January & February 2010

Wow, it's hard to believe that we're only a month away from Autumn's second birthday. As always the months fly by, but we are very happy that Spring is almost here! We've had the rare experience over the past few months of not traveling. It's been very nice to have some relaxing weekends, and we've even been able to reinstate "no pants Saturdays"! Don't worry, those are just Saturdays where we don't have anywhere to go so Autumn gets to stay in her pj's or run around in her diaper all day. Nick and I still wear pants :)

January was pretty low key, but in February we had some expected and unexpected excitement. On Feb 2nd I ended up having a pretty rough night, which resulted in a quick trip in the ambulance and unexpected gallbladder surgery. The good news is that the recovery was much better than the attack, and I'm feeling back to normal now. On a much more fun note, we celebrated our nephew's first birthday! Jacob turned one on February 12th and we had a blast at his pool party on the 14th!

Other than that we have been enjoying every day with Autumn. She continues to amaze us with the words and activities she picks up on, and we can't wait to see what the next few months bring.



So excited that Kristi, Dan and Callie came to visit us for a day. We had lots of fun playing with the girls and got some good Callie hogging time while Autumn was napping!


Oh boy - our first adventure to see Disney on Ice. Autumn did great for the first half, but got a little restless after that. She just couldn't understand why Mickey and Minnie kept leaving and all these weird princesses kept coming out.


This was her focus during the second half - popcorn! She ate half of the tub and was double fisting it!


Adorable Jacob at his first birthday party. A little swimming, a little cake...its doesn't get better than that!


Autumn loved going down the little water slide. I think we did that about 30 times.


Her latest obsession - hats. She is very particular about the one she wears and often demands that we wear them too (but she has to pick which one we wear). Who's running this show anyway?!

Such a good helper, although I think more cheese ended up in her mouth than on the pizza.

Christmas 2009

Happy New Year everyone! We hope your holidays were as wonderful as ours were. Nick and I were both able to take all of last week off, and it's the most time we've gotten to spend together with Autumn since she was born. We had a great time hanging out with her and were all very sad when we had to get back to reality on Monday morning. Thank you to all of our families who made this a great holiday season. We are grateful for the time together and the gifts. Autumn was very spoiled this year to say the least!

We had such a great time at the Columbus Zoo Wildlights! It was snowing the whole time we were there which was so cool. Autumn loved all the lights and was so excited to drink her hot cocoa out of her new Mickey Mouse thermos. Maybe it was all the sugar from the cocoa, but she just ran around and danced to the Christmas music the whole time.


Our little winter sumo baby sporting her new snowsuit from Grandma and Papa Church. It doesn't do much for her figure but it sure kept her warm while we made snowmen and went to the zoo!


Autumn and Brady going on hour #2 of playing in Brady's new Tunnel Bouncer. They were so worn out they were giddy!


Looking through the pics in Grandma and Papa Church's new calendar.


Autumn loving her new Dream Dazzler gift set that Aunt Sara picked out. A purse, cool sunglasses, a cell phone, money and make-up. What else could a girl ask for (other than maybe a credit card or two)? Oh, and special thanks to Nick for showing Autumn how to apply the make-up. What a good dad...


Brady and Autumn playing with her new tea set. They played so well together all weekend. It was so much fun to watch them interact.


The perfect Christmas - we never had to get out of our pajamas and we both got some quality one on one time coloring with Autumn.




All the excitement of Christmas day was just too much for Jacob. He fell asleep during his lunch - so cute! Someday my sister and Brian will have to explain why he's wearing a pink bib with flowers.


Maddie and Autumn making the snowman sing for the 1,487th time on Christmas. We're going to have to keep our eye on these two during the teenage years... Thanks to our sitter Kathy for letting us borrow it during Christmas break. It even made the trip to Toledo with us and came in handy many times as a bribing tool!


Grandpa Latta pulling the girls in their new sleds!

Must be an inside joke...

All dressed up before Christmas Eve service. I don't think kids get much cuter than this!

Halloween

I realize it's almost Thanksgiving, so I'm sorry that I'm just getting around to our Halloween post. We had a great October and lots of fun celebrating Halloween, especially with the nice weather. Autumn's personality has really come out over the past month, and it's been so much fun to see her eyes light up with all the new things she's learning and becoming aware of. We've also entered the fun world of potty training. It's not something we're really pushing - just trying to introduce her to it. She's done well so far though and has gone both #1 and #2 in the big girl potty a few times. Don't worry - we left those pictures out.

At the moment her biggest obsessions are Mickey Mouse and the Buckeyes (including Brutus). If she's around a TV, she's usually asking for one of them! Oh, and for some reason we thought it would be funny to teach her to say a few words with a British accent. It's hilarious listening to her say "hello". She sounds so smart when she talks like that! I'm sure we'll be paying for therapy down the road, but it's very entertaining!

Here are some pics from October...


We took Autumn on her first hayride at a small farm near our house. They drove us out to a pumpkin patch and Autumn picked out her very own pumpkin.


Very proud of her pumpkin


She was much more into carving pumpkins this year which was lots of fun!





As you can see, Autumn was a bumble bee for Halloween. Due to a little mishap earlier that day her official name became "Autumn - the banged up bumble bee".




That is one full belly!


And just when we thought the Halloween boo boo was healing, she went and got her first black eye! It's been a rough month for accidents!

August and September update

Our computer has been out of commission since May and we are so glad to have it back up and running. Now we can get caught up on the blog since we missed the whole month of August!

Autumn is still doing new things all the time and we're having lots of fun. She now has an entire mouth full of teeth, so we're happy that she won't have that to deal with for a long time. She really was a champ with teething, but her last two I-teeth seem to bother her the most.

She is up to about 30 words now. She's doing really well with learning animals and loves anything she can find in the sky...birds, planes, clouds, the moon, the sun, etc. She gets so excited when she finds something that she dances in place and points and says "oh, oh, wow, wow!". She's also starting to get the hang of counting from 1-3 and saying a few letters, and just today finally drank a full 8 oz of milk out of a sippy cup. That's a feat we started 6 months ago so it was a big day for us!



Autumn got spoiled with trips to the zoo with each of her grandparents. She had a blast and was all about her Grandpas holding her (maybe she realized they have a much better view compared to Mommy and her Grandmas).






A very hot day in August - we had lots of fun running through the sprinkler.




All set for another season of OSU football!


Autumn and Brady at a farm in Michigan. It was so much fun. They got to see all kinds of animals, take a wagon ride together, and hang out in a trailer full of pumpkins!


We went to see the painting of Autumn at a focus show at BGSU a few weeks ago. This is the painting that Andraya (Nick's half sister) did of her, and it was selected for display at the show. It's based off of a picture Andraya took when Autumn was 5 days old, so she named the painting "5 Days". So cool! She's very talented!


September 27th - Autumn's very first haircut! She was a great sport and it looks very cute. We were sort of sad about cutting it at first but we're glad we got rid of her mullet :)

July update

Month #16 - July was a blast! For the 4th we stayed in Columbus and got to take Autumn to the zoo for the first time. Her favorite animal was definitely the monkeys - she perfected her monkey sound that day. We also took her to the pool, which was the first time Nick and I were able to do that together, so it was lots of fun. She also saw her first set of fireworks! We were curious to see whether she would freak out, but she loved them!

Autumn got to hang out with all of her cousins quite a bit in July which was awesome. One night we had all four kids - Autumn, Maddie, Jacob and Brady. It was so great to have them all together and they played so well!

Autumn pretty much thinks she's ready to run now, so we have to slow her down a lot. It's hilarious to watch her because she leads with her big belly and her little arms can't keep up! In the last month she's definitely learned how to test the limits and become more independent and demanding. Her new favorite words other than "hi" are now "mine" and "no".



Maddie and Brady eating dinner together...they were both done after about 3 bites. What you can't see is Autumn in the high chair next to them shoveling in the food. It took her a good 15-20 minutes to eat. No wonder all three of them weigh about the same!


Brady and Autumn watching their daddies switch out the car seats.


She still loves that blue pillow!

A few pics from the park...this first one is her "hiding her face" to play peek-a-boo. She thinks she does a pretty good job at it and it's too funny to correct her.

Swimming on the 4th. She has a small obsession with shoes and sunglasses.

Autumn's first trip to the zoo!

All tuckered out after a long day at the zoo :)