11 & 12 Months.

So obviously I'm super far behind on posting Holland's monthly updates. But, I still want these things written down somewhere so here goes nothing!!

In Holland's eleventh month she:
-Officially started walking {Junde 26th, 2013}
-Said the words mama, no, and do {for dog}
-Loved to play with my hair.
-Loved carrying things around with her everywhere she went.
-Would put her hands on her forehead all the time with a very dramatic air.
-Started puckering up to give her daddy kisses! {SO ADORABLE!}
-Loved shoes {chewing on them, carrying them around, attempting to put them on}
-Started sleeping a thousand times better than ever before!
-Went on a family trip to Lagoon and was a good trooper being shuffled between Mom and Dad while they went on rides.
-Loved to play with toy cars and attempted to make car sounds while pushing them around.

In Holland's twelfth month she:
-Started putting everything on her head {shoes, headbands, food, etc.}
-Was super wiggly at night
-Went to UT for a family reunion and AZ for Mom's friends' wedding.
-Said mama and now the "g" sound for dog instead of do
-Started giving high fives
-Became a pro at using sippy cups
-Loved to share bites of her food with mom/dad.
-Loved running around stores and trying to get into everything!
-Got really good at stuffing her mouth to overflowing. She was {is} definitely not a slow eater!
-Learned how to spin.

I wish that I had written these posts more in the moment because even though I wrote down these little notes it is hard to remember all the super fun small details about Holland at each age! Hopefully this will help motivate me to stay a little bit more on top of things! But, I'm still glad that I kept notes and have them all here on the blog for me to refer back to. It's so fun to see Holland change and learn new things. I can't believe how much she has changed in the past two months! I'll have to do another post about what she's like now because she is an absolute joy to be around and has learned so much!

In Other News.

This is happening. :] 

Holland doesn't seem to be too excited about getting a sibling! Haha.

We're all pretty excited to welcome Ashby Baby #2 next April and I'm attempting to teach Holland that there is a baby in my belly. Mostly she just thinks my belly button is super cool stuff. 

The official due date is April 13th, 2014 and we can't wait to meet this second baby! I am 15 weeks along today (Sunday) and we just had our first doctor's appointment on Friday. We love our doctor and I am really hoping to have a VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean). We'll see what surprises this labor and delivery brings though since Holland's birth story did not go at all the way I was planning! Hopefully I'm a little more prepared for the unexpected this time around!

I'm excited to talk more about my birthing plans and thoughts about preparing for the unexpected and stuff like that. I've been doing a lot of research on all things birth related {even more than I did with Holland--and I did A LOT with her!} and I'm really excited for this new journey--no matter how it turns out! 

I'll do a pregnancy update/comparison to Holland's in another post but I just wanted to finally let the cat out of the bag! We're having a baby!!! 

Stuck. {A Mini Post}

I've been so stuck when it comes to blogging. I have about a billion things I want to/should blog about for journaling's sake but I've just been feeling overwhelmed. I've written entire blog posts that I just can't figure out titles for so I never post them. And then I have TONS of posts I want to write about my feelings towards birth and stuff in that department but I have SO much that I want to say and I just haven't found the time or energy to get it all written out in a logical way. Does anyone else just get stuck when it comes to finding titles for their posts or have any of you gotten stuck because you just have too much to say? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has been in this boat--right?

Anyway, I am going to "unstick" myself for five minutes and write a quick post while Holland and Race are out of the house for a few minutes and just do a quick life update. Here's what our past couple of weeks have looked like:

I got to see four of my eleven siblings and my parents and even got to have my two sisters stay with me for a week and then my mom and Gelsey stay with me for another week! {Helena and Gelsey pictured-- my parents, Stuart and Solomon unpictured}

We were all able to head over to Oregon for my Great Grandma Usher's memorial service. It was simple and perfect and Holland slept through the whole thing. We got to hear lots of fun memories of our Grandma and visit with lots of family.

Holland has been teething and got this goofy tooth that's like 1.5 teeth or two teeth just super close together. Race and I are not passing on good genes in the teeth department--our poor children!

We had family pictures taken and the next few pictures are just pictures I snapped while our awesome photographer friend was taking pictures of Race's sister and her family {she had a double duty photo shoot!}. Taking pictures is so much more work with a baby! Haha. But I can't wait to get the pictures back and I know it is so worth it to have the memories to treasure forever. It was also fun for me to practice taking pictures with our nice camera. I don't pull it out nearly enough and while a BUNCH of the pictures turned out blurry I still love them. :]

So that's what's been going on over here. Hopefully I'll stop feeling quite so stuck and get some of the posts that have been floating around in my head for months up on the blog! We'll see!