Violet's summer adventures

Wow, it's hard to believe it's been almost five months since the last post. Apologies to all of you Violet fanatics out there. This is actually Violet's dad doing my first post on here. At the time of the last post (right after Violet's 1st birthday), we were in the midst of the helmet era and doing good. Well, that era is officially over! Violet is helmet-free and looking great, but more on that later.

Back in July, we took our very first plane trip with Violet to Minnesota for a family reunion and she did great. It was a relatively short flight, thankfully, and the only slightly embarrassing yet harmless incident came when Violet decided to rip open her baggie of Cheerios and fling the entire bag across the plane at the passengers in the opposite aisle. It was a bloodbath (of Cheerios)! At least it wasn't milk. The reunion was great and Violet got to meet a lot of her relatives on Natalie's side for the first time as well as seeing her great-grandmother again.

We also took our first extended road trip with Violet to Grandma and Grandpa Niebur's house in Iowa and she did pretty well on that one, too. She's just a travelin' fool, that girl. Of course, we discovered that the portable DVD player is a very valuable tool in these situations.

She was also quite the social butterfly this summer, meeting and befriending many of our other friends and family. It's absolutely incredible and amazing how much she's grown up in just over a year. She's walking like a pro and is just a brilliant little chatterbox (confirmed words include mama, da-da, doggie, kitty, fish, owl, tree, and squirrel).

And then there's the helmet. Our doctor officially gave us the okay to free her from the cumbersome device and her head is looking good, although there was a little controversy between Natalie and I as to whether or not we should do it for sure. It's so hard to be objective when we've been so fixated on the shape of her head for the past five months, but we agreed that she looks pretty good and hopefully any residual flatness will grow out as she grows up. R.I.P. helmet.

Last but certainly not least, Violet got to stand up in my sister's wedding in September and looked oh-so-adorable in her little dress. Pictures from that will be forthcoming in the next post, so stay tuned for those but in the meantime enjoy these other pics highlighting our little minx.