Reid's One Year Birthday!!!

Reid is officially ONE today!!! I tried to get a good picture of him next to his birthday sign, but that just wasn't happening today. I need another adult nearby to help entertain him/save him from diving headfirst off of the chair. ;)

Reid is busy, busy, busy!!! He just likes to be on the go at all times. I wonder who he got that from??? But he also has such a sweet, cuddly side to him. He definitely likes being held, and that makes Mommy happy!

Looking through all of his pictures yesterday for the Wordless Wednesday post, I really started thinking about how much he has changed. I will never forget looking at him in the delivery room and just falling in love instantly. He was just so tiny--I just wanted to wrap him up and hold him forever! I probably did spoil him by holding him during his naps or during the night while he slept. Sure I developed carpal tunnel and back issues--but I would do it all over again. I just can't imagine our family without Reid...he has been such a blessing to us all!<\p>

At one year, Reid:

• has 8 teeth.


• eats about every 3-4 hours.


• naps twice a day (about 9-11 a.m. and 2-3 p.m.)


• sleeps from about 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. (We just stopped waking him up at 10:30 for a late-night feeding.)


• has taken a few steps. (First steps were taken on his sister's birthday!) He'll take about 2-3 steps at a time before giving up and going back to crawling.


• loves bath time and putting random objects on his head. He loves to make people laugh!


• eats almost everything! He loves all fruits and veggies and does pretty well with meat and pasta. The only thing he doesn't eat a lot of is bread. Go figure!


• still doesn't talk, but does fairly well with signing. We need to work on learning more signs to help us communicate better with him.


• loves waving bye-bye and blowing kisses!


• Nicknames: Reidy Bug, Big Boy/Little Guy, Buddy, Reider

Tonight we celebrated by having cupcakes:

Joel and Reese picked these out at the bakery. I love Reid's face in this picture...he's like, "What are you going to do with that thing on fire??"

He's not too sure of the cupcake with the burning flame on top.

The boys helped Reid make a wish!

Going in to check it out...

What on earth is this???

Mmmm...not too bad!

Offering some to his sister. :)

He really didn't eat too much of it, but that's okay. It was just practice for his real birthday party, right? Happy Birthday, Reid!!

Wordless Wednesday--Growing Up

Speeches, Stress, and Support

Phew...I can breathe!!!

The past few weeks have been a little stressful around here--which may be evident by my lack of blog postings. I have been the chair of my school's accreditation team, which is really just a team of one person...yours truly. :) Our site visit was last Thursday and Friday, and the amount of prep work and stress leading up to their visit just about sent me over the edge!

Luckily my boss suggested I start using professional days to work with her each Wednesday. We started doing this at the end of January, which helped immensely. Still, last week I working on two Power Point presentations until almost midnight. My "part-time" job really became more of a "full-time" job with all of the work I had to take home in addition to my regular work.

I could hardly sleep the last week as I kept having dreams about showing up late to the presentation--wearing Purdue sweatpants of all things. (I don't even like Purdue!) Everything came to a head last Wednesday when I had a little breakdown at school over not being able to find Jenson and Ryan. (They were safe in another teacher's room--of course!)

The amount of support I had at school--and especially at home from Joel--was just overwhelming. One teacher covered my lunch duty for me so I wouldn't have to worry about it. Another teacher kept Reese and Ryan for me after school two days in a row so I could continue working with the principal. And Shannon, my teaching partner, completed my lesson plans for my substitute so I could go home.

Joel really made sure things kept running at home as well. He took Reid to the sitter's every day and also helped with housework. He also just realized when I needed to go out to dinner instead of cooking one day--just because I needed to get out of the house!

The kids were sweet, too. I was nervous for my presentation to the review team on Thursday, so I was practicing my intro on the way to school. The kids asked what I was doing...probably wondering why their crazy mom was talking to herself. :) When I explained that I wasn't going insane and told them what I was doing, they both said they wanted to listen. I went through it a few times, and they gave some very constructive feedback. Reese said, "Mom, you paused too much and said 'um' a few times. Do it again." I actually think practicing for them helped! I was able to get through my speech with hardly any pauses or "um's."

Friday I was surprised by all of my co-workers by receiving beautiful roses as well as a gift card bouquet.

Beautiful flowers! I loved this card that was in the gift card bouquet. :) Oh, this was so true...especially the "another meeting??" :)

Apparently two teachers sent out a message to everyone and collected money to do this. I was overwhelmed by their generosity...it meant so much! They even included Polar Pop money and cash for gum. Do they know me or what?!?

It just reminded me of how blessed I am to be in a job that I love and be surrounded by so many wonderful people!! Oh, and it reminded me of how glad I am that it is over!!!!

Toys? What Are Those?

I know I'm been a little MIA in the blog world--and in the Facebook world as well. How long is Lent anyway?? :) My crazy week is almost over, so hopefully I'll be back to blogging again soon. Until then, I had to add a few pictures.

I rarely see Reid playing with a toy. He plays with anything BUT toys, as you will see in these pictures:

I mean, doesn't every kid need to play inside a box at some point?
This kid tries to put EVERYTHING on his head. Here he was using the colander from the kitchen cupboard. He has put cups, bowls, socks, shirts, pants, underpants--yes, underpants...whatever he can get his hands on. I try not to fold laundry around him!

Do you think he had to strain for me to take this picture?

This picture looks like he's trying to communicate with aliens or putting on a helmet for combat.

The best is when he gets into the laundry, as I mentioned before. I had to grab the camera when he was "hiding" under Reese's jumper and then slipped through it. I'm sure this picture will resurface in about 15 years...

Another day, another pile of clothes to go through...the fun never ends!!!

I Can See Clearly Now...

I've known Reese has needed to go to the eye doctor for quite awhile. She hasn't done well on her eye exams at her yearly check-ups for the past few years. But then last week at school, she completely failed the vision screening. I finally decided to do something about it, so I scheduled an appointment for her with my optometrist.

Our appointment was at 3 p.m., and we left the office at 5:20 p.m. Does that tell you enough right there?

Reese was so good--so patient and polite...even though I know some of the tests were uncomfortable. (The puff of air in each eye? She loved it! That always makes me flinch.)

I knew we were off to a bad start when she started reading off the letters on the chart with one eye, but then couldn't even see the bigger ones with the other eye. Oh, I wish I were joking. Dr. Miller, who has been my optometrist since I was Reese's age, said she couldn't get a good reading on her left eye. She said the right one has been dominating for so long that the left one doesn't know how to communicate with the brain. Therefore, she needed to dilate the eye in order to make both lenses relax...or something like that. We had to wait about 30 minutes for the drops to set in, so we spent that time shopping for glasses. Oh, yes--we definitely realized she needed glasses by this point!

The first thing Reese said was, "Do you have any blue glasses?" My mom and I had to fight back our laughter. My blue glasses (think Sally Jesse Raphael glasses) I had in 8th Grade are a huge joke in my family. I thought I was so hot, yet those things were quite big, blue, and not so beautiful. ;) She tried on much cuter blue glasses, but decided to keep shopping around.

She finally settled on a pair we all loved. I was surprised when I found out they could have them ready in about 30 minutes. Dr. Miller said she wants her to wear them as much as possible as she really needs to have the left eye figure out how to work again. Vision sets in between ages eight and nine, so this is the time to save the vision in her eye. We have to go back in three weeks to figure out if she is making any progress. If not, the doctor wants to put a patch over her good eye to force her to use the bad eye...and we don't want to bother with that.

Right now she is so excited to have her glasses, so we'll see how long this lasts. She told me she has been amazed with how clear everything is with her glasses on! :)

Doing her homework. Joel and I commented on how neater her handwriting is now that she can see. ;)
She looks so grown up!!!

Our Windy City Friends

Our Windy City friends, Jim and Kim, stopped by our house recently for a visit. They brought with them their beautiful daughter, Madeline, whom I had been dying to meet! She is just about 6 months old, which happens to be my favorite baby age!

Reese was tickled to be holding a baby girl!
Reid was napping when they first arrived. He wasn't sure what to think of Maddie when he woke up and found her at our house. Luckily he's used to being around a baby the same age at his sitter's house.

I love how Reid is eyeing Jim here...like he's sizing up his future father-in-law

Jim and Kim with Maddie

I e-mailed Kim and told her that we need to finalize the details of the arranged marriage for Reid and Maddie. I told them we would accept Garrett's popcorn as the form of their dowry...

Slumber Party!

Ever since Reese went to her first sleepover in December, she was set on having a slumber party for her seventh birthday. Since we had done large birthday parties for the past two years in a row, I was thrilled to have something more low-key! We told her she could choose three friends, as we weren't sure how it would go. She ended up inviting three girls from school:

Taylor, Laura K., (Reese), and Laura M.
Joel just called all four girls "Laura." It was much easier on him.

Reese with Laura K.

I found these cute picture frames to decorate. Each girl received one in her gift bag.

The girls arrived in time for pizza on Friday night. After dinner they enjoyed playing with Reese's toys, and even sang a little karaoke. Then it was time to open presents!

The birthday girl opening her first gift.

She was so excited to receive a new stuffed puppy!

Reese with "Scout." She also received a "Puppy Place" book and went through the pictures of the dogs on the back to choose the name of the dog that best resembled her dog. Um, when did my daughter get so into dogs???

After presents, it was time to watch a movie. The girls wanted to watch "Scooby Doo," despite my attempts to talk them into something a little more light-hearted. I didn't want anyone to have bad dreams!

During the movie, there was a knock at the front door. Mrs. Hall (my teaching partner) snuck over to see how the slumber party was going! The girls LOVED seeing her! Her son, Connor, is in their class, and there were a lot of giggles about Connor after Mrs. Hall left. I texted Shannon and said if they were a little older, she would probably be getting some prank phone calls!

The girls with Mrs. Hall

We paused the movie to decorate the Big Top Cupcake. I had ordered mini tiered cake pans for the girls to each decorate their own cake. But unfortunately they didn't arrive until Saturday--about an hour after the girls left. :) So we went to Plan B--the Big Top Cupcake! The girls chose the puppy design (surprise, surprise), and started by icing the cake. Then they decided I could do it faster, so they let me take over.

Making the puppy ears.

The girls with the finished Big Top Cupcake.

I see Spot. Spot looks tasty. Spot WAS tasty!

You can tell the sugar kicked in shorty after the movie ended, as is evident in this photo. The girls asked Mr. W. and I to come to the bottom of the stairs. When we did, we were bombarded with pillows and clothes being thrown over the railing. They were screaming and giggling up a storm--I'm surprised Ryan and Reid slept through it!

After the pillow fight, I tried to encourage the girls into calming down by trying to tell a story. Of course the girls started telling their own stories, which got sillier and sillier by the second. ;) I honestly think they could've stayed up for a few more hours, but at 10:30 p.m. I had them head upstairs to Reese's room. Mainly because I was exhausted myself! I could still hear a lot of giggling, but thankfully they were all able to eventually fall asleep!

The next morning the girls enjoyed eating donuts and playing outside. We were going to do a craft, but they just had too much fun playing. I think we might do slumber parties from now on. They were much more laid-back and not as stressful for me. I didn't have to do any decorating or plan games and/or activities. Basically it was more like having a playdate where the kids just got to spend the night! I'm sure it helped considering the girls were super polite and super fun to have around.

I have to add that Reese took an hour long nap Saturday morning, which hasn't happened since she was ONE! Guess that's a sign that it was a great party!