First Birthday Party

Today marked a momentous occasion...Sarah's first birthday party! The party was today at 2pm at Sarah's friend Bradyn's house (his mom and dad offered us the use of their place to help us out a bit). The theme of the party was Sesame Street, namely Elmo, who is Sarah's absolute favorite. Sarah's friends Bradyn and Hailey came over, along with their parents, and Beepah and Kathy (Kathy is Bradyn's grammy). The kids watched Elmo's World, and then we did presents. Hailey helped Sarah open her presents. Sarah was more interested in the package of socks and the little bag they came in that Beepah gave her, and Hailey was more than happy to "open presents". After presents came cake! And boy, was that cake a hit! We bought a Sesame Street birthday cake to share, and bought Sarah a small little round cake for her first taste of the confection. I am attempting to attach a video to this blog for the first time ever so you can get the full effect. A good time was had by all and the birthday girl is currently crashed out in her crib!

Trick or Treat

This month marked Sarah's first Halloween ever. We believe in Halloween at our house, but we do believe in having a little fun, so we do allow the kids to get dressed up and do some trick or treating in our neighborhood or Nana's neighborhood (or both, as was the case this year). It's fun for them and good exercise for mom. :)

Sarah's costume was a bumblebee. We went to a harvest party that the church here in South Berwick put on the Wednesday before Halloween, and then we went trick or treating on the 30th (that is the night our town does it). Sarah loved trick or treating in our neighborhood. It was still light out (because daylight savings was a week late this year). She sat in the stroller and sang and talked the whole way.

After walking a few streets in our neighborhood to show the neighbors our costumes...oh, I forgot to say that Erin was Snow White, Natalie was Juliet, and Connor was Obi Wan Kenobi...we met up with daddy and Auntie M at Dunkin Donuts to get coffee for the grown ups and go to Nana's for trick or treating. When we got to Nana's, she wanted to take lots of pictures before we left. As you can see by her expression, Sarah was not thrilled with this idea.

After all the photo ops, Mommy, Auntie M, Glen, and the kiddos, including my neice Maddie, who was a duckie, set out trick or treating. This was all well and good....until we got about halfway down Nana's street and realized that Sarah had my coffee coozie in her hand with no coffee in it. You guessed it, my ice coffee was sitting beside her in the stroller upside down. This effectively ended her night of trick or treating (her butt was covered in ice coffee...it smelled awful good lol). I took her back to Nana's to get changed, and she stayed with Nana, Oso, and daddy to hand out candy while I went back out in search of the others. All in all it was a fun night, and as you can see from the last picture, Sarah likes Halloween candy (I gave her a mini Hershey's bar yesterday during the Pats game).

Leaps and Bounds

It's been a little bit since I last posted. Part of the reason for that is I lost the cord that connects our camera to the computer to download photos. But I found it tonight, so here we go.

Sarah is getting SO big! I cannot begin to believe that she will be a year old in a few short weeks. She and her little friend Bradyn are getting more and more vocal and interactive with each other, and Candace and I are absolutely enjoying each play date a bit more every time we get them together.

Sarah is cruising around the house now on her little hands and knees. We had a little problem at first with her trying to get into the bathroom to get into the cat food. She doesn't seem to be so interested in that now though, because she has discovered the stairs. She now spends a good portion of her day gated into the living room so she can't get access to places like the stairs where she can get hurt.

A funny story...we had to take Sarah to the ER last Saturday because she woke up from her nap with conjunctivitis in her eye, and of course the docs office is not open. It was a very long day, so we got some pizza on the way home. I was heading back into the kitchen for a second slice when I discovered that Sarah had sat herself partway onto one of the chairs at the kids' table across from Connor and was happily patting the table (and also noticed while taking a picture of this cute sight that she had peed through her diaper). What a little goose! I've tried letting her have a snack there periodically this week but she only likes to sit there if someone else (preferrably Connor or one of the girls) is sitting at the table as well. My little girl is becoming a big girl!

I will post more soon as Halloween is coming up, as well as Sarah's first birthday party, and many other cute moments in between I am sure.

Activity Table

I was shopping a couple weeks ago for a birthday present for a friend of Natalie's when I noticed this little activity table on sale. I bought it thinking it was the right height for Sarah, brought it home and set it up. Sarah LOVED it!! She even shared time at her table with her friend Bradyn a couple days later. Now the funniest thing about this table is, she loves to stand at the table and growl at the various toys on it. It's hysterical!!! But she's always smiling while she is growling, so I know she isn't upset or anything.

Her other new thing is to mug for the camera. She has realized that when the flash goes off it's time to smile. However, she waits until the flash goes off, meaning the picture is already taken. So it goes like this...mom takes picture, flash goes off, Sarah mugs with big grin. I have managed to get off another quick shot to capture her "mugging" however, and it is quite cute.

Milestones

Sarah just hit two milestones in the last two days. She cut her first tooth yesterday evening, and today at Fort Foster she figured out how to crawl on the beach!!! She is getting so big...I can't believe my baby is almost ten months old!! She loves to get around the house (up till now she's been rolling, that is obviously going to change quickly lol), and her favorite thing to do is reach behind the TV stand and pull out the cable cord (the only one she can reach). So now I need to come up with a way to block her reach in that one small spot in a way she can't get past.

Another thing of note...her father is a huge Red Sox and Pats fan. Sarah now owns two more Red Sox onesies in the official colors (in addition to the two pink ones she already owns) and a pink Patriots jersey, all compliments of daddy. She makes a cute fan, I must admit.

I will post pics of her new tooth when she lets me (right now she's not very fond of showing it off, but has no problem biting with it lol) and crawling when I catch her in the act with my camera (unfortunately I didn't have it with me today).

Vacation

We just returned this past weekend from a week's vacation at a wonderful cottage on Sebago Lake. We all had a wonderful time, and the place we stayed at was absolutely beautiful. We hope to stay there again next year.

Sarah absolutely loved the lake. My inlaws had bought her a baby tube that she could use in the water. This was all well and good for the first couple trips into the lake, until she decided it was no longer acceptable that her arms couldn't reach far enough over the side to splash the water, which of course is her favorite thing to do. So she decided she wasn't having any of that any more, and mommy had to carry her out into the water so she could splash. And splash she did. Happily and noisily. Nat, Connor, and Erin would come up to us in the water and splash along, which made her even more happy.

However, our happy baby came very close to cutting a few teeth (they're almost there, barely any gum covering them) last week as well, which made for some rough moments and a LOT of poopy diapers and a yucky diaper rash to go with it (I changed more poopy diapers in one week than I think in the past six months lol). But thankfully we found some ointment that was not zinc oxide based that did the trick and made life a little better for Ms. Sarah. She also slept quite a bit, partly I think due to exhausting herself in the water and partly as a coping mechanism due to the teething.

I am including a few pictures, but only a few for the moment because most of ours didn't come out as well as we had hoped. Hopefully I can get my mother in laws pictures (or a copy of them anyway) so I can post more.