Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday weekend. The Power family will be heading to Kirksville, MO tomorrow morning to see Great Grandma Auxter, Grandpa Auxter and Terry, and Aunts Arie and JoAnna and Uncle Matt, among other Auxters.

The pictures below are from a 4th of July parade held at Lauren's school. You'll see that they made the little ones very festive. Lauren was in a wagon with her little girlfriends; somehow they managed to give her a ponytail, bow and headband. And she won't even let me pull back her bangs with a barrette.

Even the babies participated!

Hopefully we'll never have need for a stroller like this.

Lauren wishes you all a Happy 4th!

14 Months

Just thought I'd post some random 14 months or thereabouts photos and let you know how our little Lolo is doing. As you can see from the photos below, she's not getting any less cute, for sure.
All is well at the Power House. Life is back to normal after the party, and we now look forward to weekends not filled with yard work from sun up to sun down. Lauren has started to recognize us again, which is nice. She was partially orphaned for awhile. Lauren is still the greatest sleeper to ever toddle the face of this earth. As she is wont to do, she is getting several more teeth at once on the top, so she's been a little fussy (current teeth count: 6. Four on top, two on bottom). She is doing a lot of finger walking, but isn't doing as much on her own walking since we posted the video. She signs more, thank you, please, help, milk and water. She's also saying "more" verbally. She loves the song "The Wheels on the Bus" and either does the movements to get us to sing it, or starts us off by singing "the...," which might be the most adorable thing I've ever heard. She picks out her own book at night for us to read to her before she goes to sleep. She still loves her dog lovey and cat binky. We also started giving her a blanket at night, and now she can't sleep without it, so she has to have all three things to sleep. During the day I serve as all three (read: she's going through a Mom phase) (also read: Dr. Matile might have forgotten to cut the umbilical cord).

At school she crawls or "walks" over to the little table to eat, pulls out her chair, gets in, and scoots the chair in to the table. This is apparently a very big deal. She steals other kids' food and eats that in addition to her own. When her teacher holds up her sippy cup and says "whose cup is this?" Lauren raises her hand (and doesn't raise her hand when it's not her cup). If you ask her how old she is she will allegedly hold up one finger, although I have yet to see this. At nap time they tell the kiddos to go to their cots, and she crawls right over to hers, climbs up, and goes down for a nap (for 2+ hours). School is teaching her some very beautiful things.

Current nicknames: Laur, LaurLaur, Lolo, Chunky, Monkey, Chunka Monka, Chunky Monkey, Laurmas (started by Sean around Christmas, when it was really all about Lauren).

That's Lauren in a nutshell right now. 14 months old this past Monday!
Here, she practices her "what, you're taking a picture of me while the A/C is blowing through my hair? I had no idea" pose. She's really good at it.

Below, a progression of dinner time photos. Here's the deal: that baby may look like me, but she inherited both her father's appetite and, apparently (and we're hoping), his metabolism. She eats well over twice as much as I do at any given meal, and typically keeps up with Sean.

This is Round 1. And yes, there was an equally large Round 2. That's a dinner plate, folks. Not a salad plate. Do not be confused.

This is a couple of minutes later. Yeah, just a couple of minutes. She shovels it in by the handful.

Why is our little precious crying in this photo. That would be because Dada is not cutting up her spaghetti fast enough. Chop chop, Sean.

And here she is, happy again, and already part way through Round 2. Which she also finished completely, but by that time I was hungry and had put down the camera.

This was the popsicle cart that came to our house for dessert during the Associates Party.

Above and below just some random photos of Lauren from the past month or so.

Lauren Walks!

So we've been really busy. Sean and I have both been busier than ever at work, and to top it off we hosted the summer party for the Lathrop associates at our house on Saturday, which involved a lot more work than we anticipated. So poor Lauren has not had the full attention of both parents to which she has become accustomed. Perhaps in an effort to get us back on board the attention train, she walked for the first time on Friday, in the midst of the craziness.

I got to school to pick her up and her teacher came to the door whispering for me to go into her old crawlers room and watch her in secret from the Dutch door there. So I did, and sure enough she stood right up and walked to Ms. Carolyn. I started crying, it was so moving. And her old teacher Ms. Chrystal was crying, too. It was such a great moment. I can't believe she's not my little baby anymore. She's a big girl now.

She did a lot of "finger" walking this weekend (holding on to Sean's and my fingers), but not a ton by herself. But I have a feeling we're really in for it now.