Long time...no blog...

Well, I know it's taken me a while to get back to this blog. April was a long slow month, since the beginning of May we've been running around crazy seems like. This month has flown.

She's been doing so great this month. She's trying like crazy to walk...all day long it up and down up and down and cruising around the house. She's made so many great advances with her development seems like she's catching up with herself. She says Momma (mostly when mad when I'm changing her diaper). She's also teething like mad.

Motrin is my best friend. My poor baby has 4 regular teeth, 2 incisors, and I think 2 molars coming in on her. Some of the teeth about pop up and then they go back down. But one of the molars has actually busted through.

We've been visiting grandparents and trying out new adventures such as going swimming in a pool. Alina hated the swimming ring I bought...tried to put her in it and she SCREAMED. Just had her in my arms and she loved the water. She even stuck her face in and blew bubbles. We're going to keep working on that. I'm thinking of doing a YMCA baby and me swimming class.

Other than that, we've just been doing our day to day stuff. She had her 1 year immunizations shots, has learned to eat more and more regular food, and is a busy little girl. She's been on another plane ride and her first road trip of over one hour and did great. I think she's well on the way to being just another little girl.

Next week is another time of transition for little bit though. We're going to start a Mother's Day Out program (we will start calling it Father's day out on the 8th). She will do two days per week for just 4 hours and I think it will be good for her to play with other kids. There are only 4 other children in her age group and they are mostly little girls. I think this will help with the transition to Daycare which will begin on August 10th. (Keeping fingers crossed).

Andy is done with the school year tommorrow accept for clean up and meetings and I go back to work in one more week. I am going to miss spending so much time with Alina and seeing all the great progress we've made over the last two months. I'm just going to have to make our time together as quality as I can. She's got two months with Daddy coming up and I think it will be good for both of them.

Again, sorry for the long absence from the blog. I'll try to update more later.

Love to all.

Party...Party...Party

We held our 1st Birthday Bash on Saturday. We had such a great time. Lots of friends and family came with kids in tow. It was chaos as kids played in the open area of the room we had rented.

Alina was teething big time on Thursday last week. She's cutting 6 teeth at the same time right now. Thank goodness for Motrin or she would be in total misery. Fortunately, 3 of the closest ones broke through on Friday and she was in a great mood on Saturday. She was crowing and babbling. My Mom (Nana) was in town for the weekend and met Alina for the first time. They got on fabulously and Mom was such a great help in getting things together.

We had asked everyone to bring a dish and we grilled hotdogs, hamburgers, and polish sausages. One of my friends son helped Andy grill and got to wear Andy's red apron. It made him feel like the big man.

Alina played in her excersaucer surrounded by 2 of the grandmothers, a great aunt, and 3 honorary aunts. All the little kids gave her some attention while we put things together.

About two hours into the party, Alina was placed in the center of the room with a dispoable tablecloth under her. The baby cake was placed in front of her. Immediately her attention was focused. It was white with a big red '1' in the middle. You could see on her face, 'what is this'...well even with all the noise and flashes and adults ooohhing and awwwing...she was focused. One little finger delicately touched on the cake and took out a little bit of frosting. Those little eyebrows went up in suprise''YMMMM". Second helping was two fingers of goop. After that she went in full force with a whole hand.

In the end, she had frosting in her hands, hair, every inch of her face, and managed to get it into her ears as well. Took bath over two days to find all the stuff in the crevaces. :)

My baby is 1 year old and she's great.

Love to all.

Teething...

Well we didn't do much for Alina's Birthday on Thursday but I broke out one of her toys that I had bought a while back. It's an activity table. She loves the thing and it has a phone on it. She's picked up on the phone thing and thinks it a hoot. We pick it up and say 'hi'. She won't talk to it yet, but I think she will. She loves the real phone. I've also wrapped up an old remote control becuase she's always trying to steal the real one to play with and chew on. I'm debating giving it to her becuase I'm afraid she will want the other one even more. So we will see.

Unfortunately, she wasn't doing great on Thursday becuase she has started teething again. Based on what I feel I think she is cutting between 5-7 teeth. She got 7 teeth in February so I'm sure it's not unreasonable to think its that many. Thank goodness for Motrin. It's the only thing that gives her releif. She woke up a few times during the night last night, but in the end slept majority of it. She's down for a nap now.

Today is her birthday celebration. We have many friends coming for grilled hotdogs and bringing their kids to watch Alina stuff cake in her face. Should be fun and funny. I may have to hose her down afterwards. :) It's been pouring rain all morning, but we have a venue inside/outside. I rented a building at work which has a back yard area and a big function room. It was so much easier than trying to squeeze people into my little house. I could fit about 5 people and then it would be full.

I'll post how the party went later. Love to all.