Happy Autumn!!

I love Fall! It is definitely my favorite season. I love the changing weather and the crispness to the air. I love the smell of leaves and the colors of the leaves and that after they've fallen, you can rake them and play in them! I love that you can start wearing long sleeves and jackets and sweaters, and that the temperature cools down so that you can be comfortable being outside. And I love it because it is the start of the holiday seasons--when fall arrives, I can start to look forward to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and all of the fun activities and decorations and everything else that comes with them.

Happy 1st day of Fall!!!!!

(Also, on only a slightly related note, I love the name Autumn for a girl. Jacob of course doesn't like it. But there's a guy who plays World of Warcraft with Jacob in his guild whose character is named Autum, and I'm pretty sure he has a man-crush on Jacob. So that makes the name a little less appealing to me. Also, the guy plays a female character... weird, yes?)

(Pictures are from my sophomore year of college, when I went with my roomie Shanna to her family's cabin in Heber, UT. It was gorgeous up there in the fall!)

18 Months

My little girl is 18 months old today!! She's still a tiny little thing... any 18-month size pants are huge on her around the waist and won't stay up. In fact, the 6-month and 12-month jeans that I have for her are also still too big around the waist for her to wear. She can still fit into one of her pairs of 6-12 month size pants, although to be fair, I'm pretty sure they run big. She finally fits into 18-month shirts, and she has 18-month overalls and sleepers that she can wear as well (since they don't have to be tight around the waist to fit!).

One of Naomi's favorite toys are these fairy magnets that my friend Jess made for her out of styrofoam board and fairy stickers (Thank you, Jessica!!). She LOVES them. She plays with them on the refrigerator, the dishwasher, and on a magnetic dry erase board we have. Lately, she enjoys putting them all on the fridge and then hitting them until they've all fallen onto the floor.


Naomi babbles all the time, but she still doesn't say a whole lot that we can understand. She says mama, dada, dog, ball, dat (that), beep (will explain that one in a minute), ow, cack-uk (which I think means "cracker"), ni-ni (night-night) and probably some other things that I can't think of at the moment.

She understands a lot of things that we say, even if she can't say them. When she hears "movie", she runs over to the TV. "Diaper change!" sends her running as fast as she can in the opposite direction, sometimes to hide behind the parent who isn't holding the wipes & new diaper. When we ask if she wants her bottle, she will run to the kitchen and wait for us to get it ready. She likes us to hold her while it's heating in the microwave, and we count down the last 10 seconds until the beep, which is when she chimes in with her own little "beeep". It's pretty adorable. She knows "nap", "sleepy time", "beddy-byes", and "bedtime"--if we say any of those things, she runs over to the bottom of the stairs and waits for us to take the gate down so she can go to her bedroom. She also knows certain books and will bring them to us if we ask her to, like "Chicka Chicka" (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom) or "Bubbles" (a Sesame Street book I got for a dollar at Target--love their clearance/dollar section!).

She loves to clap, and she gives high-fives, and if you catch her in the right mood she will give you a big hug and the cutest, wettest kisses. We still keep a gate up at the bottom of the stairs, because although she can go up and down on her own, she often gets distracted halfway up and falls because she tried to turn around or play on the stair. Naomi knows that the gate belongs there, and if Jacob or I don't put it up right away, she will pick it up and try to put it into place herself. She still isn't much of a snuggler--she doesn't like to be held much, and she won't ever sit on our laps for more than 30 seconds. She loves wearing her new shoes (and who can blame her--they're pretty awesome), and she will wear them all day long if we don't hide them from her (which we often do, because she will take them off and then scream if we don't put them back on for her two minutes later). Most of the time, it's almost impossible to get her to eat, which is part of the reason she's so dang skinny. Every once in a while, she'll have a day where she does really well and eats a ton... but these days are rare. She likes dipping things, so if we give her a pile of ketchup or syrup and then a dippable food, she will sometimes eat a decent amount. I can also sometimes get her to eat if I use 3 separate spoons--one for each of her hands, and then one for me to shove food into her mouth when she'll let me.

We sure do love our little girl!

Baby Names

As of the 13th of this month, I am in the third trimester of my pregnancy! This pregnancy feels like it's going by much more quickly than the last one--I think it's because I have Naomi to keep me distracted and busy. I'm at the point now where I am extremely uncomfortable all of the time and every inch of me hurts, but I much prefer this pain & discomfort over the nausea and vomiting I had just two months ago.

Jacob and I still haven't decided on a name for this little girl! Jacob claims that we have, but he just gave in to the name I wanted because he didn't want to think about it anymore. Jacob has always wanted the name Aurora... like in Sleeping Beauty... and although I think it is beautiful, I can't get past the Disney reference. I'm afraid that everyone will think of Sleeping Beauty as soon as they hear it and that she'll get made fun of. If I ever give in and let Jacob use the name for one of our daughers, we have picked the middle name Noelle to go with it--Aurora Noelle. But as of right now, I want to find a name that we are both really happy with.

I've always wanted to name a daughter Aleta. It's my middle name, and I've always loved it. I think it's pretty and unique, but not unique enough that it's weird (like all of the "unique" things celebrities are naming their kids these days). Jacob didn't like it, but I guess he got tired of me looking at baby name websites and asking him, "What about Diana?", or "Do you like the name Megan?". (I really do love the name Diana, by the way, but we could never use Megan--it's the name of a girl or two that Jacob once dated/kissed.) At any rate, he finally gave in and said we could use Aleta, so we came up with the midde name Deanne (which is the name of one of Jacob's aunts, who I just think is awesome, and we had our wedding reception at her home!). So the closest we've come to agreeing on a baby name is Aleta Deanne, but I really want to find a name that Jacob loves as much as I do. We've got 3 months!

Noodle Necklaces

Naomi had a lot of fun on Friday night playing with some necklaces at a friend's house, so we made our own necklaces on Saturday with cheerios and penne pasta. Sadly, Naomi wouldn't wear hers, but she did enjoy helping me put the noodles on the yarn. She also had fun treating her necklace like a candy necklace and eating the cheerios off of it.

Since Naomi wouldn't wear the necklace, Jacob was kind enough to model it for me. Doesn't he look lovely? And so thrilled? (By the time this picture was taken, Naomi had already eaten half of the cheerios off of the necklace.)
In other news, Naomi went to nursery for the first time on Sunday. Jacob dropped her off, and she was fine at first... But about 5 minutes into Sunday School, I heard familiar screams coming from the hallway. Apparently, after her initial excitement wore off, she realized that Daddy wasn't there anymore. So I spent all of the second hour of church staying in the nursery room with her, and Jacob spent the third hour with her. We're hoping after a week or two, Naomi will get used to the other kids and start to enjoy nursery by herself. We'll see!

Video

I tried to upload this earlier with the fingerpainting post, but blogger just would not do it! Here's a short video of Naomi playing with the pudding:

Fingerpainting with Pudding

As hard as I tried to be an awesome mom last week and do something especially fun with Naomi each day, it obviously didn't happen. But I'm trying! So I picked it up again today with fingerpainting!! Naomi's too young to fingerpaint for real--she would try to eat the paint. So I made vanilla pudding and used food coloring to make different colors, and we painted with that. Naomi seemed to be having fun with it, but it was a HUGE mess. Jacob and I had to put her right into the tub afterward. It was definitely worth it, though!! Once Naomi realized how delicious the pudding was, she mostly just ate it. But she had fun swirling it around on the paper for a while, too.

Jacob's Birthday Weekend

So, when I made my goal to do one fun new thing with Naomi each day last week, I forgot that we were leaving for the weekend to go to Jacob's parents' house. Thursday was spent being a little sick and doing laundry and packing and then working, and then we left early on Friday. So I will have to finish my week of homemade fun this week.

On Thursday, my husband turned 28!! Since we were leaving the next day to celebrate with the other Romneys who live in the area, I didn't make or buy a cake--we would have eaten a couple pieces and then had to throw the rest away. Instead, we had birthday eclairs! I stuck a candle in Jacob's and sang to him all by myself so he could make a wish. Sadly, we didn't get any pictures. I did take a video, but since I'm the only person singing (and it sounds terrible), I won't be sharing that video with anyone!

We had a fun weekend eating German Chocolate cake and root beer floats and lots of other treats, but I didn't get any pictures of the weekend activities, either. I will leave you with a picture of us on Jacob's birthday last year... we were going on a hot date to Fogo de Chao in Kansas City. Isn't he handsome??

Happy Birthday, Jacob!!

Sheet Fort!

Today's fun activity was building a reading cave... also known as a sheet fort! With some sheets, a little yarn, a bunch of clothespins, and our kitchen chairs, we had a pretty nice-sized fort. Naomi eventually discovered the clothespins and then destroyed our little cave by pulling half of them off and then pulling down the sheets, but we had fun for an hour or so! Jacob even surprised us by coming home to play during a break in his school day!

This is the face Jacob made when I told him to smile:

This is the view of the fort from the stairs:

A Week of Homemade Fun

I have been feeling like a terrible mother lately. Due to pregnancy, and sickness, and exhaustion, and working, and then the extremely high temperatures, I didn't get to do any of the fun things I had planned to do with Naomi this summer. She doesn't have a ton of toys, and she has gotten to the point where she grows bored with them very quickly. We read all of her favorite stories, she plays with her giant caterpillar, she plays with her exersaucer, she pushes all of the buttons on her Dora kitchen, and then she runs over to the tv and stares at it and whines until I put in a movie. All of her playing takes about 20 minutes.

I used to be so careful about letting Naomi watch movies. I don't want her to be a movie junkie--one of those kids who can't be happy unless the tv is on. I want her to be able to play on her own and be entertained with things around her--not dependent on a screen to be entertained. But with being pregnant and sick and tired, I let her become one of those children!

So today I made a goal for myself. She needs to get out of the habit of watching movies, and I need to get out of the habit of giving in and putting on a movie when she gets too whiny. So for at least the next week, I am not going to put in a single movie for her to watch. Every day, we are going to find or make something to play with out of things we have laying around the house. Having no money to buy toys just means you have to be a little creative, right? I am not a creative person, but lucky for me, there are tons of creative people in the world who like to share their ideas online with the rest of us. :)

Today's fun activity was edible playdough. Regular playdough was out--both because we don't have any and because Naomi would just try to eat it, which is gross. So we made peanut butter playdough! All I had to do was mix 1 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of honey, and 2 cups of powdered sugar--easy and delicious! I googled to find a recipe--the one I used came from here.

Last night, I dumped out a box of 101 cookie cutters for Naomi to play with, and she had a blast playing with them. She'd put them all into a large metal tin, then dump it out, and then fill it back up again. So I washed a couple of them for us to use with the playdough. With the cookie cutters, the playdough, and a few mixing spoons, Naomi was ready to go! She sat in her high chair at the table and played for a good 45 minutes or so. Success!!

The one thing I had to be careful of was how much of the playdough Naomi tried to eat at one time--once she discovered how yummy it was, she started grabbing huge chunks to shove into her mouth. I had to keep taking them away and giving her smaller pieces to eat so she wouldn't choke.

When she was finished playing, I definitely had a mess to clean up. But Naomi had fun, so it was worth it!

Summer

I can't believe that summer has already come & gone! Jacob is back in school full-time at Mizzou (taking 18 credits of nuclear medicine classes and physics... it will be a tough semester!), and I've been busy with chasing after Naomi and attempting (and failing, usually) to keep our place clean and organized.

Most of our summer, sadly, was spent inside our little townhouse, trying to stay cool. I had big plans of taking Naomi to the Columbia parks every day, and going on little family outings, and taking Naomi to the free splash parks. But as it turned out, Naomi is TERRIFIED of water unless it's in the tub, and for most of the summer, we had extreme heat warnings and temperatures in the 100's. So we settled with staying at home and playing in our nice, air-conditioned home.

Jacob and I celebrated our second anniversary on June 9th. We didn't have a babysitter for Naomi, and we didn't have any money to go out and do anything spectacular, so we celebrated here at home. Jacob put Naomi to bed while I ran out and picked up dinner to-go from Chili's, and we ate dinner by candlelight and then watched a movie on Netflix. Jessica, one of my old roommates from Provo and one of my very best friends came to visit us in the middle of July for an entire week! We had so much fun having her here, and we even managed to get out of the house a couple times despite the heat. We took Naomi to the pool one day and forced her to face her fear of water, but she whined and cried as soon as even one toe would touch the water. She LOVES her bathtime, but the pool for some reason terrifies her.

We all loved having Jessica here and were sad to see her go. Naomi especially enjoyed having a new person to play with and entertain her. We love you, Jess!!
Shortly after Jess left, my parents drove out from Pennsylvania to visit for a few days! We all went out to Steak 'N Shake for my 26th birthday, and my mom made a delicious cake--chocolate, chocolate chip cake with buttercream icing. Yum! I loved being able to spend my birthday with them. The last time I got to spend my birthday with my parents was the summer I turned 21, after my freshmen year of college. So it had been a while!