Birthday Fun

We had a wonderful birthday week with Allie. (Her birthday was Sept. 2; I'm a little late getting this up.) She was PRECIOUS opening all her gifts, eating her cake and toddling about while enjoying being the center of attention. We enjoyed having some family here for her special occasion. The Rancatores came in on Friday before her birthday and Jane and Jacob came up on the Sunday before.

Allie has continued to do well with potty training. We hit a bit of a wall with the different schedule of her birthday week; plus she was very sick with teething that week (poor baby). She had fever several days, in addition to general ickiness. But, we had our first accident-free day on Saturday, Sept. 13!! We still have a ways to go, of course; but it's nice to see such awesome progress. We're able to go out a little more now (which is very helpful for Allie AND Joy). This week we may even attempt the grocery store!

Allie's seventh tooth finally popped through Saturday. We think an eighth one is on its way. She has had such terrible times with teething, especially with the bottom ones. We're looking forward to getting all those pearly whites in place so we don't have any more miserable weeks; but we've been warned that the molars are the worst. Honestly, we can't imagine worse and would really rather not even think about it!

Keep checking back because later this week we'll update with another post. We did a photo shoot with Allie on Monday, Sept. 15; the pictures turned out very cute, so we're anxious to share them, but we didn't want to pile two posts right on top of each other! Plus, it will give our family and friends something else to look forward to!

Also, Joy is much closer to having the photography web site finalized. She had a final meeting with the guy who is her "web guru," and he should have the finishing touches put up and kinks worked out soon. When it's ready, she'll send an e-mail to those of you who have expressed an interest and support in the project for some feedback and critiques. Then, we'll post the address on here; so you can check it out and refer Joy to anyone who's in need of a photographer!

Thanks for all the support through this endeavor. It's certainly taken many months more than we anticipated in getting started, but we're almost there!

We have figured out how to put up vertical pictures on here now, so we've included another of Allie's one-year portraits below. Also, we've put up our favorite pictures from her birthday week. As you can tell from the pictures, she had a ladybug-themed birthday party. Enjoy!