Honey, We're Home!!!

I know it's been a while since I've posted an update. The excuse is...we've moved!! We finally closed on our house the day before Christmas Eve, and it's been a whirl wind of packing, wrapping, unpacking and unwrapping since then. We just finally got our internet hooked up today, so I'm finally able to get on here to post an update. We love our new house, and are enjoying having all the extra space. There is still a lot of unpacking to do, including the actual computer where I load all the pictures onto. (Not to mention I've got to figure out what box I packed the camera cord in!) So unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share yet of Christmas or the pictures from Lily's 16 month photo shoot. I'll work on that this week, so look out for a new house, 16 month, and Christmas post in the near future! In the mean time, I hope you all have a fun New Years Eve tonight! See you in 2009!!

Quick Video From Today

Here's a quick video from this morning. Lily loves putting on our shoes and walking around. Again, sorry for the mess...our house is in a state of half packed.




And just a little FYI to those in the know....we didn't end up closing today. You'll all hear when we do ( because I'll be shouting from the rooftops after all the stress this house has been putting on us!) Please keep your fingers crossed for us that we are in our house for Christmas!

Music Time

While busy packing today I found a recorder, and Lily thought is was the funniest thing ever! After watching me play it for a couple of minutes, she wanted to give it a try. At first she tried humming into it to make a sound. It didn't take her long to figure out she needed to blow air into it though. She's been running around the house playing it for a while now...I think it may be her new favorite toy! Here is some video of her playing. Please excuse the mess, as I said I've been busy packing today!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

This weekend we went out to cut down our Christmas tree! Normally we get our tree the following weekend, but with us hopefully moving soon, but not knowing the exact date, we wanted to make sure we got a chance to enjoy the Christmas season. So off to the tree farm we went! We found a great farm with a large hill of trees that all looked nice. This was the easiest it has ever been for us to find the perfect tree. Normally we will walk around for quite a while, scrutinizing every tree, till we settle on one...this year it took us under 5 minutes...and that's with stopping to take pictures! We really couldn't go wrong at this farm, there were a lot of great trees! Ok...enough about the farm already...I know you all just want to see the pictures!

Lily leading Daddy around looking for the perfect tree:


Daddy cutting down the tree:



Lily loved the baby trees that were her size:


Lily checking out our tree after it was cut down:


Later that night, after the tree was up, and the lights were on it (we're forgoing putting up ornaments for now, until we know when our closing date is), I pulled out some presents to wrap. Lily loved the bag of bows, and the crinkly wrapping paper. I put one of the bows on her nose, and ever since then she keeps taking bows and tries to stick them to her nose!

She also had fun pulling every bow out of the bag! She made quite the mess!

Our little present:

It would appear we got our tree one day to early though. We woke up the next morning and there was at least an inch of snow on the ground! And the good kind of snow...perfect for snow balls and snowmen. It's was ok that we already had our tree though, because we had plans with Becky, Jon and Kyan to take the kids to the Big E fair grounds to meet Santa! We let the kids run around and play in the snow for a while before going to meet Santa. I think they really loved it...they were all smiles!

Kyan and his snow ball:

Lily laughing at Kyan running around:

The kids did great when we went in to meet the big man himself. Santa unfortunately was a little underwhelming, and was in a purple suit, but he was nice. Neither of the kids cried, and were happy to sit in his lap for us mommy's to take our pictures.

Lily and Santa; wondering who this funny man is:



Kyan and Purple Santa; fascinated by his lollipop:

After meeting Santa we let the kids play in the snow again for a bit. Kyan is getting very affectionate with Lily lately. He kept leaning in for a kiss and a hug from her! It's so nice to see them getting along so well, and knowing they enjoy each other company so much!

Kyan moving in for a hug:


Kyan looking so handsome in his Christmas outfit:

Lily enjoying her time out in the snow:


I'm so glad we live in an area that gets snow, and that Lily enjoys it so much!!

Christmas Picture Photo Shoot and First Snow

New hard drive is up and running, so now I can show you all th pictures from this weekend's photo shoot. I don't think I captured the picture I want to use yet...but there were some pretty cute ones! I better get on this ...time is running out to take the "perfect" picture!

Here are some of the ones I wont be using ...still cute, but just not right!

Kissing her new rocking horse (Thanks Aunt Eileen and Uncle Johnny !):
This is what happens when you try to take pictures of a baby who is just not willing:
And my favorite capture of the day, a sweet moment between Daddy and daughter, Sean trying to calm Lily down:
The following day we got our first snow of the season! It was back to the park for us to see if we could get a better xmas picture. No luck...but man is this bear suit cute!

Now if only I could get a picture where she is looking at me, and I expose/focus correctly!!

Tagged

My friend Kelly tagged me to-

1) Choose the 4th picture folder on my computer

2) Choose the 4th picture

3) Explain the picture

4) Tag 4 other people

This picture was taken back on January 13th. Lily was 4 1/2 months old and really wanted some Ben and Jerry's apparently! We had a good laugh over her grabbing and mouthing the container. What can we say, our girl has good taste!

I'll tag Julie, Dawn, Becky and Heather.

In other Lily news, she has a new word..."No"! And that's all we hear now.."No, no" (she also strings two no's together). It's cute for now, because it's still new, but I'm sure we'll wish she never learned the word soon! :) Other than that she is doing really well. She's actually getting pretty good a sharing (we'll see how long that lasts!) At little gym this week she was so sweet sharing her balls with the other babies, and clapping for each kid as they preformed their forward roll. She also was handing out bells to all the parents during one of our bell songs. She was being such a sweetie!

Unfortunately I don't have any new pictures to share today. It seems I've filled up our external hard drive already. We have to set up a new one now so I have more room for new pictures! I expect that one to e filled by this time next year too!

Here's a picture from this week last year though. Lily at 3 1/2 months:
Somehow I think her checks have gotten bigger!!

Have a good week everyone! I hope to soon have the new hard drive up and running. It better be...I need to order my Christmas cards!

New Word

Lily's new word of the day: Ball! I just walked into the living room to find her watching Sesame Street where they were talking about balls, so I asked her where her ball was. She looks at me, say "ball" and gets up and walks over to her ball! Now time to go play ball with her!

Don't forget to check out the 15 month blog post below!

15 Months Old Part 2

Dear Lily,
15 months already? Every month seems to go by faster and faster! And every month you get smarter and smarter! Just this past month you took on your first responsibility. In the past couple weeks it has become your job to feed the cats every morning! I say to you "Lily, it's time to feed the cats!" and you run to their food storage box, open it up, pull out the mug (then I have to help you fill it with food), then you run to the cats food bowl and try to pour out the food for them. Usually I have to help you pour it out, but that's ok, you will figure that out in time. Then I say "Good job Lily! Now put away the mug!" and you run to the container and put it away! It's been so great letting you have some responsibility, and I really think you take pride in it!

This month you've also really opened up at Little Gym. When we first started going, you would cry off and on for the first 10 minutes while you adjusted yourself to the new surrounding. You also use to really make Ms. Lori work to get a smile from you. Now you lead the way into the gym, and you are happy the whole class. You love getting out the bells and bringing them to Mommy and Daddy, and you love to help everyone put the bells away. This past week you were really cute and copied Ms. Lori spinning around in circles. That made everyone in the class laugh! You really are enjoying every second of class now!

You're getting better at communicating to me what you want now. You love cheese, and when you want some you will run to the fridge and try to open it while looking up at me saying "cheese". You also let me know when you want a drink by saying "juice". And though this isn't from before you turned 15 months, it's worth noting that yesterday you started signing more for the first time! That's your first real sign! At least the first one I understood. I've also been noticing this last week when I sign and ask you if you are all done, you will respond with your hands up in the air and say "ta da!" I'm starting to take this as your way of saying "all done".

I'm so lucky that you are such a cuddly baby! You love to run to Mommy and Daddy and give us big hugs and kisses. Every night before bed we cuddle on the couch. You also love giving the cats big hugs and kisses. You're actually becoming really aggressive with cuddling the cats, to the point where I have to intervene so you don't accidentally hurt them. You seem to think it's fun to sit on Orion! Poor kitty!

Another new thing worth noting that you started doing on Sunday night...you discovered how to whistle! You've been making the "o" shaped mouth for a while now, and then Sunday night you accidentally exhaled while your mouth was like that, and it made a whistle sound. It was so exciting to you that you have started to do that all the time now! What a fun discovery!

We are so proud of how smart you are getting Lily! It amazes me to think of how far you have come in a year! This time last year you were just learning to roll over and hold your head up while on your tummy. Now you are running and climbing all over the place! Keep growing baby! We love you!

Love
Mommy

Video of Lily whistling:



And of course now the 15 month pictures:



She can't always be happy:

Relaxing in the car, all bundled up for the cold:

15 Months Old

At the moment I don't have the time to write out Lily's 15 month letter, but I couldn't let the day pass without posting a picture!



I'll update this post later tomorrow or Monday. But for now...it's time for Little Gym!

Little Gym

This morning we had little gym again ( just like every Saturday morning!), and this time I remembered to bring in my camera so I could take a little video of Lily! Today was all about feet. We played foot games on the mat, and tried kicking the balls when the teacher Ms. Lori took them out. Lily also hanged from the low bar, and we discovered that she's grown taller and can now touch the mat. She also tried hanging from the high bar, walking on the balance beam (when we first started going, Lily wouldn't even try to stand on it, now, as you can see in the video below, she can stand on it, and try to walk!) and crawled through the "donut hole"! It was a fun day at class! Enjoy the videos!

The Many Faces of Lily

New Word

Just wanted to post a quick update on the new word Lily's started saying over the past couple of days. She's been saying "juice". We think she has also been saying "shoes", but we're not positive. She's also started saying ouch and wow a lot (not related to being hurt though). It's so fun seeing her vocabulary expanding! Here are a few more pics from election day:

Lily's New Obsession

Lily has developed a new behavior lately. She has become VERY interested in putting things into any sort of container...especially the trash! It was really cute at first...on Sunday night she was helping me pick up the potatoes skins that had missed the trash can. She would pick one up at a time and threw it away for me. We thought it was great! "Look...our daughter knows how to clean!" Oh how wrong were we! Since Sunday she has become obsessed with the trash. She throws everything away. We've found her binky in the trash, toys, bottles...and the latest today...I caught her throwing our shoes away! It's nice that I can give her a napkin and tell her to throw it away now, but we are also going to have to go though the trash before we put it out for pickup! Just our luck she'll throw away something important, and we'll miss it!

It's not just the trash though. She's also become obsessed with the container we keep the cat food in. For the past couple of weeks she's been lifting up the cover and pulling out hands fulls of cat food to throw on the floor. The cats love it of course and come running to clean up the mess. Late last week she started taking the cup (that we use as a scope to put the food in the cats bowl) and putting a couple of handfuls of food in it, then taking it over to empty in the cats food bowl! Again I thought "Great...we can teach her to feed the cats!" Nope...wrong again! She'll then sit down at their bowl and fill the cup back up with their food, and bring it back to the cat food container. Then today I caught her putting other things in the container that holds the cat food. She emptied a box of instant oatmeal, and took the packets one at a time over to the cat food container, and threw them in. I guess it could be worse...she could have thrown them in the trash!! Then once she had run out of oatmeal packets, she went back to the food containers and dug the packets out, one at a time, throwing them on the floor.

Now if only I can get her to put her toys away in the toy box! :)

Here are some more pictures from today. Playing with manual focus again. I'm still not that happy with my results.

As you can tell, Lily's dressed for the election today...representing both parties! Again we urge you, don't forget to get out and vote! Sean and I have already voted, have you?

Election Day!

Lily wants to remind you to get out today and VOTE!

Halloween Part 2

As promised, here's the full Halloween post! We had such a great day. I started the morning by carving one of our pumpkins (since we were so lazy this year and didn't carve our pumpkins earlier!) Then Lily and I headed outside for a photo shoot with our newly carved pumpkin.

Our pumpkin:
A couple of just Lily:

The frost the was on the ground that morning:
Lily was very interested in the pumpkin's eyes:

After taking these pictures, we headed out to a farm near us. They have a petting zoo area with goats, pigs and yaks. Lily loved watching the animals...especially the chickens!

Here are a couple of the goats:

Lily had fun playing with the Lily sized pumpkins too:
After the farm we headed up to Becky's and spent the rest of the day with them We don't get trick or treaters at our house, so it was fun to be at a house that got lots of little kids coming to the door. Lily was really into running to the door every time the doorbell rang...she made sure she was at the door to see everyone, and show off her skunk costume! After a while, when the kids started slowing down, she kept going to the door as if she was expecting the door bell to ring at any moment! She's so funny!

Here's a picture of our little zoo..Lily the skunk, Kyan the elephant, and Ella the cow:
Hope you all had as fun a Halloween as we did! Can't wait to see what next year has in store for us!