Shiloh is 1 Today!!!

At 4:29 pm one year ago today, Marc and I were celebrating the birth of our beautiful daughter!! We waited for several months to meet Shiloh, and here it is one year later . . . her first birthday!! What a great time for reflection. I think that's why I'm reminded of the first time I ever held Shiloh. It was beautiful, sweet, and a relief after such a long day. Here is a picture of me holding Shiloh for the first time!

I am so thankful for this past year with our precious little girl! The Lord has truly blessed Marc and I! Looking back, I cannot even say my favorite memory because Shiloh has developed so much! I've watched her learn to smile, laugh, eat, speak, roll over, crawl, and now walk. Wow! I love watching her grow and change, but I feel like she's growing so quickly that I can't even keep up.

Just yesterday our little lady decided that she didn't want to crawl anymore, she prefers walking! In the morning, she put on a little purse and walked out of her playroom!! It was so cute that I took a picture!

Being her first day of walking, of course, I took some videos of her!! Here is a video of Shiloh walking down the sidewalk!

Here are some pictures of her outside yesterday!

AND we can't forget today!! To celebrate Shiloh's birthday, we went to a little kids play area at Firewheel Mall! Since she only decided to walk yesterday, it's been so much fun watching her!! Here are some pictures from that!

Nightime Nightmare

After 9 LONG nights, Marc and I have concluded that Shiloh is NOT ready to sleep through the night! Gearing up for Shiloh's first birthday, Marc and I decided that we would take no more excuses Shiloh needed to be sleeping all night. We've slowly weaned a nighttime feeding away and now have a routine to put her down for the night. Shiloh has definately improved in her sleeping habits, but let's just be honest here, Shiloh is no sleeper.

Back to the story. About 11 days ago, Marc and I gave each other the loving pep talk "no matter what, we won't go in there. Shiloh will learn how to sleep through the night." As we expected, night one there was at least 3 HOURS of crying. Night two, same thing. Night three same thing. The first two nights were expected, but we still had hopes of a painless lesson for Shiloh. According to the sleep book it can take about 3-4 nights to break a bad sleeping habit, and Marc and I were prepared for this.

On night #4, we both said "okay, this should be the last bad night," and we wishfully thought "maybe tonight is the night that she'll sleep all night." Night #4 = HORRIBLE because there was lots of crying. :( Night 5, we are ready for the improvement that we read about. None, no improvement whatsoever. Night 6, "surely tonight she won't cry as long." No improvement. Night 7, no improvement. Night 8, no improvement. Night 9, no improvement and we ARE DONE with this for now.

Sadly, Shiloh never slept through the night. We are back to our 1-2 night time feedings. As it turns out, I actually get more sleep by feeding Shiloh for about 10 minutes at 2 am than I do attempting to teach her to sleep through the night. For now, the Marc and Reci Smith Family will continue to allow Shiloh to (I think the term is) "night feed."