Holding hands

Ainsley has started holding our hand while walking to take us to where she wants to go. She'll grab our hand and walk us to the refrigerator or to a toy that she wants to play with. She started doing this when we got back from vacation and I love it! She will even pull on Joel's pants or shorts and drags him around the house, taking him to where she wants to go. It's so cute!

Friday, while laying on the couch watching Mickey Mouse, she reached over and grabbed my hand and just held it while she watched tv. My heart about exploded with love! I hope this continues for a long time!

Ainsley is 18 months old!

Ainsley is 18 months old today.  She's one and a half years old.  Six months away from being a two year old.  Where did the time go?  My baby is growing up.

I took her to the doctor this morning for her 18 month well baby check up.  She loved the fish in the waiting room, and got into everything in the exam room.  She managed to untie the nurse's shoe laces, write on the floor tile with a pen, and mess with the tv when the nurse finally gave her the remote to distract her for a few minutes. 

She was 27.9 pounds, 33 inches tall, and everything looked good.  It feels so good to be done with specialists and therapy.  Her next appointment will be at two years.

At 18 months, Ainsley enjoys watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, playing with her Mickey car, baby doll, doll stroller, looking at books, coloring, purses, bracelets, playing with Mommy's tupperware, going bye-bye, rocking with Mommy and Daddy, swimming, playing outside, giving "five", hugs and kisses, and getting into anything and everything she can get her little hands on!  She loves fruit, but refuses to eat meat.  She's become a picky eater and it's sometimes hard to find something she'll eat.

Ainsley got another tooth while we were gone on vacation.  She now has four front top teeth, three middle bottom teeth, and one bottom molar.  She obviously wasn't too fussy while cutting her newest tooth, because noone complained of her being cranky while we were gone.

A new thing she's learned (in addition to burping and farting) is putting her finger up her nose.  She'll do it for so long her nostrils turn red. 

She's figured out how to ride her Mickey car.  She could only go backwards for a few days, but she's now mastered going forward too. 

While watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, she likes to yell "bye-bye Mickey" at the end of every episode.  She's also started saying "Oh Toodles" every time Mickey does, although you can't really understand what she's saying!

I was working in my office today and Ainsley went into her room to play.  A few minutes later, I could hear her dragging something down the hallway.  I figured it was her doll stroller, but got up to look.  She found her Howdy cow and was pulling it down the hallway into the living room by one of the horns.  She drug that cow all around the house today and can really bounce on it.

She still likes to push her baby doll around in the stroller and will tell you bye-bye and blow kisses while she's talking her baby for a walk down the hallway.  The baby doll gets lots of kisses from Ainsley, but Ainsley sure is rough with the doll when she's not giving it kisses.  It's funny to watch her throw the baby around because she gets mad at it.  She's also started giving the baby some milk from her sippy cup by holding the cup to the baby's mouth.  I don't have a fake baby bottle for her, so I need to find an old one of Ainsley's for her to play with.

That little smirk is trouble!

I needed to get some work done yesterday afternoon, and Little Einstein's was on.  A win-win for both of us!  She didn't take her eyes off of it, and I was able to finish up with work.

Watching Little Einstein's

Another new thing we're working on is drinking out of a regular cup.  Of course, it's with the cup in the bathtub, so she's probably drinking a little pee with the water, but Ainsley likes trying to drink the water.

We had a major accomplishment last night.  Ainsley slept in her crib the entire night for the first time in months!!!  Joel and I both said when we got back from vacation, we were going to stick with it and make her sleep in her crib.  We're both tired of getting kicked all night and having only a few inches of bed to sleep on each night.  She woke up twice in the night, and only cried for a few minutes each time (at least that's what we think....we both were pretty tired and ended up falling back asleep).  She got up at 6 for the day, and was tired by 8 this morning, but I was so proud of my little girl for sleeping in her own bed.

Ainsley's turned into a little dare devil.  Monday night when we got home, she was climbing up the basement stairs, and got to the third or fourth step with Joel right behind her.  She stood up to go back down the stairs (which we don't let her do) and before Joel could catch her, she slipped and hit her chin on the side of the stairs.  She got it pretty good and it's still reddish/purple today.  Not even half an hour after she fell on the stairs, she climbed into the living room chair and was leaning over the arm and fell face first into the carpet.  Her face hit the carpet first and then her legs went over her head and back to the floor.  Right before her feet hit the floor, her head finally went over.  I thought she broke her neck the way she fell.  It scared me to death.  Joel says she "scorpioned".  Whatever she did wasn't pretty and I wish she would just sit on the floor and not climb anything!

While at Grandma Shelly's over the weekend, she had some fun in the pool with Grandma.  She loves splashing!!!

I love this one!  Pure excitement on her face!

Ainsley slept with Uncle Thomas and Aunt Jamie while her, Mom, and Mark visited them over the weekend.  I heard she slept on Thom's side of the bed.  I'm just glad I was able to get a few night's break from someone's little feet in my side all night!

I hope her little arms hit her Uncle Thomas at least a few times in the middle of the night!!!

Ainsley loves playing with Jake (the dog), and especially riding him.  You can tell (or at least I can) in this picture that her dress is on backwards!  Poor girl!

We brought Ainsley a flute and some maracas back from Mexico.  She loves them!

We got Ainsley's 18 month pictures taken a few weeks ago.  Ainsley didn't want anything to do with getting her picture taken, so I was worried we wouldn't get any good ones.  She literally never stopped running around the whole time we were there, but Lauren ended up getting some good ones.  Below are some of my favorites.

Trying to get her hair bow off

Anniversary vacation

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary.  That meant it had been 7 years since we'd been on our honeymoon and our last vacation.  I decided we needed to get away for our anniversary, just the two of us, before we had another baby and it was harder to get away.  We left Thursday morning and arrived at our resort around noon.  Neither one of us had been to an all-inclusive before, so we didn't have a preference on where to stay.  We ended up booking an Apple square deal where we were guaranteed a 5 "apple" resort, but we wouldn't find out where we were staying until we got to the airport in St. Louis the morning we flew out.  The Apple representative at Lambert told us we were staying at the Blue Bay Grand Esmeralda in Riviera Maya.

Our vacation didn't start out very good.  We got seated in the last row of the plane, which are the only seats on the plane that don't recline.  It made taking a nap on the plane a little uncomfortable, but I still managed a small one!  We were starving when we got to the resort, so we headed straight to eat.  After eating and walking around the resort for a little bit, we were both hot and wanting to get into our room and get a shower.  We were able to check into our room a little early and when we got to our room and turned on the shower, there was no water!  I called the front desk and they said it would be back on in half an hour.  Sure enough, it came back on and Joel took a shower first.  He didn't say anything about the water, but as soon as I got in, I looked down and the water was brown.  I didn't care at that point and just wanted a shower, even if it was in brown water!  Joel thinks they must have broke a water line.  The water was clear later that night when we got back to the room.

Yummy chocolate covered strawberries!

It didn't take me very long once I got out of the shower to realize I forgot my hair straightener!  It was still at home on the bathroom sink, right where I left it because I never ran back in to grab it before heading to the airport.  I called the front desk to see if they had a hair straightener or curling iron I could borrow, but of course, they didn't.  We stopped by the couple of shops in the resort to see if they had anything with no luck there either.  I finally stopped by the spa to see if they had one I could use, but the manager had already left for the day.  I went back the next day when the manager was there and they told me I could use their straightener at the spa (that was a good 10 minute walk from our room) that day but they didn't know about the rest of my stay.  I decided it was too much trouble and just pulled my hair back the first night for supper. 

After our rough start on our vacation of getting stuck in the back row on the plane, having no water when we got to our room, and then the major issue of not having a hair straightener, we thought it could only get better from there.  We woke up the next morning and got something to eat and then headed to the beach in search of a shady spot.  We were lucky to find a shady spot and enjoyed laying around reading the rest of the day.  The rest of our vacation went pretty much the same as the first day:  wake up, go get breakfast, search for a shady spot on the beach, lay around reading/drinking, eat lunch, back to the beach for the afternoon, shower, eat supper, watch a little of the nightly entertainment show and then crash when we got back to the room.  It was so nice to be able to go to sleep whenever we wanted and sleep in a little in the morning.  I don't know if I enjoyed sleeping or being able to read/relax more!

A coconut fell off a tree

Just swingin' at the bar

Nap time!

The second full day we were there our afternoon got a little messed up.  Everyone would get their beach towels and lay them on their chairs to "claim" them.  I drank a few pina coladas that morning and by the time we got up to go eat lunch, I was a little tipsy.  We left our towels on our chairs and after lunch we headed back to the beach to our chairs.  Keep in mind, that I was still tipsy from all the pina coladas that morning.  As soon as we walk around the corner and see our chairs, Joel says:  "Someone is in our chairs".  I didn't believe him, but the closer we got, I could see someone was in "our" chairs.  With each staggering step I took toward our chairs, I could see a woman and man in our chairs and the woman was laying in the sun.  Just our luck!  Well, our luck was even better when I could finally make out that the woman laying in one of our chairs was topless!!!  Yep, the first topless person I see on our vacation is laying in our chair.  Again, I'm glad I had been drinking already.  I walked right up to the guy, while trying NOT to stare at the woman's boobs, (who was European and had a very strong accent) and asked if the towels behind him were his and he replied they weren't, so I grabbed them and off we went.  He asked if we wanted the chairs back, but there was no way we were going to say yes.  By that time, all the shady spots on the beach were taken so we headed back to the room, which was probably the best thing that could have happened to me because I needed to sleep for a little while and give the pina coladas a break

I was a little tipsy and thought this towel animal was pretty cool

I don't know what prompted this, but on the way back to our room that afternoon, Joel had the nerve to say to me:  "Why do I have to be the responsible one?"  Really?!?!  The responsible one???  I hardly ever drink and the one time I do, he's worried because he has to be the responsible one?  Let's just say I wasn't very happy and it didn't help that I had been drinking. 

The rest of our vacation was pretty calm and relaxing.  I was able to read a couple of books, and take a few naps.  Joel enjoyed all the free alcohol and watching people walk the beach.  Even with sitting in the shade, wearing a big hat, and applying and re-applying either SPF50 or 85 sunscreen, we both still got burnt.  Joel looked like a backwards raccoon one night because his face was so burnt!

There wasn't much of a beach on our resort, but we had another resort right beside ours.  We walked over to the pier and then on down to the other resorts beach one day and it was a lot nicer than ours.  A big portion of our beach was covered in seaweed and had sandbags along it.  I don't think we'd stay at the resort we were at again, but we know what to look for if we do it again. 

Our beach....

Looking at our resort/beach from the pier

Beach at the resort beside ours...much nicer!

Monday morning before heading to the airport

We headed home on Monday and we both were ready to see our baby girl.  We sure missed her!!  Our shuttle picked us up from the resort around 8:30 and our flight was at noon.  We didn't get to Mom's to get Ainsley until 5, so it made for a very long day.  But, seeing her face when we walked in was priceless!   She looked at each of us and just stared at us for a few seconds like:  Is that really Mommy and Daddy?!?!  She then came over to me and once I picked her up, she laid her head on my shoulder and just hugged me.  She NEVER does that any more and she made my entire week.

It was so hard to leave Ainsley, but we knew she'd have lots of fun staying with everyone and getting spoiled rotten.  She stayed with Jim and Rita Wednesday night and then Mom picked her up Thursday night and took her home with her.  Mom and Mark then loaded her up and took her down to Thomas and Jamie's Friday evening to stay for a few nights.  Ainsley had her first taste of alligator on Saturday night and they said she liked it.  My poor baby was out in public for the first half of Saturday with her dress on backwards before Mom (or someone) noticed.  I'm glad she was down in Missouri and not around home so noone really knew her!  Ainsley then went to Dad's Sunday afternoon to stay the night.  We picked her up from Mom's on Monday evening after we got home.

I got the picture below from Tanner on Thursday night.  Attached to the picture was this text:  bananas + milk + Little Einstein's=Ainsley thinking I'm the best Uncle.  And this was at 10:45 at night!

Tanner says Ainsley said Tanner over the weekend, even though it sounded more like "ner", but I don't know if I believe him.  She won't say it for us.  She did, however, come home knowing how to make a "fart" sound.  Mom got her to say Grandma again, but I think she was saying it a few days before we left.

I know Joel and I had a good time on vacation, and I'm pretty sure Ainsley had a good time while we were gone also.