Sharing

Jillian and Leila had a fun playdate earlier this week and I can't resist putting these photos up.  Although Leila is walking, she still wanted to help Jillian practice with her walker. 

These pictures are not staged; they did this quite a few times.  SO CUTE!

El Paso

First, lets get a few things out of the way.  Is this a Michelin baby or what?  LOVE me some of her rolls.  Matt, my brother in law, actually coined that phrase for Jillian and I love it.

We went to El Paso this past weekend and had so much fun!  It was like a mini-vacation.  We had so many people wanting to help and love on Jillian it was awesome!  We got to lay by the pool every day and Jeff and I actually got a 1 hour foot massage at a spa - heaven!  As you can see above Jillian had fun in the pool too.  Here are more pictures of the little one showing off her rolls...

We call this her modeling pose.  she does it all the time.

The mermaid pose with Nana

Aunt Lauren was in town too

She loves these glasses!  She likes them on when she's outside and then when we head inside she takes them off and puts them on her head.  I of course reposition so it stays, but she LOVES those glasses on her head.  Guess she sees me doing that a lot.

Another fav for Jillian is kissing.  She gives kisses to anyone and anything, and right on the mouth.  We call it her 'seal of approval' for when she likes something.

Here she is kissing the dog statue (she did this MANY times each day) and kissing her enormous caterpillar stuffed animal.

Papa has a big showcase of his Africa kills, and Jillian LOVED going in there, pointing, petting them, and even kissing them.  Not sure Paul knew Jillian was kissing the leopard, but she was!

This girl is SO CLOSE to walking.  I feel like everyone has a back ache after the trip because we all took our turns holding her hands and walking her around the house.

Our last night there Nana & Papa had a fun party and all the cousins came over.  Jillian and her second cousin Ashlyn were fast friends.  How cute is Ashlyn???  She's almost 3 and had us all laughing so hard with what she was saying.  

That wraps up our fun trip to Nana & Papa's house!  I sadly didn't get any more pictures of Jillian with her Nana, Papa or Gigi!  Shame on me!

July 4th

So I'm finally getting around to my 4th of July post.  We didn't do anything amazing, but it was still fun.
Saturday morning we finally took Jeff to the zoo with us.  Jillian and I go quite a bit, so it was time for Jeff to join in on the fun.  It's literally 5 minutes from our house so we got there when it opened at 9.  There was NO ONE there, I felt like we had the zoo to ourselves!  I hate crowds, so this made me happy.

I must say, I'm not a fan of zoos, but I'm impressed with the Dallas zoo. Well, as impressed as you can be with a zoo.  They recently opened a new Africa area, so we checked out.   Of course I feel terrible for the animals trapped in their habitats, but it's definitely an improvement.  Here's Jill checking out all the giraffes.

They have a neat little attraction where you can feed the giraffes.  For a whopping $5 you can get 3 romaine lettuce leaves and feed them.   What a steal, right?   Since there were no lines we opted to do it.  The giraffes didn't cooperate and with a 1 year old we didn't have a lot of patience, so we left.

They also have a new lions area.  This is not where the lions are kept; it's the bypass area to their open area.  This lioness I think enjoyed checking out the people and stalking all of us.  There's just a chain link fence b/w you and the lion.  Little scary.  Especially when you make eye contact.

We also took advantage of the long weekend and spent one night with my parents so we could get out and go on a date.  The next day we did a little swimming.

That was our weekend.  Hope yours was wonderful too!  

Food

As I've mentioned before, this girl loves food and loves to eat.  However, she hasn't developed a love for Goldfish yet.  So, when she has a food she's not interested in or when she gets full, she has a back-up plan - the dog.  I think this video is hilarious of her feeding Austin the Goldfish she doesn't want.



In other food news, Jillian loves watermelon.

She also got her first taste of ice cream and chocolate.  I was eating a chocolate ice cream cone and of course Jillian wanted to taste it.  And man was she hooked!

She was 'pleading' for more.  I quickly ate the cone, and after I put the last bite in my mouth she stared at my mouth very curiously.  She kept pulling my mouth open and looking inside like 'where did it go?'

12 Months

Jillian's development has exploded this last past month.  We feel like she has changed and grown so much since turning one.  She knows what she wants (which is pretty much everything), has developed a precious sense of humor, loves to play and giggle, and seems just so much more aware of everything.  She is still very cautious in new settings and likes to observe for 5-7 minutes before she'll start playing and crawling around.

At her One Year check-up here are Jillian's stats:

Weight:  21 pds 15 oz   -  50%

Height:  301/4"  -  80%

~Loves giving kisses to us, her toys, her stuffed animals, and even Austin.  So sweet for her to crawl over, climb up and lay one on us, without us asking for one.

~ Knows who mom, dad, Austin, Bama and Unchie are.  When we ask where's daddy she's smiles and points right at Jeff.  She knows Austin the best, sad to say.... he's in her face all day so that's probably why!

~ No teeth... where are they??  I think I see 2 teeth possibly coming in on the bottom, not positive though.  We'll just keep waiting...

~  Calls Austin 'Auh!'  She seems him, points, starts getting excited, and calls out Auh - Auh over and over again.  So sweet.

~  Took her FIRST STEP on July 2nd.  I know this is past her 12 month mark, but since I'm late writing it I'm sticking it in here.  I could see her little mind working when she wanted to get over to me, but her arm couldnt reach my chair.  She thought about it, let go of the window sill, took a big step towards me, and then grabbed the chair... she was SO proud!

~ Dances to any and all kinds of music.  She isn't picky, this girl just loves to dance.  She knows how to turn on her musical toys and animals and loves to turn 3 of them on all at one time and then dance.

~Climbs.  This is scary, but she's starting it.

~ Not sure this is a note-worthy milestone, but she's starting to throw tantrums.  I know it will just get worse, so we are practicing now on how to handle them and have patience.

~ Almost completely off bottles.  We are down to one bottle at night, and I'm about to switch to a sippy cup.  Jillian could care less, so we'll do it soon.  Makes me sad my little baby - ok, Toddler - is almost off bottles!!  But my Pediatrician keeps telling me drop them now or it will just get harder.  Ok, we will.... tear.

~ Still in size 3 diapers, wearing 12 or 12-18 month clothing.

~ Slowly liking whole milk.  We're diluting it and mixing with formula - we're getting there.

~  Favorite foods are still strawberries, bananas, cheese and cheerios.  Don't get me wrong, she eats almost anything I put in front of her, but these are her favs!  I finally introduced chicken this week, and she was very unimpressed.   My last food note - she loves lemonade!  She tasted mine from Chick-fil-a and I thought she was going to try and drink it all.  I gave her some diluted and she loved it.  We also let her play with a lemon wedge thinking we'd get some hilarious puckered faces - nope!  She sucked on it and loved it.

We love you Jillian!  This will be my last monthly post with updates/milestones.  I'll just do a post when we hit big ones - like walking!

Party Pics, Part 2

These are the pictures my incredibly talented sister-in-law Debra took.  Just when I think my photos are good - I get hers and they blow mine out of the water!

More Pictures during the Party:

The Smash Cake:

The After-Party: