Ready or Not...

Oh my.  Not sure if I'm ready for this or not :)

11 months!?!

Oh wow.  How is my little baby 11 months old??  11 is almost 12. And 12 means that she's 1.  Umm, when did that happen?  I need to get busy planning a birthday party!

We are quite a busy little lady at 11 months.  We're still not quite walking, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes pretty soon.  In the meantime, she's become extremely quick at crawling and she can pretty much get into any and everything.  The stairs prove no obstacle and she recently figured out that she can open all of her dresser drawers to pull things out. 

She can say 'buh buh' and wave when we say bye-bye.  We're still working on using it at the proper time, instead of, oh for example, during the middle of dinner, when we'll need to take a break from eating to say 'buh buh' a few times. 

Sydney has 3 teeth (with the 4th to make an appearance fairly soon, I think).
She is a great eater!  She has yet to meet a food she doesn't like.  (Well, green beans were iffy there for a while, but after much deliberation, she's decided that they are okay.) No more baby food in this house!  Sydney just eats table food (just cut up real small) and loves it.  We're still perfecting the art of getting the food into our mouth without dropping it or smearing it everywhere, but she's actually doing pretty well at keeping herself clean during a meal!
And she's still a fabulous sleeper:  she still takes 2 (sometimes 3) naps a day.  No complaints here!

"What do you mean I can't pull on the flowers?"

"If I smile really pretty, THEN can I pull the flowers?"

Love her.

 So pensive.

 

And here I thought we'd make it another couple of years before she thought I was lame:

"Seriously mom. You are so not cool."

Yup - she's a keeper :)

Sydney's Baptism

We had Sydney baptized this weekend.  And she did AWESOME during the service.  

Dan and I were fairly convinced that she was going to cause a scene (which she kind-of did, but in a 'I'm so cute, you just have to laugh' sort of way).  

I should start with a bit of background, our Princess hit her separation anxiety phase early.  Super early.  As in, we're on the tail end of it now (please, please let us be on the tail end of it). We're still working on her being okay (aka not screaming her head off) when someone else holds her.

We also have a very busy baby. She doesn't like to sit still, be held in one position, or not be allowed to crawl around and explore on her own.

So of course a baptism, where she was going to have to be in the church service for a little while followed by someone else holding her, had the potential for quite the melt down.

We made it to church on Sunday morning and Sydney was having a good time laughing and talking to everyone around her. The church service started with a few songs.  Sydney was singing along, but it's a contemporary service, so the music is 'lively', so it wasn't as if she was interrupting hymns and the organ.  

Then it was time for the prayer. We started off with a time of silent prayer.  During which Sydney was quiet. But then the 'out loud'/ by the preacher prayer started and Sydney had things to say. So she started talking. Loudly. Dan and I tried shushing her but I'm pretty sure she was proud of herself and was enjoying the super-fun game that we were playing. She kept on rolling. At this point I think I whispered a "WHO in the world decided that the prayer should go BEFORE the baptism?" to Dan. I could see the shoulders of people near us bouncing up and down as they tried not to laugh out loud.  At least they kept their heads bowed and pretended to be all solemn and reverent as they listened to Sydney instead of the prayer.

After the prayer, it was time for the baptism and Sydney didn't scream while Pastor Jim held her.  There may have been some splashing of the water in the baptismal font by the pastors to settle her down before they really got started, but it worked.  No crying at all. Woohoo!  I'm pretty sure Dan and I both sighed a HUGE sigh of relief when she didn't break down.  

Little Miss did take a trip to the nursery for the rest of the service.

 

After the service, we had a nice brunch at our house for the family that we had in town.  And brunch was followed by a nap.  By Sydney, Dan and myself.  What can I say - it was a big day, we were worn out : )

Dan and I work with the youth on Sunday nights, so that night as we were at Youth Group, one of the other counselors told us that he was 'so glad he didn't miss that' referring to Sydney's baptism and her desire to make sure all attention was on her.  Another one told us that Sydney has the gift of gab. LOL. Dan and I may have already known that, but now it appears most of the church does. :)

Happy Spring!

Apparently I went into hibernation during winter and didn't post.  Oops! 

Oh well, spring is officially here and with that comes a promise for more frequent posts!

A baby in a field of tulips.  Doesn't get any better than that!