.twelfth month

Well it happened. I've searched and searched over the past year, but it turns out there is no force on Earth powerful enough to stop a healthy child from aging. Alice has grown so much in a tiny amount of time it’s incredible. And, you know, she is so much fun now and she seems to get better with age… so I guess there are no regrets.

She likes to give kisses (open mouthed). She sings with me whenever I sing. She dances (twists and bounces) any time she hears anything remotely musical. She says “ah oh”, “at” (Ames?), “hi”, “ullo” (hello), “mama”, “dada”. She’s pretty quiet compared to Ames at this age, but she does do lots of cute babbling. Alice is getting sooooo close to walking—she has taken a few steps at a time and can stand alone for a short second. Every time she realizes she’s standing alone she just starts laughing so hard it makes her fall. She crawls around as quick as lightning—especially when she sees you eating something she wants. She puts everything in her mouth and chews on everything. She’s kind of a puppy dog.

She laughs at everything (although sometimes it can be a little insensitive), it’s awesome.

Alice never did take to nursing, much to my chagrin. I ended up pumping her milk every three hours until she was about 9 months, my milk was depleting and I slowly started working formula into her diet too. Now she is down to two pumped bottles a day and one formula bottle between. She eats lots of solids. Pretty much anything we give her although she is not great at chewing (even with 10 teeth!) so she chokes all. the. time.

Our little photo shoot this month was a piece of work. Not gonna lie, I am happy to be done with this until her next birthday! haha

      

Here she is about to take a step and one in her pro crawling position.

 

Anyway, you’ve got another post coming at you all about her big birthday extravaganza!

Here’s a preview:

.at the adventure farm

I love the fall… I wish that when fall was over, we could just start over again with another fall… and then another one, and another one, and just skip out on all of the other seasons every year. That would be my idea of a perfect world. But ah! Where would all the leaves come from without a spring? Ok so maybe we just switch between spring and fall. Is that do-able?

One of my favorite things to do in the fall has always been corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Especially big farms that have it all in one place (plus a butt load of other things on top of that). We’ve been going to Prairie Gardens Adventure Farm every year and we love it. I see no end to this tradition in sight …unless we move away of course.

The first thing we did there this year was a hay ride around the enormous parking lot. Woo! haha

 

We took pictures of the babies with piles of pumpkins.

 

Ames went crazy for all the random toys they have scattered around the whole place. Busy busy busy little three year old he is.

Petting zoo loaded with goats of all shapes and sizes.

 

They have live music and playgrounds and beautiful yellow leaves falling everywhere.

Cute Tiana had endless fun on the swing.

I think Ames’s favorite thing was the bouncing piggy pen… haha!

 

He made it look like so much fun—Tam, Jake, and Tiana had to join in. haha

Teepees are beautiful, aren’t they?

And then we entered the corn maze…… (the kid sized one, at least)

 

Um this corn maze is easy peasy, but it really is just the perfect amount of walking through corn for me.

Then we played some more…

 

Finally our Hatch cousins showed up for our big turkey dinner picnic! (ps. this was Canadian Thanksgiving weekend) We rented a picnic site and so glad we did, it was way way fun.

Oh my goodness, so much delicious food… AND PUMPKIN PIE! (someone went a little crazy with the whipped cream)

Oh Alice, your eyes…

After we were stuffed we ran over to watch a pirate shoot pumpkins out of a cannon clear across a field at a pirate ship.

…and just like every year, Ames hated every loud banging second of it, but we forced him to watch for as long as we could. Maybe someday this anxious little guy will MAN UP!? haha joking

Here he is plugging his ears as we finally walk away.

I love little goats so much. These ones go up and down ramps to the rooftops all over the farm.

And for the grande finale of the day, we all got a treat from Air’s Mom. Yum

Thank you to Air’s family for coming with us again this year! Loved it and love you!

.eleventh month

This girl had an eventful month, but she came out alive thank goodness. Honestly for a few minutes one night I had the terrible experience of thinking she might leave us, so it is an extra wonderful thing to still have little Alice here with us.

Here’s the story—it was a Saturday night and she woke up screaming at 12:30am. I got her and she seemed hot so I took her temperature. It was 101.something so I got out the infant Tylenol and put a few ml’s in a syringe thingy. She was drinking it down like a bottle but the last little bit slipped and shot into her mouth too fast. It startled her and she made a concerned face as she stopped breathing, became unresponsive and started convulsing. I thought she was choking so I started the baby heimlich but nothing was helping so I ran downstairs with her yelling “help!”. Air and his friend Jordan were down there watching a movie, and they also tried the heimlech while I ran back upstairs and called an ambulance. I was crying so much by this time it’s ridiculous. While I was on the phone Alice finally stopped convulsing and started breathing again. She was still out of it for quite a while. Unresponsive and looking confused. The ambulance finally arrived and they checked her out, told us she seemed fine now, and it may have just been something called a febrile seizure… apparently pretty common in babies with sudden high fevers? Also turns out that Air used to get them when he was little.

Yikes.

After an experience like this I am reminded of how fragile life is and how grateful I am to Heavenly Father for protecting our family. I’m grateful for the times when I’ve seen his hand working small miracles that help us on the way. And I’m grateful for the times when I had no idea that these small miracles were happening all around us, day to day, to protect us. There is so much to fear in the world these days, but the more I experience this life, the more faith I get in the fact that God will never let us go through things that we cannot handle. And we can handle a whole lot with him by our side. I know that everything is in His hands and I just have to let go and trust Him.

These photos were taken only a day and a half after this craziness. She was still pretty sick with random fevers, but as you can see, she is an amazing little champ to be happy and smiling through it all.

     

I can’t believe her first birthday is coming up… I’m in complete denial and I don’t want to think about it. Guess I better start thinking about it soon though, otherwise she won’t have any cake or presents? Eek!

Enjoy these photos of Alice doing her most favorite thing in this world (hanging upside down):

We love her so much.