Liberty - 16 Months Old

Libby Lou is 16 months old!  She weighs in at 21 pounds.  Since she cannot have dairy she has thinned out over the past two months.  Her hair is blonde and her eyes a beautiful brown.

Basically all she eats is chicken nuggets and dairy/gluten free pancakes or waffles.  Our babysitters have 400 degrees for 12 minutes memorized.  That is how long to cook her nuggets.  I did cut up a hot dog and she ate a few pieces of it.  I am surprised how much I have enjoyed learning what things to substitute so she can eat them.  We use rice flour, grape seed oil, rice milk, almond milk and egg substitute, which is a powder.  (In case you grandparents need to know for when you keep her.)  I did experiment and gave her almond milk with strawberries blended up in it, and she drank that!.....for a day.  Maybe once a week will surprise her with it.  She liked our red drink a lot but we discovered it had aspartame in it, so we weaned everyone off of it and quit buying it.  Now we are back to drinking water. I am hoping to try more recipes next month for her.  I have been sneaking bananas into her pancakes.  She won't eat fruit plain so sometimes you just do what you go to do.  She can have Kix cereal because it is corn based, not wheat based.

Side note: All of this experimenting with food and learning more about it has also inspired me to eat healthier.  I discovered that cow's milk really is not the greatest for our bodies and I am enjoying protein shakes with almond milk.

Liberty loves to go, go, go.  She tries to keep up with her brothers, and it is so cute to see them follow each other back and forth across the house. She has started to climb on the couch and is getting better about staying seated, and slowly getting off by going backwards until her toes can touch the floor.  She is such a girl, already swinging one arm and putting her hands on her hips.  It was interesting the other day at the park to see a little girl come up to her and they were handing a rock back and forth to each other.  I am not used to seeing her play with girls.  She will get plenty of practice though this summer when starts Mother's Day Out.

Liberty loves bath time and immediately does the sign for it and runs to the bathroom when we say "bath".  She likes to play peekaboo and to be chased.

We are so thankful she has been healthy.  She still has not had an ear infection, or no other health condition really besides an occasional runny nose.  We can deal with the allergy stuff and are very thankful it is not life threatening should she eat something wrong.

Sesame Street Live!

My sister's fiance won tickets for Sesame Street Live.  For some reason he was not too excited about taking Rebekah (haha), so he gave them to us. 

We don't have cable so the kids haven't really seen Sesame Street except for in books we have.  Jonathan has acted out Grover saying "near" and "far", which is hilarious by the way.

The show we attended was during Preston's nap time.  He actually lasted quite a while but we did not stay until the end.  The story was cute and the kids loved the music.

Here are some pictures from our fun adventure!

Hallister 4.5

It is hard to believe our first born is 4 1/2 years old!  He is very smart and has learned so much this past year.

He knows his days of the week, months of the year, the Pledge of Allegiance, and can count to 30.  He can also write his first name, which is not an easy task with it being so long.

Hallister is always listening and will repeat stuff we say, even if it is days later, and even if it is something Jonathan and I were talking about, not even to him.  He also has a remarkable memory. Just the other day he said, "Remember when I slipped in the mud at Preston's party and I got my shoes muddy."  That was last July!  Hall also has an amazing sense of smell.  He tells me when Liberty is poopy or just by smelling my breath he can tell me what I just ate!

Hallister is 3' 3" tall and weighs 32lbs 6oz.  He wears size 3T pants, mostly 4T shirts, and size 9 shoes. He is very helpful around the house.  He feeds the dog each morning and gets dressed on his own.  Anytime Liberty has a poopy we call for Hallister and he entertains her so she won't put her hands in her mess.

We took Hall to the dentist and it did turn out he had three small cavities.  We had them fill one of them, but barely.  He got very anxious at the end.  I'm not sure if we will be able to get the other ones done without having him sedated.  Thankfully they are very small though.  We have cut back on sugar we give him, which isn't a lot.  He occasionally has a pop tart, but his favorite sandwich is just jelly.  I bought a sugar free jelly for him to use.  His other favorite foods are popcorn and chicken nuggets with honey mustard.

If we are still in this house Hallister will go to Preschool at Castleman Creek Elementary in the Fall.  It is the school right behind our house.  That will be convenient to walk him to school. It is only half day, so it will be a nice way to ease him into Kindergarten.

On the weekends when Jonathan needs to work on something in the garage, and the other two kids are sleeping, we will park the suburban at the end of the driveway and Hallister enjoys setting up cones and riding his bicycle.  He is very good about watching for cars and always wears his helmet, but we mainly park the burb there because of careless drivers that go down our street.

Hall is very caring, sensitive, and loves to give hugs.  In the picture above Hallister brought me a "snack" while I was in bed taking a nap.  He is so sweet.  Hall really loves to cook, but it takes patience because he wants to do everything on his own.  He is a big helper after eating, and takes his plate to the sink after excusing himself from the table.

After last Halloween when he was a fireman he is still really into firetrucks.  At school when they play dress up he always puts on the fireman outfit.  We will see if this enthusiasm wears off or if it turns in to a future career.  He still loves to play with cars and trains.

We are so proud of our sweet boy!