More Outside Fun

Mike got home from a rough work day today and it was a beautiful day outside so I took Logan out for a walk so he could have a nap.

Logan was so excited to be outside AGAIN, twice in two days, we haven't done that since the fall!

She was a big girl and walked all by herself for quite a while!

Funny story about those wild pants...when we were in Ohio over Christmas we stopped at a Gymbo outlet in Cincinnati and I saw these pants. I had been looking for a pair of them FOREVER and couldn't find them (try searching them online, it's not easy). Of course they were $13.00 and not on sale so I sadly put them back on the shelf only to get an email TWO days later saying they were 60% off. Being nowhere near Cincinnati, I looked up Gymbo outlets here in Raleigh and found one! It didn't look too far, so L and I loaded up the car and started driving. 30 minutes into the trip I realized this was probably more than I had bargained for but I couldn't turn back now, I had already gotten more than halfway there. So, we ended up driving an hour and forty five minutes round trip for those little pants....which I now make sure she wears at least twice a week. ha! (I did make the trip a little more worthwhile by purchasing enough hand soap, body wash and air fresheners for a year at the bath and body works outlet...but still.)

She had so much fun outside! We're SO ready for spring.

She stopped for quite a while to watch the little boys that were playing in the yard behind us.

Sweet mommy/baby shadows.

She had so much fun outside that when we got to the top of the stairs and I opened the door she turned and ran the other way! Then threw a fit when we actually did get inside and woke up her daddy making our trip outside virtually pointless. Sigh. I don't know how we'll handle the terrible twos. :)

These Boots Are Made For Walkin'

So, *fingers crossed*, spring is right around the corner. Thank goodness. I'm having to pull out Logan's spring/summer dresses and layer them because most of her winter stuff is just a tad too small now. I don't want to buy any more since she'll only be wearing them for (hopefully) a matter of weeks before it warms up again. While some of her winter clothes don't fit, her tiny feet haven't grown and so her winter uggs DO still fit! So, today it was a pretty day and I love the outfit that we put on her this morning, so, I threw her boots on and we went outside for a few minutes to get some MUCH needed vitamin D (and to have a photo shoot...you know, priorities).

"I can't believe we're outside! What do I do with myself?!"

Trying to get used to walking on cement, she held daddy's hand for a while.

We made it out into the sunshine.

LOVE this shot!

It got pretty windy and so we got chilly and had to turn around and head back in soon after this shot was taken.

But not before shooting a couple more:

This one is just so classic, I love how her dress really makes her big blue eyes pop. I think I'll take up photography. It's my new favorite hobby. (how can it not be with a subject so fun to shoot?)

Random Thoughts at 13 Months

I don't have anything in particular to post about today, I just know that the grandparents are probably going through Logan withdraws at this point so I wanted to post a few pictures and some of Logan's new developments! (count this as her 13 month post, if you will)

She's a smiley girl today because her cold/respiratory problems are nearly gone! Just a loose cough is left.

Logan is doing MUCH better with her cow's milk lately. She wasn't too keen on it at first, but she's starting to drink at least a full sippy cup of it a day. Very huge development in our world!

We've been working on getting Logan to drink from a straw, too, because the sippy cup we take with us to the nursery is one with a straw (because it's got a flip lid to keep it from spilling in the diaper bag) and she finally got it! Another big development for us.

The biggest development in the last week or so has been Logan's ability to follow commands. I was very impressed the other day when I asked Logan to get her milk and bring it to me and she walked across the room, grabbed her sippy cup (took a sip) and then brought it to me. Since then, she's also learned how to put toys away (they get kind of close to her toy bin) and to hand me different items. The command she likes the most, though, is "Logan, jump!" to which she bounces up and down. I was so glad that Mike was around when I asked her for her milk because it was so much fun to see his smile when she accomplished the task--he doesn't get to see too many of those "firsts".

She's learned several words (though she says them her own way for now), and as of now she knows these:

Mommy

Daddy

Here (he-uh)

Come on (mon)

Bye-Bye (bye-buh)

Baby

Night Night (nuh-night)

Bubbles (bubs)

Diaper (piper...I have only gotten that one about twice, so I'm not totally sure it's a word she 'knows')

No (no no no no no no no no)

Yeah

We're working really hard on learning our body parts right now. I'm sure it'll take several weeks but so far we've got belly down and we've got nose down -- about half the time. As in, when I ask Logan, "where's your belly?" she pats her tummy and when I ask her where her nose is she points to her nose! When we've got the body down we'll work on animal sounds.

Logan has started dancing when music comes on. Theme songs, music on itunes, commercials, anything that has a beat.

She loves to brush her OWN teeth. You can brush them for her, but heaven forbid you put that toothbrush in her hands and she'll brush her gums to death and you may never see the toothbrush again!

She's started to really pretend. She loves to pretend to fold clothes. She'll pull burp clothes or blankets down if I don't have a pile of laundry out and just shake them out over and over like mommy does when she's folding her clothing. She also likes to pretend to do other housework (sweeping, dusting, etc). She's a girl after mommy's heart!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but she's quite the little mommy. She loves to rock carseats, bounce bouncers and be on call whenever we have a baby around. If I'm not there within seconds, I know Logan will be whenever one starts crying. If she does make it there before me she holds her hand out to keep me away as if saying, "I can handle this one, mommy." She'll make a great big sister one day! (not in the next nine months, so stop wondering)

I've been dying to use this Elmo bow I made for Logan and the other day in the Target clearance section I found this shirt for under $3! I was so excited, they're made for each other!

Wacky Weekend

We had a crazy weekend here! I am SO glad it's over and will be even more glad when all of these germies are cleared out of my home. After getting home and getting to bed after 2am on Friday night, Mike woke up feeling less than normal. He went to work (at 5am, no less...poor guy) and didn't eat all day, then came home nauseous. We thought maybe it was because he had only consumed two cups of coffee the entire day and no food, but after several rounds of no fun in the bathroom, we decided he probably had the stomach virus that's been circling our building.

In effort to try and keep myself and Logan from getting it, we locked ourselves in the back room and Mike stayed the living room. However, when I went to bed at 10, I knew I had gotten the bug. I was up all night with it and so in the morning Mike switched with me and watched Logan and then we took turns all day--an hour here, an hour in bed. We later realized that Logan must have had the flu, too, because the only thing that the ER Dr. couldn't explain was her stomach trouble, and after we both had the same problems we found it pretty easy to assume that she had it too. So, the poor thing had two unrelated illnesses this weekend!

We're all doing better today. Logan is definitely on the mend, as of yesterday we thought she hadn't progressed at all but today she's able to cough out a lot of the junk that was causing her breathing problems all weekend. So, we're hoping she'll be a new girl by tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm feeling much better, I'm actually well enough to disinfect the house today, so I consider that a definite win. Mike had another 5am shift this morning (why does he always seem to get scheduled for those when we've got problems like this?!) so he came home a little early feeling yucky again, but we think it's because he hasn't gotten enough sleep so he's currently in hour 2 of his nap.

Here are some snapshots of Logan Friday afternoon (before everything went crazy):

Logan LOVES to help clean the house, she likes to empty the laundry baskets so I can fold the clothes and she REALLY loves to help push the vacuum (so long as she's in my arms, otherwise she's hiding behind a chair when it's out):

Here she is watching mommy clean the kitchen (I put her in piggies to keep the snot out of her hair):

Whenever I put her in the pig tails I always think of Boo from Monsters Inc. I mean, minus the different colored hair, the brown eyes and a mouth full of teeth--there are some similarities, right? :)

ER Visit #1

So, we thought about taking Logan to her pediatrician yesterday after realizing she still hadn't shaken her nasty cold. I called the ped's office when they were out to lunch and so, in the meantime, I took Logan to the bathroom and let her sit in the steam for 20 minutes and she seemed fine afterwards. In fact, the cough seemed to disappear and she was acting completely normal so I thought we could just keep up what we were doing and that we'd be fine for the weekend. Last night, though, she woke up and when I went in to check on her she projectile vomited all over me and she developed a fever, so we made the decision to go ahead and take her to the ER to get her looked at.

We took her temp before we left the house and she was just under 101 and when they took her temp in triage an hour later she was at 103.2, so they knew something was up and got us back pretty quickly. The Dr. thought that Logan had pneumonia with the way she sounded, her symptoms and my history with it, so he sent her back for chest X-Rays and was really surprised when they came back clear. I went out to speak with him and he said he really thought that they would have had us in and out diagnosed with pneumonia within 2 hours because that was what it really looked like. But it wasn't, so, they ran a few other tests and then came to the conclusion that she's got an upper respiratory infection. Thankfully, it's not too serious and we'll just be watching her and resting and she should improve with time.

After her fever went down and she became more like herself, she wanted to play and dance so we snapped a few pictures of her in her oversized hospital gown for posterity. :)

She was very snuggly and kept leaning in for the pictures:

Then she wanted to get down and play. This lasted all of five minutes before she realized her gown was too long to walk in--then it was back to being held.

We'll be resting this weekend and hopefully we'll have a clean report by Monday!

Bye-Buh Daddy

Logan loves it when Mike is home and can give her some undivided daddy attention. This morning he was around for about an hour before work and he got to have some fun with her.

He loves to do things to make her laugh, though, she's already exhibiting "daddy/mommy, stop it, you're embarrassing me" syndrome. So, it's a little harder to get her to laugh, but every so often we get a sweet little giggle!

Then Mike had to head out to work. Logan told him she could make all of his latte's today for him if he would just take her with him, she even reminded him that she's got the uniform.

No luck, though, she'll be staying here with mommy today! She did make sure to say bye-buh to Mike several times before he closed the door, though.

New Logan-isms

Logan is developing so quickly now, it's hard to keep up with her. She's picked up a few new things this week and so while she and the borrowed baby are sleeping (at the same time...for the first time EVER) I thought I'd pop on and share them (with some pictures, don't worry!).

-Logan has been saying bye bye (buh-buh) for quite a while now but just this week she got the actual bye sound--however, instead of saying buh-bye she says bye-buh. So when someone leaves the house you'll usually get two minutes of bye-buhs and arm flailing.

- Logan learned to high five this week! Though, she more high 1's you because instead of doing the palm to palm contact, she takes her pointer finger and touches the palm of your hand. Almost like saying, "sorry, you're not good enough to have my whole palm grace the presence of yours, here's a finger." It's SO funny, anyone we show her doing it to busts up laughing because it's just so normal to her, she has no idea she's doing it "wrong."

- I've been using disposable diapers on her for the last two days because both she and the baby we watch have been sick and so any time I have "free" I'm wiping snotty noses or cleaning bottles and haven't had time to throw her diapers in the wash. However, that will change today seeing as late yesterday afternoon L figured out how to unfasten her diapers. Now I can walk out of the room and come back to find her diaperless and walking around like nothing ever happened. This would be ok as long as she only took off clean diapers. Yesterday she had a dirty one and took it off and came to give it to me--almost like saying, "this is disgusting mommy, it took you way to long to get it off of me so I just did it for you." Thanks Logan. I really appreciate the thought but didn't really appreciate the extra stain remover I had to use on several items or the impromptu bath we had to take in the middle of the day! :) Oh the stories I'll have to tell you one day when you're going to PROM! ha!

So, here's Logan yesterday, post bath. She got put in her robe because we had a party to go to last night and I couldn't stand the thought of putting on her party clothes and having her do something similar and needing to find a whole new set of clothing to put on her. You'll also notice she's carrying Mike's alarm clock around. Yet another Logan-ism--she can't be seen without some sort of electronic device. :)

She doesn't like hoods too much.

P.S. You might be saying, "well, Christy, if you actually kept pants on her, she probably wouldn't be able to get the diaper off in the first place." Wrong again. She's figured out how to get the pants down just enough to slip the diaper off. Smart, eh?

Sweet Valentine

Can't seem to catch a break here at our house! We had a stomach bug a couple of weeks ago, then we had the vaccination after shocks and now Logan has developed a nasty cold. Cough, snots, low appetite- the works! Great, isn't it? So, instead of watching the olympics today, we've got playhouse disney going and we're doing a lot of cuddling and sleeping today.

Logan woke up in a very good mood, though! She must have known it was a special day. Maybe it was because we put her in her love pj's last night:

Mike had to hold Logan up to show off her V-day outfit. We picked it up at Target yesterday along with several other sale items, all for less than $10! I decided to go with something a little more spring and a little less Valentine...those super heart-y outfits were just a little bit too geared toward the holiday and less toward the rest of the year.

We did go to church this morning, not realizing how badly she felt. Hopefully we didn't give the sickies to any other kiddies! I'm usually an over-cautious parent when it comes to that but just didn't realize it this morning. She actually moved into the big girl classroom today! She's now in the toddler class at church and she did fabulously. You know you've got a good kid when the young male volunteer stops working to come and let you know how sweet your baby is. They even told me that when all the other kids in the room were crying, Logan was trying to make everyone happy. Love it!

I seriously can't stand how cute the skirt is from the back:

Here's daddy with is mini-valentine:

I'm trying to forgive the attitude issues we're having today because she's not feeling good. Goodness gracious she gets very hot headed and moody when she's not 100%. Here she is in one of her, "don't mess with me" stances:

Anyway, I'm going to go snuggle with her some more. Enjoy your Valentine

today!

Bubbles

It's a chilly day here and Logan's got a bit of a loose cough so we've hung around inside today. We, of course, played with the phone a little bit. I recently put both the Little Einsten's theme song and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse soundtrack to the phone and so we'll sit for 10-15 minutes at a time playing and replaying the songs together.

We also went to Target to mosey around and while we were there, we picked up some bubbles to play with! This was Logan's first experience with bubbles and she had so much fun. She calls them "bubs," it's pretty cute. Here are some pictures from the experience:

"'mon, 'mon, 'mon" (translation: come on, come on, come on!)

I think she likes 'em!