HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY!

Wow, that year sure went by fast! Morgan is officially 1 year old! She is such a sweet, loving, smart, and funny little peanut! For her first birthday party, we planned a backyard Sesame Street bash. We had cold meat sandwiches, potato salad, fruit, chips, and beans.

  We also had ice cream, cupcakes, and homemade cake. Turns out cake making is not my forte. This first picture is what I felt I was capable of making...oh dear lord was I ever wrong!

This picture was my first test run to work on layering. I still laugh every time I think about this...did I really think I could pull this off. Brad's comment at first sight was "That looks great honey?" And yes he really did ask me that as a question mixed with laughter.

Here is what I ended up with after many hours of work and revamping what I really had in my bag of skills.

I do have to say I was pleased with how the cupcakes turned out, so may try those again, but there will never be cake making in my future. And then to top it off, I saw a super cute polka-dot sesame street cake at Sam's for $17.99. Lesson learned!

Friends and family came to help celebrate, which made the day even more special. Miss Morgan was spoiled with many gifts and is loving every one of them! She seemed to know exactly what she was doing as she tore open each gift. She ate her birthday cupcake, but was very dainty in taking a little nibble here and there. We thought she would dig right in, but that wasn't the case. The party was a wonderful time and we are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends that shared in our little girl's special day!

At 1 year old, Morgan:
- loves to read books
- has started to dance by bending her knees to bounce up and down
- walks
- rides her Pewi bike
- climbs on and off her rocking horse
- eats almost anything
- drinks whole milk from her sippy cup

- attempts to use spoons to eat, but resorts to her fingers after failed attempts to get it on the spoon

- signs "more" & "all done"

- jabbers a lot!

- does the gesture of "I don't know" with her hands and a shoulder shrug

- does the hand motions to "Itsy Bitsy Spider"

- draws with sidewalk chalk

- loves to swing

Our 1 Year Old!

And she's off...

11 Months and Miss Morgan is walking...wobbly, but none the less walking! August 14th is the official day that Princess Morgan took her first steps! She was sooo excited to be on the go that she would attempt a step, get about one or two in, fall, and then start to giggle and clap for herself! So fun to watch the videos we took of her.




August 6th - this is the date that Morgan stood up all by herself from the sitting position. We were over at The Helgerson's house for dinner and were sitting out on the screened porch while the kids played and the adults chatted. She was playing on the ground one minute and just stood up out of no where!









We met some friends at the I-Cubs game on August 9th. This was Morgan's very first baseball game and was in the skybox seats! We made it through half of the game, but bedtime got in the way, so we changed into PJs before heading home about half way through the game.

 Gramma came down to watch spend time with us and we all went out to have our first meal at PF Changs. Morgan did a great job and loved the sweet and sour chicken. Thanks for coming to visit Gramma!

Morgan is able to sign the words "more" and "all done". At times she gets confused and will sign at the wrong times, but for the most part seems to grasp the idea of communicating what she needs. A new party trick she picked up from her DaDda is taking a drink of water and then following it up with "aaahhh" after she takes the cup away from her mouth:. )

She loves to drive the trains and cars around and makes the "vroom" sounds as she does it.

In August, we made a trip up to Uncle Joe and Aunt Denise's cabin with the Karnick Family! It was a wonderful weekend filled with beautiful weather, great memories, and fabulous company! Morgan took her first boat ride, played in the water, and couldn't get enough of the sand. She even did a pretty good job traveling the 4 1/2 hours.

It is so fun to watch her grow and learn! More to come next month...stay tuned for the big 1st birthday details!

10 Months & Almost Walking...

At 10 months:
June 30th Morgan brought home her very first art project...despite what the picture shows, she really wasn't the canvas ;) She might just be the next Picasso.

Morgan is starting to pull herself up on everything! We borrowed this activity table from daycare and little miss is so proud of herself and the independence she is gaining!

Speaking of independence...Morgan has celebrated another holiday for the first time...the 4th of July! She was
dressed very patriotic for our BBQ celebration and also was able to partake in seeing sparklers for the first time. Bad news was that bedtime is 7:30pm and since it was still dark out we had to improvise and do the sparklers in the light...probably not quite the same effect, but it worked.



















Nana, Papa, Hailey, and Addi spent the weekend with us! We stated our Saturday with a pancake breakfast followed by the Ankeny Summerfest Parade! We had a wonderful time and collected tons of candy, which the girls and I loved :) Our neighbors Josh and Jen joined us! We came home for some much needed naps after the parade and then all the girls went back for rides at the carnival while the boys stayed behind to make us dinner...we know they really volunteered to stay behind so they could have some peace and quiet. ;) I went on the scrambler with Hailey...whew...my stomach certainly isn't as solid as it once was and was very thankful Hailey wanted to go on the Tilt-a-whirl alone ;)

The Langrehr family came to visit a couple weeks ago and despite the sweltering heat, we had a wonderful time! We made a trip to the Blank Park Zoo and played in the sprinkler out back. Morgan and Meg are about 6 months apart and they seemed to really enjoy one another...they are going to be BFFs.

 Jenny sent me this picture from an afternoon at daycare and I just loved the expression on Morgan's face as she experienced a rocking horse ride for the first time. Since this picture, I felt it was a must to find one for our house! We have two borrowed horses and another just arrived in the mail from "Auntie" Bethy as an early birthday gift and she adores all three!

The little wood one is from Ronda (a gal I work with)...her 21 year old daughter used to ride it. His name is Sliver. The tall wood one was given to Trevor for his 1st birthday and is on loan until Meg gets big enough to ride it. The new one is blue and is all her own and she seems to cause the least damage on this one being that it is plastic.



 10 months also marks Morgan's first translatable word...she says "Hi" and waves as she does it. Her first official word probably was "DaDa", but we aren't so convinced that she knew the correlation between her DaDa and just making sounds. We are pretty sure she said ball last month too, but it was only once. So I am making the executive decision and saying "Hi" is the first word followed by "baby" as her second word. She loves to point to her baby pictures above her changing table and say "baby". She also says a word that closely resembles bottle as she points at it.

7/15/2011...this is a big day...Morgan took some steps while holding onto her fire truck and then did it again a few days later with a dump truck! She can't walk yet on her own, but really does well as long as she holds on to things...it won't be long!

Miss Morgan was sick for the first time this past week...she started running a fever on Tuesday 7/19 and had one on and off until Saturday morning. The fever ranged from 99-102. You could just tell she felt icky and really didn't want to play much. She wanted to be cuddled constantly, which was so sweet, but we felt so bad for her that she wasn't feeling well. 10 months of no sickness is pretty darn good! We are pretty sure it is because she has been cutting teeth...her two top front teeth have been working their way in. She also has come down with some sort of a rash as of Friday...looks like a heat rash due to the humidity and heat index of 100-115 degrees this past week. Poor thing. However, she is on the mend now :)

Floyd...you will be hearing a lot about this pink stuffed animal puppy. He is Morgan's new cuddle companion and she likes to snuggle him whenever she gets the chance...thanks Jalayne...he was a great find! Brad named him. :)

Turns out our child had no interest in using any sort of a pacifier the first 9 months of her life, but we did have plenty of them lying around the house and she has now taken a liking to what we refer to as her "binkie". If it was up to her she would have it in her mouth 24/7, however, we have be trying to limit it to sleeping time (some days are better than others).

A favorite thing to do for play is to roll around on pillows. Morgan will walk over to the couches and pull them all onto the floor and then proceed to roll across them as she giggles. Amazing all the money you spend on toys only to find that they every day household things or paper is what she tends to play with. She also loves a toy that shoots plastic balls out of the top after you hit a button...Morgan knows exactly what to do and caught on really quick!

Another new step little miss has taken is she has been using a sippy cup! She is doing a great job with it and has given up bottles at daycare, but will still drink out of the bottle here at home. She also loves to drink out of DaDa's cup, but assistance is certainly needed or all of the water goes down the front of her shirt and onto the floor.

Morgan has been trying almost everything that Brad and I eat and seems to already have some favorites such as hotdogs, lasagna, mac and cheese, and bananas! She tried the mac and cheese for the first time at daycare by stealing it off another kids plate and she can't shovel the hotdogs in her mouth fast enough!




She has also been practicing throwing the ball for Tehya...pretty sure she I will have to give up my hopes of  her being a south paw, but she does has quite the cannon! Morgan also really enjoys bubbles and books! You can find her quite often crawling to her bedroom to find both.

This week ahead brings many more fun times...Gramma and Pappa are in town this coming week to spend QT with Morgan! We can't wait!

Until then!