Happy Birthday Eve!

It's hard to believe that one year ago today I went to Riverside Hospital to kick my kid out of my belly. In case you can't remember a year back, I had to be induced since Lauren was apparently perfectly content being a parasite. My original due date was 9/19, and a week after that we took matters into our own hands (well, my doctor's anyways). 20 hours later, Lauren arrived and my life hasn't been the same since.

To put things in perspective, here's Lauren(with Tenzin) when she was a little over a month old...she's the one with the bow on the shirt:



Now, here's Lauren last weekend:


In the first picture she couldn't do much of anything, except eat, sleep and fill a diaper. Now she's walking. It's amazing that someone can change so much in such a short period of time.

We're really excited that Grandpa and Grandma Bilek are arriving tomorrow to begin 3 days of birthday festivities. They haven't seen Lauren since Memorial Day, when she wasn't even crawling yet. I can't wait to see how much they have with the wee one.

I'll post more after the monkey-themed birthday party on the weekend. Wish me luck in decorating a cake shaped like a monkey...I haven't used cake decorating tools in many years, so it will be an adventure!

No stories, just pics

Sorry, I'm too lazy to come up with something witty, funny and cute to say about Lauren. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. If a picture's worth 1,000 words, this post is 7,000 words long.

4.5 XW

Hmmm, is that the latest version of Adobe Acrobat? The strength of the last earthquake to hit Indonesia? No, it's just Lauren's shoe size. Since she's starting to walk, I figured it was time to get her a proper pair of shoes. Of course she hasn't worn shoes in roughly 3-4 months, so she wasn't overly thrilled with this new development. I had no clue what size shoe she wore, so we went to Stride Rite to have her officially measured. After managing to get Lauren to stand on the foot-measuring device long enough for the salesperson to figure it out, we landed on 4.5 XW, as in Xtra Wide. I think Lauren's feet are basically squares. Anyways, being so well-endowed in the foot department severely limited our shoe selection. Still, we ended up with these.

I think they'll look smashing with her pink OSU jersey and gray bootleg leggings. But not so great with her new birthday dress. We're still working on that.

Lauren likes monkeys

And chimpanzees, and gorillas. Especially this one.


It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but it's from a book called Touch and Feel Baby Animals. It's part of a box set of Touch and Feel books I bought for her awhile ago. The pictures on each page have portions that are texturized to feel like the animal. So, a lion has a big furry mane, and this gorilla is fuzzy, too. She likes this baby gorilla so much gives it big, sloppy, open-mouthed baby kisses whenver she sees it. Same with the chimpanzee in Beaky's Jungle. And the stuffed gorilla the Thornburgs got her for Christmas. And the little stuffed monkey that she's not allowed to play with anymore because it's so crusty. You get the idea.

Here's what I think is cool. She somehow understands that all of these different types of animals are in the "monkey" family. They all look very different, but she loves them all the same. She's turning more and more into a little person instead of a big blob of goo every day! Here she is reading a different book. Sorry, no cute pictures of monkey kissing. You know how that goes...

Lauren's first Buckeye jersey

I couldn't bring myself to put Lauren in an OSU cheerleader outfit, but a pink football jersey works just as well, in my book.


Not that she could watch the game. It was on the crappy Big Ten network, which 2 of the 3 cable providers in Columbus don't carry. I won't go into details, you can read for yourself. She won't be watching it this weekend either since the long-awaited matchup between OSU and Akron is again on BTN.

Next step: work on O-H-I-O.

Daycare for stay at home parents. Hmm.

That's kind of how Mango's Place describes their service. No, it's not a daycare run by Chris Kattan. Thank God.



Mango's Place is a drop-in daycare, targeting stay-at-home parents who need someone to watch their kids while they go to an appointment, run errands, sleep, etc. I didn't know these places existed in Columbus until yesterday. We are very fortunate to have my mom in town to provide excellent child care services at very reasonable prices (read: free). But sometimes she has schedule changes, or Chris needs some time on his days off work to handle some stuff. I think we've found our solution. Mango's will watch your kid for up to 4 hours. You just pay a yearly membership fee, plus an hourly rate.

We went to check it out yesterday, and it looked like a great solution. All the kids seemed to be having a great time and the people were really nice. So, it looks like we have a new child care option.

Pray for us all.

Don't worry, we're all fine. Except that Lauren is.....WALKING!!!!!

I have a feeling some really bad falls are coming up. She thinks she can go faster than she can, so she's taken a couple of good headers. I don't understand why she doesn't bruise, though. Is that some freakish baby thing? Maybe they fall so much the body's like, "Eh, no point in causing alarm. Many more to come." The only exception is her knees. Since she's started crawling, she has perma-bruises on both knees. I guess that's our own fault for having hardwood floors instead of carpet. They don't seem to bother her, though.

Back to the walking, though. She's been standing and cruising really well for several weeks now. She'd do a sort of controlled fall from one piece of furniture to the next, but would never try to take a step away from anything. Then the Thornburgs came over on Labor Day. Obviously time for Lauren to show off. So, she was standing holding on to her pack and play. Then she let go, and got this look on her face that seemed to say, "Okay, I'm gonna do it. Are you watching? No, really, are you watching? I'm really gonna do it this time!" She looked down at her feet, and took two steps straight into the middle of the room. Then she fell. Of course we were all clapping and making ridiculous parent noises, so no crying. We thought it was a fluke.

Then yesterday I got a call from my mom, who was watching her while Chris and I worked. I picked up the phone, and practically before I could say hello she said, "Your daughter took eight steps! All the way from the couch to the TV!" That's when I knew it was over. All night she kept trying to walk, but kept falling flat on her face. I think she was tired, so her coordination wasn't so good. And she thinks she can run the 100m dash in about 4 seconds, but her feet don't know that.

This is what our living room looked like when she was just crawling.


I can't really imagine a worse end result, but I'm sure Lauren will figure something out.