As the sun sets on 2010...

Okay, so that is a pretty cliche title. 

But literally, the sun is setting here on the last night of 2010. :)

This past year has been one of the best years of my life.  It makes me sort of sad to see it go.

This year I've had the ultimate blessing of watching and nurturing my sweet tiny newborn into an adventurous toddler.  It's been a year of 'firsts' for us.  First walk outside in the stroller.  First crawl.  First solid food. First tooth.  First steps.  And it's sad to know that year is over.

At the same time, it's beyond exciting to know that so much fun and more 'firsts' await us in 2011!

Maybe a 'first snowcone' this summer.  Definitely a 'first playing on the playground' since he'll be walking running by this summer.

Thank you Lord for blessing Robbie and I with Maverick, and for our wonderful family and friends.

The biggest comfort to me is knowing that God is outside of time.  He knows what is to come in the next days, weeks, and year.  And He will always be there to guide us through whatever comes, and to share His love for us.

Happy New Year!

What a difference a year makes!

It's always so much fun to look through pictures from the past year.  I can't believe Maverick has changed SO much!  Last year he was a month old for his 1st Christmas.  Life was certainly crazy with a newborn and I remember thinking, "When will life be normal again?  Will I ever sleep again!????"

This picture cracks me up!  Maverick slept on the coffee table during all the festivities, and woke every once in a while to eat.  This year he is walking all around that table, banging on it, and even climbing on top.

One of my fondest memories of Mav's first Christmas was being up every couple of hours feeding him, and enjoying the midnight church services broadcasted.  It was so wonderful and serene to wake up to the soft lights of the Christmas tree across the room and the choir music coming from the tv.

The best gift ever!

Our family Christmas "portrait" last year, ha! 

Can't wait to see how much more fun all the festivities will be this year.  Maverick might sort-of know what's going on....maybe, ha!  We didn't buy him anything last year, so it was fun to buy his first 'official' gifts this year.  Under the tree from Mom and Dad will be a metal slinky and a Tonka truck. :)

He is very into pushing cars across the floor and putting things into containers...so I figure he'll love to tote all sorts of stuff around in his new dump truck.

Merry Christmas!

Favorite Photo

This is like the best picture ever, ha!  And it will definitely be in that top ten photos for Maverick's wedding.

I am also SO excited about the next picture because:
 1) I actually look sort-of good, ha!  I am not the most photogenic person in the world (that's why I'm always the photographer).
 2) I have only a handful of pictures of Maverick and I, and this one is just so wonderful!  And it's becoming more apparent everyday that Mav is starting to look more and more like his mother...poor kid!!!



Soooooo I haven't started any Christmas shopping.  But that's true Jenni fashion to wait until the week of Christmas.  I do my best work at the last minute (mostly college essays, thank you).  So I'm excited to get it all done this week.

I'm also VERY excited about only having to work 3 days next week, and then being off until January 3rd!  Besides the one sick day I took the week before last, I haven't called in sick or used any vacation days since going on maternity leave.  I think I earned this time off. :)

Monday is my super special birthday.

Not that I'm planning anything super special, or feel extra super special.

But technically--by definition--it's my super special birthday.

According to the playground rules, a super special birthday is when you turn the age of your birth date.  In my case:  my birthday is December 27th, and this year I am turning 27.

I'm still trying to process the fact that I'm going to be 27.  For whatever reason, that just seems a lot older than 26. Ha!

So I've complied a list of possible things to do on my super special birthday.  I may do nothing, something not on the list, or whatever.  Just fun things to think about.

1) Enjoy a nice coffee.  In a coffeehouse.  Possibly read my "stories" while doing so. (It depends if Mav is with me or not)  FYI--my "stories" is what Robbie calls my guilty pleasure of tabloid magazines.

2) Bake a cake, and put it on display in very seldom used cake dome.

3) Go to a store that I normally can't afford and try on clothes I wouldn't normally try on.  Just for fun. :)

4) Write a letter to myself about the past year, and make aspirations for the next.  (I sort of do this anyway. I've kept a diary since I was in 5th grade)

5) Send my parents a thank you card.  Now that I'm a mommy, I've realized I have a lot of catching up to do on thanking them for all their hard work invested in me. :)

Ready to Fast Forward

...only a few days though!

Poor Maverick has been fighting a couple battles the past couple of days.  First, the doc thinks he has some sort of run-of-the-mill stomach virus (I'm pretty sure that's why I was up puking all night last night).  Except Mav hasn't been puking...it's been the other end, blah!

The other battle is a bad reaction to a vaccine he got last week.  Apparently it can take up to 10 days or so for a bad reaction to occur with injections.  His poor little leg has redness and swelling (about a half dollar size) at the injection site; and he has a red rash all over his body.  At this point it's just a wait and see, so I'm ready to fast forward a few days (with the hope that it all goes away).  The doc shared with me that another baby came in with the same reaction to the same vaccine, so they're doing some investigating.

He's never had a bad reaction before, but this is the first time he's received the MMR vaccine.  Doing a tiny bit of google research (I haaaaaaaaaate googling stuff like this because the results are always the most horrific and rare situations out there) I learned that the MMR vaccine quite often causes the child to break out in a rash that looks similar to the measles, but it's not actual measles.

I'm all about vaccines and I think they are one of the (if not the most) important breakthroughs in medicine.  So many lives have been, and continue to be saved with such a simple and relatively low risk procedure.  Many viruses and diseases have been eradicated because of them, and I think it's important that kids and adults get vaccinated.  But I shall step off my box now. :)

Birthday Hangover

It's Saturday morning...and I've been awake since 7:30am....what am I doing?  Eating a spoonful of cake icing and playing around on Facebook and Blogger of course!

I don't know what it is about my brain that won't switch off when I finally have the opportunity to sleep in on the weekend.  At least I didn't get up at 5:30am like I normally do for work during the week! :)

Maybe I'm still recovering from Maverick's First birthday.  It was really more like a birthday week, ha!  Having your birthday on or very close to a holiday is a lot of fun since you get to see so many family and friends.  (mine is 2 days after Christmas and I love it!!!)

(Mav looks a little annoyed here, but it's because I had him stop playing so I could get a picture of him in his custom birthday shirt--thanks Aunt Linda and Robyn!!)

Maverick is standing by himself all the time now, but he still prefers to crawl everywhere.  Which is totally fine with me, I'm trying to enjoy these last days of not chasing him around like crazy, ha!  Although I'm kept super busy with him climbing on everything.  He climbed on top of the coffee table the other day and about scared me to death! 

He currently LOVES to put things in containers.  Goldfish crackers go into the bowl.  Blocks go into the box.  Refrigerator magnets go into the seat compartment of his new bike.  Animal crackers go into the barn.  (I'm gonna go ahead and say that he is a genius and knows that animals live in barns)

But his most faaaaaaaavorite is the trash can.  Unfortunately. 

We have to hide our kitchen trash can because he loves to stand there and open & close the lid.  Open & close the lid.  Open & close the lid.  Open & close the lid.  Open & close the lid.  Throw a couple things in there.  Open & close the lid.  Open & close the lid...

Which would be great...if it weren't filled with yucky trash! :)

A couple last minute reminders (for my memory's sake):

-Maverick has just about conquered holding his own sippy cup!  We've been working on it for a while, and now he's just about there.  Pretty soon it will seem silly that we were so concerned about it, ha!

-Maverick did great at his 1 yr. check up...except for the shots of course!  I'm sure there were some pretty nervous kiddos in the waiting room after hearing him scream like that.  He is a big'un:  25 lbs (75%) and 32 inches tall (97%).  Mav got the seal of approval and thumbs up from his doctor who said he was just perfect. ;)

Now I'm gonna go make some scrambled eggs so they're ready for when my boys wake up.  I'm excited because today Robbie actually has a Saturday off!!