Hartsock happenings: lately {and E: 13.5 mths}

I have a love/hate relationship with spring. . . in some ways it's one of my favorite seasons. I love that the world seems to be waking up after a long, cold winter. I like that the days are longer, and (usually) warmer and sunnier. But in the "school world," spring is just crazy. So much to do. So much to squeeze in. Kiddos that are ready to be done. Teachers that are also ready to be done, but are not allowed to act like it. It's exhausting, and overwhelming, and I have found myself in a bit of a funk lately. I think part of the problem is that the warm weather and sunshine (which normally balance out the workplace stress) have not yet arrived . . .

Last week on Monday our daycare provider needed to be closed since they moved over the weekend. So I took the day off to spend with my babies. It was so very nice to have an extra day at home with MY kids . . . and it just so happened that Monday was gorgeous weather-wise too. It was a much needed reprieve from my"normal" lately, and I had a chance to do a few things I have been putting off/not finding the time to do. I've been wanting to find more ways to sneak extra veggies into B's diet. He's not a huge eater in general, so it's kind of hard to get him to eat MORE, especially veggies. One idea I've had, but had not gotten around to trying is "green" smoothies . . . well, on Monday we tried it out (I just made a regular smoothie with bananas, frozen strawberries, skim milk, and threw in a few handfuls of spinach)! I was a little worried that B wouldn't want to try it, but he was all for it - Yum!

Eager to share with Elise!

Miss E - 13.5 mths
Now that Elise has reached the ripe old age of one, I forgot to do a monthly update at the beginning of the month. :( Since she is still growing and changing pretty quickly, I am going to try to continue to do some kind of monthly-ish summary . . . this blog is, in many ways, our online baby book - so I want to keep recording things here . . .

At 13.5 months, Elise
• is wearing pretty much all size 12 mth clothes . . . I think I weeded the last of the 9mth outfits out of her closet, as we're getting ready to move into the spring weather wear. Shoe size is 2-3, and still wearing size 3 diapers.

• has graduated to a big girl carseat! We finally got Braden new booster seats so that E could move up into his 5 pt harness seat (still rear facing). She LOVES it. I am sad to be out of the infant carrier stage, but admit that it was getting to be a challenge to lug her around in that seat.

• is down to 2 bottles a day (morning and night), and has moved to 1% milk (we are working on transitioning to skim after starting with 2%). Elise is doing ok with sippy cups, and can also drink from a cup, but still prefers her bottle, especially at night. With B I made sure that he was DONE with the bottle by age 1, but this time around I am just not in such a hurry to get rid the bottles in our house.

• loves to EAT. Girlie can outeat big bro if she wants to . . . she loves clementines, pears, mandarin oranges, cheese, crackers, anything sweet, and anything on our plates. If you're not willing to share what you're eating, you'd better not eat in her presence.

• is on the GO. All. of. the. time. Oh, myyyyyy, is this girl a busy body. She goes and goes and goes. We finally gave in and installed child safety locks on several of our cabinets because we were so done with putting back the contents of said cabinets for the 10 millionth time. If you are right there with her and tell her "no," she will usually obey . . . but should you step away, to say, go to the bathroom for 2 seconds, Elise will have a cupboard emptied. So we (hopefully) have put a stop to that.

• loves loves loves to be outside. She gets very excited to put on her coat, and very upset when it's time to come in and does NOT want to take off her coat. I have a feeling we are going to spend a LOT of time outside this summer. Elise also is a big fan of stroller rides. Due to the cold weather, we haven't gone on very many yet, but she loves it and has a blast checking out the world as she rides along.

• still has her blue eyes (I think they will stay blue at this point), and is getting more hair. It's still a lot longer in the back (just behind her ears). I think it might be a little wavy/curly. It also looks a little lighter than B's hair to me.

• has 2 top teeth and 2 bottom teeth, and is in the process of acquiring a couple more on the top. Thankfully (so far!) this has not affected her sleep, and she is mostly sleeping through the night. A typical night is bedtime at 8ish (sometimes she cries for a few minutes, but usually goes down pretty easily), and I wake her at 7:30. On the weekends she sometimes wakes up before we are ready to get up, and will usually just talk to herself/babble in her crib till we get her, and sometimes even falls back asleep till 8:30 or so. I am hoping she is agreeable to sleeping in in the summertime, because I would like to too!

I'll wrap up this marathon post with some pictures I snapped tonight . . . I realized that we haven't had the camera out much lately, so dug it out to photograph B & E licking the cookie dough spatula while making cookies this afternoon.

Elise knows that Braden has something yummy . . .

Since big bro wasn't willing to share his spatula (and that would be a little gross anyway), E got her own little spoonful of dough to sample . . . mmmmm!