1 Year and Counting!!!

Hello again!!!! It's been a busy month and I'm sorry I haven't posted! Let's get right to it!

Norah's 1st Year 

Here is a look back at Norah's 1st year :)

Norah's 1st Birthday Party and Milestones

I can't believe my little girl is going to be one in less than 2 weeks!!! Where did the last year go??? I am in the midst of getting everything ready for her party. We are having it at our local park so I'm praying that the weather is nice for her birthday. I am getting so into her theme and all the decorations I feel kinda like I'm planning a mini wedding (it feels like when I was planning my wedding because I'm obsessed with the details and there are lots of little details :) My sister-in-law gave me the idea of polka dots and then I just went from there and now I am doing polka dots, mixed with florals in a pink and yellow color scheme. I had to do this party on a budget so its been fun being creative with all the details! I got much of my inspiration from Pinterest and a blog I stumbled upon through Pinterest called Visual Vocabulary. I'm still going with mason jar cupcakes in 4 oz mason jars I picked up at my local ACE Hardware (they were actually cheaper than anywhere I could find online). I also ordered pink and yellow striped paper straws, polka dot balloons, and confetti sprinkles that look like polka dots. I am also going to have yellow and pink candies in glass jars along with a yummy BBQ lunch. We purchased a bunch of fun stuff at Wal-Mart for cheap for the kids to play with at the park like bubble wands, big beach balls, and I also picked up some canary yellow plates and purchased pink polka dot napkins at Target along with some cute gift bags. Me and Casey attempted Photoshop and after 8 hrs we accomplished making her birthday invitations too!!! I will definitely post pics of the party in a few weeks! Here are some of the ideas below:

I want to use my mason jars from my wedding for 

the drinks and I want to finish them 

off with some cute fabric like these.

These are the straws I purchased

I purchased this adorable bow to go 

with her birthday dress from the Etsy shop A Little Lady 

Measuring Norah for her birthday dress I purchased on Etsy :)

This is the dress I got for her for her birthday party from the Etsy Shop Perryfinalia

Norah is walking everywhere and I absolutely love it!!! I love that she is so mobile now and when we go to the park she isn't crawling in the dirt. She says mamamamamama and dadadadada and she makes a barking noise whenever she sees a dog, whether were at the park or if were reading a book with a dog in it or if we say "what's a dog say?", its so cute. We are still working on signs, but she hasn't quite mastered signs yet, except for she has done "all done" a couple of times. She high fives every once and awhile too. She sleeps about 12 hrs at night, her bedtime is 7pm and she sleeps until 7am, sometimes 7:15ish. She takes two naps, one at 10am for about an hour and one at 2pm for about 2 hrs. I have to limit her morning nap now to no more than an hour or she doesn't take a great afternoon nap. I have a feeling she will be dropping her morning nap in the next month or two because she has had more than a few days in the past couple of weeks where she has trouble falling asleep in the afternoon. We did purchase black out shades and that has definitely helped with morning wake up and nap times. I thought she was totally ready to drop her morning nap, but I thought I would try the black out shades first and that solved the problem for now, but like I said I think one nap is in her near future :) I am actually excited for one nap because then our mornings will be freed up to run errands, go to the gym, etc and then we will be home for lunch and then a nice long afternoon nap while I get stuff done around the house. I have been reading that once the morning nap is dropped the afternoon nap is usually extended to 3 to 4 hrs long, so that will be nice! She still nurses before each meal and she gets breakfast around 8, lunch at 12, a snack when she gets up from her afternoon nap, and dinner at 5. She loves eating big girl food and boy does she love to eat!! Her favorites right now are avocado, mac and cheese, string cheese, yogurt, mango slices, applesauce, strawberries, steamed veggies, rice, pastas, pretty much anything I give her or what we are having for dinner. For snack she loves goldfish, mum mums, and cheerios. We have also started to transition her to a little bit of goat's milk at night for her bedtime milk because I plan to stop nursing when she turns one. So far she loves the stuff and doesn't notice the difference, we have also started to give her milk at night in a sippy cup instead of a bottle and she downs it, doesn't miss the bottle at all! I think this probably has to do with her nursing, because she rarely gets the bottle so I don't think she cares where the milk comes from as long as she gets that bedtime milk! :) We are still pricing out goat's milk versus Organic whole milk, we have researched both and goat's milk digests much easier for infants and there are many benefits to it, but it is pricer so we have to decide which direction were going to go. Here are some recent photos of Norah:

Norah playing in the front yard :)

At the park :)

Spring is definitely in the air! This pic was taken when 

we were walking to the park one day.

Rainy Day Fort

It has been rainy pretty much all week (I can't complain because I can't even say we have had a winter because its been so nice). Casey was also off this past week so we had lots of family time indoors! So we decided one afternoon to make a fort with Norah and she absolutely loved it! It was so cute to see how excited she was to play in this amazing fun couch fort! She laughed so hard when we would peak in her fort and she loved being able to climb all over the couch since the cushions were off and she could reach it. She got a few scrapes because she was playing so hard, but she didn't cry, she was having way to much fun. She took an amazing afternoon nap that day after all that fun!!! Here are some pics :)

Casey's Birthday

Casey also celebrated his 28th birthday on Feb. 15th!! This was his first birthday as a daddy, we held a small BBQ dinner with his brothers a few nights before his birthday, which was a lot of fun and then his actual birthday we just relaxed and enjoyed the day together. Here is a pic of the birthday boy and his little girl :)

Golden Gate Bridge Walk

We also enjoyed a wonderful day walking the Golden Gate Bridge with Casey's brother and my sister-in-law and nephews. It was 70 degrees in February in SF, this is why I love living back in Cali! It took a total of 2 hrs to walk across and back. After our walk we went to an amazing restaurant called Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, such a great day!

Weight Watchers Update

Me and Casey have been loving Weight Watchers, Casey has lost a total of 14 pounds and I have lost 8!!! I'm only 13 lbs from my goal!! We really enjoy doing it together and I just love that I don't feel like I'm dieting!! We still eat a lot of the same foods, but we have also changed a lot too. We are substituting things we used everyday for healthier, lower point options. For example, I LOVE butter, but its really high in points so we have been buying Smart Balance light butter made with flax, way low in points and much better for me! We have also been loving nonfat plain Greek yogurt we get at Costco. It is a great substitute for so many things, we substitute it for mayo and we even used it to bread our baked chicken with Panko crumbs the other night instead of eggs. We have have always tried to eat healthy by buying whole wheat pastas, breads, etc and buying as much Organic as we can, we also don't drink sodas, or have a lot of junk food in the house, but Weight Watchers has even refined our knowledge even more and has really equipped us to make our weight loss stick, it teaches you that its a lifestyle and you don't have to go without desserts or eating out, its all in moderation. So much of the knowledge we already knew about whole grains are best, eating organics is good, etc has also helped us in WW. I'm such a sweets person and bread and butter and I LOVE to go out to eat, and since WW I have been still eating sweets, bread and butter, and going out to eat, but I am much better about my portions and not over doing it. I also love it because its the only weight loss program that is still healthy for pregnant and nursing moms. I'm still nursing Norah and when I first had Norah my midwife told me not to diet while nursing because its not good for your milk, which ultimately is not good for your baby, but I was still struggling to loose the last 15 lbs, and so when I researched WW I found out you can do it while nursing or pregnant. Since its a point system you just get more points if your nursing or pregnant. I would recommend this to anyone who has struggled with other diets and wants to still have the good stuff, but loose weight too.

With my success of Weight Watchers I have also decided to speed up the weight loss by getting more active and join our local gym, even though I was hesitant before since we have P90x on DVD and we also have Insanity and Pilates workouts at home. But I recently tried a guest pass and enjoyed the Zumba classes so much, plus I loved getting out in the morning and Norah enjoyed playing with some new friends at the gym daycare. But in order for it to work in the budget something had to go so we decided cable! We have been talking about getting rid of our cable for a while because we have really been consciously turning the TV off more and to spend more quality time with each other. We have loved the results of the TV not being the center of our entertainment and decided it was best for our family and wallet for it to go! We still enjoy some shows like The Voice and I love 19 kids and Counting so we decided to try out Hulu Plus and see if we like it, its only $7.99 a month so its definitely budget friendly.

Other Updates

Since my last post I have received my photo books from My Publisher!! They came out so amazing and I can't wait to finish 2008, 2011 and our dating years books now that these came out so amazing. I decided to name them after my blog, because they really are pictures of Heinemeyer Happenings! So every book is labeled the same, expect the year will change. I also decided to always put a black and white photo of that year on the front cover, so one day I will have a shelf full of these beautiful books that have a theme. I also loved what Young House Love did with the first page of the book by putting all the highlights of that year and so I did that too, what a great idea! Here are some pics below of the finished products!

I also have started going to garage sales again since the season is upon us!!! I have been to a few in the past month and have found some great stuff already! I have purchased some more age appropriate toys for Norah and a few other things. I also recently went to our local JBF consignment baby sale again (we had one in the fall too) and got a lot of great things for cheap! One weekend recently I came home with a couple of garage sale finds and one of her favorites was this camping chair I got for her, she absolutely loved it and I put her garage sale rain boots on and she was in heaven!! So cute!!

So good to catch up, hope you have a wonderful week!!