I love my husband!

Matt is so wonderful and sweet! I love that he totally gets me and he's always got my back. He made this comment on my last post after several people COMPLETELY missed the point.

Some of you seem to have totally missed the point of this post. She's saying that it drives her crazy when people don't proofread at all when they post. Let me emphasize "AT ALL". She isn't saying that every little grammar mistake drives her up the wall, just the really frequent and obvious ones. She even admits to not being perfect herself. Furthermore, her point in this post was to say that she's going to try to stop letting these things bother her so much. Seriously, spaces and idiomatic phrases are what we're complaining about now? Let's try to take the Nazi out of grammar Nazi. You may now pick my comment apart for grammatical errors if you feel the need. Good hunting.

I like you Alot!

I am a stickler for grammar. It drives me crazy when people don't use punctuation, use the wrong words, or misspell words on their blogs, in their facebook status, in comments, etc. Proofread people! That's what it's there for! This is not to say I don't occasionally make mistakes myself. No one is perfect. Its the people who constantly make one mistake right after another. Like they are in too much of a hurry to actually have their writing make sense. Maybe it bothers me because I've always had a sort of knack for spelling/grammar. Maybe its because I got my degree in English and had these rules beat into me by my teachers. Or maybe its from being an English tutor and having to pick out these mistakes on a daily basis. Whatever the reason, Matt knows of my strange obsession and so he sent this to me the other day. It was just too funny not to share! http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

So I am taking on a new leaf. I will now find different strategies to deal with my grievances, thanks to my new friend Alot!

Photo Shoot

My friend, Aubrey, did Kalianna's one year pictures on Monday. I was a little nervous, since she's been teething, but she was such a trooper! Stinker that she is though, she wouldn't smile! But she made some pretty cute faces. As you can see from my changed main picture, this is one of my favorite Kalianna faces. She is very expressive with her lips! And I call this her monkey face. But she is my little monkey, so it fits well! Here are some of my other favorites from the shoot:

Guess My Size

Can someone please explain to me why the sizing for baby clothes varies SO much?? I've known this about baby clothes for quite some time now, but it seems to be getting even harder to keep my daughter clothed! She is in 18 month clothes right now. Sort of. Some 18 month clothes are teeny and haven't fit her for months. Others are huge and she fits in them like a circus tent. And then other 18 month clothes fit her perfectly! Huh?? How does this make sense? And how am I supposed to know what size she is when there are so many variables involved? Grrrrr. The biggest problem is its not even just from brand to brand. If I could trust a brand to have their sizing the same across the board then I would know she is in 12 month in this brand, 18 month in that one, and 2T in the other. I bought Kalianna two new pairs of pj's a couple weeks ago. Same brand, from the same store, purchased at the same time. One of them fits her, but is a little big with room to grow. The other pair is so tight I had to actually pop some of the seams in the sleeves in order to get her arms into them. What the heck?!? And it drives me super crazy that the height and weight limits written on the tag are never accurate! Too often I have bought something that said on the tag 20-25 lbs (perfect!) and height between 29-32" (awesome!) Kalianna weighs 21 lbs and is 31" so this onesie should fit perfectly, right? "Ha ha! We fooled you! We switched the tags around, so this is really for a 9 month old!" If I could just trust the tags, instead of sizing by month, everything would be fine and dandy. Because I know my daughter's stats. Instead, its like the baby clothes companies have started a new game show: Guess My Size! The object is to figure out what size clothes your child should wear, and if you get it wrong, you're just out the money. "Ha ha! Fooled you again!"

Easter Fun...and Sickness

Two posts in one day! Wowzers! So I know technically this was Kalianna's 2nd Easter, but since she was only a couple weeks old last year, I'm counting this as her first Easter. Did conference throw anyone else off this year? It just didn't quite feel like Easter to me. Anyway, in her first Easter basket she got: a cute stuffed monkey (since she's my little monkey), a board book/ flap book about the scriptures, bubbles, and a couple suckers and m&ms.

She loves the suckers!

I didn't get a ton of pictures, but I had good intentions. She also got a beautiful Easter dress from her great-grandma Howell, which she wore to church last week. Pictures to come. While we were all enjoying conference, I checked on Kalianna to find this: Playing with her "cousin" Sadie. I'm so glad she has such sweet, gentle, patient dogs to play with!

That evening, we were invited to dinner at Bryan and Ricci's house. Right before we left, Matt said his stomach was bothering him. But we didn't want to cancel on them last minute, so we drove down to Orem. We sat down on the couch and started visiting, when Matt jumped up and ran to the bathroom. He threw up. So he laid down on the couch while Bryan and Ricci quickly dished up some food for us to take in tupperware. I fed Kalianna dinner, then we got back in the car and drove back to my parent's house to pick up our dogs and stuff from staying overnight. Well, by the time we got there, Matt was worse. Lots worse! He couldn't handle riding in the bumpy car again so we decided to stay the night. He threw up several more times before finally crashing in the guest room. After putting Kalianna to bed, I got all our stuff together so we could be ready to go home the next morning. About 2:00am it was my turn. I woke up, ran to the bathroom, and barely made it in time. It was amazing how fast it hit! I felt completely fine when I went to bed, but I woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a train. Crazy! The next morning my dad came in to check on one sick person, only to discover two. He then told us that both my mom and Theresa also had gotten hit with it during the night. The four of us were quite a sight to behold! My dad ended up taking the day off work to care for all of us, but to especially take care of Kalianna (since both her parents were basically dead to the world). I am so glad we didn't go home the night before, or I don't know what we would have done!! Thanks so much to my dad!! We seriously would have been in trouble without his help!! Kalianna loves her grandpa! And I think they both had fun. After resting all day and finally proving we could both keep food down, we left to go home. And, of course, it started snowing. So it took twice as long to get home (we got here around 9:30pm) and we all crashed! Today, I feel fine. I mean, I'm low on energy and have had to be careful what I eat, but I feel completely fine compared to yesterday. We think it was the 24 hour flu. Turns out my nephew, Joshua, and Ricci both also got sick yesterday. Not a fun way at all to end our Easter Sunday!

Birthday Party

Kalianna's birthday party was a big success! I was worried she would be nervous with so much attention but she had a ball! And she was really happy the whole time. Kalianna loves animals and especially loves the song Old Macdonald, so we decided to have an Old Macdonald theme. The party was at my parent's house to accommodate our numerous guests. We started with a dinner of french fries and chicken nuggets (her favorites) and fruit. Then we watched a movie I made about her first year of life. My first time ever making a movie and ever using windows movie maker, but I had a blast and it turned out better than I could have imagined! She opened presents (the pile of presents that little girl received was ginormous!) And she had lots of little cousins to help her open them. Thanks everyone for such beautiful gifts! She has had so much fun playing with all her new toys and mommy is very happy to have so many new clothes.We played a couple little farm related games like pin the tail on the pig, guess how many farm animals in the jar, and the chicken game on the Wii. Then it was cake time. My mom and Ricci helped me make these awesome cupcakes earlier that day. Aren't they adorable? (and yes, that is a horse, not a giraffe) Kalianna LOVED her cake!!! I have never seen a one year old tear into a cake like she did! She ate tons of it and loved having an audience while doing it! She kept looking at me like "Are you really letting me do this?!" It was so adorable! After a much needed bath, the party guests left and Kalianna continued to play with her new toys for a little while (thanks to the sugar buzz). But she slept wonderfully on the way home. It could not have gone better! I'm so glad she enjoyed herself so much!!

Kalianna's 1st Birthday!

Happy Birthday Kalianna! I've heard lots of people say that they can't believe it when their baby turns one. But you know what? Looking back to the night she was born, it actually does feel like its been a year. And what an amazing, incredible, great year it has been! Kalianna amazes me with how smart she is, and how quickly she learns new things. She is my little monkey, crawling and climbing all over the place! But she also loves a good snuggle now and then too. She can say mama and dada now (and actually knows what they mean). She seems pretty content with just crawling and walking next to furniture right now. But as with everything else, I'm sure when she decides she's ready to walk, she'll work on it till she's a pro. She is such a determined little girl! When she wants to do something, nothing will stop her! Her favorite things to do are watch baby einstein (she LOVES animals!), chase the dogs, play with her twin in the oven's reflection (she pulls the hand towels off and when she sees herself, she will squeal and then jabber), music (she's started dancing when she hears it), climbing up and down the stairs, reading (she gets upset when a book ends), and entertaining people (she's such a little ham). She has learned how to give high-fives (thanks to uncle Brent) and then she claps for herself afterward. She is starting to show her independence. If mommy is busy cleaning or working on something, she will go into her room and play by herself. I have gone in her room several times to find her sitting in a pile of books, reading them to herself. Its super cute! Kalianna is now in a forward facing car seat, which seems to make her really happy. She likes to see what's going on, and her poor long legs were getting so cramped against that backseat. She is such a happy, easy-going little girl! I am so blessed to have her in my life! I love her so much!!!

For breakfast this morning, Kalianna enjoyed her first waffles. I knew she would love them because of the syrup. That girl has such a little sweet tooth! Her birthday present from us was a little car that converts into a walker. We gave it to her a little early, so I already know she loves playing with it.

Then today to celebrate her first birthday Matt and I wanted to take her to the zoo. But unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. I also bought her a cute birthday outfit that was capris with a cute top, but again, weather...So this morning Kalianna and I picked up Matt from work and the three of us went down to Southtown Mall. Kalianna played in the Dinosaur play area for the first time, and she loved it! She had so much fun going down the slides, climbing on the toys, and playing with her reflection. She had a ball!

Then we went for a ride on the carousel. She didn't crack a smile the whole time and we weren't sure if she liked it. But as soon as the carousel stopped and I pulled her off her horse, she started to cry.

We were all getting pretty hungry at this point, so we stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Kalianna got her very first happy meal and she ate almost the entire thing! That girls loves her chicken nuggets and fries!

We took Matt back to work before heading home, and Kalianna crashed.

It was such a fun and simple way to spend her birthday! And she loved it all! Then for dinner tonight we had spaghetti, one of her favorite foods. I know she doesn't know its her birthday, but hopefully she at least had a happy day!