personality.

this little girl gets cuter and cuter every day. who knew that was even possible?? she's such a little person now. her personality comes out in everything she does. now she pretends to feed her bear and baby, either putting food up to their mouths or her big plastic fork. she also likes to cover up her stuffed animals and tell them nigh-nigh.

another one of her favorites to carry around my lunch bag and put things in it. now we know to look in that bag if we're missing something. like i found my phone in there amongst many other things. she'll grab a bad and say "bye-bye!" or grab my keys ("keys keys keys") and head for the door.

fin also likes to take her stuffed animals for rides on her little truck.

she now calls herself "nene." it's awesome. sometimes when she does something she's not supposed to she'll say "oh nene." she'll say it all exasperated like i would. so while i'd like to be mad she's nibbling on the coffee table, i have to laugh...for now. it's also funny when she throws food and says "oh geez." she's getting to the point where she copies just about everything i say. clearly i say "oh geez" quite a bit. she's gonna turn me in!

eat.

erin likes to make fun of my first time mom-ness every once and a while. i think she forgets she too was like this with grace and is a little more lax the second time around.  one of her favorite things to pick on me about is how i feed fin. i'm not SUPER strict with what i feed her, but i do try to only feed her food that actually benefits her, not just fills her up. however, b and i don't really eat like this so some nights fin eats something different than us. for instance, the other night we were going to be having meat lovers pizza (look, i hadn't been to the store in a while). i'm not totally opposed to fin having pizza, she's definitely had it before, but that night i gave her falafel balls and green beans. so after she had her chickpea balls and steamed green beans (which she loves, by the way), we pigged out on pizza....that definitely had bacon on it. sometimes i'm too tired to care and she'll eat whatever we're having. i just figure i might as well keep feeding her the good stuff while she still likes it. i'm afraid once she tries the "bad" stuff she wont go back to the healthy stuff. the only time she's really had sweets was on her birthday and ever since then we can't eat cupcakes in front of her b/c she definitely knows what they are now. i don't give her juice b/c well, she likes milk and water. i make her crackers (i like to know what's in them, but of course she's had store bought ones), she eats quinoa mac and cheese AND regular mac and cheese, she eats organic and non-organic fruits and veggies and she's only had whipped cream once b/c grandpa was trying to win her over. so it's not that much work to feed her well, i'm not crazy control freak about it and she doesn't know any different. :)

chatty.

our girl is quite the chatty cathy. she tries to repeat just about everything she hears. i'm trying to remember everything she says, so here goes:

hi
bye (sometimes bu-bye)
ball
bubble (bu-bu)
mama
dada
llama (mama)
ride (ise) it's a strange word she says for ride, but we definitely know what she means
peas
please (peas)
eyes
more (mu)
baby
lamby (meme)
finley (nene)
minnie
ruby (be)
box (bo)
hot
bow
blow (bow)
bar
water (wawa)
snack (na)
nigh night (night night)
teeth (tee, says the same for toothbrush)
mine (luckily she doesn't know what it means really)
banana (nana)
milk (milk)

geez. when i put it in a list like that it looks like a ton! she is a determined little booger when it comes to talking. she'll stare at my mouth and try to say it herself. there are some other things she says quite a bit that we can't quite figure out the meaning of. it's so fun hearing her little voice and actually understanding (a little) what she's trying to tell us! no we need to get them all on video.

give.

i am determined to raise my kid(s) to be charitable, to think of others before themselves and to always give back. we're certainly not the richest people in the world (at least not monetarily), but we have everything we could possibly need/want. because of this it was important to me to make fin's birthday about giving. when i was thinking about how we were going to give i immediately thought of books. books are important for so many reasons and finley's already a bookworm so it made complete sense. as a teacher i saw kids that came from homes that didn't have books. homes where kids weren't read to. homes where books weren't important. it's a whole different world from what brandon and i are used to, but it exists.  i did some research and called the hospital where she was born. it was almost brand new when i had her there (they delivered their first baby there in feb) so i thought they might need some help building their library. when i called the woman in volunteer services was so grateful to be getting books. they have racks in the waiting rooms but no books. NONE. so while they don't have a children's hospital there, of course there are kids that come in with their families. hopefully the 61 books we donated will help keep kids entertained, happy, comforted, distracted, and maybe give them a little reading practice. you can take the girl out of teaching, but you can't take the teaching out of the girl. :)

we went last week to drop off the books and it was great. the woman met us downstairs and once again said how thankful she is. she took a few pictures and she should be e-mailing them to me. hopefully we can keep this going for birthdays. i know one day she's going to care about presents, i just hope she also cares giving back.

rainbow.

we had the best birthday celebration ever. for real. when fin was about 6 months old i saw a bunch of pictures of rainbow birthday parties and decided way back then that that is what i wanted to do. i collected ideas for a long time and then a few months ago i started working on making decorations and such. yes, a few months ago. look, i'm not a procrastinator. i don't like feeling rushed and i had a vision in my head that i wanted to execute. i'm proud to say all the food was homemade (with some help from erin!) and a lot of the decorations were homemade also. i made weekly trips to the dollar store and hobby lobby (luckily they're right next to each other) looking for sales and cheaper alternatives. i wanted her big day to be special, but definitely didn't want to break the bank. hence the homemade decorations. anyways, it turned out perfectly, not just because of the food and decor, but because we had all our family and good friends to celebrate with us.

tourist.

over spring break mom, erin, grace and andrew visited for a few days! normally they only end up staying one night b/c andrew doesn't sleep so well here, but this time it wasn't a problem at all...thank goodness. we were extra prepared. we had the pack n' play and an air mattress set up in the extra room just in case erin had to sleep in there with him, but it never got used. so erin slept on the air mattress in the guest room and mom and grace slept in the real bed in the guest room. everyone slept well (at night) so we could be houston tourists during the day. we went to the children's museum one day and it. was. CROWDED. since it was spring break, going to the museum was not a unique a idea. i thought i was just going to have to wait outside with fin until we finally found the tot room for the babies. it was so nice up there and not nearly as crowded as downstairs. i think even grace had enough of all the people. sadly she wasn't allowed to play with the babies in the tot room b/c the cut off age is 3. she was pretty upset about it. in fact, when brandon got home from work that night the first thing grace told him was "i had a disaster at the museum. i was bawling." it was so sad. :(

the next day we went to the rodeo. brandon took the day off to come to fin's first rodeo. i was very thankful to have the help. it's a little different doing things with a baby than by yourself. we packed up like we were going to be gone for days and headed out. we've actually never been to the rodeo so we weren't sure what to expect, but it too was extremely crowded. besides that, it was a lot of fun. it'll be easier to take fin to these kinds of things when she can walk. hmmmm... as i'm typing that i'm thinking that might not be true. it's just hard with her now b/c she wants to get out and crawl around, but that wasn't exactly going to happen. we had some lunch there, but brought an avocado for fin to have since rodeo food isn't exactly the most healthy. good thing too since we tried giving her some turkey leg, but she wanted none of it. i'm not sure fin was all too impressed with the rodeo. i'm definitely looking forward to taking her again in the future!

we always have a great time when the shuley clan is here. it's especially fun now because the babies are getting older and actually interacting now.

nutshell.

my sweet, sweet finley,

where has the time gone?? last year on the morning of the 16th i was telling our family not to drive all the way to houston. "i don't know if they're contractions, mom. they don't hurt THAT bad. i'm not like pulling my hair out like you see in the movies." i told coco. daddy was putting in your carseat just in case it was really go time. i didn't want to get everyone's hope up, including my own. we were so ready to meet you, but terrified at the same time. what the heck do you do with a baby?? i mean we had the swing set up, your room was perfection, the pack n' play all ready for you to sleep peacefully in. bags were packed, we'd read books and on paper we were "ready" but were we really?

i guess that's the beauty of this whole thing. you didn't have any expectations and neither did we. sure we expected you to cry all the time and never sleep, but you were the opposite. of course you cried and we had no idea why, but we learned how to calm you down. and sleep? we couldn't have asked for a better sleeper. now when you first get a baby home they sleep a lot. then after a couple weeks of sleeping a lot (and you, fin, were a champion sleeper), babies are up a bit more during the day. little by little there's more awake time. like you were breaking us in slowly. you gave us time to figure out what the heck to do with you. there were days when you wouldn't want to sleep, but luckily those were few and far between. at least i think. i don't think my mind is sugar coating it. don't get me wrong. there were days that i would call your daddy to make sure he was coming home at a decent time. i needed back up. and being the awesome daddy/husband he is, he would be home at a good time and step in. those first few weeks (heck, even months, ok, even now) we had no idea what we were doing. but at the end of the day if we were all alive and mostly happy, we called it a success. small steps for sure at the beginning.

it's weird how things just fell into place naturally. we all figured each other out, fell into a routine and the first year has gone amazingly smoothly. you got pink eye (twice, thanks dad!), a cold around 7 months and who knows what close to a year old. i think that's a pretty good track record for the first year. you hit every milestone you were "supposed" to and are certainly not so much a baby anymore. when i took you out i'd get comments about how calm i was. well what else are you supposed to do? i think part of the reason you're so easy going is b/c we are. it was a conscious decision when you were screaming you're head off that we would be calm/ i certainly think babies pick up on nerves and tension. no need to add to all that business. i figured we'd eventually get you calmed down. we still get comments about how "great" you are in public. this is all i know so i'm not sure how other babies are in stores, but i thank my lucky stars we got an easy going baby. not to say you don't have your moments, but we were definitely blessed with a laid back baby.

i learned a lot about myself too. NOTHING can compare to being a mom. nothing. no seriously, nothing. who knew you could love someone so much? who knew you could function and put on a happy face with such little sleep? who knew you could be so hard on yourself? i'm still mad at myself for not breastfeeding longer. that's probably my biggest/only regret thus far. clearly i need to let it go. you're happy, smart, healthy and beautiful. we must be doing something right! sometimes i still can't believe you're all ours. sometimes i miss being pregnant and having you all to myself. i miss being able to protect you from just about everything. but then i see you walking around, talking to your toys and i can't wait to see what you do next. you surprise us everyday.

so finley, thank you. thank you for teaching me so much. thank you for loving me just as i am. and thank you for picking me.