Aloha Friday

Over at Kilani's blog she started the Aloha Friday, in honor of in Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that they take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So she thought that on Fridays she would take it easy on posting, too. I thought this is a great idea so therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response.

This being the first day of May, means that in 11 days - Lyla will be celebrating her 1st Birthday! A momentous event for our daughter and for us as parents. I have been a busy bee planning for this event and I just wondered what you have done for your children's 1st birthdays.

So my question is:

What did you do or what do you plan to do to celebrate your child's/children's 1st birthday? A large party or just close family and friends? Party favors?

Hope everyone has a great Friday!

The Cousin's Visit

Last weekend we had a nice visit with my sister and her family. They had not been to see us since the fall so it was great to have them come down. You can read about the visit from my sister's perspective at her blog Country Mouse City Mouse.

They arrived Saturday afternoon and we enjoyed some time outside together before the large rainstorm flew over. They kids played and enjoyed being outside and together with us. Matthew got right to work getting his play house cleaned up. It sure needed it after the long winter we had.

Jillian loves Lyla. She held her hand and walked around with us outside.

I had to work on Sunday. But Ryan and my sister says that Jillian just wanted to sit beside Lyla and hug her in the morning. Ryan took some pictures of this event. The look on Lyla's face is priceless.

There, that is better!
All in all, it was a great weekend and we enjoyed having your visit! It is a lot of fun to have all the kids together.

Walking

On Tuesday Lyla and I went to Open Gym and boy oh boy did she take off. She has been taking some step without holding onto our hands - but just a couple in a row, but on Tuesday she was walking like 10 steps at a time. She is inconsistent with her walking. Sometimes she wants to walk independently but she still very often wants to hold our hands for reassurance. But, I do believe it will only be a matter of time...

'Ba' a.k.a. Balloon

Last week I went to 'Party City' to buy some of the stuff that I need for Lyla's birthday party. She was absolutely adorable in the store. They have an entire wall of inflated balloons that you can look at and decide which one you want to buy. So I was looking at the wall and Lyla was sitting in her stroller, and it is not uncommon for Lyla to say Hello to everyone that passes by. She is a very friendly girl. So I hear her saying hello. And I always say Hi back because passer-byers don't always pay attention to her and that breaks my heart. So I look down and say 'Hi' back to her and I see that she is waving and smiling ear to ear at a Diego balloon! Now, she has never seen Diego before so it wasn't that she recognized him. It was just that she loved the balloons. So, me being the easy momma that I am - I bought her a Blue's Clue Balloon. Blue's Clue because it was on Clearance and because she LOVES dogs! She loved that balloon so much. She would call for it - 'Ba'. Wave at it, smile at it, scream at it and she took that balloon everywhere with her for the first 24 hours. She even held onto it tightly as we left the store. I could not even see her in the mirror the whole way home because she had Blue's Clue in front of her. All I could her was her talking away to it and screaming with joy at it. Sadly, last night when I was making dinner Lyla was playing with 'ba' and 'ba' seemed to deflate some how. But it will only be 10 more days before Lyla gets some more 'bas'.

Here she is with her 'ba'. Yes - it was bigger than her!

Lyla 'bums' around the house now, and she would hold onto the strings and bum around while holding on to it. She would not let it out of her sight!

Just Play'n

Today, as the weather is dull and gray I wanted to look back on the past couple of weeks. We have been blessed with some beautiful weather with lots of sun and warm weather. This has allowed us to get outside and explore some school yards and parks with our exploratory girl. Lyla is eager to get into everything and to see all that the world has to offer. Here are some pictures from a day 3 weeks ago where we visited two playgrounds in one day!

Here we are at the school yard in our neighbourhood. This was Lyla's first time on a 'big girl' swing and she loved it! Here are some really cute pictures using the tunnel. Yes - I was inside this tunnel snapping away!

A father and his daughter - a love indescribable!

Me and my girl sliding down a slide!

Driving the car! She was so cute driving this car. She used both hands, one hand and stood up and drove it as well!

Both playgrounds had the game 'x's and o's', by the time we got to this playground - Lyla was a pro!

Lyla really enjoyed swinging in these swings! She spent a long time in them very content and just watching the other children playing around her.

And of course, some music! Miss music enjoyed holding onto these bars and rattling them.

So, that is a synopsis of our day at the parks. We are looking forward to more days like this to come.

Visit to Nana and Papa's

As I said in my last post, Lyla and I made a rather impromptu trip to Nana and Papa's house about 2 weeks ago. Ryan left in the morning and neither one of us thought we wouldn't see each other for 3 days, but as it happened Lyla and I decided to hop in the car and go home for a couple of days. This was a little nerve racking because it would be the first time that Lyla had traveled a great distance without another set of hands to hand her toys, food and drink. Rather it was just me and her and Lyla did GREAT! The trip is about 2 to 2.5 hours and each time she slept about an hour or so and then played quietly in the back seat. She was a great girl. But believe me, I would rather have Ryan with us. At least I now know I can make it to Nana and Papa's on my own!

Luckily Nana had an umbrella stroller at her house, as I didn't bring my stroller due to space limitations. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining so we went out for a "stroll" in the afternoon. The funny thing with this was the whole time Lyla was in the stroller she had to have her legs sticking straight out. It was quite cute! Then Nana got out the bubbles and we sat out and blew bubbles in the sun.

I went home to see a good friend of mine but this also allowed Lyla and I to see Nana, Papa, Aunt Pam and her favorite cousins - Emily, Matthew and Jillian. It was great fun!

The kids had a lot of fun playing together. Lyla loves her cousins! I hope that Jillian and her will grow up to be close friends!Matthew was great at showing Lyla how to do certain things. He was especially good at making the top spin!I was missing my co-partner, Ryan for bath time. But no worry on this night! I had 3 little helpers eager to help get Lyla ready for bed!

Of course we cant forget 'Papa'. Before we left, Lyla had been looking at Nana and Papa's picture and pointing at Papa and saying 'Papa'. So she got to see him in the flesh which was a treat! Here are the two of them have a early morning snuggle and discussion.
Thanks Mom and Dad (Nana and Papa) for accomodating our impromptu trip. I have a feeling it will be happening again ..

Sitting with 'the bunnies'

Every Easter, my mom (Nana to Lyla) have her grandchildren sit with some toy bunnies. I was not expecting Lyla to be involved in this tradition because it seems like I work every Easter and we are 2 hours away from Nana's house. However, an impromptu trip a week and a half ago allowed Lyla to be involved in this tradition. My pictures are not as good as Nana's because Lyla was dancing on the settee with the bunnies and I had to sit close to catch her if she danced right off. And than, Lyla had eyes only for her Nana so most of my pictures are a side profile as she is looking at her Nana.
I like the first one with her legs crossed so lady like! :)

These pictures made me realize how little Lyla still is. I mean the Bunny to her right is bigger than her!

Lyla Crawling - she is on the move!!

Well, it happened. She has started to do the "shimmy crawl"! This all happened this afternoon, as this morning she was not moving like this but between her attempts to nap (as she did not have an afternoon nap today; I guess she was too excited about her crawling abilities) she got up and did this. The cool thing was that she waited for both Ryan and I to be here as Ryan was at home sick today! We are excited but now realizing that we are not at all prepared for her to be mobile. Anyways, have a look and enjoy!

Some more Easter Photos

Just a few more pictures of the days following Easter. Lyla loved her Easter basket and of course she HAD to walk with it. And she loved to dump it to get her Easter eggs out.

I love the expressions in the following pictures. She was so excited to find her eggs. Giggling with mom!

Smiling about her eggs!

Lyla would bite on her Easter basket and I would say "No - no- no!" You can see how she would hoover over the Easter basket, poised to bite and give me this mischievous look. She knew exactly what she was up to! That is my girl!

Wordless/Wordful Wednesday

Like Mother, like daughter...
I think this picture is pretty hilarious. Lyla loves to scrunch up her nose when she is goofing around, checking out new things or just for the fun of it. Ryan snapped this picture of the two of us doing our "scrunchy nose look" together without the two of us realizing it.
Have a great Wednesday.

Lyla's 1st Easter

Easter came and went and Lyla has now officially celebrated all of the yearly holidays. The only thing that she has yet to celebrate is a birthday which will be here in less than 1 month!! Hard to believe - but the old adage 'time flies when you are having fun' really does apply.

So, as I said in an earlier post we celebrated Easter a week early because of my work schedule. We made arrangements with the Easter Bunny to hop by a week earlier so accommodate our schedule. This was really tricky because the Easter Bunny is really busy at this time of year but since it was Lyla's 1st Easter he agreed because he wanted us to celebrate as a family.

So when we woke up on Easter morning, sure enough the Easter Bunny had came while we were sleeping. Left for Lyla was a Easter basket full of treats and some eggs to play with. Inside the plastic eggs where some Gerber Puffs - a special treat for Lyla.

She enjoyed Easter very much. She investigated her eggs and realized that they rattled when she shook them. She even got a couple open and retrieved her precious puffs out of them.

Seeing that Lyla is not crawling yet, she did a lot of side rolling back and forth. She was often distracted by all the eggs to it took her quite some time to get to her Easter Basket. But when she finally made it to her basket, she quickly went through it all. Taking items out, investigating them and then throwing them aside to look at the next item.Her favorite item was definitely the plastic eggs. Then the stack able Bunny's would be a close second.

The 3 of us then had a huge Easter breakfast; bacon and eggs for Ryan and I, and oatmeal, yogurt and toast for Lyla. I promise she ate more than her plastic eggs... lol...

After Lyla's morning nap, we went and visited the Easter Bunny at Somerset and thanked him for hopping over to our house early.

It was a beautiful day, so we ended up spending some of it outside - swinging and walking around.

We then all had an afternoon siesta. And then joked around as a family afterwards.

All in all, it was a great Easter. I enjoyed it more than Christmas because she was more interactive and into looking at things and playing with things. And it was great to be home as a family to celebrate, as our time together has been limited due to my work schedule. I am sure that each holiday is going to get more special as Lyla gets more older and enjoys it more each year.