Look...

Look who can climb stairs...

walk a little...

give dirty looks...

bat those long eyelashes...

open cupboards...

crawl everywhere...

make HUGE messes...

and just melt your heart?



Lauren can! :)

The Rear to Front Dilemma

Lauren is getting fairly big, in baby terms. Thus she is almost too tall for her rear-facing infant carseat. I don't want to spend money on another bigger rear-facing carseat since she will legally be able to switch to forward in 2 months, although it's not advised.

What do all of you with kids do? Should I shell out more money for a bigger rear-facing one so her little legs will have some wiggle room? Or just go for a high-back front-facing when she turns one? Oh it would be nice to have her turned around so she can see us!

And what kinds of carseats do you have? Do you like them or not? I was thinking about the Evenflo Chase LX Booster Seat. What do you think?

9 Months

Lauren seems to have grown up a ton just in the last few weeks since Christmas.

Last week at her doctor's appointment he said she was getting to be a big girl! Literally! She is 91% in both height and weight! I was shocked, I didn't think she was THAT big! Guess I should have suspected that when she's already wearing 18 to 24 month old clothes.

She also got her first tooth on Sunday! I've been wondering if it would show up sooner or later and it finally came through. I felt bad though, that she might be teething didn't cross my mind when she had been a little grouchy for a few days. Her poor little mouth hurt!

She is now army crawling all over the place. She realized she can actually move rooms now and follow me around. It's pretty fun.

She's starting to pull herself up on things as long as she can get a good handhold and finding every single little piece of lint or crumb that I missed vacuuming.

She started giving her stuffed animals and blankets hugs now. She will hold them up to her face and hug them tight. It's really cute.

Man! All I can say is that these last nine months went a whole lot faster than being pregnant for 9 months!

Organization

Just been thinking about organization... mostly because there are a TON of pins about organization on Pinterest right now with it being a new year and all. I find them kind of funny. Not because they don't have good ideas, but I find them ironic in that organization is supposed to reduce stress; but I think in alot of cases the idea of becoming more organized stresses people out more.

I'm not a crazy organized person. But I do like order to things. And organizing our house is not that hard because we set it up like my parent's house/what I grew up with. I always know that the baking soda is against the wall in the cupboard next to the stove. I always know that extra shoelaces and batteries are in the linen closet, becuase that's where my mom put them. It just makes sense to me.

As soon as I try to become more "organized" and mess this "system" up we can never find anything which just stresses me out 'cuz I can't find the baking soda at the exact moment I need it! (No it really doesn't cause me that much stress, it's just annoying.)

At one point I tried making all of those perfectly labeled bins that had a perfect spot to keep it's designated thing. Frustration ensued when they did not turn out the way I wanted and everything just ended up mixed up anyway because I had taken them out of their "spot" to put them in the bin. Now we just have random JJ cole and diaper box bins strewn around to house stuff. Works for us.

So I don't really know what I'm trying to say, but organization another person's way may not necessarily be "your organization" so don't stress out about "getting organized!"

picture from here