Alyssa is 1.. can you believe it!

So Alyssa turned the big 1 today. We are still in shock that it has been a year since she was born. Time has really flown since last year.. and I think it will only get faster! Alyssa is pulling herself up regularly now, and she has started trying to stand up on her own without leaning on anything. I have a feeling that she will be walking very, very soon.

My (Rebecca's) mom came out to visit this past weekend to help celebrate Alyssa's birthday. It was a really nice visit; we went to the local pumpkin patch, went out to dinner, to the local farmer's market and got lots of stuff done around the house. We enjoyed the visit, and look forward to seeing the grandparents again over Thanksgiving.

Below are a couple of pictures from the small birthday celebration and from the pumpkin patch.. Enjoy!

Alyssa sitting on a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch

Chewing on the birthday hat

Blowing out the candle on the Birthday cake (or vegan muffin)

Eating the birthday muffin

Walking with daddy

Pumpkin patch

So.. big dork that I am, I had to take advantage of the "famous" spots in the area. And being that I am a closet (or not so closet) reality show fan, I took advantage of the mom's outing to the Roloff farm today. For those of you who may not know, the Roloff farm is featured in the TLC show "Little People, Big World", which I used to watch when I had cable.

So here are some pictures from Alyssa's first Pumpkin Patch outing

Roloff Farms sign

Alyssa, Rebecca and Grandpa Roloff

Alyssa and the pumpkins




Christine, our new nanny

Alyssa and Rebecca with Zach Roloff

Alyssa Update

Since Alyssa is almost 1, and since we just realized that Flickr was erasing our pics, we decided to move our Alyssa updates here. Hopefully they won't start disappearing from here as well :)

So what cool things is Alyssa doing now?
- Pulling up on EVERYTHING
- Reading books (by reading, we mean pulling as many off the shelf as possible and eating whatever we can't take away in time)
- Saying words! She loves to say "Dogg-ie! Woof" over and over and over and.. well you get the idea. She can also say dada and bye.

- Waving. If you say "Say bye bye" to her, she will wave. Sometimes, it's like 10 minutes after the fact, but she will eventually wave
- Gives good kisses when you ask her to give you a kiss. By kiss, I mean open mouth on your cheek. Sometimes teeth involved.

- Speaking of teeth, she now has 4. She didn't get teeth like "normal" kids. Nope.. she has dracula fangs. We thought she would get the middle teeth right after her two side ones came in, but we are still waiting after almost 2 months.


- Army crawling. Sometimes she will get up on her hands and knees and crawl a little bit, but mostly she scoots aroung on her stomach. It's killer on the onesies, and most of them are dirty and stretched out by the end of the day.

- Pets the dog. She's obsessed with the dog, and luckily we have a very tolerant dog. She's a bit rough sometimes, and I swear I get the dog equivalent of eye rolls from Cheyenne, but the dog is very patient and just moves away if she has had too much.
- Clapping her hands. She loves to clap at everything, and will usually clap if someone else starts clapping their hands.

Everyone seems to be adjusting to Washington life very well. Yes it rains here, but no one has melted yet :) We have found lots of neat indoor activities, and enjoy our outdoor activities when it is nice. I have to say, I really missed the fall when I was in California, and am glad that we made it up here in time to enjoy the fall season

Below are a couple more videos; one is of Alyssa dancing to her animal magnet on the fridge, and the other is video of her feeding herself: