Easter Egg Hunt

Today I took Piper on her very first Easter Egg Hunt. I wasn't sure what to expect from her, but she did really well. I think it was definitely a success! Some of my former students were at the same site setting up for Prom, so I snagged one of them to take pictures for me since Josh wasn't there.

We met my friends Cole and Ashley at the hunt with their two girls, Meg and Mary Clark.

getting started

I had to convince her to put them in the basket each time. She didn't want to let them go!

There's another one!

Showing off

Proud of herself!

Fourteen!

Today Piper is 14 months old. Where has the time gone?!

• The big story this month is her mobility. She still crawls some, but she walks about 70 or 80% of the time. She finally learned to stand up by herself from sitting in the floor. I think most babies actually learn to do this before they walk.


• She loves her two new pairs of sandals. Every time she wears them, she points to them over and over and jabbers like she's saying "Look! I have new shoes on!".


• Speaking of jabbering, she still makes lots of noise. I haven't noticed any new words lately, but she is constantly babbling. She made so much noise on our recent outing to the mall that clerks from other parts of the store were coming to see who was being so loud. I'm not kidding--this happened more than once.


• She has 10 teeth--wow! All eight front teeth and two upper molars.


• Since most of her front teeth came in, I've been making her little bitty sandwhiches sometimes for lunch. She LOVES a good ham and cheese melt.


• As I mentioned in a previous post, Piper has started to sign "more". Most of the time she does this at the appropriate time (when she's eating and is out of food). But sometimes she does it randomly and we can't figure out what she's wanting more of.


• She still takes two good naps every day (except for Sundays).


• Her favorite playtime continues to involve balls and taking things in and out of various containers/drawers/cabinets.


• Whereas she's not really saying any new words, she is understanding and learning at a feverish pace now. Josh and I can ask her to point something out to us, and she'll do it. She'll follow simple commands to bring us things, put things away, drink some milk, take this to Daddy, etc. It's fascinating for the teacher in me to watch her learn.


• Come November, she'll no longer be the baby of the Webb family. Congratulations to my brother Corey and his wife Tisha on their pregnancy!

Foodie

Piper continues to love to eat. Here she is having some strawberries for an afternoon snack.

*I promise she has on a shirt--you just can see it because of her bib.*

After each strawberry, she signed for more, like she's doing here. She's really started to sign much more recently. It's nice to know a little of what she's thinking!

I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner tonight. Piper really liked it, especially the bacon, as evidenced by the lack of bacon in this picture.

Videos

I forgot to share this video from Ian's visit last week. He came very close to running her into the couch!



And, unfortunately, I see many more of these in my future...

Child Labor

Piper loves to "sort" the laundry. Although she makes a mess with it, I don't particularly mind since it keeps her occupied for 15 minutes at a time.

She carefully inspects each piece of clothing before deciding in which pile she will throw it.

Apparently she decided some of her clothes needed to go to the laundromat.

Nana comes to visit!

We were blessed this week with a visit from Nana (aka, my mom). While she was here, we survived some pretty hairy weather, a three-hour shopping trip with Piper, and a week with very poor naps. But we had a blast in spite of those things!

Nana introduces Piper to one of a girl's best friends--the hair dryer

Ball time while we waited for our food

We love it when Nana visits (and not only because she does things like weed the flower beds and buy us Easter dresses)!

Busy Weekend!

This weekend, Brenden, Sarah Beth, Ian, and their friend Jason all came to visit. We had wonderful weather and a fabulous time! Ian and Piper played so well together. Actually, I should say that Ian played well with Piper; she's still learning to share, a fact that greatly frustrated him a couple of times. But I still think they had so much fun together. I hope they can always play that well!

Saturday morning was spent playing with ALL of Piper's toys. My house was a wreck, but it was ok since the kids were having so much fun. They took turns riding this toy while the other one pushed. It was quite comical when Piper pushed Ian around. Look at his poor long legs!

Piper's turn!

Lunch (still in their jammies!)

On Saturday afternoon, the boys went to a Nashville Predators hockey game (this was the real reason they came). The Preds lost in overtime, but I think it was an exciting game. They had great seats--on the glass--and got to see quite a bit of action. Ian even came home with a hockey puck that had been used in the game! Sarah Beth and I fixed dinner while Piper was asleep that afternoon, and then us three girls went to the mall for a quick shopping trip before the guys came home.

I wanted to take Brenden and Sarah Beth to do something they could only do in Nashville while they were in town, so we decided to get a sitter for the kids and head out to listen to some live music Saturday night. We went to a place owned by Kix Brooks (half of the famous Brooks and Dunn country duo). We took our dinner and picnic-ed on the lawn. Sarah Beth and I had made an awesome dinner of personal pizzas made from portabello mushroom caps, sauce, cheese, and pepperoni; baked spaghetti; and almond cake with fresh raspberry glaze. It was delicious! The best part of the evening, though, was when we discovered that Kix Brooks was actually on the property! Everyone says that the stars like to live in Nashville because no one bothers them, so we were a little hesitant to make a big deal out of his being there. But when it became apparent that he was expecting people to come up to him (for example, he was carrying around his own Sharpie for autographs), we went to meet him. The rest is history--and well-documented in pictures!

Me, Kix, and Sarah Beth

My cake was really good (if I say so myself), so I took him a piece. I didn't really expect him to eat it, but he did--right then and there!

Both kids were great for the sitter that night. Sunday we got up early, the kids played, we went to church, had lunch, and then the Bristolians headed back home.

You can really tell in these pictures how good Ian was with Piper. He was always wanting to help her and play "family" with her. He is such a good kid!

We loved hosting these four and can't wait to do it again!