Dating.

While Bob and I both firmly agree that Bailey will not be allowed to date until she's 30, we are okay with supervised play dates in the meantime. ;-)

Bailey continues to spend time with her best bud, Griffen. They see each other regularly but it had been a while since they had an opportunity to really play together. To remedy this (and so Griffen's mom, Lisa, and I can visit!), we had a play date Wednesday. It's so much fun to watch them grow up together. They are so close in age (3 weeks difference) that their developmental milestones are virtually the same which makes for some fun play!

Here are some cute pictures from their date (including a kiss!):

Bailey got lots more loving on Thursday when Grandma Bilyeu came up for a visit. Talk about a great week!

Finally!

It's been a week since my last post. A week? Really? Where does the time go?!? I always have a mental count of how long it's been since I last updated the blog. That awareness is coupled with grand intentions of updating it with new stories and pictures. And yet something always seems to distract, occupy or otherwise deter me from blogging. Better late than never, though, right?

Bailey had the good fortune of visiting with Grandpa Buck twice last week. He even came with us to Royals Fan Fest Thursday night. I brought my camera but, wouldn't you know, the battery died after only a couple pictures. Now that she's walking, Bailey likes to wander around a lot. She spent a lot of time toddling around Fan Fest waving at random people (while I chased behind her!).

Saturday night we went to a Missouri Comets indoor soccer game. We have season tickets and have been to several games already so Bailey is familiar with the routine. She's well known by a few of the staff. She loves the attention she gets. She knows how to work a crowd!

We hoped to have a relaxing day at home Sunday...but woke up to discover that our furnace was broken. It was a chilly 65-degrees when we woke up (which, looking back, was tropical compared to the 52-degrees it was in our house Monday morning!). We don't know how long it had been out but our efforts to revive it were futile. The repair man advised that they would be out first thing Monday morning.

We opted to seek warmth and comfort for a few hours at Grandma and Grandpa Kerste's house! Bailey loved playing with Grandma and Grandpa Kerste. She wore herself out and took a short nap on me.

She woke up all sweaty (like she always does when she naps on someone) and cuddled with Grandma.

Then she finally caught up with their kitten, Stinker! Stinker had been trying his best to steer clear of Bailey as she happily chased after him waving as she walked.

We headed back home Sunday night and settled in to our bedrooms. We had space heaters in Bailey's room and our room so we were comfortable overnight. Monday morning it was confirmed that our furnace was a goner. Shucks. So let me introduce you to the newest addition to the Buck household - our new Lennox furnace!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention - we blew a fuse while trying to use one of our space heaters in the basement Sunday morning...and consequently fried our television. Talk about an unlucky day, huh? It's an older TV that literally weighs 240 pounds so it's not going anywhere until we get help to haul it away. In the meantime we put our other television in front of it. I jokingly dubbed it "picture in a picture". We will have to make due for a while!

Today has been nice, as we are ever so grateful for a warm house! I took Bailey to "rhyme time" at the library this morning. There was quite a crowd and I always enjoy seeing how many different people Bailey will wave at. This afternoon we played downstairs and she crawled under a chair (one of our many oh-so-sophisticated obstacles we set up as "baby gates"). She was amused until she couldn't figure out how to get back out!

Never fear, I won't leave you with that sad face. Here is a happy one that followed shortly after I rescued her:

Weaned?!

I told you last week that Bailey was no longer breastfeeding. This week we took the next big step and we stopped the bottle of formula at bedtime. Gasp! Bob and I were very nervous about how it would go down but it went surprisingly well (at least so far). Thank goodness for her pacifier!

We got Bailey a special sippy cup to replace her bottle - okay, it's not really anything special but it does have fish on it and she likes that! We replaced the formula with whole milk. The rest of the bedtime routine - book, prayers, and rocking - remained the same.

This was night #2 without her bedtime bottle and I would probably dare to say that it was slightly easier than last night (less fidgeting in her crib after we put her down). We have our fingers crossed that she continues to cooperate and will forget all about baby bottles and formula sooner rather than later!

Here are some pictures of her last night with her new bedtime sippy cup:

Fine Dining

Bailey has her very own plates now. She's big time! Grandma Buck gave us these sectioned plates last month and we finally went to Babies R Us to get the "easi mat" to use with them. The mat sticks to the high chair tray (static maybe?) and the plate sticks to the mat via a suction cup. It's great because Bailey can't get the plate off to throw it on the floor - at least not yet!

Does a body good!

Well, it's official - Bailey is done breastfeeding. Actually, it's been a week that she's been done but I guess I was hesitant to publicly declare it for fear of a relapse or something. Ha ha!

For the last few months, Bailey was breastfeeding about three times a day - once in the morning and then before both of her naps. I had plans to wean her after she turned one (Big kudos to me for making it to a year, if I do say so myself!!). As it turned out, she weaned herself from the naptime feedings. When she was sick with this last cold, she didn't want to breastfeed before her naps. She would still breastfeed in the morning but not before her naps. Weird, huh? And I thought those naptime feedings would be the difficult ones to phase out!

Starting last Monday, I cut out the morning feeding too. I altered our morning routine a bit to try to distract her and I guess it worked because she didn't seem to notice (or care) that she wasn't breastfeeding anymore.

We have been ready to introduce whole milk for a while now but wanted to wait until Bailey was well. She had a pretty bad cough with this last cold and we didn't want to exacerbate her mucus with the added dairy. She still has a lingering cough but we felt she was well enough to start drinking milk today. I gave her a glass of milk with each of her meals. She seemed to like it. And, bonus, I think the milk mustache is super cute on her!

Another 'first' for today . . . SNOW! We had an accumulating snowfall overnight so I took Bailey out in the snow for the first time. She was not impressed. In fact, she didn't like it at all. I'm not sure if it was her impaired mobility (due in part to the depth of the snow as well as the 84 layers of clothing I put on her!) that was so upsetting but she cried. Thus our time out in the snow was limited. I think I spent more time getting us both dressed to go out than we actually spent outside!

Baby Steps

Bailey has been taking a few steps here and there this last month. It usually takes some coaxing, though.

Today, however, she showed an interest in walking more on her own. As in, without any prompting from us! It's exciting. And ADORABLE.

I took this video of her walking on my cell phone this afternoon:

Immediately after I stopped recording she turned around and walked back toward the gate...but she wiped out just as she approached it. She fell back and hit her head (thankfully it's carpet!). She cried and I assured her that she was fine. After all, there are many, many more tumbles ahead in her toddling future!

Crawling is still her primary means of transportation at this time but who knows how much longer that will last. Suddenly I'm not sure I'm ready to parent an actual (literal) toddler!

A New Year

2011. Wow. It still sounds weird to say. I guess that's fair. It is only Day 2. I'm sure the awkwardness of a new year - you know, when you still date things "2010" out of habit, etc - will wear off soon enough.

Bob and I were excited to usher in a new year, as we are looking forward to another year full of delightful milestones and accomplishments for our beautiful daughter. 2010 was nothing short of AMAZING and I am confident 2011 will only be better!

Now, don't get me wrong, when I said we were excited to usher in the new year, that doesn't mean that we actually stayed up until midnight. Nope. We were in bed by 11. Ha ha! Bailey, of course, didn't even know it was a special night so she was in bed by 9:30. I'm sure it won't be much longer before she figures it out and starts asking to stay up late on those special occasions!

Bailey has been sick the past few days. She started sneezing on Wednesday and it went downhill from there. She must have sneezed 382 times Wednesday. Seriously. By Wednesday night, her nose was running and we began the dreaded quest to minimize the amount of snot smeared across her face and hands at any given time. She also developed a pretty bad cough with this cold. She even has long coughing spells when she's trying to sleep. It's pretty sad. Fortunately, she has been afebrile so at least we have that to be thankful for. I feel sad for her because I can only imagine she feels pretty miserable at times. My instinct is to medicate her for her symptoms (decongestant, etc.) but she's too young for that. All we can do is slather her chest with menthol rub, run a humidifier, and keep wipe-wipe-wiping at her nose.

All in all, she's been in pretty decent spirits. I managed to put away all the Christmas decorations on New Years Eve (during the day) so we finally had some room to put together the toy that Santa Claus brought her. It was a pretty big hit!