Jessica's Birthday Celebration

On Saturday, we went to SLC to spend the day with my sisters (Megan and Jessica) and my brother-in-law (Matt) to celebrate Jessica's birthday. It was a gorgeous day outside (70 degrees) and very windy, so we went to the park to fly some kites. Nate and Uncle Matt did a great job teaching Bridget how to fly the kite.

In fact, they did such a good job she was doing it by herself before too long. It was just too bad her attention span was so short that she would just drop it and walk away after a minute or two.
Can you believe she's not even 16-months-old yet?
She loves to steal my sunglasses.

Can you blame her? She looks so cute in them.

And here's the birthday girl with the Barbie birthday cake she requested I make for her. Apparently 21 is not too old for such a cake.

The rest of the festivities included making and eating homemade personal size pizzas (sorry no pics of that) and eating cake with homemade ice cream. Yum!

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

Lately, Bridget has decided that she likes to sit on her toy drum because it is just the right height for her. When she was playing with it on Saturday, she decided to take the lid off and sit on it, and this picture is the result. It was so funny that I could hardly stop laughing and had to take advantage of the photo opportunity. Too bad she didn't find it as funny as I did. And her crazy hair in this picture is from the nap she'd just taken. I promise I would not allow her to go out with it like that in public.

15 Month Stats

Yesterday Bridget had her 15 month checkup, and all is well. She's now 32" tall (90th percentile) which means she's grown an inch in the last 3 months. I'm not surprised because most of her pants have started to look a little short lately which means spring needs to come so I can buy her a new warm weather wardrobe. She's slimmed down to 25.5 lbs. (80-85th percentile), so she only gained half a pound in the last 3 months. If I ran around as much as she does, I'd probably slim down too. And for the first time in her life she's below the 90th percentile in something. Her head measurement only changed a tiny bit, and she's still off the charts in that area. She only got one shot this visit and handled it very well. I was a little concerned she might have pink eye because one of her eyes was looking like it yesterday (minus the goop), but it seems to be better today.

Our Little Helper

We decided it was time for Bridget to start earning her keep around here, and laundry is one of those tasks where she's actually more of a help than a hindrance. Once she empties the clothes from the dryer into the basket, I carry it upstairs so she can immediately start emptying it onto the floor while I try to fold and put away as fast as I can. Once she's emptied all of the contents onto the floor, she puts them all back in the basket and decides she's done. It cracks me up how she does the exact same thing every time without fail, and I do appreciate her help.

Have No Fear, Her Hair is Here

For months, people have commented on Bridget's lack of hair, and I've been wondering if it would ever fill in and be long enough to do anything with it. Although it still isn't long enough for a ponytail of any sort (due to the fact that the hair on top is still really short), it doesn't bother me anymore because she has the cutest curls now! She definitely is her mother's daughter, and someday she'll probably hate me for giving her curly hair just like I've always hated mine. And I have to give Nate props because he's in charge of styling her hair during the week and does a very good job.

A Few More Milestones

So I haven't been blogging lately not because I'm lazy. Our lives have been fairly mundane, so it's a good thing we have Bridget to keep it somewhat interesting. Here's just a few of her recent accomplishments:

• She's finally mastered going down the stairs, and is so good at it that she goes up and down whenever she feels like it, carting all sorts of toys or random objects with her. In fact, we hardly ever shut the baby gate anymore. And one of her favorite things to do is go down one or two steps, sit, and flip through her books. Nate and I are both loving not having to carry her anymore!


• Another one of her new skills I'm loving is her ability to clean up after herself - somewhat. If I tell her to clean something up she usually does especially if I get her started. Our house is nowhere near as tidy as I'd like, but it's a little better.


• Her vocabulary is increasing and she's recently added "baby" and "cougar" or as she says it "ca-ga." I know it's a weird word to pick up on, but she loves the cougar on my BYU sweatshirt and loves trying to repeat it when I say it. Her favorite words are by far "Dada" and "yuck," and both are said more times a day than I can count.


• Currently, she's learning to climb up onto the couch but is only successful part of the time.


• Teething seems to be an almost constant event with her. She just got her 3rd molar and from the way she's been acting today I wouldn't be surprised if the 4th is on its way soon.


• She's also learned how to show people that she's one. If you ask her "how old are you?" she holds up her pointer finger (if she's up to performing and isn't holding something in her hand).

Christmas in Portland

Once again, I'm slow to post, but it's better late than never. We were fortunate to be able to fly to Portland, OR to spend Christmas with my family this year. Even though this is our 3rd Christmas since we've been married, it's the first we've spent with my side of the family. The group included Mark and Mark, Jill, Rob, Elaine, Charlotte, Megan, and us. Unfortunately the weather in Portland was really bad for several days before we were scheduled to leave, and we were very nervous that we might not be able to get there. As luck would have it, the weather was great leaving home early Christmas Eve morning and only snowing slightly when we got to Portland.

Because of the bad weather there, we mostly stayed in the house relaxing, visiting, eating, playing with the kids, watching TV and playing video games. Bridget thought playing with her cousins Charlotte and Elaine was pretty great and also enjoyed the new toys all of them got for Christmas.

As far as Christmas festivities, we had our usual big dinner on Christmas Eve followed by the traditional rice pudding game which my sister, Jill, won.

Before the kids went to bed, they each opened a new pair of PJs from Aunt Megan. Bridget loves to open presents after all the practice she got from her birthday and didn't want to stop at just one.

This is Bridget admiring the Wonder Pets that Elaine got from Santa on Christmas morning. Bridget wasn't enjoying the present opening as much because she was ready for a nap at this point due to the fact that she'd been up since 5 am.

One of her favorite toys was this telephone from Jill and Rob, and she was constantly dragging it around.

While we were there we discovered that Bridget and Charlotte had matching PJs so we just had to get a picture. Jill and I tried our best to get the 3 kiddies to pose for a picture, and this was the best we could do.

This video shows a bit of everyone enjoying Christmas morning. Bridget had great fun for days playing with an empty wrapping paper roll as evidenced here, and the rest of us are enjoying the yummy Crème Brûlée French Toast and bacon in our PJs.

Family Christmas Party

Saturday night we attended a Christmas party with Nate's extended family. It was just the usual stuff - lots of delicious food and a visit from Santa for the kids. Bridget loved the opportunity to run around and play with other kids and took a special liking to her 2nd cousin Caleb who's about 6 months older than she is. When she saw him, she went right up to him and was trying to hug and kiss him. She got a hug out of him the first time, and then we she tried to do it again a few minutes later, she gave him a big open mouth kiss right on his mouth! It was hysterical to watch, and luckily we got it on video. I don't know why she decided she needed to kiss him because she doesn't usually give kisses away so freely.

Being the friendly, outgoing girl that she is, she had no qualms about sitting on Santa's lap.

Daily Rituals

A couple of Bridget's daily activities include emptying the kitchen drawer containing all the dishtowels and bibs and the drawer with all of the plastic food containers. As soon as she sees me putting anything away, she quickly tries to get them back out. I can't wait until she understands the concept of cleaning up after herself...that day can't come quickly enough for me. It's daily rituals like this that make me wonder why I bought her toys for Christmas when it's the simple things that entertain her.

Bridget's 1 Year Stats

Today Nate and I took Bridget to the pediatrician for her 1-year checkup. Developmentally she's doing everything she's supposed to be doing, and she's still very healthy and growing well. She weighs 25 lbs. (98th percentile), is 31 inches tall (95th percentile) and her head is 19.25 inches (above 98th percentile). I keep thinking that one of these days her growth will slow down a little bit and she might actually be below the 90th percentile in something, but not yet. She runs around a lot, so maybe that will start to slow her weight down. Amazingly, she handled her 5 shots very well too. She screamed and shed a few tears, but only for about a minute. And her hemoglobin was tested to make sure her iron levels were good, and they were (thanks to parents who only feed her healthy food). As a treat afterward, we did take her to Coldstone to get her free birthday kiddie cup, but she was only interested in a few bites. She's been drinking whole milk for a few days now, and she doesn't seem to mind the taste at all, but she won't drink it cold. We have to warm it up just a little or she won't take more than a sip. Hopefully she'll stop being so picky soon.

Bridget's First Birthday

On Thanksgiving Day we celebrated Bridget's 1st Birthday. After we spent the early afternoon eating dinner with Nate's immediate and extended family (I think there were 50-60 people), we came back to our house to have Bridget's party. She had a hard time staying away from the presents while we were waiting for family to arrive. She got some fun toys, books, and clothes. She is a true girl because she was just as excited about the clothes as she was the toys.

I finished making/decorating her birthday cake just before midnight the night before.

It was hard to keep her away from the presents while we were waiting for family to arrive.

Here's a video of her opening some of her presents. I didn't include all of them because I didn't want the video to get too long, but it hits a few of the highlights.

My favorite part of the party was watching her eat her cake. She loved it, especially since we're very strict about what she eats and don't let her eat junk food. She ate the whole piece and was quite a mess by the end.

Happy Birthday to our beautiful girl!

What are the Chances?

Today Bridget and I headed to the mall after I got off work, and as we were getting ready to leave the mall a horrible thing happened. Maybe I'll win a nomination for the bad mom award, but here's the story.

I had just put Bridget in her carseat, and she was crabby because it was lunchtime and naptime. She grabbed the keys which I had in my hand, and when I tried to take them back she screamed. So I decided to let her hold them for a minute while I put the stroller and bags in the car. I shut her door to open the door in front of it, and then put my purse and bag on the front seat. I shut that door and was about to open her door again to get the keys to open the trunk when I heard that dreadful "click" of the locks. In the 2 seconds that all the doors were shut, she just happened to hit the lock button on the remote. I immediately started to panic and hoped that she would miraculously hit the unlock button. When I realized that that wasn't going to happen and my cell phone was also locked in the car, I started looking around for strangers that might be able to help me.

A nice woman let me use her phone to call 911. The dispatcher I spoke to told me that "they don't do that" even though I told him my baby was locked in the car. He said I'd have to call a tow truck. I was shocked. Here I am in an emergency situation and the dispatcher won't even help me. What does he want me to do, whip out the yellow pages as I'm standing there in the mall parking lot? He seriously wouldn't help me at all, so I just hung up. The woman who was trying to help me went in the mall to try and get some help from mall security.

In the meantime, I'm standing at the car trying to keep Bridget happy and trying not to cry myself. There weren't a lot of people around, and luckily some more people came to my aid as I was standing at my car crying. Another woman let me use her phone so I could call Nate and have him start heading home to get our spare set of keys. Then a man who was a tool salesman and had his big truck full of tools was able to use something to get into the car and unlock the doors. By this time, Bridget had been locked in for about 30 minutes and there were about 6 strangers gathered around my car trying to help. The mall security guy informed me that the 911 dispatcher should have called a locksmith who would have opened the car for free because a baby was inside. He was very surprised when I told him what the dispatcher didn't offer to do anything like that.

So here's what I've learned from this experience. Don't plan on 911 helping you in emergency situations. Don't let babies play with car keys unless there is at least one door open at all times. And there are a lot of nice strangers out there who will help you when you need it.

Nate's Birthday

I'm such a lazy blogger these days. Nate's birthday was almost 2 weeks ago, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it. You can tell how excited he was to be another year older from the expression on his face (well that and the fact that he hates having his picture taken).

We didn't do anything too exciting. The three of us went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and then Nate opened his super exciting present (a Shop Vac) when we got home. We ate cake after Bridget went to bed since she couldn't have any. I didn't want to make a big birthday cake for just the two of us to eat, so I bought a little one at Coldstone. I think Nate thought I was a little cheesy because I put a candle in it and made him blow it out after I sang to him, but it's the official birthday thing to do so I just had to do it.

Halloween

As usual, I'm a little slow to post, but here are some pictures of Bridget in her 2 costumes. We borrowed both of the costumes, and since she looked so cute in both she wore the bumble bee costume to our ward trunk-or-treat on the 29th and the pumpkin costume on Halloween. She never sits still anymore, so trying to get a good picture was almost impossible. As of the 29th, she's officially walking all over the place. If she falls, she crawls just long enough to get to something where she can pull up to stand, and then she's on her way again. On Halloween, Bridget got to show her cute pumpkin costume off at my school and then at Nate's office. That night we tried to visit as many family members as possible, but she's not a night owl so we didn't get to see everyone. Sorry to those of you we missed. Being the strict mother that I am, she didn't get any candy this year, but I'm sure she'll love it next year.

Pre-Halloween Fun

Last Friday, Megan, Jessica, and Matt came to hang out with us and stay the night. We're so much fun I can't believe they don't come and stay every weekend. We started off the night by eating some of my homemade BBQ chicken pizza and then baked some halloween sugar cookies. We had so much fun that I even stayed up way past my bedtime. The next morning when Bridget woke us up at 6:30, Nate took her and went to Einstein Bagels to get us some delicious breakfast including my favorite pumpkin bagels with pumpkin shmear. Once everybody was finally awake we ate, played with Bridget, and then decorated our sugar cookies. It was a fun-filled weekend, and I'm pretty sure I ate way too many cookies.

11 Months

I seriously can't believe October is almost over, and Bridget is now 11 months. Her 1st birthday will be here before I know it. Nate and I love watching all the new things she's learning to do, and can't help but laugh at some of them. Here's a quick run-down of the last month and a video highlighting some of them:

• She's getting so good at walking, but still resorts to crawling at least half of the time. I love how she walks like a zombie with her arms straight out in front of her to help her get her balance.


• Her ability to understand amazes me. If we're in our living room and we ask her where Jesus is, she gets a big smile on her face and looks at the picture hanging on our fireplace and then at the statue on the piano. I know I'm a little biased, but it's so cute!


• Any time you say to her "no pooping," she smiles and pretends to grunt like she does when she is pooping. Sorry if that's TMI, but it really is funny.


• She got 2 more of her top teeth.


• She loves to play "Where's Bridget?" aka peek-a-boo if there's a blanket or dishtowel nearby.


• Bath time is still one of her favorite activities, and she's not afraid of the water one bit. If we lay her down to wet her hair, she doesn't get scared or cry at all.


• The stranger phobia still hasn't set in, and at this point I don't know that it will. She's a very friendly baby, and will smile or go to most people if Mom or Dad is nearby.


• She finally wore shoes for the first time, and is getting better at walking in them.

A Few Steps

Bridget is getting closer and closer to walking by herself, and a couple of days ago she made some good progress. She will sometimes let go of things (couch, people, etc.) on her own now and take a few steps. She does really well if she goes slow and gets her balance with each step, but sometimes she gets a little too excited and then falls. Anyway, this is a short video of one of her practice sessions. I'll be surprised if she's not walking on her own by her birthday which is only about 5 weeks away!

Recent Changes

We've been in our house now for about 2 months, and in that short time we've already gone through some major changes at church. About a month ago Nate got called to teach Elders Quorum one Sunday a month, and lucky for him he probably now holds some sort of record for serving in a calling for the shortest amount of time and never having to actually do anything with it. Within 2 weeks of receiving that calling, our stake made major boundary changes to every ward and dissolved two of the nine wards (ours being one of them). Obviously everybody from our ward was released from their callings, and on Sunday we attended our new ward for the first time.

On Saturday a member of the bishopric randomly showed up at our door (for some reason they didn't have a phone number for us so he couldn't call first). I happened to still be in my pajamas because I'd been so busy cleaning and taking care of Bridget that I hadn't had a chance to get ready for the day yet, so it was just a little embarrassing. Anyway, I got called to be the 2nd Counselor in the Primary of our new ward. When he told me the name of the president, I didn't have a clue who she was (not surprising since we've only lived in our house a couple of months). When we were all sustained during sacrament meeting, I didn't even recognize her as somebody I'd ever seen before. She even admitted to me later that she couldn't even remember my name, but when she was praying about who her counselors should be, she knew it was supposed to be me (the woman who spoke in sacrament meeting just a few weeks before and bought the Riggs' home). I'm really excited about this calling since it's something I haven't done before, and I love Primary. I also look forward to getting to know the other women in the presidency, the teachers, and the kids.

First Snow Fall of 2008

We all awoke this morning to the great white stuff falling from the sky. Bridget loved to just sit by the window and watch it fall.

By the time we got done with church (4:00 PM) the snow had stopped and it was looking much nicer. Now Nate just has to clean up the mess from the two branches that broke off our tree in the front yard.

Waving

A little over a week ago Bridget learned to wave, and since I'm slow to blog these days, I'm finally get around to posting a short video. She still hasn't figured out to turn her hand the other direction, but she'll get it eventually.