Halloween

Savannah dressed up as a fairy this year, in the weeks leading up to Halloween we'd try her wings and skirt on so she could get used to them but she wasn't really very fond of either. Luckily once we got her suited up on Halloween she seemed to have warmed up to the whole get up or maybe we were just successful in distracting her with other things.

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

Thankfully we took plenty of pictures before we ate our chili for dinner because of course she managed to drop a bean down the front of her white onesie!

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

We had only intended to go to a couple houses and then pass out candy at home but our friends that live in the back of our neighborhood came to trick or treat near our house so we walked halfway around the block with them instead.  Most of the trick or treating consisted of James chasing and/or carrying Savannah from house to house. She was really not interested in trick or treating which was just fine by us, less candy we have to eat and less we have to worry about her being interested in strangers.

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

This is what you get when you try to pose 4 girls ages 4 and under...

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

From SGN - 17th Month

16 Months

Today Savannah is 16 months old! 

After months and months of everybody and their brother trying, she FINALLY says 'uh oh.' She doesn't say it in the right context yet but that doesnt' make it any less adorable. 


Along with 'uh oh' she also says...
-hi
-hey
-what's that?
-baby
-go
-whoa, whoa, whoa
-no
(and a whole lot of other words that I can't think of right now, she has woken up at 5 a.m. the past two days which also means I woke up at 5 a.m. so I'm not functioning at 100% right now)

She can point out her belly button as well as everyone else's, she will show you where your eyes and nose are and she knows what shoes are, where to find them and that they go on her feet - she just can't quite figure out how to get them on correctly.  If you ask her where her diapers are she will go to her room and get one and she even points to hers when it is time to be changed, she doesn't always want to lie (lay?) on the changing table to be changed but she knows when it is time. 

She LOVES to be outside and often pitches a fit if we let the dogs out and don't let her go with them.  She likes to climb on everything and her current favorite spot to sit is on the windowsill in the office.  Her favorite toys aren't toys at all, they are just random household things like hair clips and sauce cups. 

She is absolutely the sweetest, funniest, most precious little girl that we could have ever asked for, our love for her grows enormously every single day.

These sauce cups kept her nicely occupied while I cooked dinner, she loved stacking them together.

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

Looking glamorous in one of my necklaces.

From SGN - 16th Month

Adorably cheesy grin

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

Modeling her new coat, hand made by Gammie!

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

From SGN - 16th Month

Planes!

The air show was in town last weekend and since Savannah is obsessed with pointing out planes and thinks every noise she hears outside is a plane, we thought it would be fun for her to get a little closer look.  Since the idea of sitting in traffic for 45 minutes to get on the Navy base didn't sound fun we decided just to watch from the Target parking lot next to the base.  Great view, none of the traffic!

We were concerned that the noise might be scary for her but she had a blast and just laughed and laughed when the planes flew right over our heads, she spent most of the time we were there just sitting in James' lap taking it all in. 

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

Pumpkin Patch

We visited the pumpkin patch - well, not so much a patch as a church with a large quantity of pumpkins for sale, but it's the best you're going to get around here - a couple weekends ago.  We, that would be James and I, were SO excited to take Savannah.  We had visions of her running around amazed at all the pumpkins, trying to pick them up and going nuts over the little Savannah sized pumpkins.  Yeah, not so much.  She was much more intersted in the other kids there and trying to get into their family photos rather than have her picture taken.  Thankfully we had an emergency stash of Goldfish crackers in the diaper bag that held her attention for a few minutes.

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

From SGN - 16th Month

Savannahese

If only we knew what she was trying to say, it is probably the solution to all the problems in the world.

Something I meant to blog about in depth, but didn’t…

Nursing


Savannah was exclusively on breastmilk for over a year (nursing and pumping) and I’m pretty dang proud of myself. In the process I turned into something I never thought I’d be – a lactivist (aka a breastfeeding advocate), pretty surprising to me since for MANY years I never even considering breastfeeding to be something I would ever do. Now I was never on the verge of staging a nurse-in and I never felt the need to stand up for nursing mothers rights but then again I only had one instance of NIP (nursing in public) where someone gave me a dirty look…


Cracker Barrel in the middle of Georgia. I was sitting in a corner thoroughly covered, as always, and for the first time in my life I accurately read someone’s lips to make out, “She’s feeding that baby, she needs to do that in the bathroom.” I know for sure that’s what she said because she had to repeat herself (her dining partner was probably as dumbstruck as I was) and I was able to read her lips again. Lucky for her they were done eating or I might have sat down at her table to finish up nursing or suggested she take her breakfast to the bathroom.


And I nursed EVERYWHERE – church, restaurants, the homes of family and friends, Starbucks, parking lots/garages, even while on the interstate once (Don’t call DCF, James was driving, Savannah was strapped in her car seat and I was bent over her, I’m sure it was quite a sight.) and the list goes on and on, it would be easier to name a place where I didn’t feed my baby.  I'm sure this surprised quite a few people and it certainly surprised me, I'm quite modest but when it came to feeding her I wasn't the least bit shy. I don't know if my fellow churchgoers, coffee drinkers, etc. were comfortable with my doing so but no one ever mentioned it or even gave it a second glance.



I fear I am somewhat crazy as I have found myself cornering the mother-to-be at baby showers inquiring about her plans for feeding her baby and offering to answer a 3 a.m. phone call with nary a mean thought to answer a breastfeeding question (I am so thrilled when I actually get taken up on my offer). I know from experience with friends and family that despite your best efforts, sometimes breastfeeding just doesn’t work so I’m not some crazy lady screaming “breast is best” at the top of my lungs at every chance I get.  But today, I found myself aghast when a childhood friend posted on Facebook that she was going to switch to formula this week because nursing hurt too much. You mean its working and you’re going to stop because of a little pain? WHAT?! I have a ridiculously low pain threshhold so I'm not trying to make myself out to be a hero here, but I had excruciating pain while nursing for 6 weeks while all the books say it shouldn’t last more than 2-4 weeks. But you know what, I kept on keepin’ on and by golly, it got better. Besides, labor was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, pre-epidural that is, and this was nothing compared to that.

My timeline is a little fuzzy but I think I've got all the dates right and this is really more for me and my own reference than anything else.  Thankfully I had a nice stash of frozen milk so I started pumping only once per day at work at the beginning of June and stopped pumping completely 2 weeks before Savannah's first birthday. Very shortly after her birthday we introduced cows milk in a sippy cup, never putting it in a bottle (ok ok, maybe we did once or twice in a desperate moment).  We continued nursing in the morning and at night for another week, I dropped the morning session while we were visiting family over the 4th of July weekend and we dropped the evening session on July 9, I had planned to go one more day but she was fussy and I could tell she just wasn't getting enough.  We started just giving her a sippy cup from the freezer stash after that night and ran out on July 14.  We had intended for the next day to be the last day of frozen milk but while thawing it we realized that bag had about 6 holes in it so it had to be thrown out...you can bet a complaint was promptly submitted on the manufacturers website and someone, that would be me, had some high value coupons in her hot little hands not soon after and we love our free sippy cups!

I found nursing to be quite natural and not at all difficult (once we got the hang of things) and SO convenient, I did have to give up milk and sour cream for a while but we never had to make sure that we had bottles with us or make a late night trip to the store for more formula. Not to mention the money we saved, especially since we would have needed soy formula, and the benefits to me - a quick return to my pre-pregnancy clothes and a decreased risk of getting several types of cancers. 

Newest Game

We're not sure where she picked this up or why she enjoys it so much but we've spent a lot of time laughing with her over this lately...