The Malouf Family: 1 Year Old!!!!

This has been the craziest, funnest, most wonderful year of our lives. Now we can't imagine what it would be like without our sweet little Lily even though we were married more than 6 yeas before she came to us. We love her so much!

Here are some of Lily's cool new tricks this past month:

Playing: Lily makes a buzzing sound and flies around her little bug toys. She does this with all her animal toys too. Maybe she thinks all animals buzz?

Eating: Lily really likes tortillas! They are nice and easy to give her too, so that is a plus. She likes blueberry bagels as well. I started giving her stage 3 food which has little lumps in it. She does not like lumps! She pulls them all out of her mouth. Now if she has a cheerio in her mouth or something and I give her a bite of food she spits the cheerio out. She hates lumps I guess! I am starting her on whole milk today (Feb. 3rd). I have started gradually mixing it it in with her formula. First just 1 oz with 5 oz formula, then 2 oz with 4 oz of formula, and so on. She has done great so far!

Talking: Lily says, "Hey!" when you walk away from her and she doesn't like it or if she wants something she will point to it and say, "hey!" in kind of a demanding voice :). She waves and says "hi" now (she has been waving and saying bye already). She signs "please" a lot more now in addition to "more" and "thank you" and "all done" and now she does the signs for "kitty" "dog" and "fish". She will point at her humidifier and sound machine and go "shhhh" Whenever we say "love you" she blows us a kiss. Whenever I ask her to give me a kiss. She now will point to her nose and my nose when I ask where our noses are and our eyes and mouth.

Kisses: Lily is very affectionate! Whenever she sees Michael and I kiss she needs to join in on the action too. If she gives Michael a kiss, she has to give me one too. She loves it when I put her on my shoulder so she can hug my head and give me lots of slobbery kisses on my cheeks and lips! It is too cute. One night she randomly got up at 3 am so I was laying next to her crib and holding her hand through the slats to try to get her to go to sleep. She started kissing my hand over and over ha ha! She also has discovered a new friend. I call her the girl in the oven :). She loves to stare at herself in the reflection of our oven and give herself kisses.

Sick: We all got sick this month. Lily had an ear infection and a terrible cough at the beginning of the month. She had so much mucus it would gag her and make her throw up. She gave it to me and it was one of the worst colds I've ever had. Michael got a milder version, but it still wasn't fun. Hopefully she stays healthy for awhile! We got a humidifier for her room and that has helped a lot. It also adds more white noise which she loves to have for sleeping.

Teething: Lily FINALLY got teeth this month! She has 2 on the bottom!!! They are so tiny but boy are they sharp! She was a lot more fussy and clingy than usual when she was teething and she had a harder time sleeping, but all in all she did pretty good.

On the Move: Lily is walking! Not all the time but she can walk about 10-15 steps in a row. She has pretty good balance! She looks so cute, like she is way too small to be walking.

BIRTHDAY PARTY!

We celebrated her birthday in the gym of our church. Her birthday fell on a Saturday so it was perfect! Unfortunately not the most perfect timing since my parents and my sister Judy and her husband were all on wonderful tropical vacations so had to miss her party. But still we had fun and a lot of people came! I was actually pleasantly surprised how many people there were, about 50. All of Michael's family were there (Chris & Alison with their kiddos, Kim and Reynie and their kiddos, and Sean & Britt and of course Grandma and Grandpa Malouf) plus his Aunt Diane, and Joy Lynne came and also Lexi and her friend came. My sister Jana was there with Marisa and Lauren, my brother Mike and his family came and my little brother and his wife also my niece Holly and her husband and baby boy along with Cece, Katie, and Zoe. Then my cousins Bob and Dawn and Chelsea and Brayden were there. We had some of our good friends come too! Amber and Brad with their 3 kiddos, Kristie and Clayton with their 2 boys, and Erika and Garret with little Bentley. It was a great turnout!

I made 3 kinds of cupcakes: Funfetti (Michael's favorite), Peanut Butter with Reese's, and Lime. I borrowed my sister Judy's frosting stuff so they would look kind of cute! I got really cute flower cupcake holders at Walmart and also a bunch of disposable table cloths to make everything cute. I made a #1 out of her 1 year pictures and put it on a poster board. There was a table when people came in where they could write their name on a onesie as a sign in and also fill out their "Wishes for Lily" along with a slideshow playing with "Lily's Song" Uncle Reynie wrote for her playing in the background and all the photobooks I've made of her. I liked how everything turned out! I wasn't too stressed and it was fun.

Since Lily was born on Groundhog's Day we also celebrated that a little. At one of the tables the kids could make a groundhog by frosting mini chocolate chips to nutter butters!

We played a few games. When people came in they got a paper with a few activities they could fill out. One was guessing what Lily's favorite foods were (I think Cece won that): squash, sweet potatoes with turkey, macaroni and cheese, and peaches (If you ever wondered why Lily's face always looks orange, that's why). Another was answering some trivia questions about Lily (Renee was our winner there). Another was matching Lily's pictures month by month 0-12 months (Lexi won!). We also did a relay race where the kids had to on the first lap roll from one side of the gym to the other. Then on the way back they could army crawl, then the other way they did a real crawl, then on the way back they could walk without bending their knees like a baby (Zoe was the fastest one there). The prizes for winning the games were a game of Uno! I think everyone had a good time (I hope).

Then we helped Lily open her presents. Michael and I got her the Fisher-Price Disney Princess castle and then the Little Mermaid coach and Alladin and Jasmine and Belle and the Beast. She got so many good things from everyone else too! Lots of books which are my favorite, some adorable clothes and toys.

Then we did the cake! I stripped Lily out of her beautiful pink poofy tutu dress my mom bought her for her birthday and stuck a cupcake bib on her. Her cake was just a white cake with red food coloring to make it look pink with strawberry frosting and then I used yogurt bites to spell out her name and outline the cake. She also had a flashing pink #1 candle! We all sang Happy Birthday and were so excited for her to eat her cake and she didn't really want anything to do with it. She isn't much of a sweets person. Her daddy and her cousins helped her eat some of it and make a mess out of herself though!

Lily was so good the whole day. She was extra happy and sweet even though she only took 1 of her 2 naps. She must have known it was her birthday! We sure love this girl so much.