Party Time!

More of Porter's 1st Birthday. It's a huge picture dump, and they pretty much speak for themselves:

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

 

I am pretty dang proud of this cake! I have always bought Brooke's cakes, but I felt up to the task of making a very hungry caterpillar cake.

 Pinch is always trying to give the grandkids chocolate and I always scold him when he tries to give some to Porter. Now that he's one, it's chocolate time! Thanks, Pinch!

 Cake Smash time!

 Shopping for Porter's birthday included me going down in the storage room and finding some of Brooke's old toys. As you can see, Brooke was right in the action wanting to play with them again.

Mom and the birthday boy

Thanks, Aunt Nicole for the new quilt! We love it!

 Singing Happy Birthday

Cake Smash

It's Fun to be One!

Our little groundhog turned one on February 2! Wow, how this year has flown by. 

Milestones:

• Weight: 19.9
• Height: 30.8(90th percentile)
• 
  Dr commented on Porter's big hands
  Is getting good at climbing the stairs, now we are just working on how to come down. Usually he just sits at the top and cries.. 
• no more formula! I stopped nursing at 9 months and have been looking forward to not buying formula for the last three months. Next step: get rid of bottles and to sippy cups only. 
• eating and sleeping habits are pretty much the same as 11 months
  Is getting his top two incisors. He'll be a little vampire for a while
  
• still not walking or crawling on all 4s--the army crawl suits him just fine.
• Will pull himself up to kneeling or standing position, but won't cruise on furniture yet.
• claps and sometimes waves
• says "uh-oh" (his first word), "ma" and "da" Brooke is "Ba"
• I finally got smart and decided to give Porter and Brooke a bath together. They love it. Not sure how long I can keep bathing them together, though. I guess maybe when Brooke starts pointing and asking questions.

I used my camera to take some one year old pictures and am disappointed with how they turned out. This is one of the down sides of using a film SLR camera: you can't see how your shots are turning out. I don't know if the lighting was bad, or if it was a bad roll of film, but I have never had my pictures turn out so bad. I even took them pics over a 3 day period. Luckily with some Photoshop help, I got them to look somewhat decent, but still not what I was hoping for. Oh well.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar fits our little guy perfectly! He loves to eat! 

Oh how we love Porter and are so glad he is part of our family.  Can't wait to see him grow and develop more this coming year.

Little Mister 11 months

Our little mister is 11 months, can you believe it? This year has gone by insanely fast! Porter definitely has a personality of his own and we love watching him show it. Some things about Porter:

sleeps on his stomach even though we lay him down on his back--and on the opposite side of the crib, I might add. He also LOVES his soft blankets. As we lay him down and put the blankets on top of him he eagerly reaches up for them.

is experimenting with the kneeling and standing thing. Right now the stairs and standing up in his crib are his latest feats.

As soon as I go to change his diaper, he immediately flips over on his tummy and crawls over the edge of the changing table...

and does this:

Some more pics of our big boy:

You can see in this pic, he's gotten his two bottom teeth. Both came in December and I think he is getting some more

• morning nap is touch and go. You never know what you'll get. Sometimes it's 30 min, something he won't nap, sometimes it's 2 hours. You just take what you can get.
• will nap for a good 2-3 hours in the afternoon
• goes to bed early and usually sleeps until 6am or later--but he gets off his schedule so easily! Even one night off his schedule messes him up for weeks it seems like.
• loves to eat table food and prefers it over baby food
• catches on really quickly to games we play like peek a boo or tickling. If I am tickling his neck and then stop, he'll bend his face towards mine as if saying "come on, do it again!"
• loves to play with Brooke, especially when she is on one side of a closed door and sticks her fingers under the crack. He thinks this is hilarious and gets so excited
• speaking of doors, an open door is his favorite toy. He will crawl right over and push it closed. Also loves drawers for the same reason.

And now onto Miss B. She decided that she wanted to be like a princess and cut her own hair. I was furious. I am not particularly a fan of bangs and now Brooke has some. You can kind of see in the pic below ho uneven the sides are. She cut a huge chunk out of the left side.

Luckily curled and a bow pinning it back, you can't really tell

Brooke has started to ask if she can babysit Porter. This means I either put them together in her room or down in the TV room in the basement and they play together. It's actually quite nice for me!

Belated New Years Celebration

It's an M. family tradition to get together with Blake's family over New Year's Eve. This year, Blake's niece was also baptized on January 5, so we decided to combine the two events and have a major family get together. Our family drove to Logan Friday night and stayed with Blake's brother and his family. Saturday morning was the baptism, followed by lunch at Steph's house and sledding in her awesome back yard. This was Brooke's first time sledding and she loved it!

Brooke has the BIGGEST smile on her face!

Getting pulled up the hill by dad

Get ready!

Get set!

Going...

Gone!

 Blake and I even joined in the fun!

Saturday night was our traditional family party at Kent's house. Lots of yummy food, the kids (and Blake and Kurt) had a giant nerf gun war in the basement while the other adults had a karaoke marathon. 

It's well known in the family how much Blake loves Oreos  Some of the nieces made Blake a special Oreo  It's all of the filling from all the other cookies in the package in one giant cookie!

 Brooke and "Yabba" are best little buddies. They are only a few apart in age. One time I walked by and these two were deep in conversation. Brooke looked up at me and said, "Mom, we're talking" as if that were my cue to keep moving and just let them be.

Thanks again for another great party. See you in the summer for the next reunion!