New shoes, playing in the fountains, 17 months old, and sleep these days!

I wanted to post some pictures and give a little update on this wonderful person! She's growing up so fast, soon she'll be a year and a half!! Every day she's less of a baby and more of a kid. She does more and more and is learning like the little sponge she is! Just this afternoon she helped me make macaroni & cheese. She looked at the box and got the cow milk and butter and cheese that we needed. Well, we didn't need cheese, but she heard me say cheese and insisted on giving me the Parmesan cheese from the fridge. Haha.

We had a heat wave here the last few days, which is not fun. It gets to be over 90 degrees in our apartment. So on Father's day, June 19th, we spent some time at the air conditioned mall and used a gift card to get Makena a new pair of shoes! I know I've never bought a pair of $52 shoes for myself... but it's important to get quality shoes for these early walking years. :)

She's a size 6/6.5 now. Extra wide. The shoe guy (the owner of Howard's Children Shoes in Vallco Mall) took one look at her feet and said they were so wide that we'd probably have a hard time finding shoes to fit them as she grows. Yikes? lol. He also said her toes are a high risk of getting ingrown toenails, and to cut them squared, not rounded. Ok then Mr shoe guy!

It was still hot when we left the mall so we had dinner at Aqui. I'm obsessed with the sampler dish there, the beans and hummus and guac and huge bowl of chips...yummy AND cheap meal! We also split a salad that had apples and walnuts and mango in it. Delicious. Makena is getting harder to take out to eat which sucks. She is starting to hate the highchairs, but won't stay in a booster seat, and just wants to climb and around. She's not much of an eater, so she finishes her food quickly then wants to play.

We went to the park where we saw some splash fountains, and my mom said she saw them turned on the other day. And sure enough the water was on and there was nobody else playing so we had it to ourselves. What a little hidden gem! Makena had a total blast!! Good thing her new shoes are waterproof, because though she was a bit cautious first, she soon became soaked!



The next very hot day was Makena's 17 month birthday! lol. We dropped off Pam at work and went to McKenzie Park in Los Altos for a La Leche League enrichment meeting/park play day! I really like the other moms in that group, I love Monday's when I'm able to make the meetings. It's so nice to connect with other moms who share similar parenting views. And there are 3 other kids who were all born within a week or so of Makena, so that's super cute and fun!


Then I tried to get her to nap in the car but she didn't feel like napping. Making it the 4th day that she's gone without a nap in the past month. On Memorial day last month we went to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with my parents and cousin Kevin who was visiting, and Makena didn't nap the entire day. That was the first time, and amazingly she was in a fine mood. Boo to disappearing naps... She did fall asleep the second we started driving home, and of course woke up as we got home and wouldn't fall back to sleep for another hour.

But anyway. So she didn't nap and it was hot in the car. Really hot. Our a/c is broken at the moment and her car seat is black so she was all sweaty. :( We went and got a free cupcake at Sprinkles and then stopped at Starbucks for some free ice water! We needed to kill time before picking up Pam.
She's had a fascination with cups and water since she was a few months old, and she still loves to drink water and play with cups of water! She especially loves transferring water back and forth between cups. And taking straws out. And poking her finger through the straw hole to try and get the ice. lol.

About a week ago we decided to switch up our sleeping arrangements. Again. She's been sleeping between us in bed, on our mattress on the floor, and it usually is fine but was getting cramped and sometimes Pam doesn't sleep well or I feel frustrated that I can't roll over after nursing her without waking her up. And we wanted to clear out space in her room, which I love so much because it's decorated so adorably but the truth is, we need that space for storage. Our rent was raised last month (to $1,295 from $1,199) and we are so totally struggling to pay every single bill. It's been a really rough time. This month marks the one year anniversary since Pam was fired, and every time we think we are starting to do okay with money we get hit with something else. Being a grown up is hard sometimes.

Instead of moving to a smaller crappier apartment in a less desirable area we have made the decision to stop paying our monthly storage unit expense and turn Makena's bedroom into our storage space. I'm selling a lot of her outgrown baby toys and stuff on craigslist, and we moved her crib to make room for all our stuff. So we moved it into our room, and set it up as a side car next to our bed! We also took our box spring out of her room and now have a somewhat normal bed!
It's been working out great, she loves her bed, and starts out the night there and then sometimes in the early morning hours when she wakes I scoot her over to me to nurse and snuggle and sleep longer. The last 2 nights she has slept the entire night through without waking up. She's done this before, plenty of times, but it's always exciting!

The night of the 20th we dressed her in this Elmo onesie to get her excited about the next day, when we had tickets to see Sesame Street Live. I'll post all about that soon!

She tossed and turned all that night, we joked that she was excited about the show.

So, in ending this post, yep, our daughter is pretty darn awesome. Every day just gets better. She's just so overflowing with amazingness.
P.S. She came out of the room with her towel on her head and my sun glasses, and grabbed my keys out of the diaper bag and held them up to the door while saying "Bye!" to me. She is so silly, so sweet, and so the perfect baby for me!

I love her.