Chandler @ 18-months

Oh...my sweet little Chan-Chan...that's what we are calling you these days!

Your Stats:

Ht:  33" and 85%

Wt:  26.2 lbs and 80%

HC:  18 1/4 and 50%

Very consistent...big baby, small head.  =)

This is not a great picture, but here you are with one of your friends who is just 2 weeks younger than you to get an idea of how big you are.  =)

Things you love:
Being Outside

Dancing

Mickey Mouse, Dora, Special Agent OSO, Wiggles

Raisins, Orange juice

Baby Dolls

Playing Dress-Up

And making us all laugh.  It is very common for us all (even Brooking) to be laughing out loud at something hilarious that you are doing on purpose to make us laugh.

2 of my FAVORITE things that you do are:
1.  Roar like a lion to try to scare people
(It is so sweet and delicate, that you are really not scary at all, but you think it's HILARIOUS!)

 and
2.  You make this face on command...anytime I ask, which is often because it is SO stink in' cute!

There are SO MANY things about you that make me think you might be a genius!

But here are just a couple:
1.  Your vocabulary!!  You say probably 200 words...it's INSANE!  And you'll attempt to say any word, phrase or sentence that I ask you to.  Some of my favorite things you say are "What's that?", "Shake it off" (whenever you hurt yourself), and "Don't know" (when I ask you something that you don't know...it's just really funny coming from a 1-year-old

2.  You go potty.  You are not potty-trained, but anytime you see one or hear someone say that word, you ask to go and have success with #1 and #2.  You also wipe, flush and wash your own hands.  You probably go potty 3 times a day!!  Brilliant!

3.  You can sing the whole alphabet song...granted more letters are wrong than are right, but I can recognize the tune and you hit that key letters, ABCD, G, P, Q, V.  You also sing Jesus Loves Me and Old McDonald.

You still don't sleep very much!  Probably just 10-11 hours at night and just a single 1.5 hour nap during the day.  But when you are sleeping, you sleep HARD!

And you'll sleep anywhere!  Yesterday, we went to pick you up from the church nursery and you were asleep in a bright room, full of other babies your age.  You had fallen asleep on a buggy ride they had taken you on, stayed asleep when they moved you over to a crib, stayed asleep when I took you out, walked you out to the car, buckled you into your car seat and slept all the way home!!

I often get you out of the car when you fall asleep, will change your diaper and put you in your crib and you never wake up.  You don't sleep much, but when you do, you don't play around about it!!

The only time you get a paci is when you sleep and before you'll take it, you make us rinse it off!  You get in your crib, hand it to us and say, "Wash."  Funny girl!

Your downside, if there has to be one, is that you will no longer sit in a high chair (only boosters like Brooklyn) or in a shopping cart, which makes you REALLY difficult to shop with!!
This was what happened when we tried to go to Old Navy the other day.

You just wanted to hang out with the headless children mannequins!

Needless to say, this was not a successful trip and we weren't able to get anything.

You are still VERY snuggly and loving.  You say, "I love you."  Melts my heart!

You are still pretty much a mommy's girl, but you are starting to be a lot friendlier around others.  You will let others hold you, you don't cry or cling when getting dropped off in church nursery, and you wave, smile and say to EVERYONE we see.

And you've really warmed up to your Daddy!!  And, of course, he's become smitten with you!

Oh yeah, one more cute thing you do is mimic people.  You will watch how they are standing or how they are holding their hands and try to copy it.  LOVE THAT!  LOVE YOU!!

Oh...and you help me make my bed every day.  You bring me every single pillow...some of them are as big as you are, but you are very determined and do such a good job!!  Such a great helper!!

I could just keep writing about you forever, but I have to stop somewhere.

Happy 18-month birthday, Baby Chandler!!

I'm Going to Jackson...

Jackson Hole, Wyoming!!

Eddie and I haven't been on a vacation without children in about 2 1/2 years and it was finally time!!

This was our Jackson Hole crew!  Ben and Brooke are sitting at the far end of the table.

Michelle (black and white-striped top) and her boyfriend, Chris, are the ones sitting closest to the camera.

That's Michelle and I just after we landed in Wyoming.  Can you tell we are so excited?!?  Our flight didn't leave Texas until 5 pm so it was dark by the time we landed, got a rental car and made it to our condo.  

So we didn't get to see the view from our front window until the next morning.

 Pretty picturesque, huh???  And do you see those little red post things across the street.  

That was the lift!!  We literally walked across the street each morning and were ON THE LIFT!!!  Awesome.

The night we got there we went to the grocery store thinking we'd just buy some milk and cereal type stuff to have for breakfast each morning UNTIL....this handsome fellow VOLUNTEERED to cook for us each morning!!  Thank you, Eddie!!

Here we are before setting out our very first morning there.

Eddie and I have only been skiing once before...for one day...with no ski school or instruction.

We were definitely the rookie skiers of the group.

We headed up on the lift hopeful that the little we learned on that 1 day 6 years ago would come back to us.

No luck!!  Both of us fell down exiting the first lift.  =)

At least we looked the part, though!

After much time spent on the ground the first morning, we finally broke down and went to ski school...which ended up being more like a private lesson for just Eddie and me.

I learned SOOO much and was ready to conquer the next day on the slopes...but not before enjoying a fabulous kid-free dinner!

Before dinner, Brooke let me play beauty shop with her hair.  I secretly LOVE to play hair dresser!

Check out her super-cute rocking' curls!!

See that?  No high chairs, booster seats, cheerios, diaper bags...ahhh...the simple life!

The whole gang, with full bellies, after a long hard day of skiing, posing for a picture in the snow.

So.  Much.  Fun.

Pretty sure we've decided to make this an annual trip!

Second day.

After our half-day of ski school and mastering the greens, we were ready to hit the blues!!

Left my camera at home that night...so on to day 3!

We were doing pretty well, on 1 set of blues, so we decided to take the Gondola all the way to the top of the mountain and ski all the way down on some new sets of blues.

When we got to the top we realized how foggy it was...you could barely see what was coming up ahead of you and was tricky to keep up with our small group.  But we did it!!

Such a feeling of accomplishment!   

We went up the Gondola again later in the day.  They have this awesome restaurant at the very top with great food and a magnificent view!

Ben and Brooke ran in with us to grab a bite and to let Michelle and Chris (who literally skies at an expert level) do some tougher slopes that Eddie and I just weren't ready for this time around.

But next year we will be!!

Don't know if you can fully appreciate that view behind us...but it was A.MAZ.ING.

That last night.  Chris and Michelle volunteered to make us dinner.  They both are FABULOUS cooks.  

Chris has even spent a lot of time working in restaurants and you should SEE how fast he can chop stuff!!

I wish I had a video of that!!

So our last night we just ate family style around the table eating the most delicious filets, baked potatoes, bread and some other colored vegetables on a kabob.  =)

So delicious my mouth waters just thinking about it.

Thanks for cooking Chris and Michelle!

And, because I don't want them to feel left out, Ben and Brooke cleaned it all up when dinner was over.

So...let's get this straight.

Eddie cooked breakfast every morning and Ben cleaned it up.

Brooke and Chris made us all sandwiches each day to take on the slopes.

Chris and Michelle cooked dinner the last night and the Wyatt's cleaned it all up.

Right.

So, apparently when I'm on vacation, I am ON VACATION.  =)  Don't expect me to lift a finger!

It was Sunday night after all and SOMEBODY had to watch the Grammy's and see what kind-of tribute they were going to pay to Whitney Houston!!

The next morning, we LEFT our condo by 5:45 a.m. Wow.  That's so early!
But we had the best time ever!!!

Of course, this all would not have been possible without Ms. M (aka - Eddie's mom or Gie-gie)
She made the 5-hour drive to our house to keep the girls while we were gone.  Not only did she manage to get them up, dressed and out of the house each day, but also somehow managed to have the playroom cleaned, dishes done and her own sheets, towels and linens all washed and put back together when we got home.  You grandparents have to stop being SSOOOO fantastic!!  It makes vacationing so easy and fun for us we are going to be tempted to do it more often!!

And finally, thank you to Chris!!
He did all the research in figuring out the location, the place to stay, the rental car, and the flight arrangements.  He was our concierge, our tour guide, our chauffeur, our cook.  He pulled the ENTIRE trip together and was doing work for us the whole time we were there!  I know there was probably a TON done behind the scenes that I don't even know about.  Thank you for making the WHOLE thing so easy and fun for the rest of us!!

Monumental Day

Today 2 big things happened that probably aren't that big for anyone else on earth, but were HUGE for us here at the Nalley house!

1.  Brooklyn ate a quesadilla!!  Since Brooklyn was about a year old, she's refused to eat anything that would be considered substantial meal foods, except for chicken nuggets, Mac-n-cheese, and spaghetti Os   Last summer, I was really tough on her and FORCED her to try at least 1 bite of several different foods (they were just normal kid foods that most children will eat...nothing crazy like brussel sprouts or anything.)  There were many tears and it was such an ordeal, that after several months of zero basically progress, I gave up.  She did add PB&J and pizza to her diet, which were huge, but we haven't added anything else over the last 9 months until tonight!!  She ate a WHOLE quesadilla!!  Granted she was bribed with whatever she wanted, which was in this case pink ice cream, but still progress was made with NO TEARS on her part or exhaustion on mine and I'm on cloud nine!!

2.  Then to top it off, when we got home, Chandler requested to sit on the potty which is VERY common around our house.  What is NOT common is that she actually went!!  Not even 18-months-old and already success on the potty!!  (I thought this was a total fluke at the time, but I'm actually posting this a week late and she's had several more #1 successes and a #2 success as well.  She definitely "gets it", but I'm not sure I'm totally ready to start potty training another one =))