Walking Practice

Our nightly walking practice has finally become fruitful.

Roar!

Finley was a little girl dinosaur for her second halloween. She was pretty intrigued by her costume at first.

Then, she wanted to make sure that Moses knew she was a dinosaur now - so watch out doggy!

After deciding she was tough afterall, she decided to share her candy with Moses.

Next, we headed to church for Trunk or Treat. I decided that Finley didn't really need to collect candy from all the trunks so instead we just went around looking at all the decorated trunks.

Finley was pretty intrigued by Henry the Lion.

Uncle Steven tried to peer pressure Finley into her first hotdog but she stuck with just eating a plain bun :)

My "Leap"top

It is no secret that Paul and I are a laptop family. We each use our own laptops every day and Finley loves to try to pull out our power cords, push buttons or close them on our hands while typing. Fun.

For Finley's birthday, Aunt Andrea and Uncle Brad got Finley a LeapTop - or a toddler's laptop. It helps her learn her alphabet and even says things like "check your email" and "time to write a blog post". She has recently learned how to pretend and started pretending to type on her leaptop. So cute!!!

Stairway to Heaven...or maybe just the second floor.

I recently became aware that more than just my mom and Paul's parents read the blog - Hi Grammy!

For this reason, I am going to make an effort to update the blog more often. My goal is going to be at least once a week. We'll see how that goes ;)

Although Finley is not walking yet, she has mastered the art of crawling. She is quite speedy at zipping around our house and even can make it up the stairs with a little encouragement.



I know that our life will change 100% once she starts walking but I think it's a little tough for Paul, the track coach, to have a late walker. Oh well.

Finley's favorites

Now that Finley is 13 months old, she is developing quite the personality. She has quite a few things which are favorite things:

Books


Tearing up napkins

Moses's bed

Moses in general

Unfortunately, the love is not always reciprocated by Moses :(

One YEAR!

She's growing up so fast! Finley had her 12 month doctor's appointment last week and confirmed what we all knew - our little girl is growing, slowly, but growing :)


Length: 28.75" (40th%ile)
Weight: 19 pounds 3 oz (20%ile)
Head: 50%ile

Clean bill of health!

Finley goes to the Fair

Several years ago, Paul introduced me to the concept of a county fair. Even though my mom says she took me when I was a child, I have no memory of going to a fair and seeing farm animals close up before in my life. Since this was a highlight of our dating years, I wanted to make sure we introduced Finley to the fair early on.

We met a bunch of my coworkers and their children at the fair last Friday. It started with a pot belly pig race. The pigs were put into starting gates and raced around a small track.



Then they reconfigured the track and had the pigs jump into a water obstacle. It was hilarious!



Finley got to see all kinds of animals at the fair - horses, pigs, cows, goats and her favorite - rabbits.

Can't wait until next year!!!

Minnesota

Well, I'm skipping over the majority of our summer activities since keeping up with this blog is apparently not my forte. In the past few months we have gone on vacation with all the Finley's to North Carolina, spent many fun weekends with friends and family and learned to enjoy the summer with a little one crawling around.

This past weekend we traveled to Minnesota for our annual baseball trip. We drove out on Thursday and Finley was a trooper! We stopped at some touristy rest stop in Wisconsin for Finley to stretch her legs.


In Minnesota, we went to the Mall of America where I met my childhood hero, Omar Vizquel.



Finley did not go to the baseball game with us but we enjoyed our kid-free night!

Finley Crawls

A few weeks ago I received a call at work. It was Paul.

Paul: "Guess what."

Jody: "What?"

Paul: "Finley's crawling!!!"

Jody: "Yeah!!! Take a video and send it to me. Right. NOW!!"

Paul promptly got out the camera, bribed her with the elusive computer cord (Parents of the Year) and emailed me within minutes this video.

We're so proud of her! It took her a little longer than we thought to actually start crawling, although we weren't complaining because a non-mobile baby is so much easier than a mobile one!

Now that she's been mobile for two weeks, she's moving quick! She's all over the place, in Moses' food dishes, seeking out computer cords, trying to pull up on furniture - it's awesome to watch the wheels turning in that head of hers!!!

This morning she woke up especially early as I was getting ready for work (6 am). I ran upstairs thinking that I would just pop the pacifier back in her mouth and head out the door. Much to my surprise when I entered her room, Finley was crawling laps in her crib as awake as could be! I think she's getting ready for track practice :)

Easter....6 weeks late

We hosted Easter - way back in April and I just haven't quite had the time to post about it. It was great having both the Koutz's and the Rigby's here for the celebration.

9 months

May has become a little crazy!!! I have quite a few events to update on and not enough time to write the posts! In the meantime I will give an update on Finley's 9 month doctor appointment.

age: 9 months

Weight: 17 pounds 14 oz. (30%ile)
Length: 26 inches (10th%ile)
Head circumference: 17.5 inches (60%ile)

So basically she is petite (although normal) with big brains! No concerns from the doctor because her thigh rolls obviously testify that she is well fed. The doctor was impressed with Finley's verbal skills and also her ability to promptly tear apart the paper bed cover.

Thankfully no shots today so just a quick check up and out the door!

California Dreamin...

Finley and I had the opportunity to tag along with Paul and one of his athletes for a 5 day trip to California. I've never been there before and thought it would be a fun time!

Finley got to see her grandma and grandpa Koutz in the airport as they were picking up the Great grandparents. She did really well on her first flight and was only a little fussy on the second flight.

She got to go to the Rosebowl and see the mountains.

We enjoyed the sunshine at the track meet.

We took an evening to walk around Downtown Disney.

It was a whirlwind week!

Getting so BIG!

Finley has learned to LOVE bathtime. She tries to gather up all the little floating toys in her lap and then shove them one by one in her mouth. Its pretty fun to watch until she falls face first in the water because she reaches too far foward.




She also has become more mobile. She's not quite crawling but can roll all over the place. A few nights ago I found her sleeping on her belly for the first time.



She's getting bigger by the second it seems!!!

Indianapolis Trip

Apparently I'm a blog slacker.

The goal of the week is to play catch up on the blog. We'll start with the first weekend in April.

Finley and I made the trek south to Indianapolis with Paul's family... sans Paul. We celebrated many birthdays - Glenda, Caroline and my own. We also celebrated the announcement of Dave & Caroline's baby, expected in October!!


Finley enjoyed all the family time as well as shaking her groove-thang at the Battle of the Bands at the women's NCAA Final Four.

Randomness

Sorry for the lack of blog updates. This is definitely our busy time of year around the Koutz house and its hard to remember to do things like take pictures and update the blog, and honestly there hasn't been anything super exciting to report in recent weeks but I'll give you the run down of whats been going on in the last month.

Finley enjoyed a quick visit with Nini and Pops at the beginning of March. We were driving home from track nationals in Cleveland and stopped for an overnight in New Hudson. Finley received a new T-shirt from Nini and Pop's recent trip to Florida.



Finley has also reached the age where everything goes in the mouth. I'm not quite sure why she doesn't like to eat food but paper is the tastiest thing she's ever had! (And every toy within grasping distance.)



Finley is now the quite proficient sitter. It is rare that I find her toppled over anymore. She loves sitting but hates being on her tummy and therefore has absolutely no interest in crawling. We think she might be a straight-to-walking kind of kid.


Her hair is beginning to come in. Not quite enough for me to put bows in it yet but enough for Daddy to give her an awesome hair-do after bath time.


Coming up for Finley - Weekend of Koutz-extravaganza in Indianapolis and her first plane ride to California....