Monkeyin' around

Saturday after we had our family Thanksgiving dinner, we stayed in Rockford. Dave, Jeni's fiance, was having a poker night and Doug was playing. Since us girls didn't want to hang with the boys, we found other fun activities! Thanks to Aunt Jeni for suggesting Monkey Joe's!

I didn't know how Allie would react to being presented with a big inflatable cage to jump in. Turns out she loved it. They had a mini zone for kids under 3 and it was perfect for Allie. She even crawled right in on her own.
 
Mama and Aunt Jeni loved it too! I think the best part was that we got to go in with her (parents can accompany kids up to age 4). This is just the beginning of all the fun things I can do with my baby. I've already found a place like this here in Madison (that just happens to be practically next to our house! Who knew?), which we will visit soon.

The Durso Family feast

This year the Durso family had two Thanksgiving dinners. One was with my entire family on Saturday (everyone was there, that hardly ever happens!) and the other took place on Friday, with just the three of us.

I love baking pies. I just wish it didn't take so long. The dinner preparation started with baking the pumpkin pie. Above, the crust. I think I did a pretty good job with this one.

And pouring the filling into the crust. Then... we bake. The recipe said an hour, and I think mine took an hour and a half.

After the pie was done, then it was time for the turkey to go in the oven. Last year I just cooked a turkey breast. Two years ago, I did a whole turkey. But that one didn't get thawed all the way, so it didn't get cooked all the way. It was gross. This bird, however, turned out great!

The finished pie on the stove, and now its the bird's turn in the oven! Set the timer for three hours and then we eat!

Three hours after I put it in, I took the turkey out. Not only was the turkey done, it was a little overdone. I got temps of 175 in the breast and off the thermometer on the thigh. It only had to be 165.

And here's Dada carving. Since the turkey was done all the way, the carving was way easier.

I prepared a little plate for Allie. She had everything we had, except for the gravy.

Thanksgiving dinner was a big hit. She loved turkey, corn, stuffing, the bread, everything.

And then look at all those leftovers! There's plenty of turkey in our future! That's the remnants of a 10-pound bird! We've already started working on it, but there's still a lot left. I need to look for some leftover turkey recipes...

We kinda fell asleep and/or got too full to have pie after dinner on Friday. So we had the next best thing... pie for breakfast on Saturday! Allie loooooved the pie. She's had a lot of sweets over the last few days, her first ever. We need to keep that under wraps for awhile now so she doesn't think thats normal.

So in conclusion, the Durso Family feast was a smashing success!

First "real" holidays

Allie's first holiday was Halloween, but she was only a few hours old at the time. Last Thanksgiving she was a month old and still sleeping all the time. Same with Christmas. I'm really excited to start this year's holiday season with a baby who, while she still sleeps a lot, is awake too!

So this year we consider her first "real" holidays. Unfortunately she missed out on Halloween because she was sick. But we've taken full advantage of Thanksgiving! Allie had her first Thanksgiving dinner last night, and it was a hit. She'll have another today at my parents' house. There will be up to 25 people there! I'm almost done baking 72 dinner rolls to take along. Thats a big dinner.

We'll be taking plenty of pictures! I'm so excited to share these holidays with our baby and also with the blog!

Christmas 2010

Picture Joy Christmas

Make a statement with Shutterfly Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

I wanted to do this last year, but I couldn't get things together in time. This year, however, I can! I am finally joining the ranks of not only those who send Christmas cards, but who send PHOTO Christmas cards!

Giving thanks

On this Thanksgiving, I am so thankful for my amazing and beautiful little girl, who is growing up WAY too fast!

I am thankful for her great dad, my wonderful husband, who does everything he can to make me and Allie happy.

I am even thankful for our only slightly mellow Monk.

I am thankful to be EMPLOYED and looking forward to a real Christmas. I am thankful we can spend time this holiday season with all our family.

I am thankful for the ability to run. Even though my body isn't in the composition I'd like it to be, I am thankful my body allowed me to give birth and that it allows me to run. I would never have met some of my best friends (real life or virtual) if I didn't run.

We didn't have turkey today. I ran the Berbee Derby this morning (check out my race report here!) and my family came because my brother ran it too. We just had chili and sandwiches at our house after. Doug, Allie and I will have a little Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I'm braving a whole turkey and also baking a pumpkin pie. One of these years I'll tackle real stuffing, but this year its just from a box. No Black Friday shopping though. Saturday is Thanksgiving with my family. We could have 25 people there!

Its a glorious long weekend here, something else I am thankful for!

Fun new foods

Recently Allie has been having a lot of new food experiences. The biggest change has been the leap from drinking formula from the bottle to drinking whole milk from the sippy cup!

But as you can see here, she sometimes still gets a little confused about which way is up!

I'd say her most favorite new food is cheese. For awhile I broke the cheese up into pieces, but on Saturday I just gave her the whole slice and she knew what to do. You should see how quickly she scarfs down a slice of cheese.

Another favorite is toast. The transition away from the bottle has changed the way we get Allie ready for work in the morning. We used to get her up and give her a bottle and then she'd have breakfast at daycare. But now that she doesn't have a bottle first thing when she gets up, we need to give her breakfast. Doug and I were both surprised with how easy that transition was and that it is, in some ways, much easier than giving a bottle.

Most breakfast consists of a bowl of oatmeal, a cup of yogurt and a piece of toast. Look how proud she looks here feeding herself!

Some new foods that have been utter failures have been tofu and carrot soup. I've never had tofu and I tried it and I think its gross. So when Allie didn't like it, I decided thats one food we don't need to try again. I'm not going to feed her something we wouldn't feed Monk! The carrot soup is a recipe I actually found on a baby and children focused food blog, but I think it was too spicy for Allie. Mama and Dada liked the soup, though it needs to be a side item and not the main dish.

We have varying success with veggie burgers, chicken, bananas and gerber graduates entrees.

Along with cheese and toast, Allie really loves mixed vegetables, cottage cheese, graham crackers and applesauce. And don't forget the milk. She absolutely loves milk. It took a little longer than I thought it would, but we've stopped feeding the purees. We're doing a lot of finger foods and she enjoys feeding herself, though I'm not sure when to start giving her the spoon. She has a pretty balanced diet but isn't wild about meat. I'm happy that right now at least she doesn't seem to be terribly picky, though sometimes she'll refuse food she likes for no apparent reason.

She's old enough that she can eat whatever foods we're eating, but I'm still a little slow on giving her our food. Part of that reason is that a lot of the time she eats right when we get home and goes to bed really early before we eat. I have a hard time getting meals coordinated for all three of us. Its something I'll figure out though.

Chilly trip to the park

Since Allie has real shoes now and the weather seemed reasonably nice on Saturday, Dada took Allie to the park while Mama was at work. It was chilly but Dada bundled Allie up really well, at least we thought really well.

Allie wasn't too sure what this grass stuff was all about.

Doug said since she wasn't sure of her surroundings, Allie would only walk toward him.

She enjoyed picking up sticks and leaves. Dada had brought her ball to throw but those leaves were much more interesting

Unfortunately it was a little too cold for Allie. Dada took a lot of cute pictures in the five minutes they were at the park. Then Allie got cold and cranky fast. Dada sprinted home from the park (recovering from bronchitis and pushing the stroller!) and spent the rest of the day inside. Its too bad today was rainy and wet because the temperature was much better than yesterday.

Shoeless no more

Allie has a pair of real shoes! We'd put it off for awhile, why I really don't know. I guess its just like a lot of other baby-related things that we've just been behind on.

She wasn't too impressed with them at first, however. She's still not terribly impressed. Its cute to watch her play with them though. She figured out velcro awhile ago and these are velcro shoes. So she undoes and then redoes the velcro. Luckily she hasn't figured out how to take them off yet.



It took a bit of work to figure out walking in the new shoes. But now we can take Allie outside or out in public and let her walk around!

Goofy girl

We don't let Allie play in just a diaper very often, but she sure loved it! She had gotten her clothes all messy while eating, so I just stripped her right there!

Allie is really learning to explore and just be funny. One night this week she walked around for no less than a half hour with her rubber ducky in her mouth.

Its so much fun to watch Allie and Monk play together. They're each other's best buddy!

That is a t-shirt on Allie's head. Its one of hers. When I do her laundry, I bring it upstairs to the living room to fold. But a basket's been sitting there for a few days unfolded. Last night Allie found it and, well, she decided to dress herself!

She was playing with her clothes for close to an hour. This sleeper was a favorite, worn as a hood. So Dada took that message and that's the sleeper Allie wore to bed last night!

Sometimes it seems like weeks go by and Allie doesn't change very much at all. Then we have a week like this one, where she changed by leaps and bounds every day! She's really developing a sense of humor and she laughs constantly. And so do we.

Leftovers

Eeek! Its been a week since I last posted! Things have been crazy with varying amounts of sickness in the Durso pack. The good news is I think we're all finally on the mend!

I realized I had a bunch of leftover Halloween pictures here that I had uploaded but never actually posted. This is how we celebrated Halloween this year:

We did carve our pumpkin, so that was one item checked off the Halloween list. But Allie didn't dress up because of her cold. She looks so rough when she's sick, it just breaks my heart. She did, however, wear her Halloween shirt that she'd gotten from her Aunt Jeni the day before. That reminds me, we need to get her Turkey Day shirt out since Thanksgiving Day is next week! Where is time going?

Trapped in boxes

A week and a half later, five lonely boxes sit waiting to be unwrapped. They were bought a month ago, wrapped three days ago and the whole time have been waiting patiently to be opened and played with! Alas, they'll just have to wait a bit longer, as our house has been battling sickness and there still hasn't been a good time for the conclusion of birthday festivities.

Coat? Check. Shoes? Not so much

Allie got this adorable pink coat for her birthday from Aunty Jeni. Its not super thick but its perfect since she won't spend a ton of time outside during the winter just yet. She has mittens and a stocking cap to go with the coat. But she's missing one key piece of protection from the elements... shoes. Allie owns one pair of shoes right now, an adorable pair of pink crocs. But right now, one of them is missing. Oops!

Friday Flashback: Allie's first year

More than once last Saturday morning, I felt a surge of excitement. It was like I was preparing for my own birthday party.

Its the same excitement I felt many times while pregnant, even while I was in labor. I am so privileged to have Allie as my daughter. I remember this every day, even while Allie is becoming more of a handful.

She was so surprised to see her birthday cake lit up when I brought it to her. She was amazed as everyone in the room sang "Happy Birthday." She loved playing with the ribbons, bows, boxes and tags. I wish we could have gotten more pictures. We did shoot video that I have yet to look at.

There's a whole year's worth of video on that camera. Several times this year I've meant to put it all on a DVD. As Allie's birthday came closer, I figured I may as well wait until her birthday to document the entire first year on DVD. I do watch the video on occasion. I love watching footage from Allie's very first night and the following day. There's her first bath, all the photo shoots, getting ready to go home. I keep trying to work on her baby book, but thats something that gets pushed to the back burner too. I don't want to forget. Unfortunately I already have forgotten some things. Its my goal to give Allie a complete baby book, however. And I think I will be able to with the help of this blog.

The prevailing memory from Allie's first few months is that she slept. A LOT. We had trouble with breast feeding because she wouldn't wake up enough to eat and stimulate my production. I wish we'd breast fed longer. But I'm proud of myself for making it to 6 months considering I started thinking about weaning before she was a month old! And again when she was 3 months old.

Even though she slept a lot it was really hard putting her to bed for the night those first few months. She wouldn't sleep in her crib without about a two hour prep time first that often included multiple feedings and diaper changes. I couldn't get her to sleep in her crib for nap times either. She did, however, sleep through the night very early.
As Allie grew, she went from hating tummy time to rolling over, to scooting backwards, then scooting forward, crawling, standing and finally walking. She went from all breast milk to rice cereal, to fruit and vegetable purees, dairy products and meats.

Its astounding to look back at everything Allie did in her first year of life. She went from 8 lbs 13 oz to 23 lbs 14 oz, 20 inches to 29 and a quarter. We have boxes and boxes of clothes she's outgrown.

So what's next for you Allie Kat? Where will you go from here? We can't wait to see.

Party time

Saturday morning started really early for me and Doug. We did some cleaning during the week, but we still had plenty to do before Allie's birthday party. Luckily, Allie slept in so we were able to get more done. After Allie got up and had eaten, she and Dada went to do the grocery shopping and then she took a nap while we finished cleaning.

Finally the cleaning was complete. The food was pretty simple finger food that I had made earlier and just had to set out. The hardest part was making Allie's birthday cake. It was a lot of work for a cake that really only had two pieces eaten, but at least I can say I made her first birthday cake.

It looks like cookies n' cream, but its actually cream cheese frosting with raisins. If I were to use this recipe again, I'd leave the raisins out. I actually liked this cake and it turned out well. It was my first time making a layer cake. Allie liked it and would have eaten more this week if she hadn't been sick.

There were plenty of treats for the party guests. Jeni made pumpkin bars and we bought a second cake from Target. Even though Allie wouldn't be eating the second cake, we still got the princess 1st birthday cake because she's our little princess!

We really like Target cakes and it was way easier than making two cakes! The 1 that was on the cake I made actually came with the Target cake. We'd bought another number 1, but when I was taking decorations out, I left that in the bag and the bag got thrown away! Good thing we got the 1st birthday cake from Target!

I still have my lamb chop from when I was a baby, and now Allie has a lamb chop too! She got lamb chop from grandma and grandpa Swanson. She was more interested in the tag though.

She got fun princess stuff from Uncle Justin and Aunt Kira along with an awesome Hello Kitty card.

Allie loved the bow on the box more!

Perhaps Allie's favorite actual toy she got was this crawling worm toy she got from Ryan, the baby she's in daycare with. In the craziness I forgot to take a picture of those two together! Ryan is two and a half months younger than Allie.

Allie got lots of clothes and toys but she definitely loved the bows and tags and tissue paper more.

Look at those red cheeks! Hopefully Allie won't be sick for her next birthday.

Allie really liked her cake. She ate almost the entire piece, and it was pretty big!

And after the party, we finally got to relax. Because Allie was under the weather, we postponed the rest of her birthday celebration until this weekend. The good news is, Allie is recovering nicely and will party again on Sunday!

It was a great day and a great year. I can't believe how fast one year with our baby has gone by. She is an amazing child and I can't wait to see what she does next.