Little Lady Lien

Happy Big 1 Stella!

So hard to believe our little princess turned one a few weeks ago! She has gone from a sweet, happy baby to laughing, talking toddler it seems to be overnight. Where did the time go?! Her favorite words are Dada, Mama, Jackie and, of course, ELMO. She loves Elmo. She can sign "all done", food and more... not going to lie, Eric and I had to brush up on learning the words they are teaching her in daycare. She is eating pretty much anything we put in front of her, but I am pretty sure she'd live on mac n' cheese daily if she could. She sticks her whole fist full of mac n' cheese in her mouth no problem. Move over bottles and formula, we've got sippy cups and whole milk to take on now. She really did a great job during the transition. Mommy, on the other hand is having a hard time letting go of my little baby and accepting the fact that we have a toddler on hand!!

At her 1 year checkup she was 20lb 10oz (43% percentile) and 30" long (80% percentile). We've got ourselves a tall and skinny lady apparently.

Here are some pictures from her birthday party! Turns out, she has her fathers sweet tooth. The cupcake was a little easier to handle and a little less intimidating than the cake. Note to self.....

she.was.done.

2.27.... a year later.

This picture melts my heart... this moment, a year ago, is something I can't put in to words, all I can come up with is "how were we so lucky to get her?" She has brought so much joy, expanded our hearts to love in ways we never thought possible and has challenged us in ways that we never thought or expected, all for the good of course! So we decided to start a tradition of taking off work the day of her birthday, and it was a wonderful day as a family...

I forgot how amazing it was to wake up in the morning in the middle of the week and not have to frantically get myself ready, get Stella ready, get Jack outside and finally get out the door at a reasonable hour to get to work before lunchtime!! I think Stella was legitimately concerned at how excited her parents were coming into her room in the morning singing Happy Birthday! We spent the morning playing around the house and then ventured to St. Paul for lunch and an afternoon at the St. Paul Children's Museum. She LOVED it.

Clapping for myself now that I am a toddler!

It's my birthday!

Family self pic - Stella's WOW WOW WOW Face

she's concerned we're her parents.

practicing her fishing skills for the cottage!

February Fun... Weekends of visitors

Stella was so spoiled in the month of February with company every weekend! It started with a visit from her BFF Lucy... Their favorite thing to do was to play at the big window and look outside.... in their jammy's of course. Annnnnnnnd they took an AMAZING nap so Meaghan and I could catch up for more than 10 minutes!

Loved reading all about Elmo!

She also had a brunch date with Tommy Durkin at our favorite little restaurant, Good Day Cafe.

And for her first Valentine's day... she got a special visit from Benjamin! We were lucky enough to have Erica and Ben visit us for a few days during the week so they got to spend their first romantic holiday together. We had such visions of a cute photo shot session... well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Maybe the couch will work better??

TOTAL MELTDOWN

But, they sure did love bath time!

What a ham! Ben you are smart to cover your eyes!

"Stell give Ben kisses"

And to cap off such a fun few weekends of visitors, Stelly was lucky enough to have some more friends visit for a little early birthday celebration! Auntie Tammi flew all the way from San Francisco, Auntie T + Uncle Scott came up from Madison and a few more friends from Minnie stopped by!