Happy birthday my sweet baby girl!

I can hardly believe it, but Hailey Marie is officially 1 year old! This year went by way too fast and I can honestly say I enjoyed every moment and I can't imagine my life without my sweet girl.

On Sunday we celebrated Hailey's birthday with a great group of family and friends. Hailey had so much fun, looked so pretty and showed off her great walking. (She became a full-fledged walker at about 11 1/2 months and now she never even crawls, so I think she is officially a toddler!)

I think Hailey's favorite part of the party was definitely eating her cake. She wasn't shy at all, and by the time we took the cake away she looked like a little Elmo!

Hailey has been very busy the past few days playing with all her new toys and reading all her new books. We spent a lot of special family time at home today celebrating, and went out for a nice dinner to celebrate Hailey and Grandma Cindy's birthdays. And of course she enjoyed a cupcake!

Can't believe the first year is over, but I'm so excited for what the next year will bring and am so excited to see Hailey turn into a little girl.

Happy birthday love muffin!

First steps and 11 months old!!

First let me apologize for the lack of blogging, I started work again a few weeks ago and juggling being a working mom is taking some getting used to and some things just get neglected (like blogging and cleaning the house!)

But more importantly, Hailey took her FIRST STEPS on Aug. 31, 2010. I can't tell you how exciting it was to see my baby girl toddle four steps and launch herself into my arms! She has been taking steps here and there ever since (up to about 10 steps today!) and at this rate we really think she will be a good walker by the time her birthday rolls around. You can tell she's getting more brave and confident because while holding onto something she will suddenly let go and just stand there looking at me so proud of herself for standing all on her own.

Watching my baby (yes I still call her my baby though clearly she is becoming much more toddler every day) learn how to walk is one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. All of her development in the last few weeks is just incredible, it's amazing how quickly she went from learning to pull herself up, to now crawling on her knees, then pushing her stroller everywhere, and now walking all by herself.

Hailey is also quite the chatterbox these days, she "talks" and screeches all day long usually, and sometimes it sounds like she is saying actual words, such as doggy, out, daddy, and the other day grammie taught her to say hat (though she hasn't said it for mommy yet, but grandpa says he heard it too). Unfortunately she isn't saying mama yet, but I know it will come, and I love seeing Anthony get so excited when she says dada or daddy right to him. I'm pretty sure she does know what the words mean. She also definitely knows doggy, cookie monster, ball, and dolly - if you ask her to find them for you she immediately looks at the right thing, little smarty pants!

She also suddenly has a mouth full of teeth! She only had four teeth for the longest time, but now I think she probably has about 10 that have poked through, including molars! I even made her first dentist appointment for around her first birthday, will be interesting to see how a toddler dentist appointment goes!

Hailey sleeps so great, and so far has adjusted really well to mommy going back to work and her going to daycare. It helps that she has new friends at daycare that she absolutely adores (and vice versa) and they keep her super busy and she comes home pretty exhausted.

She is eating almost all people food these days and is such a good eater, I don't think she's tried anything she hasn't liked! She even ate salmon tonight and scarfed it down! She loves her veggies and fruit and enjoys trying all kinds of new foods. Next month we are looking forward to making the switch to milk instead of formula, and I'm excited to see how she likes it.

We just sent out invitations for Hailey's birthday party, I am so excited and can't wait to see her toddle around and dig into her cake! We are doing a Sesame Street/Elmo theme and the party is going to be at a nice park nearby, hopefully the weather will be nice.

Hopefully it won't be so long before my next blog, but in the meantime here are some of the latest pictures of my little cutie (who totally is looking like a toddler and not a baby anymore!):

Back to work for mommy

I had originally planned to go back to work when Hailey was 3 months old at the end of my maternity leave, but due to a terrible economy the company I worked for did major layoffs and though it wasn't fun to lose my job it did mean I was able to stay home with Hailey until she was 10 months old.

But after spending countless hours looking for a new job and going to many interviews (remember, the economy is terrible right now and tons of people are out of work), I have finally been offered a job and will start in a few days.

I'm full of mixed emotions. I have loved staying at home with Hailey and feel so lucky to have gotten so much time with her. But I also miss using my brain and being creative and being busy. Ideally I would have liked to find a part time job so I could get the best of both worlds, but in order to make decent money I've accepted a full time position. The worst part is that it's a long commute, so it makes me pretty sad that I'll be away from Hailey so much.

The hardest part I think is going from one extreme to the other. I've been with Hailey 24/7 almost her whole life, and now I'll only get to see her a couple hours at most a day during the week. And I'll have to leave so early in the morning that I won't even get to see her before she wakes up, I'm going to miss my sweet little morning Hailey so much.

Well it's probably pretty obvious that I'm not exactly thrilled about going back to work, so I'm trying not to dwell on it too much. It's going to be very hard for me to leave her, but I'm sure it will be a nice change for Hailey to get out of the house more and interact with other babies while being cared for by others.

It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to take it one day at a time and hopefully we get into a schedule that works well for everyone.

10 months old!

Ack, it's only 2 months until Hailey's first birthday!! Where in the world has this year gone?! I can't believe I have a 10 month old, she's so much closer to being a toddler than she is a baby, she's turning into a little girl right before my very eyes.

Hailey has 4 teeth now (got them all within 2 weeks!), both middle on top and bottom, she looks so different with teeth!

She is still army crawling all over, and is very fast now. She's also pulling up a lot, getting up on her knees a lot and likes to climb all over everything, her current favorite being crawling around the bottom shelf of the coffee table! She also tries to stand and walk whenever possible. She still needs our help to walk around, but she's getting more and more brave and lets go everyone once in a while or only holds on with one hand. It's probably only a matter of time before she just decides to take off.

Hailey used to be so content to just sit and play for a while, but she recently just perfected the skill of getting down from a sitting position to crawling, meaning she does not ever sit still anymore! And as I mentioned she is very fast at crawling.

Case in point, the other day I left her in her room for a few minutes to do something in our room. When I returned I found that she had crawled all the way to the laundry room and had spilled the dogs' water all over the floor and herself, and their food all over the floor AND managed to sneak her first bite of dog food!

She is becoming quite the little explorer and wants to get into everything she's not supposed to - I'm starting to have my hands full with her!

But she's more fun than ever and really getting a personality. She "talks" and babbles so much, and I swear sometimes she tries to say "doggy."

Here's a picture of Hailey with her very first ponytail!

Since it's only 2 months away I've begun planning Hailey's first birthday party. We're planning to have it at a park and hopefully the weather will be nice! Since Hailey loves Elmo so much I'm planning a Sesame Street theme and will probably have a cute Elmo cake for her. I can't wait to see her eat cake!

Happy 10 months baby girl!

9 month stats

At her 9 month appointment Hailey weighed in at 20 pounds even (75%) and is 27 1/4 inches long (40%) so for now she is kind of short and stout like her mama! Ha, nothing to worry about though as the doctor said babies fluctuate so much and all that will likely change with her activity levels increasing.

The doctor was also able to feel both her top two middle teeth, so it looks like Hailey got 4 teeth in less than 2 weeks! And lucky for me she really wasn't even too fussy about it, thank goodness.

All in all Hailey is happy and healthy and developing right on track. The doctor said we can start to introduce more table foods and should be thinking about being off the bottle by around 1 year old.

As long as she stays healthy we won't be going back to the doctor until after her 1st birthday, which is less than 3 months away - how is that even possible?!!

9 months old!

Hailey is 9 months old today! It's hard to believe that she's been here as long as I was pregnant, time is going by way too fast.

But I'm really enjoying this stage. She is constantly learning and wanting to try new things. Her favorite thing to do right now is to stand and/or walk while holding onto my hands. She would probably stand all day if I would let her! We got her a little mini stroller with a doll in it that she can pull herself up with and then push around slowly and try to walk. Every day she gets a little more confident and tries to do new things like letting go with one hand or even both a couple times.

And now she is up to 3 teeth! All three came popped out in about the span of a week and a half. She's got the two bottom middle teeth and one top middle tooth. Luckily she hasn't been too terribly miserable with the teething.

Hailey's hair is getting a lot longer and thicker and I recently started mussing it up with water a little bit for a new 'do! Check it out:


I just can't wait til her hair is long and thick enough for me to put it in a ponytail!

We're going in for a 9 month check-up with the pediatrician tomorrow so I will be sure to update soon with all her growth stats!

First tooth!

So we were sitting playing at storytime at the library today when Hailey grabbed my finger, jabbed it in her mouth and bit down, and what did I feel?! A tooth! I was so surprised! I knew we had to be getting close, but I was so surprised to feel something new in her mouth all of a sudden.

I think her gums are very sore because she's been a little cranky and she really won't let me poke around in her mouth very much, but when we got home I did some investigating and not only can I feel it but I can see the tiny white tooth!

Ahh, this means my baby girl is growing up! Will try to catch a picture of the new tooth at some point to post!