17 Months

Dear Lily,
Each month with you just gets crazier and funner Lily! This past month you've become a real ham! You love to laugh and make people laugh by making funny faces and nibbling on toes! You've really perfected what we lovingly call your mad scientist laugh. You can sometimes just break out in the huge laugh that makes everyone around you smile!

You've also learned to be very polite this month. Every time you give us something, or we give you something, you will say "thank you". You've also started saying please when you want something too! It's so nice to see you being so polite! Then just as I'm getting smug that I've taught my daughter to be little miss manners, you'll remind me you're still a toddler by throwing your dinner off the table! (and breaking out into your mad scientist laugh of course!)


This past month you've grown a few more teeth. Now the count is up to 13 with one more just below the surface. You've got 4 in the top front, 4 on the bottom front, and 4 molars (those were hard coming in for you!). And on your 17 month birthday I noticed that one of you're canines had popped through without me even knowing you were teething those. We knew you're 4th molar was coming in at the same time, but you wouldn't let us see the rest of your mouth, so we missed that one coming in entirely! Your other canine on the top is also just under the surface, and should be popping through any day now. Good thing you love to brush your teeth! We can't brush our teeth without you demanding to brush yours too!

As I've said before on the blog, your vocabulary is really starting to blossom this month. You're learning new words faster than I can record them now! New to the list are toes, mouth, nose, belly, eat, water, please, bottle, flower, teeth, cold and Ouija. I'm sure I am forgetting a few too. And of course, most of these would only be understood by Mommy and Daddy...but we know what you mean. For example, for nose you say "no" with the "o" sound drawn out, and pointing to your nose. Mouth is "Maw", while pointing to your mouth. You're also starting to try to copy me when I say words. That's how you learned flower the other day. We were stilling looking through a garden catalog together, and I was pointing out the flowers to you, and you immediately tried to say it with me!


"The Itsy Bitsy Spider" is still you're favorite song. You always give up a round of applause when we sing it to you. You also love "Head, Shoulders. Knees, and Toes" and "Patty Cake". Anything with finger play that you can try to follow along with really! I've also caught you trying to sing yourself lately. The other night in bed I was humming to you, and when I stopped you continued your own song by yourself. I can't wait until we can sing together!

You've become really interested in baby dolls this month. You love to push them around the house in your baby stroller, and put them to bed in your dolls cradle. I've spied you a few times even offering your binky to your favorite doll! Though that doesn't surprise me... you love to share your binky with Daddy and me, and the cats!


You continue to be our sweet little girl who loves to give hugs and kisses! We are so proud of how fast you are growing and learning! I can't wait to see what the next month holds for us! We love you Lily!!

Love,
Mommy

Sledding and Doing Dishes

Over the weekend we took Lily sledding for the first time! We have a great little hill in our side yard, which is perfect for sledding, and after a month and all that snow we finally took advantage of it! Lily had a blast going down the hill with us, and also really got into playing in the snow (again, her first time playing in snow!)

At the bottom of the hill with Daddy:


Tasting the snow:

And just for clarification...yes that is one of my old gloves she is wearing! We couldn't find her other mitten before we went out, so stuck that on her. Wouldn't you know we found the missing mitten as soon as we got inside!

Laughing at Daddy as he went sledding down the hill by himself:


I think she liked it so much that this morning she brought me her coat and hat as if to say she wanted to go outside. So this morning we went out again to play in the snow. No pictures, but she had fun with me pulling her around the yard in her sled!

Later this morning I filled her baby bathtub with water and gave her a few of her plastic dishes and a sponge with a little soap. My goal was for her to play at cleaning dishes (and thus occupying her time by mimicking mommy so I could wash our dishes!) But Lily had other plans...before I knew it lily had climbed into the tub and was sitting in the soapy water! I should have known she would have tried that! Oh well...we had fun anyways...and she still played at washing dishes...she just wanted to sit in the water while she cleaned!

Uh Oh! Mommy caught me in the water:


Having fun rocking the tub back and forth:

Finally helping with the dishes:

Random Picture Post

I'm having trouble keeping up with pictures since we've moved, so I figured I'd just post a bunch from the last couple weeks at once!

Ringing in the New Year in style:


Blueberry beard on New Years day:

Lily got new paints and markers for Christmas...here she is exploring them for the first time:


And her final project...Lily's first masterpiece!

On our 2 year wedding anniversary, Sean and I took Lily to the children's museum. There she enjoyed looking at different animals, digging for dino bones, and playing with bubbles!

Lily in her dino excavation gear:

Lily inside a bubble:


Gorgeous baby blues:

Taking a bath yesterday. She was helping with lathering the shampoo:

She loves to put things on her head lately, especially hats. If she sees one it has to go on her head! Here Lily is putting her favorite hat on yesterday:


And the last picture, parroting mommy with her toy camera:


We've also had a vocabulary boom in the last week or so. Her new words are Elmo, Ca Ca (was trying to get her to say poopy...we're just starting to think potty training...trying to teach her the words...she for some reason prefers Ca ca...go figure!) , peas, Ky (for Kyan), bubble (we think it means bottle), more, cow, and moo. I think she also has said poopy a few times, but her binky was in her mouth, so I can't be sure. She's also perfected how to say apple in the last week. At her 16 month doctors appointment last week we were told we would start seeing her pick up a word a day soon...I just was surprised it started that soon after!!

As for her 16 month appointment, Lily was 22 lbs 13 oz (40%), and 32 inches (80%).

Freezing Rain

Today we had freezing rain, which encased everything in ice. Of course I had to run outside while Lily was napping to take some pictures!



And finally, the outside of our house:
Not the best picture...I need to change my lens to be able to get the full front of the house in a picture, since the lens I had on the camera doesn't go very wide. But there is the front 2 rooms. Next to that is the big picture window of the living room. Doesn't everything look so pretty in ice though?

Scroll down for the Christmas post.

Christmas 2008

Finally it's time for the Christmas post!! We had a fantastic Christmas this year because we got to spend it in our own house! We started our celebrations off with a new tradition this year; we each opened one present Christmas Eve night, which for each of us is a new set of Christmas pajama's. Lily loved her new PJ's:


The next morning we woke up bright and early to find all the great gifts Santa had left us ! Lily loves the red push wagon Santa left her! She spent most of the day sitting inside it and pushing it around:
After playing with our gifts from Santa for a while, we started on the pile of presents under the tree. Lily got a little spoiled this year!

Lily trying out her new Cabbage Patch dolls binky (notice again, n the wagon!) :

Opening up a box of Clothes:

Helping herself to a present out of turn:
The way we open presents in our house is we take turns opening presents, going in order of age from youngest to oldest. Lily got so into opening presents though that she got excited and decided it was her turn a little early, and started opening this one present by herself. We let her roll with it, cos hey, she's only 16 months...we can't expect her to learn turn taking in one morning. This was the only time she opened a gift on her own though!

And what was the gift she was so eager to open? A shape sorter!

Excited to be in her wagon again:

A new Puppy!:
Another Cabbage Patch Doll:
Testing out her wood pull toy:

Lily really got into open gifts this year, which was really fun! In addition to those pictures, Lily also got a dolls baby stroller, and lots of clothes and books. She likes to push the baby stroller in one hand and the wagon in the other! She also loves to push her baby dolls around the house in the stroller.

At the end of the long day Lily was so tuckered out that she feel asleep in her highchair during dinner!
I hope everyone had as great a Christmas as we did!

16 months

Dear Lily,

I wish there was a way I could slow down time...every month seems to go by faster and faster with you! I can't believe you are already this little kid, no longer a baby! You've become so independent lately! You like to help out around the house, and you love to sit and read by yourself now! But at the same time, this past month you've become cuddly all over again! You love to give great big hugs all the time now!

Over this month your words have exploded. I've lost count of how many words you know. Off the top of my head the news words you've learned this month are; ball, no, bye bye, up, all done, apple, happy, achoo, I do, ouch, meow and binky (though you say bebe for binky and appy for apple). You also started signing a little this month. You can sign more, eat and please. Usually you roll all three signs into one though. You do the more sign and the eat sign at the same time at your mouth, and then say please by rubbing both hands on your sides. At the say time you will say cheese while doing your signs. It's really cute to see you trying to communicate with us! It's nice that you can tell us when you want to eat, or when you need your binky, or when you want to be picked up, or when you are done eating!

Another cute thing you picked up this month was blowing when I say"ouch...it's hot!" I always says it's hot when your food is to warm, and I'll show you how to blow on it to cool it down, and this month you start blowing on your food yourself! In the past 2 weeks since we've been in our new home I've seen you transfer this to other things. When I told you one day to not touch the oven because it was hot (it wasn't really...I just am trying to teach you not to go near the oven door) you crouched down and started blowing on the door! Talk about cute! Then a couple days later I told you not to touch the space heaters fake fire (again trying to teach you not to go near fire...the space heater front doesn't actually get hot at all!) and you again got down and started blowing on it! Now I'll have to teach you to not get so close when it really is something that is hot, but for now it's really cute!

You've also started talking to your reflection in the dishwasher and oven doors since we've moved. You like to just sit there for a while and talk to the baby you see. I have to wonder if this is the beginning of an imaginary friend somewhere down the line. I'll have to wait and see, but you sure do like you're mirror friend!

Of course it was this month that we moved. You really seem to like all the extra space so far! The first couple of days here you were a little crankier than normal...but you've also been teething another molar (still hasn't broken through yet!) so that may be the cause. It's hard to keep track of you know though. Before at the apartment I could sit almost anywhere in the house and still see you or be within 3 steps of seeing you...now when you wonder off while I'm doing dishes or cooking dinner, I'll have to go hunt you down! Usually I'll find you terrorizing the cats. Last month I said how you like to give them hugs...well that of course has continued, but now you also like to grab at their tails and pull. Poor Ouija is usually your main target for tail pulling. For this reason I want to put off getting a dog. We always said once we were in the house we would start looking for a dog to join our family, but now I'm worried about having a strange pet in the house when you are being so rough with the cats already. We'll see how you treat the cats in the next month or so I think before we start looking.

It's still just incredible to me how far you've come from this time last year! This time last year you had just started eating solid foods (rice mush mostly) and were just starting to learn to sit up by yourself. Now you are eating mostly the same foods Daddy and I eat, and are running so fast it's hard to keep up with you! You are a full blown toddler now babe, with toddler tantrums and everything! I miss your baby days already, but look forward everything new that's in our future! We love you Lily!

Love,
Mommy

16 month Photo Shoot:

I discovered early on in this photo shoot that Lily was really intrigued by the candy canes on our tree. The only way I got her to keep still was let her play with one...of course it went straight to her mouth:

Sharing her candy cane with me:
Finally cooperating for me:


Reading her book to me:
With such enthusiasm:
Christmas post to follow, probably tomorrow!

Trimming the Tree

I've finally found the camera cord! So now it's time for the non-stop set of posts from the last 2 weeks of holiday celebration and new house settling. For tonight we'll just start with our first night in our new house, and re-trimming the tree in our new house.
I don't have any pictures of our first night in the house, but I can tell you all how our first night went. The day we got the keys to our house (we didn't close till 5 days later...much thanks to our Realtor for getting us the keys earlier!) there was a huge snow storm in our area. Because of the snow storm we only took with us what we could fit in one car load; us, Lily, a few toys for Lily, the lap top, a couple movies, some food and the air mattress. Then we basically just bunkered down for the rest of the night in our new home watching It's Christmas Charlie Brown and other favorite Christmas movies. That night I think we got over a foot of snow...the first big snow storm of the year, and we decide that was the perfect night to move! The snow really put a damper on how we moved everything though. In the end it took us a whole week and I don't know how many trips to get everything moved because we had several storms in a row.

Here's a picture snow from our first morning in the house, taken from our living room:

While the snow did make moving slow going, that storm will always be one we remember fondly because we got to weather it out in our first home!

Now as I was saying there were several storms that first week in our house. The second storm was the day we decided we were going to move the Christmas tree. As I'm sure you remember, we cut down our tree a couple weeks before we moved, and only decorated it with lights because we would be moving soon. We were smart enough to take the lights down before moving it, be we left the tree stand on, in an attempt to keep the tree alive. So imagine if you will, a car fulled to the brim of our belongings, with a tree strapped to the top with the stand still on it, driving down the road in the middle of heavy snow storm! At least we got the tree to the house in one piece, and we were able to weather that storm by spending a cozy night decoration our tree.

Lily really had fun helping us with the tree this year. She was fascinated by the lights. She liked wearing them like a necklace.
She also had fun with the ornaments. Unfortunately by fun I mean she liked to pull them down after I placed each one on the tree!

Here she is playing with one of the nonbreakable ornaments...or rather trying to eat it like a cookie:
Our tree after we were halfway through decorating it:
I should have a fully finished tree picture somewhere, but I haven't looked through all the pictures yet.

And I have one last picture for the night of Lily's hand print ornament from last year. This is an imprint of her hand on Christmas day last year...it's know my most treasured ornament!
That's all I can do tonight, Lily is crying to go to bed. I'll try to get Lily's 16 month blog up tomorrow, and then we'll see when I can do a Christmas post. Good night for now!