Saturday, August 25, 2012

Year 1

Wow... 1 year....

Tomorrow my little girl, my "baby Paige" turns 1. This first year has been amazing and yes, as they all say, gone by so quickly! But I won't say it's gone by too fast. There are some things that I wish wouldn't change, but too many more things that I'm so glad are changing!

I went back through Facebook quickly tonight and pulled out a few highlights over the past year. Sometimes I wish I would've kept a better record of "fun" things she did over the past year, but that's what Facebook is for right? :)

August 26th, 2011 - Paige is born!
September 2nd, 2011 - Paige's first trip to Huntington
September 21st, 2011 - Paige'st first trip to the office
October 5th, 2011 - Paige's first trip to the zoo!
October 20th, 2011 - First 8-hour sleep
October 25th, 2011 - Paige's first day @ daycare
October 29th, 2011 - First night in her crib
November 14th, 2011 - Paige rolled from her belly to her back
December 18th, 2011 - Discovered her feet
January 9th, 2012 - Paige's first food - Bananas!
February 3rd, 2012 - the first of many ear infections
February 11th 2012 - sitting up by herself
February 26th, 2012 - Happy 1/2 Birthday!!
March 10th, 2012 - Paige is officially mobile!
April 5th, 2012 - First tooth!
April 14th, 2012 - Begins to pull herself up
April 22nd, 2012 - Graduates from army crawl to hands and knees!
April 28th, 2012 - First 12 & 1/2 hour stretch!
May 29th, 2012 - Paige gets tubes :(
June 15th - 18th 2012 - Paige's first road trip out of the state!
Early July 2012 - Paige begins taking steps
August 12th, 2012 - Paige's first plane ride
August 23rd (ish) - Paige is officially a walker - (at least walking more than crawling!)
August 25th, 2012 - Paige goes to sleep not know that tomorrow she will be 1!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Travel Days 3-6

So my goal was to do a post-a-day on vacation... ha! That obviously didn't work out!

Day 3: Top Pot Doughnuts, Woodland Park Zoo, Picnic @ Gasworks Park, Fremont Troll, Mariner's Game

Probably my favorite day of vacation! The day started with the best doughnuts I have ever had! Top Pot Doughnuts! These were melt in your mouth amazing. The Woodland Park Zoo is huge and absolutely beautiful! So many good things about this zoo. I love their exhibits, while it makes the zoo bigger, they give their animals lots of room! The lions were amazing, they were right up at the glass! The orangutans were a close second! I love orangutans :) After the zoo we had a picnic and did some sightseeing. Justin took us to Fremont to see the Troll under the bridge, so cool! Jeremy and I had been planning on Tuesday night being date night. Originally we had planned to have a nice dinner downtown and head to the Space Needle for the night views. At one point Jeremy mentioned something about going to a Mariner's game. He even went as far as to look up if they were at home and how much tickets were, I was kind of shocked. We decided that it would probably be out of our budget and decided not to go. So with Justin's help we did a lot of research into looking at places to eat downtown. But we never found one we really liked and there isn't much to do after 6 pm after the Space Needles closes down. It was shaping up to look like the amount we would've spent at a nice restaurant would've been about the same amount to go to the baseball game... so we went to the game! I was so excited! It turns out it was free t-shirt night too! It was an incredible game! Came down to the bottom of the ninth, 2 outs, man on third, and Eric Thames got one past the infield to win the game! Now, neither of us are Mariner's fans, but we were both on our feet for the ninth cheering them on! It was just one of those games, you root for the home team!

Day 4: Pike Place Market

Crazy crowded. It was a lot of fun, but probably would've been better with just Jeremy and I. We had Paige on the backpack carrier, but she didn't like being in there too long. But it was definitely something fun to experience!

Day 5: Space Needle, EMP/Sci-Fi Museum, Aquarium

Another packed day! We started with breakfast at Toulouse Petite. Simply fantastic! I would definitely recommend this place to anyone! I had the biscuits and creole sausage gravy with scrambled eggs and potatoes... ahhh... sorry, I was having flashbacks! We also had the beignets to share, crazy that those are considered breakfast. Our server was also a great up-seller... I was debating between the biscuits and gravy and the french toast (Creme Caramel French Toast) , and she said get the biscuits and gravy and order 1 piece of french toast... best.decision.ever. Anyway.. onto the rest of the day. We hit the Space Needle, amazing, breath-taking views. Seriously, how cool would it be to see mountains every day... The EMP/Sci-Fi museum was next... it was fun, but to be honest, I'm not a huge music fan and the Sci-Fi part was pretty small. So off it was to the Aquarium!! I think Paige enjoyed this the most. It was so much easier for her to see what was going on and be able to point to the fish.

Day 6: Flying home

Oh man... way too early! We were up at 4:00 am to get to the airport. We had a 6 am flight so we were thinking getting there by 4:45ish would be fine, seriously, how many people can there be at the airport at 6 am... TOO MANY!! I was a wreck from the time we entered the airport to the time we landed in Indy! We made it to our plane at 5:53am so of course we had to sit in the back and there weren't two seats together. Finally, we were able to get someone to move so we could all sit together! So the entire flight I'm freaking out about making our connecting flight because we only had a 45 min layover in Denver. We landed about 10 minutes early, good, right? Wrong! There was a plane at our gate so we couldn't pull in. So we finally get off the plane and make it to the next flight about 15 min before it took off. Now, all of this wouldn't have been so bad if we didn't have a 1-year old with us, who I was planning on getting milk and food for in between flights. Fortunately, I had some fruit/veggie pouches and she ate those, but she hadn't had any good solid food all morning! And on top of all that, she had been up since 4:30am (meaning only about 9 hours of sleep)! She didn't fall asleep on the first flight until after the plane landed and was up before the next plane took off! She did sleep in the car all the way home from the airport and then we had lunch/dinner as soon as we got home... and you could tell she was starving!

Overall experience: Seattle is beautiful!! We had such a great time! However, I'm not sure I want to travel that far with a 1 year old ever again! Paige is a great baby, and I still got stressed out with her! Plus we would do so much during the day that she was always in the stroller or backpack carrier because she couldn't walk by herself. I'm sure that was rough on her!

Thanks so much to my brother and sister-in-law for hosting and letting us baby wreck your house! :) The food was fantastic and you guys were awesome!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Day 2 - adjusting, food, more adjusting

Today was meant as a day for relaxing. I knew there would be some adjustment time for us, so we wanted to take it easy today, and it was beautiful!

Paige took a two hour nap this morning to help her adjust and was very happy and good through lunch, then took another two hour nap after this afternoons festivities (I joined her for the second two hour nap!). We were able to keep her awake until 7 before she became unmanageable and passed out before she finished her nighttime bottle! Hoping that she sleeps until at least 5 (6 or 7 would be best-case scenario!)

So this morning we stayed at Justin and Betsy's house to relax and had some breakfast. Paige's nap time was great for some vacation reading this morning! Around 10:30 we took off to meet Justin at his work (he worked 1/2 day today) and then Justin, Betsy and the three of us went to Skillet for lunch. So yummy! After lunch we walked to Cupcake Royale to pick up some delicious cupcakes to celebrate Paige's first birthday with Uncle Justin and Aunt Betsy! And then headed over to Molly Moon's for some ice cream! (scout mint in a waffle cone is amazing!). After that adventure we headed back to the house for nap time and more relaxing. Justin made some killer carnitas tacos for dinner, then we let Paige smash into her cupcake, put her to bed, enjoyed our cupcakes, and then played some Ticket to Ride.

So far the only disappointing part of this trip is the weather... It's hot here!! I was so excited to experience some cool Seattle weather! Oh well, at least it's not raining!

Tomorrow's agenda:
Woodland Park Zoo
Picnic
Freemont and/or Ballard
Date night for me and Jeremy while Uncle Justin and Aunt Betsy babysit!  

Monday, August 13, 2012

Day 1 - travel

So yesterday we began the adventure of taking our (almost) 1-year old on her first plane ride... Across the United States! I was getting more and more nervous as the day came but knew it would only be 6 hours of my life... Wow, I'm so glad it's over! Actually it went fairly well. The first leg from Indy to KC was completely full, I took a window seat, Jeremy took the middle, and some older guy with 8 grand kids took the aisle seat... He wasn't too creepy until he rubbed Paige's head at one point, after that Jeremy did a body block on him. :) but Paige kept trying to reach over to him so it didn't work out too well, she's too friendly! Paige kept going back and forth between Jeremy and I, never sitting still for more than a minute or two, grabbing at all the magazines and brochures in the seat. It seemed like we would never get to KC. But we made it with her only crying a couple times. 

Leg 2... KC to Seatlle (3 hours & 30 minutes). We didn't have to change planes in KC, so after everyone got off the plane we were able to move and find new seats (creepy grandpa got off in KC!). I asked one of the flight attendants if there were going to be extra seats this time so we could use the car seat. (We had gate checked it but since the tag said it was going to Seattle I wasn't sure if they would be able to get it). She was so nice and found out there were extras seats and one of the crew went and found the seat for us!! Yay Southwest! Bonus points!! Have the car seat was so great! Paige was getting so cranky before the flight took off so I started feeding her some dinner (at this point it was 5:30 our time and she had only taken an hour long nap the entire day). After about 5 bites of some food she passed out! She was asleep during takeoff and probably slept a total of 45 minutes. So after that it was more passing her back and forth between the two of us and letting her look around and smile at all the other passenagers. We had some great people around us! We did get her back in seat for about 45 min - 1 hour and she watched Monsters Inc on the iPad (no sound, just the movie). Then we let climb all over us again. About 30 minutes before landing the lady across the aisle said, "it's okay if you want to put her in her car seat and let her cry herself to sleep, none of us mind." It was so sweet! She could tell Paige was tired but wouldn't go to sleep! So just before landing we strapped her in and let her cry for a few minutes, restarted Monsters Inc (she loves that movie), and sure enough she fell asleep, just before we landed! So she only slept for the takeoff and the landing! As we were getting off the plane I apologized to the guy sitting in front of us and his response: "I have twins, you guys did great!" :) so thankful for understanding people around us! Overall it was a good experience, I'm just praying for extra seats on the way home! That car seat is a lifesaver! As far as the Time change... Well we are still working on that! Paige woke up right before we got in the car last night and ended up staying awake until 7:30 Seattle time. I was really hoping she would sleep until 6 or 6:30, but of course she was up at 4:30 (7:30 Indiana time - normal wake up time). She stayed in the room with us and kept trying to go back to sleep with no such luck. So at 5:30 we got up and let her play around for a while, gave her some breakfast, and put her down for a nap at 7:30! Hopefully the morning nap will be enough to reset her! Looking forward to a fun day!!