Abbi's been walking long enough now that Jenn and I don't really remember the crawling stage all that much. She runs around the house like she's owns the place, and really never resorts back to crawling. This picture was taken on May 30 this year, and it honestly feels like ages ago. She was a lot easier to keep track of back then, and certainly it was much easier to keep her out of things. However - I wouldn't trade where she is today for anything.

Contrast

Isn't she cute. I took this last night. We headed out for a few minutes, I needed something from the car, so it was a good opportunity to let Abbi explore outside a bit. She's been working really hard at figuring out how to manage the front steps. She doesn't like to scoot down them because it scratches her up, so she's working on taking careful steps and using the railing to keep herself up. She does really good, but can't quite get down the last step thats extra big. But she is doing fantastically with the others!

Cutie

This is my new favorite picture of Abbi. She looks to freaking cute here. That big beautiful smile on her face. She's looks adorable. I was outside taking pictures of stuff and so she was outside with me, wandering around on the deck checking things out. She was engaged pretty good with the ladder and then I started snapping pictures. I got this one while she was under the ladder, clearly super happy!

New Favorite

Here is a compilation video of Abbi enjoying different aspects of Port Discovery two weeks ago. She definitely had a good time!

Video: Port Discovery

Last Friday we met up with the Sofinowski's so the girls could enjoy some play at Port Discovery, a self proclaimed kids museum downtown. They are running a special on the third Friday of each month where you can get in for $2, an $11 discount.

Abbi had a great time running around playing with anything and everything she could get her hands on. She played really well with the other kids and it was encouraging to see her interact so well with them. This is a picture of Abbi having way to much fun with a fake steering wheel!

Port Discovery

I'm definitely late on this post, but like last month, oh well.

This kid amazes me. She's super smart. I don't think she's smart in the way that we only have 1 kid to compare her to so she must be smart, I really think she's smart. She listens well (when she wants to) and she's super curious and seems to figure out new things all the time.

Since she's over a year, the doctor told us at her year checkup to ween her from all bottles by 15 months. She's been off all bottles for about 3 weeks now. We were giving it to her at night to try and get her to sleep and she'd take the bottle, then get back up and start playing again. So we started to just put her down for bed. Its awesome - we'll ask her "are you ready for bed" and she responds by shaking her head up and down. I take her up for bed, she lays right down and goes to sleep. No crying. She's awesome!

As for growing, she's working her way out of size 4 shoes, into some new 5's and she's got wide feet. Must have come from me or something. She's tall, and strong. She loves climb. On everything. This is where the smarts come in. She moves thing over to other places and uses them to climb up, very smart! Did I mention that she's awesome!

In the nicest way possible, I think she's built like a truck. She runs around and kinda slams into stuff and just moves right on. A lot of the time shes not even phased by what happens. There are of course other times where she's hurt and needs parental love, but not a lot.

She loves to eat, and does well. One thing we've learned is that she'll eat whatever you give her if she doesn't have a choice. But if she does, then she'll cry and whine until she gets what she wants. For example, if we have a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries for her, she won't eat the grilled cheese because she wants the fries.

She's interested in tons of stuff. She plays with these ribbons all the time upstairs (like craft ribbons) and she likes to play with drum sticks. She likes laying on the floor and rolling around. Playing kitchen. Playing with dolls. She loves to play with Max, even if he's still not to keen on her, they are getting better.

Basically put, she's awesome. She's a ton of fun, and even more work. She's definitely wearing Jenn and I out, so much so - we wonder how older people manage to have kids, I can't imagine. I'll stick with my 1 year old and my 29 year old self taking care of her.

14 Months

She's getting so big. Jenn keeps saying to me each night how toddler-ish she's become. She's such a little person these days. She just has her own personallity and its amazing to watch her learn and grow.

Last weekend she came up to me with the point and shoot camera and handed it to me (more or less), and so we worked on smiling for the camera. I don't think she really understood, and I did get some cute pics of her smiling, but not really "at" the camera. I really liked how this one turned out though, kinda in between smiles for her. I love the face she's giving me here!

The Look