Happy Holidays!

I guess that it is too late for Merry Christmas and too early for Happy New Year. We just got home last night from our long week of traveling. It was not actually a whole week but whose counting?

On Tuesday Night at bedtime we left for OK to visit The Rowes. We celebrated Christmas Eve with them, and we left on Christmas morning after Santa came to drive 5 hrs. to have Christmas dinner with my side of the family. The day after Christmas we went to Springfield, MO with my mom and brother to visit my grandma (mom's mom), and we just got back last night from that trip. Makayla traveled much better this time than she has for past trips.

We have a BIG THANK YOU for the Tates for the tip on the portable DVD player in the car. It never occured to me that she would be old enough to appreciate that. We got her veggie tales and Little Einsteins. It turns that Makayla hates Veggie Tales and loves Little Einsteins. She screamed for about 20 mins before I changed the DVD back. I think that she just likes all of the music on Little Einsteins.

Overall Christmas travels went very well, and Makayla had a great time visiting her family.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

I got this cook book , Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, that has a ton of egg and dairy free cake and frosting recipes in it. I made the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes this weekend. They were so good, and I am tempted to say that it may have been some of the best...No-THE BEST, red velvet cake that I have ever had. That is saying a lot because i LOVE red velvet cake.

I am going to make their basic chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting for Makayla's daycare party tomorrow. They are completely allergy friendly for her. We are still learning about these allergies through trial and error unfortunately. It is coming together slowly. I really look forward to our visit with the nutritionist next week, and I hope that she is able to give us some guidance. It is my assumption that she has plenty of experience working with food allergies since she works in the allergy clinic one day a week, and I hope that she will have some ideas for good substitutes for all of the foods that we are omiting from Makayla's diet to ensure that she still gets a balanced diet

.

Thankful

This morning we are thankful for God's gift of ear tubes! Makayla woke up this morning with gunk seeping out of her right ear. This is the first time that she has had any drainage from her tubes, but we love drainage and ear tubes around here. Before the tubes we would have had an ear infection for sure today! Drainage is good by the way because it means the puss is draining out of her ear instead of staying in her ear causing an infection.

see a little bit of color

I posted this picture last week, but I love this effect with this picture. It really looks

Christmas-ee to me.

I also did this to another photo that looks great. Check it out in this post from March. Wow! That was a long time ago.

bundled up

It has been a little chilly down here recently. Makayla has a couple of jackets and a couple of coats. This is her heavy coat that she will probably be able to still wear next year. We did not plan that, but her coat is a little big. It fits well when she is standing, but it really rides up when we carry her. I know that it is supposed to be a little big, but it is probably too big. She likes to chew it too as you can see.

Do you feel lucky?

WE DON'T!

Makayla had her allergy appointment with Dr. Ruddell today. I really had hoped that something horrible had happened down in the lab, and we had somehow been given some other poor child's allergy test results. No such luck. Actually, we would have been quite lucky to have only had the 4 original allergies, but guess what! We were not lucky today. We have 3 more allergies to add to our list equaling a grand total of 7. You read that right. I said seven. Here is our updated list from highest severity.

• peanuts
• milk
• eggs
• soy
• cashews
• beef
• pork

Good thing that Makayla is a self proclaimed vegetarian, or we might have a situation on our hands.

We did manage to get some good news today. People can often test positive for a soy allergy when they have a severe peanut allergy which Makayla has. The allergist told us to try to introduce soy milk to test Makayla's tolerance to soy in hopes that it was a false positive due to the peanuts. We hope that it was, or we might have to use one of our super expensive epi-pens because I just gave her some soy milk. We definitely don't want to have to do that, but it works through jeans and all clothes just in case you were wondering. We have a couple of trainers to practice. I guess that it is best to be prepared. Now I have to prepare everyone else on the planet.

Mommy and me!

I have so few pics of Makayla and me. I guess that I never look nice enough when I am taking pics to have my picture made with her or maybe it is because I do take most of the pictures. I have tons pictures of Makayla and Nathan.

like this one

and this one where he is pretending to be asleep

and this one taken during story time

This has been a great source of frustration for Makayla. She told me that I needed to post a decent pic of the two of us. Here it is.

Mommy and me!

Black and White Week

Get ready for a week full of black and white pitcures. Maybe it's boring to some, but it is classic to others. I hope not to disappoint, but I personally like black and white for certain things.

'tis the season for Christmas shirts

We love Christmas shirts around here. We just can't get enough. Makayla got this one from her Aunt Connie. It is so cute it says "I'm on Santa's List".

Makayla is standing up from the floor on her own. She thinks that she is really cool because she can stand up wherever she wants. She is taking more steps now, but she still crawls quite abit. She will walk quite a bit at home, but she won't walk much at daycare. She would also eat meat at daycare, but she wouldn't touch the stuff at home. Kids...they are so unpredictable.

expressions change

Did you realize how quickly someone's facial expression can change? Here's a great example. Please excuse the dirty daycare cothes. She played hard in these clothes all day.

Having fun just rockin' on our rockin' thingy that we got from Carrie Reaves (my friend from work that also goes to our church).

Starting to get a little freaked out. Kind of wanting off the rockin' thingy.

Demanding to be removed from the rockin' thingy.

I LOVE SANTA!

and I love this onesie that Makayla got from the Stafford's. It is just so cute that she wanted to show it off to everyone on the planet.

She wanted to let everyone know that she has a polka dot bow. Maybe she'll put it on Jennifer's carrots. We haven't given Jennifer the carrots that she won yet because we don't want her to be tempted to eat them before Christmas. It takes a while for something pickled to become pickled.

It has been cold here!

This is a picture of Makayla getting ready to go outside to help her Dad while he attempted to put up Christmas lights with the help of cousin Daniel. We got some new lights this year because the lights that we had last year would not stay in the right position, so they were flipping up, down, and all over. They just did not look good. Well this year was not much better because the strands either didn't work or were falling apart, so they went back to Wal-Mart. In short we have no lights on our house this year and probably won't.

Our little Picasso

Makayla loves to color. I bet that Santa is bringing her some big baby crayons for Christmas. Just a hunch that I have because Santa and I are tight like that. She just couldn't wait for me to show everyone her creation from lunch at Chilis's today.

I found a tooth

I found a 5th tooth in Makayla's mouth this weekend. I have been looking for another one to come in for a while on the bottom. Well you guys know how she can get to laughing sometimes...When she was laughing at me this weekend I saw it. It is half way in on the TOP. I thought that she was supposed to get more bottom teeth first, so that is where I have been looking. I have no idea how long that tooth has been there, but I am assuming at least a month or so because it is really big. It is about half as big as her front 2 teeth that she has had for a couple of months.

Am I a bad mom? Would you have been checking out the top gums?

Sorry, I'm allergic

I haven't posted this pic before because it just looks very sad. Anyway, Here's the story. About 3 weeks ago (or maybe 4 or 5) Makayla had an allergic reaction to something (we still aren't sure what it was that day). She had the reaction about 7:30 PM, and her eyes and ears swelled up like Will Smith on Hitch. This pic was taken about 12 hours and 3 doses of Benadryl later. As you can see her eyes were still quite swollen, but her ears were back to normal. It has taken us this long to get her allergy test back. I certainly hope that the test results were wrong. I don't want her to be the kid at a birthday party sitting there in her cute little party hat watching her friends eat cake and ice cream while she drinks her little cup of rice milk. That just doesn't seem fair to me. I don't want her to have to go through her life checking food labels. We don't have food allergies in the family. Makayla's Aunt Melissa had some when she was younger that she outgrew, but Nathan and I have none. Nathan is the only person that I know with no seasonal allergies at all. Here is Makayla's list which will help you understand the birthday party scenario.

Severe

Peanuts

Milk

Moderate
Eggs

Soy

How sad for her. I went to Wal-Mart to see if I could find something for her to eat other than fruits and veggies, but I couldn't find anything. Not even the organic crackers that we buy for her are okay because they have milk, soy, and eggs in them. She has to drink rice milk because she is apparently allergic to milk and soy. I called Wild Oats (a huge natural foods store) in Little Rock to see if they had some products that would work for her. The guy on the phone was so kind and sympathetic. He said that they did not have a huge selection, but we would find more there than we would anywhere else. He even said that if I have trouble finding things that I could page him, and he would help me find things that she could eat.

I am so excited!

First of all I am excited that Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Second of all I am excited that my brother's team (Newport Greyhounds) is playing in the playoffs still, and he is playing Heber Springs on Friday night. Third of all I am excited that I have finished Makayla's scrapbook. The pages are currently being printed, and when I put them in the book it will be officially finished. This means that it is family scrapbook time, so I am going to be busy snapping pics of the family during all major holidays and special occasions.

and the winner is...

#4

Nathan has spoken. I told him to choose a number between 1 and 6. He chose 4, so my good friend Jennifer A. won the prize winning pickled carrots which is really funny he was reluctant to even enter the contest at the thought of actually winning the carrots. I practically had to beg her to even enter. Ha! Ha! I think that she was worried that she might hurt my feelings if she didn't like them because she is just like that. She cares about people's feelings and stuff. I can ease her mind.

Jennifer, If you don't like the carrots that's okay. You can just give them back. That makes one more jar for me! LOL!

now I am for real

Okay. I am for real now. The new scrapbook pages really are up over on my digital scrapbooking blog. Makayla has kept me running this weekend, so I haven't had time to post them until now. Check them out.

Here's a preview.

Exciting stuff to come...

for those digiscrap lovers out there. I have been hard at work these past few days finishing up Makayla's digital scrapbook. I plan to have them uploaded to my digital scrapbooking blog before I go to bed tonight.

Since her first year is over, I will be starting a family scrapbook for all of our holidays and events. This has become such an enjoyable hobby for me! It is just so easy, too.

I just thought that I would give you guys a heads up, so that you can head over there later and see all of her scrapbook pages. I have them all printed and placed in a regualar scrapbook.

remember the lasts

Don't they always make a liar out of you. Tonight while the three of us were playing Makayla took 5 steps to Nathan. I say sob, sob because I have really been enjoying my baby girl. I don't consider 5 steps walking, but she is much closer. When she starts walking that means that she is no longer a baby because then she becomes a toddler. I get weekly updates from babycenter on average baby development, and the 1st one that I got after her birthday said your toddler this week instead of your baby this week. I was thinking "no way". She is a baby not a toddler. I still secretly miss the 8 week old that would just hang out and nurse on demand. I sometimes miss that, but then I am snapped back into the reality of what having an 8 week old really means.

I am so excited that she is moving forward, but I am going to miss the crawler. I know one thing for sure....that we get really caught up in the "firsts". You know first bottle, first solid food, first tooth, and first step. We get so caught up with the "firsts" that we don't realize the lasts when we see them. How many of you remember the lasts? Some of the lasts I am talking about are the last bottle, last jar of baby food, and last time they crawled to you before they walked for good. There was a thread on babycenter about this that really got me thinking about it. I am so glad that I read through those posts because it helped me realize that I did not want to miss her lasts because of her firsts that will follow. I am savoring these last few weeks of crawling and plan to video so much of it because I don't want to forget these last few weeks for this stage of our family. Our family of 3 will never again see the days of a crawling baby after she becomes a walker. I guess that what I am trying to say is that it is so important to remember the lasts because they are just as momentous as firsts just less recognized. If you think that your little one is out of lasts there are plenty more. Make sure that you remember the last diaper that you change, last time to use their sippy, last time to use their high chair, last night in their crib, the last time that you rock them to sleep , and their last time to lose a baby tooth. I feel like all of these occasions are so memorable, but we often forget to remember them but wish that we had.

Walking with mommy

Makayla likes to walk with her push toys, but she will not walk with them very long before she completely loses interest. She loves to walk with mommy though. She even like to hold onto just one finger and walk, but she is not close at all to walking on her own. Beth has told me for months that Makayla will be that girl walks around the room with 1 finger on the wall. I can totally see that being what she would do because she is just such a funny girl!

This is what we see every morning when we go into Makayla's room when she wakes up. Enjoy this bouncey video.

Extended Rear Facing

I am a huge supporter of extended rear facing in car seats. Safety is just not something that we mess around with at our house. I am not saying that someone's choice to turn their little one around is unsafe or anything, but here is a link to a video showing the difference between an older child that is rear facing vs. the same child that is forward facing. It uses crash test dummies, but I just wanted everyone to be aware of the advantages of extended rear facing because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't. Please note the difference in neck and spine movement. Just remember that it is much easier to fix a broken leg than an neck or spine injury.

Here's the Link

Makayla loves to eat!

"I thought that this Jelly sandwich would be better seperated." "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Hands off the Spaghetti or you're gonna get it!" (She means it, too!)

"No Meat! No Meat!"

Makayla also loves spaghetti, but she wouldn't even eat the meat in it. As you can tell she seperated the ground beef from the rest and ate the spaghetti noodles. The only way that we can disguise meat is in her raviolli.

What's your favortite holiday tradition?

HOLIDAY CONTEST!

I'm sorry in advance because blogger will not let me space between paragraphs.

My Aunt Wanda (Great aunt actually) always made pickled carrots every year for the holidays. I always looked forward to them at Christmas, and other people did too. Aunt Wanda was a petite woman with a very kind and gentle nature. I think that may be one of the reasons why I loved them so much because she was just so delightful and kind. Aunt Wanda died when I was still in High School. I don't think that a sweeter person has ever walked this earth. Anyway back to the carrots. They are as wonderful and delightful as Aunt Wanda was, and now I can make them. Well, I sort of make them and have had success in the recreating of her carrots. I have it all figured out after trial and error. I had no idea how challenging canning could be. I have her recipe, but I never could get them to turn out exactly the way hers did. Probably because I am not her, so they will never the same. They have passed the test because my Dad has always loved Aunt Wanda's pickled carrots, and he told me that they tasted just like them when I made them last year.

I did some research on Alum which was used for pickling in this recipe. I was not able to find it in the stores, so I just had to find out why it was so hard to find. It turns out that Alum is banned because it is actually toxic to humans. I now use pickling salt instead of Alum which was one adjustment that I had to make. Other than that they are exactly the same. They do taste pretty much the way that hers did. I also made another adjustment this year. Makayla's mommy has moved beyond peeling and slicing bags and bags of carrots because it took hours to make these last time and only about 30 minutes this time. We will see how it goes. I know there will be lots of disappointed folks because they loved the long, skinny nature of Aunt Wanda's Crunchy, beautiful carrots. Guess what! She was a retired lady with nothing but time. I on the other hand am limited on time, so this year folks you are getting measly baby carrots because I am not willing to peel and slice for hours.

Okay, Now it is contest time! I have made 1 extra jar of these pickled beauties for 1 of you. I have told you all about 1 of my favorite family traditions, and I would absolutely love to hear about yours. In just 1 week I will have Nathan pick a number at random based upon the number of comments that I receive for the contest. The number that he chooses will match the number for your post. For example the first person to comment will be #1 and so on. I am so excited to be able to share this family tradition with one of you. Don't hold it against me if they are not good because I am not Aunt Wanda, so I will not make the perfect pickled carrots every time. Even if you don't want to be considered for the prize I would love to hear about everyone's family traditions. If you don't live here I would love to ship them to you if you win. If you do live here I will just swing by and drop them off while I am out and about sometime.

Don't be scared of you don't like carrots. These are no ordinary carrots. I promise that they are the most delightful holiday treat that you will ever have the priveledge of eating. They are the perfect blend of spicy and tart. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.