My baby is 18 months old today....tears, sniff.

Don't get me wrong they are tears of joy. Zoe is 18 months old today and I am stuck at work while she is at daycare, truly sucks. I wish I could have afforded to take today off and just spend it with her. I want to hold her forever and never, ever let her go.
I want her to be able to read back through my post once she gets older. I want to just tell her a few things today.

My Dearest and Most Precious Zoe,

You were put here on earth to make me whole, mission complete kiddo. I never, ever thought that it was possible to love someone as much as I love you. My heart just aches with the amount of love I have for you. You are truly beautiful inside and out. I am having so much fun watching you learn and explore. You crack me up everyday with your "fake" laugh. You are extremely ticklish just like your Mommy. I love counting your little ribs, you just laugh and laugh. I love to hear the sound of your laughter, it warms my heart. I hope you realize that laughter will keep you young and it is a very important part of your everyday life so make sure to always laugh. It is the best medicine in the world. Some things I have noticed I will list now.

-You love to hang upside down, not sure if I should be worried or not. You may just possibly give your mama a heart attack doing this.

- You absolutely love shoes. You could spend hours playing with mama and daddy's shoes. You love to try and put them on your own feet or on our feet. Once you get them on your feet, you love to walk in them. Note to self, keep heels out of your reach for now!

-You love socks too and love putting them on and taking them off.

-You love to play with your toes. You are amazed by your toes for some reason.

-You love your baby dolls. When you wake up in the morning, you ask for Baby, Annie and Lilly (your dolls of choice right now). When you go to bed all 3 dolls must be present for our night night ritual to take place.

-You have mastered wiping with toilet paper, flushing the toilet and closing the toilet lid. You still however have not gone tee tee or poo poo in the potty. We are waiting patiently for you to learn this. You love to drag the potty with you wherever you go even though the potty is the size of you, it cracks me up.

-You love to brush your teeth, this is a good thing. You cry when I take the toothbrush from you. Hopefully you will have much healthier teeth than your mommy.

- You are a pretty good sleeper. You can go for weeks and sleep through the night but then you go through stages, like the present time, where you "play" in your crib with your baby dolls, whine for mama or daddy and eventually go back to sleep. It wakes your mama and daddy up but we absolutely love to listen to you playing with your baby dolls.

- You are still pretty little. Your stats at your 18 month checkup were:
23lbs - 25th - 50th percentile
31.5 in long - 25th-50th percentile
46.5 head circumference - 50th percentile

-You are trying to run everywhere right now and climb on anything you can find to climb on. Seriously kid, your killing me....ha ha....love you.

-You are such a happy baby. You will go to anyone and everyone.

-You are our little social butterfly. Daycare raves about how independent you are and how all the kids love to be around you. You are such a sweet, sweet baby.

-You have begone to have mini melt downs. I really hope we get through this stage with minimum melt downs. Time will tell.

-You love to put the ball under mommy's shirt and say baby. I think you are telling mommy and daddy that you are ready for a little brother or sister. I think you are going to be an amazing big sister.

-You love for mommy to hold you and mommy loves holding you.

-You love playing hide and seek.

-You love your crayons, mostly you like to eat them but you also like to draw with them and cry when it is time to put them up. I hope you get your daddy's artistic flare.

Zoe, you are heaven sent. I could go on and on about you all day and night. I will however spare other readers. I will end this letter with this.

I will always, always, always, did I mention always love you with all of my heart and soul. I never understood how deep a Mother's love could be until I myself became a Mother. I now understand. I would walk to the moon and back for you baby girl. I am so excited to walk this journey with you. I hope you know that my cup runneth over with pride, joy, love and happiness. You are such a special and precious part of my life. I cherish you baby girl and hope you always remember that I will always be here, right by your side, in the good and bad times.

HAPPY 18 MONTH BIRTHDAY MY BABY GIRL!!

Love,
Mommy

Here are just a few pictures I took this morning. I will take more tonight and post later.

No "JAWS" about it

Dear Mr. Jaws Movie Producer,

I never watched your movies because they scared the heck out of me. Even the main song just the main song when I heard it scared me to almost having to tinkle in my pants. I will probably never watch your movies but man did you entertain many, many people with your scary movies and also caused a group of people (me being included) to be scared to swim in the ocean!! Although I didn't watch your movies, I know you had a following of people who did. You were very talented and you will be missed.

RIP. David Brown
http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=456001>1=28101

Monkey Joes

We had a great weekend. Thanks for the craft ideas ladies. We ended up painting with our fingers on small canvas that I had around the house, we colored, we traced our hands. I thought about a project that involved glue but decided against it for now. We had a great time at Monkey Joes. Bryan's sister Andrea was in town visiting a friend of hers and she spent the day with us on Saturday. We love you Aunt Dre and had a blast with you. See you in June, she lives in Tampa FL. We went two weekends in a row to Monkey Joes, that is why you see Zoe in different outfits. Her cute little pig tails were falling out by the time we left. Her hair was everywhere, so cute though.

Craft project

This weekend seems like it will be a weekend stuck inside due to the weather and due to a sick husband.

Any suggestions what kind of crafty thing I can do with Zoe this weekend while we are stuck inside. She is almost 18 months so still limited a little on what we can do but any ideas you can give me would help.

Friends

I never posted from our girls night out!! We had a great time. I love these girls and miss them terribly. We had a fabulous dinner, ate way too much!!







Then we had another girls night where we went to a fabulous place called Sips and Strokes. Our creative side got to shine this night!! Our subject was a funky peacock. It was so interesting to see at least 50 different paintings of the teachers version of a funky peacock. We sipped on a mimosa or two and let our artistic abilities come out!! We had a great time. My sister, my best friend Amy and a friend of my sisters made up our group. I can't wait to go back. I love, love, love this first picture of My sister, Amy and I. Can you guess which one is my sister? Amy and I became best friends in high school. Everywhere we went people asked us were we twins. In high school hers and my hair were a lot lighter, we were the same size, same build. We look a good bit different now....we are all grown up!

4 out of 4 nights

Not sure what is going on with miss Zoe. 4 out of 4 nights this week she has decided to have play time at odd hours of the night, 12:45, 3:15 and 5:25, what gives? She is doing pretty good though with putting herself back to sleep but it still wakes us up when she is playing with her baby dolls. It cracks me up to hear her playing with her dolls just talking up a storm but you can't understand a word she is saying. It is so cute and funny maybe after the first couple of nights but it is wearing on weary Daddy and Mommy who already have to get up at the crack of dawn for work. Tell me, has anyone else gone through this stage? Is this a stage? Is it her teeth? Is it she is getting too much sleep? I just don't understand what is causing her to wake up and want to "play"!! I am glad the weekend is here. Maybe us weary parents can get some solid sleep. Hope everyone bundles up this weekend and stay inside if possible. Try not to get on the roads unless absolutely necessary. Be safe and stay warm!! Man, I now is when I wish we could use our fireplace. Thought I would leave you with a picture of my sweet happy baby!!

Lack of post

Hi my dear blog friends. It's been a while, I apologize. I have just been enjoying life and getting over a cold. I am loving every minute with baby girl. She is so much fun these days. She is talking up a storm, NO, being her favorite word right now. We were beginning to think the word YES would never be in her vocabulary but she has slowly been using the word yes the past few nights. She has been learning her colors and shapes some. I am trying to not push to much. Her daycare is wonderful, they have been working on animals and counting to 10 with her.

Zoe and I went to Monkey Joes last weekend on a Mommy/daughter date and had a blast. For those of you who don't have a Monkey Joes, let me paint a picture for you....think tons of kids, lots of inflatable bouncy houses/slides, balloons, rides and lots of yummy kiddie food. Zoe is still so little (she is tiny for her age) so I got to go down the slides with her and bounce in the bouncy houses with her, oh so much fun. What an experience with my daughter. By the time we left, I was one soaking wet from sweat Mama. She and I got out of the house while Daddy painted in the house. That's right folks, we moved the gate that we had up to keep Zoe in our living room. We figured it is time she got to explore the house. We now have the gate at the top of our stairs (stairs going down to front entrance). We have outlet covers on every outlet, latches on all cabinets, we are lacking the safety knobs to go on the stove (Zoe loves to try and turn these GAS oven knobs) and we still need to get the safety knobs to go on the doors so that she can't get the door opened to outside. We are hoping to get these done this weekend....IF IT DOESN'T SNOW OR ICE!!! . I hope it doesn't but the weather is calling for a chance of this, oh joy!! Anyway, Zoe is having so much fun exploring and we are having fun watching/following her all over the house. If the weather isn't bad we are going back to Monkey Joes this weekend with Daddy. He missed out on the fun so we must go back...for his sake!!!

I will post some new pictures soon. Zoe will be 18 months on February 3rd. She is getting to be such a big girl. I am loving watching her everyday, something new with her everyday.

As far as Weight Watchers and me, yea, not doing so good. I have good days and bad but here lately the bad outweighs the good...shame on me. I do ok during the week but the weekends are killing me. I am aiming to do better this weekend. My problem is that I am scheduled to have my wisdom teeth out next Thursday so in my mind I am thinking I should splurge this weekend and eat/drink what I want. Hey, I'm sure I will lose some weight just because I won't be able to eat a whole lot for several days....I know, bad way to lose weight but hey, I'll take it any way I can!!

What about you guys, are you dieting, if so, what is working for you?