunching up paper, and following Molly around.

-Biggest news is that she is WALKING! It's just so crazy to see walk around like no big deal. She took her first step about a month ago but now she can walk across the living room no problem. If she's holding my hand she can walk as far as she wants.

Walking fool!

Discovering the world

It's really hard to get a good picture of her these days b/c she's either moving around too fast or focused on something and then I take it away so she will look at me and then she throws a fit (thus this picture)

She got sick one night and it was just the saddest thing ever to see her so pitiful, but she wanted to snuggle and be held so I was also happy to do so!

Since none of her pants really fit I sewed her up some leg warmers. I love them b/c you don't have to take anything off to change her diaper.

More obsessed than ever with Molly!

Tutu and wings from the Mapes!

The diaper bag is emptied out at least once a day

Got some legos for her birthday from my grandma, she loooooves them. Can't put them together but loves stashing them in weird places and pulling them apart.

I always wanted a feisty girl and boy did God deliver on that one. If she's not happy then she definitely let's you know it.

First time at the park with dad, he was impressed at how good she was at climbing up the stairs!

Loves to swing

Ruby Ann has made us an even happier family...

The most exciting blog post you will ever read.......about shelves....

So a month or two ago I was out and about meeting some friends for lunch and when it came time to leave....the car wouldn't go. It was awesome timing though because Ruby was overdue for a nap and we had friends with us, one of which was only a couple weeks old. So, yeah, super awesome. So, our other friend came back and picked us all up and took us home and Andy borrowed a truck from a friend to come possibly haul the car back to our house. He gets up there and, of course, the car starts right up! So he comes all the way back home to get me so we can get the car. Wow, if you are still reading this, you are either 1) bored to tears 2) my mom.

Anyways, here's what came of this big fiasco. When we went back up there, where were across the street from the greatest store that ever was. IKEA baby! So, after I batted my eyelashes a few times at Andy he agreed we should make the most of having a truck. I mean,  clearly the universe was telling us to buy lots of stuff at Ikea, who am I to argue with that?

So we bought shelving. Man did I take the scenic route to get to that or what? Let's get on the pictures!

Ruby very excited about all the big boxes to crawl on

BEFORE- too small and way too sad of a bookshelf

Okay, so sad little bookshelf needed a new home and I had the perfect place- she is now the new and improved happy craft bookshelf in the back of my closet!

Before- look at all that wasted waste just begging to be used

My own little craft corner...well not a corner...my own little craft cove! I like that even better, it's like where pirates would craft!

So eventually the guest room with be Ruby's room and since it's the way bigger of the two bedrooms then it will also be kinda the playroom as well. So, we wanted mucho shelving for mucho kid stuff. For now it does look kinda empty but when you live in a 1300 square foot house, you don't get "empty" very much so I'm relishing all the empty shelves and completely empty bins. I have zero doubt they will be filled one day with all sorts of blocks, books, art supplies, old pb&j's that I don't find stashed away till I smell them out.....awww....it will be so fun!

Since this room is right next to Ruby's and the tinniest little noise wakes her up we couldn't do any of the assembly while she was asleep. She was not thrilled with the only way we found to contain her while we had tools and tiny little screws she was obsessed with.

Added some fabric to the back for a little fun/we had to rip out the chair rail and I didn't want to fix it

Okay, the 2nd shelf we bought was for our bedroom. We loved our office in there so we needed some more storage space for all our staplers. Love it.

Ruby's First Birthday Party!

My girl is one year old. I know I blogged earlier about how I was wrestling with what I wanted to do for her party. We decided to do it as low key as possible and it was perfect. I used all leftover decorations from other people's baby showers or birthdays. Since our house isn't big enough to accommodate our friends (frustrating but definitely a good problem to have) we normally have to split up but I really wanted to just all be together and enjoy each other and so we decided to make the most of our ginormous deck outside.

Ruby + Rylee = baby best friends forever

all the babies loved her new truck she got from her grandma and pawpaw

first bites of cake

warming up to it slowly

definitely didn't like the sticky on her hands

asher is ruby's newest friend. he is only two months old and apparently the object of ruby's affection..

ruby's friends, minus a sleeping rylee

The party was exactly what we wanted, just to sit down and be with our friends and truly celebrate Miss Ruby Ann. Thank you to all that came. We are blessed to call you friends and cannot wait for years and years of celebrations together!

I want to ride my bi-cy-cllleee. I want to ride my bike!

Queen anyone? No? Okay. Well I love that song....


If I have made it abundantly clear, let me clear something up. Andy is awesome. He is the most doing, hard working, always trying to improve, make the world better kinda person you will ever know. So when he came up with this idea I was down b/c I knew he could handle it. We sold both our cars, downgraded and bought an old and super not fancy yet reliable/awesome gas mileage car for me to drive and he would bike everywhere-to work everyday, to get groceries sometimes, to a happy hours after work, to friend's house, even once to church and back once which was 22 miles. Yeah, I told you- he's awesome.


Now here we are three months later and I can honestly say it has been so so so much easier than I thought it would be (says the girl that still has a car, the guy that bikes 17 miles a day may have a different story ;) ). The only adjustment for me has been learning to drive a manual (a 450 mile drive was my crash course) and if I'm really being honest, learning to be humble enough to drive 2001 Chevrolet Prizm. Andy really likes riding and the few days he doesn't he says he misses it. A couple weeks ago we even started taking Ruby on rides and have been going to family bike rides many times a week.

little girl's first time on the bike

didn't take her long to loooove it

she loves waving at people, trees, really anything....

So we are definitely a biking family now. We've bike to go get a ice cream cone a few times, grocery store, the pharmacy, garage sale-ing, to a friend's house, and just cruising of course. Biking is so awesome in so many ways but even better than the crazy money we are saving and awesome exercise is just good old fashion family time together.

Pinterest Fail

Have ya'll seen this website?
http://www.pinterestfail.com/

It cracks me up and makes me feel better that a good chunk of my projects don't turn out how I imagined them. Here's my most recent one....

Inspiration:
(http://theembellishednest.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/pinterest-challenge-diy-wall-art/)

(http://theembellishednest.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/pinterest-challenge-diy-wall-art/)



Easy right? Tape up a blank canvas and just paint your heart out. Take the tape off and boom you've got yourself a masterpiece!

I will say this, we had some serious fun making it. Thankfully our friends Chez and Eliza came over do it with us. 

Two happy, messy girls

then she crawled out to the yard and started playing in the dirt, i figured what's a little dirt with some paint?

Add caption

our masterpieces! i use the term masterpiece loosely...



So then I peeled the tape off and it wasn't the big reveal I was hoping for. It was u-g-l-y and it didn't have no alibi.

So, a week or so I decided to re-do it. I taped it up again and had a little better idea of what I wanted this time.

better!

her happy home on the mantle

I'm currently working on another pinterest project gone wrong. It's funny how bad this guy has turned out. Can't wait to share another failure with you soon. I've got to go waste another 12 hours on it first though....