What's New?

I feel like I haven't blogged in a while so I thought I should update.

Alexis had her 18 month appointment last week. She won't be having any more appointments until she is 2 :) She had some more shots at this appointment and she was such a trooper. They checked her blood to see if she needed to continue taking iron supplements and luckily her pedi let me know she wants her to stop the iron for now and come back in a month to test her again and see if she can stop it altogether. One thing that was a real bummer is that Alexis fell to the 2nd percentile for weight, last visit she was in the 4th percentile :( but thanks to her daddy is in the 70th percentile for her head size lol. The two weeks that Alexis had that ear infection and had broken out, she didn't really have an appetite so I'm sure that contributed to her falling to the 2nd percentile. Alexis is an amazing eater, she is just so active that I'm sure it makes it hard for her to keep the weight on. Well her pedi asked us to start calorie packing and gave us a list of a ton of things to feed her. We are super strict with what she eats in terms of having no juice, unless she is sick, and not giving her any sweets or anything like that but now we've had to let go a little. We're still not giving Alexis any juice but her pedi asked us to give her lots of cheeses and put butter on her food and give her things like pancakes. Even though I don't like the idea of calorie packing, I know that it is for her own good and it definitely is going to stop once she gets to a good enough weight. I've said it before and I'll say it again, as long as she is healthy and eats I don't care how small she is, she is just always going to be petite and I don't mind that at all :)

Speaking of calorie packing; Alexis has officially started ordering off the kids menu when we go out, and she can pack it all away :) It's so weird to me that she is at the age where she can have her own meal when we go out, instead of eating off of mine and Derek's food. We have also started letting her have chocolate milk here and there, and she loves it!

Alexis has started saying "Uh-Oh" it is soooo cute; I think she may have learned that at daycare. She is also saying "Tank you" lol can't quite say the "h" in Thank you. this I also think she learned at daycare. She is still saying "hola" but not as much, I think because she hears a lot of the English words at daycare so it is easier for her. But not to fear I bought more Spanish books for her for Christmas and hope that will help the Spanish along more. Besides momma and daddy, which she has been saying for a while, I know there are other things she is trying to say I just can't make out what it is, one of these days she is just going to explode with a vocabulary.

My little Boo has become the most expert stair climber, which I do discourage because I don't want her to fall. She is definitely an expert walker, even in her boots she has become a great walker. Alexis loves sitting on these tiny chairs in the play area and crossing her legs, she is so cute! For a long time now whenever Derek and I are sitting next to each other, she runs over freaking out wanting to be a part of it, she seriously does the cutest things. She has also been giving kisses for the longest time, I would say "besito" and she would lean in and kiss me, well for the last month she has been puckering up her lips and coming in for kisses one after the other, she understands that concept now :)

Even though Alexis has dropped in her weight percentile I still feel like she has gotten so big. Her hair is so long; I love it! It is past her shoulders. I don't want to cut it and even though her bangs are in her face at times I just can't bring myself to cut it, it's so beautiful.

My little Lexi won the kids costume contest at my work :)

I am super proud of my little cute :) and proud of myself for making it without a pattern :) I also won a gift card for winning the contest, so that was a nice bonus!

On another note, I am super excited for Christmas! We bought all of our presents during Black Friday! We got all of our stockings done and our gifts; Now all I have left is to get my parents, brothers, and little niece Harlow their gifts. We put up our Christmas tree too :)

You can't really see it in the picture, but we put Alexis' new block ornament on our tree :) her first Christmas ornament is down in Southern California so I need to have my brother mail it to me so we can add it to the tree.

We are taking our Christmas pictures on Monday :) Alexis is going to look so fabulous in her dress! I am excited to have our pictures taken and get our Christmas cards sent out! I love the holidays!!!

Well that is all for now! Enjoy!

Random

It has been a long week and I still have 2 days to go till my weekend; It's ok though because tomorrow Derek and I get to have a date night :)

At work we have a Fall Film Festival, I think they also have one in either Spring or Summer. So what they do is they rent out some of the theater rooms within a theater only for us and we get a certain amount of tickets and we can choose which movies we want to go to. The three movies they were doing were Wreck it Ralph, Breaking Dawn, and The Hobbit. I got 4 tickets and picked 2 for Breaking Dawn and 2 for The Hobbit. We get the tickets, a gift card to buy snacks and free popcorn :) The Breaking Dawn showings are for today, tomorrow, and Saturday; I should have gone today but I wanted to go Friday since it is closer to my weekend, lately I don't go out anywhere late since I have to wake up at 4:30am in the morning for work. The Hobbit doesn't come out till December, but I'm excited for that too. I am excited to see Breaking Dawn but at the same time I thought the book sucked so mostly it's just because I've committed so much time reading the books and watching the movies that I am excited. The other cool thing is that I got 2 extra tickets for Breaking Dawn because I submitted some pictures on our work instagram page :) Derek invited his coworker and his wife to come with us. I haven't been on a double date forever so that's kind of weird lol

On another note, I can't believe Alexis is 1 1/2! Alexis has her 18 month appt with her pedi this month. We have been to her doctor twice since her last visit because she got sick so her weight won't be a real surprise, because they did weigh her both times we went in. I am excited to find out how she is doing with everything else, developmentally. Now that Alexis is 1 year and 6 months I am starting to get ideas for her 2nd birthday lol I know Derek looked at me like I was crazy, which I probably am, but I am just so excited to plan her 2nd birthday. Plus this time we will hopefully be in our home and hopefully have a big enough backyard to be able to have it there :)

I am sooooooooo looking forward to the end of the month! We are going to finish up our Christmas shopping, for the most part. We bought Alexis her activity cube already, it was on sale at Target and we were going to get it for her anyway so it made sense. I ordered Alexis her stocking, one that she will have for years to come. I also ordered Alexis an ornament and a doll for her stocking. Pottery Barn had the stocking on sale and I won a $50 gift card at work because my team won the October challenge :) so I used that to get her stuff. I got Alexis the cutest ballerina stocking, it is huge! I thought it would be smaller but it is seriously huge. To go with her stocking I got Alexis a ballerina doll to put in her stocking. As you can see there is a ballerina theme here ;) We are putting Alexis in mommy and me baby ballet classes through SLC ballet for the Spring. I also got Alexis her ornament for this year, it's a glittery block ornament to signify the end of her baby years. I want to have a tradition of buying a new ornament every year for something new that has happened within the year :)

Excited for Breaking Dawn, Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping!

October Fun!

I decided to post about Alexis' costume separately, otherwise this would have turned out to be a very long blog post.

This month has been pretty busy. Alexis had an ear infection about 3 weeks ago, so I had to miss work to take her to the doctor, then 2 weeks later she broke out in a rash and daycare told us we couldn't bring her in because they didn't know if it was contagious, so I had to miss work again to take her to the doctor and it turned out she had a reaction to the antibiotics she was taking for her ear infection, so again I had to miss work. I'm hoping Alexis won't be needing anymore doctor's visits at least not until her 18 month well visit.

I spent a lot of the month making Alexis' Halloween costume, so of course I was excited to show it off :) In October we went to a pumpkin patch, my work Trunk or Treat, and went Trick or Treating for Halloween.

On the 29th we went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. It isn't exactly a Pumpkin Patch it's more like a ton of games and corn mazes and things like that. We put Alexis in her cute little outfit we bought her for the Pumpkin Patch. We took a ton of cute pictures and picked out the perfect pumpkin! She loved seeing all the kids there :) Here are some pics.

The day after Cornbelly's was my work Trunk or Treat, which was also at Thanksgiving Point at their barn. I had finished Alexis' costume and was super excited to show it off. At the Trunk or Treat they were taking pictures of the kids in costumes for a costume contest; I think the winner gets a gift card or something. I was excited to have them take a picture of Alexis and hopefully win the contest. Everyone loved her Boo costume. Apparently it was going around like wildfire because everywhere we went people were like "Hey someone told me about the Boo costume" lol we even had someone ask to get a picture of her. I will upload the professional picture as soon as they send them out at work and hopefully will win the contest :) for now here are some pictures.

On Halloween I had to work, but it wasn't too bad. We had this contest within our team all month, we got split into 4 mini teams and I was the leader for our team. We tried super hard and have been ahead the whole month and it got pretty close the last day so we don't know yet but hopefully we pulled through, there is a $50 gift card for each person on the team that wins, so I definitely want that :) Alexis wore her cute outfit to daycare she had worn to the pumpkin patch and they gave her a glow stick for Halloween, she also made some cute little crafts with her footprint and paint that they sent home with her, they are too cute. We went out Trick or Treating that night, I had originally planned to just take her around in the stroller and have her look at all the little kids in their costumes, she wasn't going to eat any candy anyway so I figured it wouldn't matter, but we ended up going with Derek's uncle and his kids; Derek didn't feel well so he didn't come out with us. Alexis was so excited, she was shrieking and running around and just so happy to be going around door to door. Here are some pictures from the night.

My little Boo was so cute. October was an amazing month with lots of fun memories :) I am so excited for the Holidays, mostly Christmas. Enjoy <3 \

P.S. Alexis has been giving kisses for a while now, but stopped for a bit and now she is giving them like crazy, leaning in and giving me kisses and shaking like crazy from excitement lol I love her so much <3

How To Make A Monsters Inc Boo Costume :)

So I decided to post a blog specifically on how I made the Monster's Inc Boo Costume. First let's talk about how this even came to be, making the costume and all. I was going to have Alexis be a bumble bee or ladybug, but everyone kept telling us she looked like boo, so I decided to just make the costume :)

So my background in sewing was limited to a class I took my freshman year in high school. I made 2 quilts with different fabric and sewing patterns, a pair of shorts, a shirt, and a purse. I got an A in the class so I guess it wasn't too bad. So I searched the internet to see if I could find a tutorial on how to make the costume. I found this website. I followed this for the most part except for using a different purple fabric, making an undershirt, and I didn't make the hood as big. When I started this project, I thought that I would do my best and hopefully it would turn out ok, but I definitely surprised myself with how great it turned out :)

Here is how I did it:

First I bought the fabric, I went off of what I saw on the website, aside from choosing different fabric for the suit and the fabric for the shirt. The Fabric total as well as safety pins, velcro, pipe cleaners, styrofoam and thread came out to about $38.

There weren't any specific measurements for everything on the site so I measured Alexis and went off of that. I started with the fabric I measured out and pinned it into a rectangle with the batting and sewed around the edges. Then sewed 3 lines across the fabric to make the shape of the outfit. I cut arm circles into the fabric, I think I may have made them a little to big but I was winging it, it ended up working out fine. I also added the teeth to the body. Finally I added the velcro to keep the costume together.

After the body I made a shirt and pants. I just took one of Alexis' shirts and her pants an cut out a pattern. I ended up not using the paints, the body was long enough so that I didn't need them.

After being done with all that, which I did feel was the easiest part It took me a couple of days to get started on what I would call the "hood". I didn't want to make it too big or too small. I didn't want it to cover her face, I wanted it to just rest right above her forehead. So I measured her head across and went a couple of inches out. I cut the fabric in a crescent shape and stuffed it with some batting and sewed around the edges and sewed the teeth on. I wanted to stay as true to Boo so I made sure she had the right amount of teeth on there.

I took the styrofoam balls and using a sharpie colored in half of the "eye" and colored in circles for the pupils. I took 2 pipe cleaners,for each eye, and twisted them together and stuck it in the back of the "eye". I then took my dollar tree mop and used the mop hair for the hood. I sewed it on by hand, I wanted to put enough of it on the hood but not too much. After I finished the "hair" I sewed the pipe cleaners onto the hood, which was not easy, you can't really sew through the pipe cleaners, so what I did was sew the "hair" really tight around them and it worked :)

Finally I used elastic to sew the hood onto the body and it was done!

I had to use some safety pins; I had sewn the elastic a little too high so I used a couple of safety pins in the back to hold it down better. Here is Alexis at my work Trunk or Treat on the 30th. She was a hit!