Anna has a new favorite food...Lima beans! She loves them! I bought some a while back because I have no clue what she will and will not eat these days. I'm trying to help her develop a taste for the healthy stuff, so lima beans seemed like a good choice. I waited until after she had eaten her dinner and then I dropped a few on her tray. To my surprise she not only ate them, but she bounced up and down in her seat and leaned forward for more! She's finally earning the nick name she's had since before she was born...Beanie!

The next day for lunch I gave her some more. This time they were a real part of the meal and again I was surprised. Instead of gobbling up her favorite raviolis, she pushed them all to the side and only ate the limas! It was so funny to watch her move the other foods around the tray and pick them up to see if there was maybe just one more lima bean underneath. I'm so glad that she likes them! Here she is showing me her new favorite treat (yes, that is food in her crazy hair). Say lima!

A while back my friend Ashley and I took our daughters to go see Woody the Weiner Dog at the library. Ashley had seen that he was coming to town and asked if Anna and I might be interested in going to meet him. Are you kidding?!?! Of course we were!!! We had no idea what to expect, but we were hoping that Woody (full name: Dogwood) would be a real dog and not some guy in a giant dog suit.

When we got to the library there were lots of (older) kids sitting on the floor listening to the author read the story about Woody. There was a slide show too and that managed to hold our babies' attention for all of 3 seconds. Finally, after an intermission song of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Woody made his entrance, followed by his sister Chloe who was also a weenie. They were wearing sunglasses and you could tell that they had been through this a million times. When it was over, all of the children had a chance to pet Woody and Chloe on their way out of the library. Anna and Kendall just sort of smiled and stared at the dogs, especially Chloe and her poor little cataracts eyes...which Anna tried to touch of course.

The girls may have been a bit too young to understand the story but we had fun nonetheless!

P.S. I just discovered that Woody has his own blog! Ha!

A while back I bought some baby cook books. I know, I know, she can just eat whatever we eat. But she is so weird about texture right now and I wondered if these books might have some ideas that she would like and that maybe mommy and daddy could enjoy too. So Monday Anna and I went to Whole Foods (where even tomatoes have their own accent lighting) and bought lots of yummy things to make for the week. I don't shop there every day, but man I love that place. Everything is so...pretty. It makes you never want to eat junk food again.

Anyway, I decided to try and make a recipe from this book. It was the Fish Cakes recipe and it seemed simple enough. A base of mashed potatoes and flaked white fish sounded like something Anna could handle. Well I started to make them right when she went into a cling-to-your-leg-and-cry-and-drool-meltdown. Nathan came home and took her off to play and almost THREE HOURS LATER the fish cakes were finished. I thought they sounded simple but halfway through the preparation I read the fine print that said they should take about 55 minutes to make. And that's only the prep time!

So Anna was in bed by the time we finished making them but she had a leftover today. Surprisingly, she loved them! She ate it all up, fish and all. She even picked up all the little bits that would fall out of her mouth and ate those too. I was really happy that she liked them, because she doesn't eat much meat. I also felt like my hours of work were worth it. But does this mean I have to make them again???

Notice the spotless bib and almost crumb-free tray. Fish cakes, fish cakes, eat them up YUM!

I have lots of things to blog, but not lots of time so I'll just share the most recent news. Poor Anna is sick. I took her to the doctor yesterday because I noticed that she was pulling on her right ear a lot lately. When we got there, they said that her ears looked perfect but her throat looked red and swollen. They ordered a test for strep throat and surprisingly it came back positive. They said it was not very common for babies her age to get strep, but she's got it! I have no idea where it came from. All we can think is that maybe she picked it up in the church nursery. We started antibiotics yesterday afternoon so as of 4pm today she should no longer be contagious. The doctor also said that Nathan and I (and anyone else she has been around) has 2-5 days to come down with strep. We are crossing our fingers that no one else gets sick!

She is coughing a little but other than that she is her normal happy self. She's still crawling around, chasing Ruby and eating like she always does. In the last two days she has been consumed with the desire to walk and she spends all of her awake time standing in the middle of the room flapping her arms and then falling down. She did get brave once yesterday and she started to pivot on one foot...first to the left, then to the right...then boom! back to the floor. She's so funny to watch because she is so determined and so excited to be doing it all by herself.

Here are a few pictures of her after church on Sunday, walking around with daddy's help. She's wearing the little dress that her Grandma F bought for her and we think it's so cute!

This evening we are going to have Anna's 1 year pictures taken. Sure, we missed the 12 month mark, but she'll be 1 all year long right? I'm a little nervous because we've haven't had pictures taken since she became so mobile. I know she'll be smiley, it getting her to sit still that will be the struggle. Wish us luck! I'll post the link as soon as it's available.

I really do not have time to be on here right now. I have a ton of things to do but I feel guilty about the Sprout Spot having no new messages for the past week so here you go :)

Nathan and I had a fantastic time on our trip! The weather was perfect all week and we did so many fun activities. We laugh because neither of us got a tan since we spent very little time on the beach. We rode our bikes down there one day and played in the ocean a little but we had so many other plans that we didn't stay long. It's a good thing too, because we found out at the end of the week that a little girl was bitten on the leg by a baby shark (she was fine). We kayaked, hiked a little, rode bikes all over the island and of course we played Pirate Island miniature golf like we did last time. We also ate at all of our favorite restaurants and went to our favorite shops. We went back to see Gregg Russell under the big tree in Harbour Town and got totally emotional watching all of the children sing along. It was a great trip and if someone could have delivered Anna to us I think we would have stayed forever.

Anna did just fine and had lots of fun with grandma and grandpa. She went on outings with them and did all sorts of fun things around their house like watching birds on the bird feeders and playing with the VCR. We were so happy to hear that after the first night she slept great and didn't put up too much of a fight. As usual, she had no trouble eating either ;)

We are happy to be home and to settle back into our regular routines. Anna is doing great and I think she enjoys being back with her doggy again. She's still trying to walk and now she stands up and dives forward instead of stepping. She thinks it's too funny!

I know I said this last time, but I will post some pictures from our trip as soon as we get them off of Nathan's laptop.

****Update: Anna popped another tooth today! Now she has the top two, one bottom tooth and another on the way. She loves testing them out on snacks and on mommy and daddy!

Sprout is hitting the road once again...but this time she's only going to grandma and grandpa's house. Nathan and I are taking a much needed anniversary trip and poor little Beanie is staying behind. We absolutely hate the thought of not being with her each day, but we know she will be just fine and she will have lots of fun with her grandparents. We were tempted to just take her along, but at this age the only fun she would have at the beach is eating sand and getting it trapped in her diaper. In other words, not much fun at all. Mommy is having a slight nervous breakdown, but we will still have fun!....even if we are counting the minutes until we are reunited with our sweet girl. What will we do without that squishy smile (that gained a new top tooth today) to greet us each morning?

We'll be back in a week with pictures and stories!

This week Anna got her first set of big girl pajamas. That means not a sleeper, but actual top and bottom pajamas. I had seen them before and thought they were cute, but I was afraid that the top would ride up and leave her with a cold tummy at night. But this week I saw a 3 piece set that had a top, long pants and shorts. The top looked quite long and so did the pants, so I thought there was a good chance that they would stay in the right places all night. The big shocker is that because they are supposed to be very close fitting, I went for the next size up and bought the 18 months. Anna has never in her life gone up a size!


So we brought them home and washed them and she wore them the next night. Pretty cute if I do say so myself! I like the little bird on the front, which you can't really see in these pictures. She crawled around and played with her new puzzle (thanks Uncle Richard and Aunt MaryAnn!) and got a feel for her new jammies. Don't worry grandmas, when it was time for bed she also put on some socks ;)