Goodbye Peanut Butter (maybe)

So tonight I encountered another first in mommy-hood: first allergic reaction to food.

Neither of the girls were interested in the baked chimichangas I made for dinner (which were amazing by the way- I can't believe they didn't like them) so I told Walker to spread some peanut butter on some bread for both of them.  I didn't think twice about this as Taylor has been eating peanut butter for over a year and food allergies do not run in our families.  Well Lucy barely touched her bread and peanut butter but it must have been just enough.  Less than 30 minutes later, Walker comes out from changing her and said "um what's up with her lip?"  Lucy's upper lip was puffy on the right side.  I looked at her and said "um what's up with her FACE?"  She had blotchy red patches all over her face and there were little bumps around the perimeter.   And her right eye was all red like it was irritated.  I immediately called my sister because I wasn't sure what to do as clearly Lucy was having an allergic reaction but it was obviously not life threatening (she was acting totally fine; just a little fussy but she was tired from no afternoon nap).  Jen (on the consult of her husband, a doctor) said to give her children's Benadryl and keep an eye on her and make an appointment with  a pediatric allergist pronto.  So tomorrow morning I will definitely be doing so.  I didn't realize that ENT doctors are the ones who treat allergies (at least they are the ones who do so at Christie Clinic) so I'm hoping we get to see Dr. Lipps again as he was the one who we saw when Taylor needed tubes put in her ears.  (and random sidenote but I love that an ENT doctor has the name Dr. Lipps!)
And now I probably will need to start preparing myself for all the precautions we'll have to start taking.  Oy......

Lucy's Party

Even though not many were in attendance (I really stink at picking good days for parties!) Lucy had a very nice birthday party.  My father-in-law was nice enough to lend us his house for the afternoon since our house is not nearly big enough for any party with more than 6 people. ;)  I really put a lot of work into the party so I wanted to share it with everyone...maybe I'll inspire someone to do their own owl-themed party.

So yes the theme was owls and the colors were purple and green.  I even made Taylor wear a purple shirt to match (and of course I wore one too!) because I am that much of a dork. :)

It's hard to see but that's the banner I made.  I just took a bunch of scrapbook paper to school and used our die-cut machine to cut the letters and then I used my circle cutter to make a bunch of circles to glue the letters on to.  Of course all the paper I used was different patterns of purple and green.

I made four of these adorable owls using those paper lanterns you can get at party stores.  You can see the tutorial here. I did not use foam or buttons like she did; paper was easier for me to work with.  I love these owls so much that I'm taking them to school and hanging them in my classroom.  No way am I throwing these away!

I wanted to display Lucy's scrapbook at her party but when I got it out I saw I had exactly one month scrapbooked.  So I could either cram 11 months worth of scrapbooking into a day (um, NO) or I could just snag her first year picture frame off the wall and bring that.  So that's what I did.  You can get those at Hobby Lobby if you're interested.  And here's the sign I made for the corner of it:

 

 Nothing too exciting about the tableware.  For the silverware holders, I just bought 2 cheap vases at Walmart and wrapped ribbon around them.  I was going to do this thing I saw on Pinterest that uses old soup cans but we have not used any cans in the past 2 weeks and I wasn't about to open any just so I could have the empty ones!  Besides I like how pretty the vases turned out.

 This is the favor basket.  It's kind of hard to see what's inside.  It's these:

So I saw these adorable bottles on Etsy.  Basically this lady took the PocketBac bottles from Bath&Body Works and made a label for them.  I thought it was really cute but I didn't want to pay $1.45 per bottle for something I know I could make myself.  So I opened up Photoshop, copied the owl from Lucy's invitations and made a label.  I printed them out and made a template for the right shape by peeling a label off the bottle and glueing it on cardstock and cutting it out.  Then I just traced the template over each label, cut them out, and voila! 

 

Some of the goodies that were served.  If you have not made Funfetti Cake Batter Buddies, do it soon!!  They are SOO good (and SO addicting!).   You can't tell but I did tint the almond bark before coating the cereal in it.  But of course once I added the cake mix and powdered sugar, you couldn't even tell.  Oh well.  I bought those bowls from the Target $1 section a few weeks back knowing I wanted to use them for the party but not knowing what I could do with them.  They were the perfect size for holding the snacks!  We also served buffalo chicken dip which is another one of my favorites. 

We also served these:

Owl cupcakes!  Yep I made those from scratch.  Well okay I used box cake mix and a tub of frosting but I did color the frosting myself.  I found these on Pinterest but they used brown M&M's for the pupils.  I used Junior Mints because I thought it looked better (and cuter!) to have bigger pupils.  The nose is an orange M&M.  And no I did not pick out all the orange ones from a bag (which is what Walker thought I was going to do).  Meijer sells M&M's (well generic version) in all different colors in their bulk foods aisle so I just got a scoop from there.

This is the cupcake holder I bought last year when it was on clearance after Easter.  So yep, I knew Lucy would have green as one of the party colors for a long time ;).   Hey, my fellow frugal moms know when you see a deal you gotta snag it!

And now the piece de resistance: Lucy's smash cake.

Yes I made that cake all by myself.  I have to admit I'm pretty proud.  :D  I got the recipe from here.  I did not use a starburst for the bow because they don't make green or purple starburst (well maybe they do actually but there weren't any in the bag I bought to get the orange nose!).  So I just took 3 white chocolate chips to make the bow.  And I don't know how the lady made the "ears" but I just took 2 broken oreos, stuck them in the cake and then frosted over them.  To be honest I almost didn't want Lucy to eat the cake!

Okay now some pictures from the party:

Lucy mostly got clothes and books.  Even though I said "no gifts" on the invitation (I guess people really don't pay attention to that!) people still asked what Lucy would like and I said, NO TOYS!  I'm sorry but we just have too many as it is.  I'm actually in the process of getting rid of some because they just take up a lot of room!  I did get her an adorable felt sandwich set from Melissa&Doug but that's more because I'm trying to replace the cheap plastic food the girls have.  

"Enough with the singing, I want to eat my cake!"

Alright cake, it's me vs. you and I plan on winning.

I should have taken a picture of the cake afterwards but Lucy barely made a dent in it.  Basically she ate a lot of the frosting.  So in the end, maybe the cake won.

So it was a great day for our little girl.  And now I need to start working on Taylor's 3 year bash (ha! just kidding!).

Lucy is ONE!

2 weeks ago was the actual birthday (March 7th) but I wanted to wait until I had her pictures done before I wrote a post.  And that meant waiting for her t-shirt to come.  I got a few okay pictures in last weekend and I had intentions of getting more during the week but then I was gone at the Illinois Reading Conference for 2 nights and when I got home on Friday afternoon I went into party mode (prepping for it that is).  So I didn't get any more pictures until her party and I just finished editing those.  [/sidetrack]

Weight: 19 lbs 1 oz
Height: 27.5 inches

I don't think I'll ever have very tall girls, but that's okay.  And obviously Lucy doesn't have any weight concerns like Taylor.  She's my little chunker and I love it!  Speaking of food....
Lucy is slowly making the transition to table food.  This is somewhat hard since she only has 3 teeth (there is a 4th one that is almost through).  She has been gnawing on her finger in the back of  her mouth so that makes me wonder if her molars will start coming in.  That would be helpful.  Still despite not having very many teeth she's doing really well chewing up the food we give her.  Right now she loves pancakes, cheerios (who doesn't?), french fries, and yogurt.  She will also happily eat any fruit or veggie puree (yessss! a child who eats vegetables!), and just recently we've started giving her meat (tonight's chicken was a big success).  I'm so glad she's not a picky eater.  Lucy drinks a lot of milk like Taylor and she still gets a bottle of breastmilk at night.  Although, we are on our last container of bags so I'm thinking we have less than 2 weeks on the breastmilk.

Sleep is pretty much the same.  Some nights Lucy will sleep all night and other nights she'll wake up for various reasons.  The most aggravating thing is when she wakes up at 5:30 or 6 on the weekends.

I do believe Lucy's vocabulary is "exploding."  She is starting to repeat more and more words that she hears.  Right now she will say "hi, mama, ball, no, dada, bye-bye, up, doggie, Superwhy," and most recently "out."  whew!  And believe it or not she is also starting to say some letter names.  She doesn't really call any letters by their correct name but when we look at alphabet books she will start saying letter names that she knows.  It is such a relief to know that she is not going to have a language delay like Taylor.  You know I think part of it is that Walker and I are both so much more aware of different language development techniques and we use them so much with Taylor that Lucy has picked up on a lot of words too.

So since Lucy has been working so much on her language, her physical development has been kind of on the backburner.  Right now she's working on standing by herself.  She's getting more and more brave about letting go of things and balancing.  But Lucy definitely has no interest in walking.  Anytime we try to hold her hands to get her to walk, she buckles her legs.  Considering she gets into enough things just by crawling, I'm okay with her not walking yet.

Right now, Lucy loves playing with puzzles.  She doesn't really know how to get the pieces back in the right place without help but she does seem to understand that is what you're supposed to do with a puzzle.  Lucy also likes coloring chewing on crayons.  She has tried coloring on the page a few times but it is difficult for her.  Oh and anything that has buttons and noise are a big hit.  I've had to break up a few arguments over Taylor's laptop.  And of course books are a big hit.  Lucy loves to point to the pictures and wait for me to give her the word for the object.

Okay, enough writing; it's picture time!
(the ones in the long sleeves are from last weekend, the other ones are from the party; still can't believe she got to wear only a t-shirt and tutu outside in March in IL!)

The Party Begins

Tomorrow my baby turns 1...wow, it's hard to believe it's been a year since I was laying in bed miserable, sure that I was NEVER going into labor (ha!  I think every mom-to-be feels that way at 39+ weeks). 
So first, Happy Birthday Lucy!
Second, there is a party planned. Don't be offended if you weren't invited.  For 1st birthdays we tend to invite just family since Walker's family is so big.  Anyway, you all know that I heart Pinterest and I have found so many cute ideas on there for Lucy's party.  I will not give them all away before the party (that wouldn't be fun) so be prepared for the multitude of posts (or maybe just one mega post) on all the details of the party.
For now, I will share with you that it is an owl-themed party (of course since owls are my latest obsession, fueled by Pinterest).  And I ordered adorable invites from Etsy.  I seriously don't know why I haven't done this before.  Don't get me wrong; I love using Shutterfly (they just sent me a coupon for a FREE hardcover photo album, no other purchase required!!) but doing the invites this way was SO much cheaper.  I paid a gal $8 for a personalized invitation in jpeg format that she emailed to me so I could upload them to walmart.com and get them printed.  And since we have Adobe photoshop on our computer, I was even able to change the colors on the invite to what I wanted them to be (the pink owl was cute but the color scheme for the party is purple and green).
So here is a copy of the invite.  And a little hint: I used the owl on the invite to help me out with the favors!

(obviously the actual invitation doesn't have black bars on it but I didn't want to put addresses or phone numbers on my blog =))