Growing up

Alyssa has a few things that she LOVES. The most popular too are Emma and cell phones.
Emma is one month older than Alyssa. Alyssa goes to her house twice a week while Russ goes to school. She loves her. They are BFF! Alyssa always squeals when she sees her, they follow each other all over the house. We were hanging out the other night and Alyssa kept giving her hugs and kisses. One time even on the lips, oh my gosh we were laughing so hard! Alyssa started crying hysterically when I pulled her away from Emma.

Second thing cell phones. If I am ever on the phone she gets so mad and tries to grab the phone out of my hand. She has already broken two of my phones. After they are broken I take the battery out and give them to her. Does she want the broken phone...of course not...it doesn't light up or make noise when you press the buttons! Today Noelle let her hold her phone and she walked around the house of 20 minutes jabbering into her phone. Cell phones were not even popular until I was in college and my 1 year old is obsessed. How how times change!

where does time go

1 year ago.

A year of love

It's my party I can cry if I want to... ( I'm having a hard time formatting this so the pictures are first and then the explanation)

We had a great time celebrating Alyssa's first birthday. It is really hard to believe it has already been a year. It has been a great year, she brings so much joy into our lives. We love every minute with her!

We had family over for a party, Alyssa wasn't too interested in opening the presents (maybe next year). We got her a slide, it was a little bigger than we thought. At first she was terrified of it but now she loves to go down the slide. She can't climb up there on her own but she will learn. She also got some fun toys, clothes and books. As for the cake she ate the icing for a little bit but then she pushed the cake away.

Alyssa is full of energy and curiosity. She loves to explore new area's of the house, opens all the drawers. It is hard to get her to stay still long enough to feed her.... She loves books she will turn the pages over and over. She also loves dogs, if she is ever crying we all we have to do is take her outside to see the dog. She is not patient at all... If I show her how to do something and she can't do it right away she gets so mad ( we laugh because it is funny but she gets really frustrated). She started walking 4 days before her birthday now she just walks everywhere!

She has been the most wonderful addition to our lives. I can't remember what life was like before her, it is so much better now! We are so grateful to be her parents, we love to watch her grow and learn!!!

Alyssa's new trick

For Christmas we gave Alyssa a walking toy. Until now she has only used the toy for its buttons and music. Today I encouraged her to try and walk with it, until now she has not been interested....watch and see how she took off.....

Autism

When I was in PA school I did my graduate project on Autism. Russ's nephew has Autism so it was a very interesting topic for me. My main point of interest was vaccines and Autism, may people were worried that there was a risk with getting their children vaccinated especially with the MMR vaccine. The number of children getting their vaccines has significantly dropped over the past 10 years, this is putting children at risk of getting these deadly diseases that we had almost eradicated because of the invention of vaccinations. The whole basis behind the scare was one research article that came out in England in 1998 that only has 12 subjects (those who have done any research will know that this is a very low number and no credible evidence should come from that type of study), either way the study was published and this scare of Autism ran ramped. The most annoying thing to me is a celebrity wrote a book about autism and how she believed her son was a victim of the vaccination causing the autism. (celebrity is Jenny McCarthy) Of course with out any medical training she published this book and it sold like crazy and even hyped up this scare. I am very happy to announce that today the study that started this whole scare was retracted from the Lancet journal stating that it should have never been published in the first place and the Doctor that published the article was paid to give those findings. See the article below... I hope this helps reverse the false knowledge of vaccines and Autism.
This is from ABC news
Lancet climbs down on autism vaccine link
Posted Wed Feb 3, 2010 9:10am AEDT
A British medical journal has retracted a controversial study which suggested a link between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine known as MMR.
The now-discredited research by Doctor Andrew Wakefield caused vaccination rates to plummet in Britain.
Six years ago The Lancet admitted it was wrong to publish the research, but it has taken the journal 12 years to retract the Wakefield paper.
It emerged that Dr Wakefield failed to disclose that he was being paid to investigate claims that children had been damaged by the MMR vaccine.
It took an in-depth investigation by the General Medical Council to finally convince the journal to formally retract the paper.
The council found Dr Wakefield had been dishonest and irresponsible in his research methods.
-BBC

Christmas

Christmas eve we went to my aunts house and had our traditional Christmas eve celebration. Dinner and a thought about the Nativity. It was fun to see our cousins. Alyssa had fun because there were kids there. Delaney is about 6 months older than her and she loved to just follow her around.

Christmas morning. Alyssa was very happy,
The Christmas morning stair pose, I don't think Russ knew the picture was being taken...
Alyssa and her new book.
She was very excited to get her knew toys. She didn't really open the presents but when she saw the toy she wanted to play with it.

After Christmas at my house, we went to Russ moms house. Her only cousin Wyatt gave her a fun ball popping toy
Grandma Patti gave her this fun table. She loves it. It talks in English and Spanish and has music. The toys these days are so much more high tech than when I was a kid.

Christmas was really fun with Alyssa even though she didn't understand. We look forward to next year!

Thanksgiving

Grandma and Alyssa watching the parade at Disneyland.
We went to Newport beach California. It was so nice and warm. We went to Disneyland for one day. Alyssa did pretty good. Unfortunately she was asleep for the ride I wanted her to see (It's a small world). It was so cute all decorated for Christmas. Alyssa did enjoy the parade.

This is Alyssa watching the parade, I love her curious look.
This is at Laguna beach. I think these picture turned out really cool.

We had a fire at Laguna beach. It was cold but the fire kept us nice and warm. Hearing the ocean at night still by the fire roasting marshmallows, so nice!
We ran a turkey trot 10K in Dana point. I was a really nice run, it was along the ocean. The only problem was that there were 4000 people and the lanes we had to run in were so small it was hard to go the pace I wanted too because we had to run around people. We still did it in good time, Noelle of course finished before us.
Alyssa played with this flower and devoured it for about a half hour. This is at the pool.
In front of Snow Whites Adventure.
In line for its a small world. So cute, my favorite ride!