Animal Noises

Evaleigh is getting really good at making animal noises! She can do a dog, cat, cow, monkey, lion, and today she started making a bird sound. She also loves to do "so big!" that she learned from her nana.

It's a little hard to hear the dog (ruff ruff) and the lion (rowr). Sometimes she will do a sheep sound.

Walking!!

FINALLY she is walking!! We went to Joel's parents' house last night and I think she liked the soft carpet, and she took several steps on her own! But usually when we tried to get to walk again she would just sit down. Then tonight we were helping her walk and she did! She took lots of steps! This video is after she took several steps. After this video she took several more steps. She had been walking behind her push-carts for a long time and walking while holding our hand, and now she is finally walking by herself! (She is 16 1/2 months old!). She is very cautious and only does stuff when she is confident.



She is saying a lot of words too. She imitates a dog, cat, lion, elephant, and monkey. She says dada, daddy, mama, kitty, yummy, baby (beebee), and sings her ABCs, even though it sounds like E, C. She can sometimes feed herself with her spoon. She climbs on the futon and climbs down backwards. And she still loves to read books! She will sit and read for a long time. She is growing up so fast!

Snow!

We got about 6-7 inches of snow last night! I am home from school and may be most of the week. It's not supposed to get much above freezing until Thursday.
Evaleigh is 16 months old now, and still not walking! She walks fine when she golds our finger, but when we let go, she stand a little, then plops down and crawls.
I have a lot of videos and pictures that I should post...

Today I hope to sew some cloth napkins. We had tons of paper napkins and I wanted to have some cloth ones made by the time we ran out. We are on our last bit of paper napkins!
I also plan on baking a cranberry nut loaf, and some cranberry/pear/applesauce for Evaleigh to freeze.

Maybe if we are out of school most of the week I can start some of the many other projects I have!

Here's a real short video of her on her rocking horse that she got for Christmas. She can do it by herself, with help getting on.

Walking with her Walker

I haven't been online for a long time. Our computer had a bunch of viruses. We still don't have it back.. the lady who is working on it found a lot more problems.. so we bought a little notebook for Christmas.
Here is a video of Evaleigh using her walker. She is already much better at it than in this video. She can turn corners and maneuver it around objects on the floor.
She will sometimes stand by herself but she is still too cautious to take a step without us helping her or using her walkers.

Almost Walking!

I helped her use her walker toy yesterday and Joel did today. Today he got brave enough to let go and let her walk by herself and she did great! Sometimes it goes too fast and she plops down and she can't turn corners yet, but she's almost walking by herself!

Evaleigh Reading

Evaleigh loves to read! She will sit and read for a long time. Here she is reading in her highchair while waiting for her food.



She has 4 teeth now! On Monday I saw one top tooth. Then a couple days later I saw the other top tooth. They grow more each day!

Evaleigh's Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party

Evaleigh turned one on September 4, and her party was on September 5. I wrote this post a while ago but it keep getting an error. Finally today I copied the whole thing into a word document and copied and pasted and it worked!

For Evaleigh's first birthday we had a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed party!
We followed the book for the menu and decorated the room based on the book.
This was her invitation. I also ordered cupcake toppers from the same person.
Joel's mom helped me to decide on The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a theme and my friend Mary helped with most of the party ideas. I also looked here for inspiration (number 81 is The Very Hungry Caterpillar theme).

It was a lot of work and we didn't get everything done, but it still turned out great! I read the book when everyone was there because most of the food had to do with the book.

This was our menu (with quotes from the book):

In the light of the moon a

little egg lay on a leaf.

We had hard-cooked eggs on lettuce (didn't have time to make deviled eggs).

On Monday through Friday, he ate through one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, and five oranges.But he was still hungry.

(We paraphrased these next few pages into one sentence since it was all one dish).
We had a fruit salad with apples, pears, plums, strawberries, and oranges for the part of the book where he ate through all the fruit.

The next part of the book says,

On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese,one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake,

and one slice of watermelon.

We had brownies for the chocolate cake, the ice cream was in the punch, we had a dish of pickles, there were cheese and salami rolls (we used provolone and american), the lollipops were on the tables, cherry tarts, tofurky (italian sausage flavor) with mozzarella balls and mushrooms, cupcakes were with the cake, and a plate of watermelon.

The next day was Sunday again.

The caterpillar ate through one nice

green leaf, and after that

he felt much better.

We had a big green salad with toppings (cranberries, croutons, walnuts, almonds) and dressings.

We also added mini burgers (we left the bean burgers on home by accident!), hummus with carrots, bell peppers, and chips, and salsa with chips.

The bulletin board pieces kept falling off the wall!

For her cake I used a recipe here and I bought the book! (I think it's my favorite baby and toddler cook book.) I thought the cake was pretty good! The icing was cream cheese, organic vanilla yogurt, and some natural raspberry jelly. I think Evaleigh liked the raspberries the best.

The cupcakes were used from a recipe called

Baby Turns 1 cake from a really awesome website! It uses brown sugar so it's a little sweeter.

We used a digital frame to show pictures from her first year.








This is where I got all the decorations:
-I already mentioned that I got the invitations and cupcake toppers from design dream. I also found really cute invitations on kodak but they were more expensive and took too long to get to me and I'd still have to mail them out. Maybe a good idea if I had more time and money.

-I bought a 2-inch scalloped cutter and a 1 1/2 inch circle cutter on amazon.

-I found great party favors and ideas at the Eric Carle Museum website, but shipping was so expensive! I ended up getting ideas and then buying everything somewhere else.

-I got an Eric Carle party kit on amazon. I got mine for really cheap by looking at the other sellers.

-I got the border and bulletin board set from Carson Dellosa. I also got some birthday stickers here.

- I bought bubbles at Walmart and glued the cupcake toppers on to match the theme. I also bought twisty straws.

-I reused baby food jars by hot gluing a ribbon around them and gluing on a circle from the cupcake toppers. Inside I put jellybeans and lollipops. I bought washable markers, crayons (big and regular), and colored pencils to put in cups on the tables.

-I printed a coloring page for people to color from the Eric Carle website. I found other activities by searching online but I didn't use them. This and this looked great but I didn't use them for the party.

-I bought fabric from Fat Quarter Shop. The link is for all Eric Carle fabrics.

-We got balloons at a local party shop. We had some made into a caterpillar and others made into butterflies.

She loved opening presents!