Party Time (part 1) and Exciting News!

Pierson was very blessed and got to have 2 first birthday parties. We were in Longview the weekend before her 1st birthday and since my entire family lives in Longview/ East Texas and would not be able to make it Waco for her "big" party, we celebrated a little early.

Here is the "smash" cake for the little princess.

She was not real sure about the cake at first.

Then we started to have a little fun with the icing!

Showing everyone what she had on her hands

Pierson loves to clap and so when we started clapping for her, naturally she wanted to do it too :)

It may look like she is really enjoying her cake, but she has yet to take a taste.

She finally decides to take a little taste of this sugar stuff that mom and dad have been keeping from her for so long

And she is definitely her daddy's girl because she did NOT like the icing!!!! It was so funny to see her face and then how she decided she did not want the icing on her hands anymore so she began to shake them, throwing the icing all over the walls

My niece, Maddie, was happy to take over and get rid of the cake!

She really got into opening her gifts this time. Much different from just a few months ago at Christmas.

She was all cleaned up after the cake and excited to see what she got.

Playing her new drum from Aunt Kelly

Figured out the drum sticks can be used as swords too :)

The weekend was complete with some EXCITING news from Pierson's Uncle Bubba and Aunt Jannon (my little brother and sister-in-law)! They are expecting their first child in October 2010 and told the family their wonderful news while we were in town. They brought over a fun little gift for my parents (the frame they are holding).

Nana (my mom) couldn't wait to share the news with the rest of the family and friends.

Pierson loves her Aunt Jannon

and her Uncle Bubba and knows that they will be wonderful parents!

Cousin Kevin's wedding

Pierson has not been to a wedding from start to finish since she was 6 weeks old. Several weeks ago, she got to attend mom's cousin Kevin's wedding in good ole Gilmer, Texas. Keeping a 12 month old content and STILL during a wedding ceremony is quite the task, but she ended up doing just fine (to mom and dad's surprise).

Pierson started off the evening showing her Paw Paw how much she loves to give kisses!

Everybody around was saying how cute I was so I naturally had to cheese it up for them.

She also had a lot of fun trying to crawl over the pews and grab the nice people's hair sitting in front of us.

Thankfully she did not start this until after the ceremony was over, but she was definitely ready to let people know that she was there and that the attention should not be on the bride and groom, but her!

She has always been a very "scheduled" baby and so when it was bedtime, she was done! It is a very, VERY rare occasion now when she will fall asleep on one of us, but she was out about 5 minutes after this pic. I actually really enjoyed that!

She woke back up when we were getting ready to leave and Nana wanted to get one more hold in before we headed home. She is obviously not happy we were keeping her from getting her beauty sleep.

The wedding was wonderful and we are very happy for Kevin and Alaina as they start their new life together!

Happy Birthday Sweet Pierson Layne!!!!

My oh my, how time has flown by! Our precious little Pierson is one today. As all other mom's know, this day brings both joy and sadness. I am so happy to see what she has become in just one short year and all that she will be in the future, but sadnened that my baby is officially not a baby anymore. What an amazing and truly blessed year this has been! SO many things have changed in just one short year, it is so hard to remember what our life was like before our precious daughter arrived. Over the past year, she has gone from the newborn sleep to 4 naps then 3 then 2 and now almost to 1. She has gone from waking every 2-3 hours to nurse to sleeping a full 11.5 hours every night, from only taking short 30 minute naps to 1.5-2 hour naps. She has gone from lying there completely helpless to feeding herself and walking around on her own, from just being able to cry to "talking" non-stop, saying mama and dada, amongst other baby words :), from a tiny 6lbs. 11oz. to a whopping 24 lbs, from a cute gummy grin to a mouth full of 8 teeth and  from a sweet little cuddly baby to my now wonderful, amazing, sweet little, all over the place toddler. Just writing the word toddler makes me tear up. God gave Ryan and I one of our most treasured blessings a year ago today and we are so grateful that He has given us the honor of being Pierson's mommy and daddy. Here are a few pictures from when our little baby made her debut!

Hard to believe these were taken a year ago!

To celebrate today, she started her day off with a trip to Starbucks (she loves to people watch there), ran a quick errand with mom, took a nice morning nap, had some of her favorite foods for lunch (berries, cheese, bananas and milk), went for a long jog/walk with mom, played with her birthday toys and took a really short afternoon nap. She happily greeted her daddy when he came home and we headed out for our family outing to celebrate! She got to ride in her new car seat facing the FRONT!

She didn't know what was going on! We went to one of her (mom) favorite dinner places, Ninfa's.

She chowed down on some tortillas, avocados and beans.

Finished it off with the perfect dessert for a birthday girl with a little mesican in her :) She was quite tired though since she didn't take a good nap, so we will have to really try to sopapilla another time. She got to celebrate with mom's side of the family this past weekend  and she is looking forward to celebrating with her friends this weekend! Party pictures are to follow very soon!!!

Snow Day!

On 2/23/10 we saw quite a bit of snow here in Waco. No one in our little family is a huge fan of the cold weather, but since this was the first time Pierson got to see this much snow, we decided to bundle up and head out to play.

Ryan's office closed early so he was able to come and enjoy our family snow day! He was trying to get Pierson to "taste" her first snow ball.

Our cute little snow baby!

Practicing our new walking skills in the snow!

We even got to bust out the sled!

Since we don't have any hills and Pierson can't really "hang on" quite yet, Ryan decided to pull her around to get her first sleding experience.

Pierson tried to start crawling in the snow and Bailey thought she was ready to play so started trying to pounch on her in the snow

Took her forever to crawl just a few inches. She couldn't understand why she wasn't moving!

Pierson's very first (golfer) snowman! No laughing!!!!

Pierson had enough of the snow so I took her inside to get her out of her layers and layers of wet clothing and into some dry clothes while Ryan decided to take full advantage of hitting the bright orange golf balls in the snow and as always, Bailey loved fetching them.

One of Pierson's favorite things to do is to watch Ryan hit golf balls. She dies laughing watching him!!! Wonder what that means about his swing??? We had enough of the snow and waaaaayyyy too much of the cold so we headed in to warm up and mommy and daddy got to participate in the afternoon nap time as well. Although we truly despise cold weather (except during Christmas of course) we had a wonderful day spending time together and playing outside like little kids.

Busy, Busy......

As usual, we have been very busy.......

Pierson loves to get out and about and experience as much as she can. One her favorite things to do though is have little playdates. She always looks forward to our weekly playgroups, but really likes it when she gets to play with her friends outside of playgroup. Pierson had the pleasure of having one of her other favorite playmates over, Brooks Jurgensen.

Pierson shared her toys and loved having another little one over to play!

She also loves getting to play with the toys that her friends bring over!

She will kill me for these kind of pictures later in life, but I couldn't resist. She absolutely LOVES her bath time and never wants to get out!

She is like a little granny with her walker! She is so funny to watch with this toy because she will literally move it around the house to get from place to place and to get where she wants. She will push it up to where she wants to go and play there for a little while and then get back on the walker and move somewhere else.

She loves pointing at things now, more so when she wants something. She will get such a serious little face, point to something and then say something (in her own language of course) like she is carrying on a grown up conversation with us.












No matter where Mommy puts my blankie, I can go and find it!

One of her new things :)

Mom let her have goldfish this past week and she LOVED them! She apparently takes after her mommy and enhales all things that are carbs :)

This weekend was a full of events and it started off by getting to attend on her playmates 1st birthday party, Jack Sibley!

She got to play with some of her favorite friends, Brooks Jurgensen and Addyson McEachern. She missed her morning nap though so we were a little on edge that morning ;)

Pierson and her pal, Hudson King, eating some yummy yogurt melts at the party.

Pierson got to go visit her Nonna on Friday night and had her first night away from mommy and daddy (at the same time) so they could celebrate Valentine's Day and Daddy's birthday. Pierson had a wonderful time at her Nonna's house and was on her best behavior. Mommy and Daddy had a much needed night out and for the first time ever since Pierson's birth, over night and morning to themselves. We weren't really able to "sleep in" but it was great to not HAVE to get out of bed and immediately start entertaining our little one. We sure did miss our sweet P! We picked her up at noon the next day.

This is P and her Nonna (Donna) from her church dedication. She has worked with Ryan since he started at Spenco and we have been SOOOOO blessed to have her and her sweet family in our lives. Pierson LOVES her and it is such a relief to know she is in great hands when we leave her.

Pierson helped her daddy do nothing on his birthday! Don't worry, that is what he takes great joy in doing every year. Then on Sunday, we headed down to Austin to watch Pierson's Lita (Ryan's mom) walk in the Austin 1/2 marathon.

Here is Lita with her walking buddy, Kathleen Maxwell, just about to cross the finish line! Kathleen is the mother of Ryan's long time childhood friend, Austin.

They FINISHED!!!!

Pierson has a special Valentine's/ Race Day outfit for her Lita.

Lita Love!

It was a beautiful day in Austin, sunshine and 70 degrees!

Pierson had her first 6th St. experience, but thankfully it was with her daddy so she didn't get into too much trouble :) We got to stop by and have a very quick visit with Taylor and Ali Williams and their parents. We had a great lunch after the race with Lita and the Maxwell's and then headed back home to cloudy 40 degree weather.