Daddy?

Paige now understands when daddy is home and when he isn't home. She starts off the morning by looking for daddy. "DADDY!" in the computer room, "DADDY!" in the bathroom. If she knows he is not home, any noise that sounds like the garage door opening--thunder, airplane--she does this: *gasp*.. wide eyes...walk walk walk to the babygate looking into the foyer... "DADDY? DADDY?" After a minute or 2 she gives up, knowing he isn't home. He is working from home today so she won't leave him alone. (probably working from home since I told him that she constantly looks for him during the day)



Here is another new favourite activity:

Sick

Paige has a cold. Caught it from the two of us, who caught it from the cruise ship (inevitably--when 3000 people are pretty much confined to one place for a week). Now all 3 of us are sick.

Oh well....

Here are some new photos...

New words...

I forgot to mention before, but Paige has been using a new word for the last few weeks..."flowers". But she says "WA wa", or "wa WA". I guess you need top teeth to be able to make an "F" sound. She likes to say "wa wa" while she is in her stroller and we pass flowers, or while she is outside on our front steps. In fact, when we pulled up to our house for the first time as we were driving home from the airport last week, she said a loud "WA WA" as she saw the flowers on our front steps.

She also knows "Paige, where's your head?"-- she puts both hands on her head for this one. I'm trying to teach her other things too-- nose, mouth, etc.

She also seems to know puppy, since i asked her where the puppy was and she went and got her stuffed puppy.

12 month shots

Poor little Paigey. It was that time again for the dreaded (for mommy) shots. Paige was a very brave girl and only cried a bit. She was having a rough day to begin with since her top right incisor is making its way down. I tried to take a picture of the bandaid on her arm since the nurse put a heart sticker on it, but she was not happy when we got home. You can see it poking out from under her sleeve.

Here are her stats:

height: 28 inches

weight: 22lbs

This puts her in between the 50th and 75th percentile for weight, and in the 25th percentile for height. Short and stocky.

Our Cruise

Another carnival ship at Miami Port (looks the same as ours)

This is our ship: Carnival Triumph

Our stateroom: 8237 Balcony

The main lobby from above The Rome Lounge where all of the big shows were every night at 10:30
Formal night #1

A casual lunch in the Paris dining room
A $15 drink!! Woops!
In Cozumel we started the morning off by going Parasailing.

In the afternoon in Cozumel we took a Twister Boat ( 65mph, and then spins in 360degree turns on the water--fun) to Isla Pasion which was a tiny island with a bar/buffet on it. We were able to relax and enjoy the view, and swim in the crystal clear water.

Formal night #2

In Grand Cayman, we took the Allura Catamaran to Stingray City. Breathtaking views on the ride over. the stingrays were actually quite cute once you got over the initial fear.



Our 3rd stop was in Ocho Rios Jamaica, where we went to a garden and then Dunn's River Falls. We weren't able to bring our camera to the falls since it would have been ruined, but picture us + hundreds of other people forming human chains trekking up the very dangerous falls + me apparently babysitting small child who is too short to climb who needs me to yank her up all of the steep slopes. It was a must do while in Jamaica, but not the most exciting thing on our trip. Anyway, i think we have about 495 more pictures, so obviously, I just picked out a few. The vacation was unbelievable, I would highly recommend cruising. We loved how you get to feel right at home on the ship. You can wander down the hall and have a fancy meal, wander off to have a coffee at the cafe, or go see an hour long show in the huge lounge, all while being 5 minutes from your room. Then the port days were fun for a change in routine, yet you can enter and exit the ship as often as you like. I can't wait to go on the next cruise--Mediterranean here we come!

0h--and Paige was very well behaved apparently. ;) Of course we missed her, but we were so busy and having so much fun that we were able to enjoy our trip, but also enjoy going home to see her. She looked bigger than I remembered. When we first saw her at the airport she couldn't stop staring at us--as if she was trying to work everything out in her mind--"hey...wait a minute..."

How much we've grown.....

Birth Day:

Birthday:

It's unbelievable that when Paige was born we didn't know her at all. We loved her because we had a special bond with her, but she was a complete stranger. We didn't know what we had gotten ourselves into, and what the months leading up to this moment would be like. We didn't know it would take 9 months for her to sleep through the night, or that she would scream instead of nap when she was tired, or that she would go through a phase where she would scream instead of eat. We also didn't know that she would roll over early, and crawl early, and start saying hi at 8 months. We didn't know she would love the water, and stuffed animals, and puppies and cats. We didn't know that the sound of her laugh sometimes makes you want to cry. The fact that she would one day take hesitant steps across the floor at 10 months was a mystery to us. We didn't know that every morning she would stand up and smile and sway back and forth in her crib when we went to say good morning. We didn't know how lucky we were to have the most perfect little girl in the world.

This is the best job in the world.

Paige's Big Day

We're here. Paige is one. After her huge party on the weekend there was less pressure to do anything crazy, but we still had a little outing with Amy and Katharine at a splash park.

We arrived first thing in the morning since it worked in our schedules, but doing so helped us avoid the big kids that would likely have knocked over the little ones. Paige was able to test out her new wetsuit that she got for her birthday from Aunt Leslie and Uncle Mark. The day wasn't that sunny, so the water felt quite chilly; it wasn't warm enough for the girls to walk right into it. Not to mention, there was an incident that Paige was traumatized by. I turned my head for 2 seconds to see what Amy was doing and Paige was apprently standing in the line of fire of a huge thick jetstream that was pouring directly on top of her head. I turned my head when i heard little yelling noises. She was standing there with the stream gushing down on her head and she was crying as best as she could with the water all over her face and flailing her arms. It was probably pretty heavy on her head as well. Poor little thing. After that she was scared when water would start shooting suddenly. She would start to whine and rush right up to me. I would say she was scared yet fascinated.

After we all dried off we took a journey to the Second Cup for some coffee while the girls sat facing each other in high chairs and eating some cheerios. the day was fairly normal after this since Paige had a huge nap in the afternoon, but in the evening she did have some leftover cake--lemon this time.

Paige's 1st Birthday Party

So many photos. Wish I could put them all up. Thanks to everyone who joined us for Paige's big day! It was a blast! She got to try her first ever birthday cake, which was her first dessert of any kind. I felt a little choked up singing Happy Birthday to her, but I knew this would happen ever since she was born. Can't believe we've already had her party...