Happy Birthday, Little Missy!

I'm a dork so this is something I put together at the last minute to have printed for Autumn's party...one photo from every month of her second year! We'll have her status update tomorrow after her 2 year checkup. :)

Few more birthday pics

Ryan and Tyler in the bubbles:


Here's Autumn while everyone sang happy birthday. It's funny, she doesn't really like it when a lot of people look at her. Sometimes she's okay but usually she gets really nervous--here she has her head buried and is chewing on my shirt (something else she does when she's embarrassed). A few weeks ago I took her for a dermatologist follow-up for her eczema. The waiting room is set up in a weird way so as soon as you walk in, there are people in a line, sitting there staring at you. Autumn walked in, stopped dead, said "uh-oh," and turned around and walked right back out. And then did the hiding and gnawing thing as I carried her past all the people!


Although she blows bubbles and dandelions, we couldn't get her to blow out her candle. :P


I'm not going to lie--I AM SO HAPPY about this cake!!! I had a blast making it and am really happy I took my cake-decorating friend Mollie's advice and iced it with a plain, white fluffy whipped icing because the reaction to it being cut open was probably one of the best moments of my baking life! Also, in the background you can see the lollipop bouquet I made...that was super fun, too! And the lollipops made great party favors!


Here's a pic of just the lollipop bucket which is also Autumn's Easter bucket. I figured that the bucket would be a good investment and I was right, lol. I also made the labels. Those aren't waterproof but as part of Autumn's birthday gift, I also made her some waterproof labels with her name and that same flower (in bright blue) and font.


I don't have photos of these, but I also made small pails with pinwheels and small swirl pops and all the moms took home pails with flowers...I think you can see one in the corner of the photo of the cut cake. Anyway, back to Autumn. Here she is in an awesome 2nd birthday bib her Aunt Lindsay bought her.


I tell you what, she knows how to open presents! And she loved everything because almost every time she opened a new gift, she was immediately enthralled. Thank you to everyone...I can't get over how amazing our friends and family are. You guys are the best and we are so blessed to have loved ones who know us and our little monkey so well.


Here's one last photo...a baby and her really big lollipop at the end of a hard day of fun:


Oh!! Before I forget...go here! You might recognize a scruffy leetle monkey and her not-as-scruffy cousin!

Autumn's Birthday Party, pt 1

Autumn's birthday isn't until this Thursday but we had a little party for her this afternoon. I'm going to pretend that there's not a stack of gifts and party food waiting to be sorted and organized by posting photos. :) Unfortunately, I didn't get many photos but the ones I did get are kind of fun. Here's Autumn in her birthday girl crown. That didn't last long. :)


Mike's dad got Autumn a little playhouse for her birthday and it was a huge hit with the babies. They were so cute playing house:


The theme of the day was rainbow colors so I put Autumn in this awesome yellow tutu that her Mama Lainey got her a while back. It was totally perfect and looked adorable whenever she leaned out the windows like this.


Right after this pic, Autumn closed the shutters on me.


Here's Mike blowing bubbles for the kids. I think he had more fun than they did with it...


Actually, I think I'm going to post the rest of the photos later but I'll end with a video...no editing but it's pretty great. Mike might have had more fun than the kids with the bubbles, but no one had more fun than Papa D!


Now. To convince Mike that I do, indeed, want to go to bed before 9pm. Haha.

One from the archives

With Autumn's second birthday rapidly approaching, I am feeling somewhat nostalgic. I think it's because Autumn has just gone through a major "growing up" spurt where she is, if not taller, certainly noticeably more mature. I can see it in her face and shape; she's all gangly and kid-like. And I can see it in her skill sets; she is talking and mimicking and learning to make friends. So, here's a little monkey reminder from May 2007...almost 2 years ago, if you can believe that:

From Autumn

Some current ones...I just uploaded a bunch of photos from my blackberry. Here's one of her being weird on the playground. We met some ladies and bebehs from church and she was a little shy. Autumn ended up having a good time poking the wood chips with a stick.

From May 2009

She doesn't look too happy about it here, but Autumn LOVES to help carry things in. We usually give her a light bag of groceries to drag in. A couple of weeks ago, she really wanted to haul the wrapping paper. :)


And we've mentioned that Autumn is a teeny bit OCD, right? Well, the big thing for her is the tub. She absolutely cannot stand to have anything floating in the water. Seriously, it's bad to the point that I warned Mike's parents right before they took Autumn to Birmingham the weekend I had that big conference. We found out about her little quirk when we put her in the tub at Andi's house in Colorado. There were letters in the tub. And she wept. She wept and walked around the tub picking up the letters and throwing them into the bucket. Wept. While Andi, Sophia, and I stared in confused amazement. Autumn doesn't play with many toys in the tub so I didn't really think about it until then but after we came home I got out our letters (I had forgotten that I stored them) and then I watched.


Autumn will fill and empty cups and line up her rubber ducks on the ledge, but will not let them float. She'll play with letters, dunking them in the water and then sticking them on the walls, but never, ever lets them just hang out in the water. She takes the letters out of the container, dips them in the water, sticks them on the wall, and then stacks them before putting the letters back in the container. See?


And, just for fun, here's a non-blackberry photo from another day that I think shows the sheer concentration Autumn puts into her bathtub play:


Hahaha! By the way, I am starting a new tag: "quirks." I guess Mike and I are somewhat quirky people so I guess it makes sense that we'd have a quirky baby. Might as well have fun with our eccentricities, right?

A Week in the Life

This should have been three blog posts but I'm gonna try to fit it into one. Haha. So, SUNDAY we had lunch with most of the Colley family. I always love seeing Tyler and Autumn together because they are just so cute and sweet, especially when they are grinning at each other across tables. :) We blocked traffic a little getting some group shots of the kids. We have Mama Lainey and Papa D:


Note Autumn's outfit. Aunt Lindsay got that for her and Autumn totally looked like she should have been on a yacht. Mike and I worked in the children's area that day and were joking that we were underdressed compared to Autumn and her snazzy outfit. As evidenced here in the photo which includes the Colley Subfamily B (we're Colley Subfamily A) aka Ryan, Leah, and Tyler.


By the way, occasionally I have moments where I am reminded how small I am (usually in a grappling or stickfighting situation, ha) and the photo above seriously made me go, man, I'm small. LOL! Anyway, here they are with the always-snazzy Nanny and Boppa. Check out Boppa's suspenders. Love them! Oh, and please say a prayer for Nanny...she's fine but she is in the hospital recovering from hernia repair surgery. I think the worst part for her is going to be the "taking it easy" part. :P


Since this is a week in the Colley Life, here's a little Molly for ya. If you look at the first pic, you will see a little bird. It was on the windowsill chirping while Molly went BALLISTIC. It was seemingly taunting Molly which is weird because birds usually fly away when Molly lunges and hits the window. But not this bird. I im'd mike and told him that the bird was either tormenting Molly or hurt. Turns out it was just tormenting Molly. Brave bird.


Oh, this was funny. On Friday morning, we had finished our early morning routine and Autumn was doing her morning roam after getting dressed. Well. Apparently she was hot because one second she was fully dressed and tearing through the house and the next she was wearing only her diaper and sitting in her box of puzzles. Funny girl.


Today was the best, though. We got home from a looong day (including the wedding brunch for one of my kali instructors!) and we were all pretty beat. Autumn got her, like, 4th wind and this is how I found her after she did some rummaging in her room and came back into the living room.


She even did some chores dressed like this. I think she wore those sunglasses and carried my sheep keychain for like an hour. It was all kinds of awesome.


And here's the last one before we had dinner and then the bedtime routine...I LOVE how she wears her sunglasses like this. :P I haven't ever put her glasses on her head so this is just something she's picked up by watching. Having my favorite poofy lip face just makes it even better!


And is it freaking you out how grown up she looks there? Time is flying, for real!!

Growing up Monkey part 204

I was going to make a video to go along with this post but, man, I am tired tonight for some reason. But, the video is coming and it will. be. awesome. Hahaha. Well. It'll be entertaining, right? Cause it's Autumn and she is, if nothing else, entertaining. For example, this should have been in the cleaning post. One night recently-ish, I came home to this:


Who knew that monkeys could do dishes? She's also learning to do some fun things like sit cross legged...


and blow bubbles (she hasn't quite learned not to touch the wand to her mouth).


But the very best thing of all is that she finally, after months of saying, "papa, papa," called me mama!! Saturday night, Autumn ran through the house yelling, "mama! shoes!" right before we left the house. :D It was a good night.

Helpful Baby is Helpful...usually

So, Autumn is a pretty awesome kid. One reason she's awesome is that she, at least at this stage, kind of likes to clean. She even sings the silly song I made up about cleaning up when she does clean which just makes it that much better. My mom, of course, can't help but declare, "she didn't get that from you," whenever Autumn goes into OCDIMUSTCLEANOCD mode. THANKS MOM. lol. I even have photographic proof:


Seriously, she does stuff like wash the sides of the tub when she's bathing. She also likes to scrub her tray clean when she's done eating. Autumn even likes to help me fold and put away laundry which I let her do even if it means stuff goes in the drawers in a less than, um, flat manner.


Well. Today Miss Autumn had a non-cleaning moment. She likes to stand in the dining area of our house and stare out the window. I'm not really sure what she looks at but sometimes she stands there for a while. It's a little weird. But, hey, whatever, right? So, today when she stood in the window, I didn't think anything of it until I went over there. Yep. She had found a couple of crayons under the table and was coloring the window sill.


So as punishment she got to clean up the mess. Yes. I am that mom. At first I think she thought it was fun (singing, deeean up! deeean up! lalalalala!) but then she got pretty pitiful. I'm actually kind of hoping it didn't turn her off of her cleanliness. I have to confess that I did help her out in the end. :) Who could resist this sadness??


And, since we can't end a post with a sad monkey, here's Autumn with her first pigtails! I CAN'T STAND HOW AWESOME THIS IS. Mike and I were total dorks that morning, trying to get pics with our blackberrys so we could make them our backgrounds. lol!