Random Photo's

Just some random photo's from this past week! I've been struggling again with my camera to get good shots...and Lily hasn't been cooperating with me, so I'm not to pleased with the last few times I've tried to practice taking pictures. Here's the best of the bunch:

I didn't realize while I was loading the photo's that those two were pretty much identical expression! I think maybe she is teething again. She's been really fussy, and clearly biting on her hands a lot!
Yesterday I brought her to the play ground to play. She was so not feeling it!
Again, another "Mom...will you put that camera down!" expressions!

Sorry I don't have anything better for you all this week! Lily just hasn't been very smiley for me this week! She did start saying Daddy this week though! She's been walking around repeating "Daddy" to remember it, just like she did with "duck". Only she sticks an "n" sound in the middle of Daddy. It's very cute!

I hope everyone is having a good week!

Lawn Sale, Photography and Hot Dogs

Today we held a lawn sale. It was probably the most pathetic lawn sale I've ever seen! Last night on a crazy cleaning whim, I decided we needed to pull some thing together for a quick sale. We spent the night running around the house gathering as many items we could find that we haven't used in the last year, or that we recently replaced with something newer, or we've just plain been meaning to donate. Unfortunately we came up pretty short. We forged ahead with the plan anyways, and priced everything extremely low. Hey, we weren't aiming to make money...just to get rid of a few things! Good thing we weren't aiming to make money....because our whole day's efforts only resulted in $18.50!! Like I said...it was pretty pathetic! We still had a nice day, relaxing in the sun listening to music, waiting for people to come look at our junk! And hey, we got rid of a few things! And since we had everything already gathered together, it was easy for Sean to take everything we had left after we gave up, and bring it over to Good Will to donate.

The best part of our whole lawn sale though was near the end, when Lily tried to walk off with all our profit! She took the old pickle jar we were using to hold the money, and just started walking off with it! We joked that she would make the worst thief though, because she kept dropping the jar every few feet! Unfortunately she dropped it one last time on the drive way, and the jar broke! It was then that we decided it was time to pack it up! (We hadn't had a "costumer" for over an hour at that point...haha!) So it wasn't the most successful of lawn sales...and I spent some of our "profit" at the other lawn sale down the street...but it was still a fun time overall...and getting this picture of Lily walking off with out money made all the effort worth it!

Lately I've been getting really into photography. I'm reading as much as I can about my camera, and photography in general. As of this week I've started shooting everything in manual. Well, everything that doesn't need a flash! I haven't figured out how to manually set my flash! I hope you'll start seeing improvements in my photo's soon. I know I have a long way to go, and a lot to learn! Please feel free to leave me comments of encouragement when you start to see me improving! Today I did my first lesson from the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, all about understanding how ISO effects your picture. The book is great, and is really helping me understand how shutter speed, ISO, and aperture work together to create a correct exposure! I'll be practicing a lot...so you may be seeing a lot more pictures (or less...if it turns out I'm not so good at shooting in manual! haha!)

Tonight Lily is eating her first hot dog (or rather, organic vegi dog). She's loving it! She keeps shoveling the little pieces in her mouth! Another new favorite she's discovered recently is peas. I've been giving her mac and cheese with peas thrown every now and then for lunch. Usually she will pick around the peas, and scarf down the pasta. This week though she started to do the opposite. She's fallen in love with peas! When she sees those little green things on her tray, she'll ignore everything else, and go straight for the peas! I must admit, I have no problem with this! She use to spit peas and other vegetables out when I fed her them. This makes it much easier to give her a more rounded diet!

11 Months Old

Dear Lily,
Where did this past month go?! It's all going by to quickly for me! Only one short month left till you are one. It makes me so sad when I think that my wonderful time with you as a baby is coming to an end soon. I've enjoy this time with you at this stage far more than I ever thought I would! I'm not ready for you to grow up just yet. I know the toddler years will be just as fun though, and I'm really looking forward to watching you learn about the world.

You're becoming more and more like a toddler every day! Now that you've mastered walking this past month, you're always up on your two legs toddling after me! You're little waddle is just to cute! When you try to walk to fast though, you trip up on your feet and fall on your bottom! That doesn't deter you from standing right back up again though! You are fearless!

Everything is a duck to you these days. You walk around the house saying "duck, duck, duck"! You do know a real or rudder duck by sight and sound though. The other day you were facing me, and Daddy squeaked your rubber ducky from behind you, and you shouted out "DUCK", and turned around to see it! I still think you are trying to say cat too. You'll try it a few times, then when you can't get it right, you call them "duck" (of course!). I think you may also be trying to say baby. You say BaBa when we try to work on it. Not quite, but you're getting there! Then of course there is the MaMa and DaDa that you have been saying for a while now. To bad you only say MaMa when you are mad!

You learned to climb this month. You used your problem solving skills, and pushed a box over to the couch, stepped up onto the box, and then pulled yourself up onto the couch! I couldn't believe it the first time I saw you do this! Now you just climb up into my arms when ever you want a snuggle! In the last couple days you've been figuring out how to climb up onto the bed. You use the side boards as a step up this time, and struggle to pull yourself onto the bed. This is much harder for you because the bed is taller, but you have gotten up several times now! You've even learned how to lower yourself backwards off the bed or couch! You also mastered climbing stairs on all fours this month.

Your diet is starting to look a little more toddler like too. Over this past month, we've partially weaned. You still nurse for comfort a couple times a day, but most of your liquid diet comes from bottles now. Though getting you to drink a full bottle can sometimes be difficult. You just want to play, and keep breaking off from the bottle every few sips! We've had many bottles that have taken an hour+ to finish! For you're solid meals, you've been eating a lot more bite sized food. You like chicken, peas, pasta, bread, and crackers. You love cheese, and you favorite food I think is yogurt! You get a carton of YoBaby yogurt every morning with breakfast, and you always gobble it up!

I think your starting to understand things around you a bit more lately too. You give the cats hugs and kisses when they are near you. You also pet them now, instead of pulling at their fur! I'm sure they appreciate this! Though I think you scare Orion every time you give him a big bear hug! You give yourself kisses in the mirror a lot now too. Until this month, you just use to stare and smile at the reflection in the mirror. Now you touch your reflection's face, and wave!

You're still my cuddle bear. At night when I'm reading you a story, you keep giving me hugs before going back to play with things you shouldn't be getting into (usually tearing other books or papers apart!) You've also become very interested in my nose lately. You touch it, and pull it, and try to stick you fingers up it! For some reason this just makes you laugh and laugh!

Another big accomplishment this month, you are finally consistently sleeping in your crib! Every night for the past couple weeks we have put you down in the crib to sleep, and you will stay there for at least 4 hours most nights, sometimes more. Last night you actually slept the whole night in the crib! A full 8 hours! That is the longest you have ever slept in the crib. We didn't even bring you to bed with us when you did wake up, because you had already gotten a full nights sleep! Of course now you are sleeping in the high chair next to me (your favorite place to nap!).
Here you are napping in your highchair yesterday after breakfast. You're doing the same thing now as I write this!

A few other new things you did this month: We finished reading your first chapter book, the first book in Lemony Snicket's series of Unfortunate Events, "Bad Beginnings" ; You like to walk around the house putting cloths over your head like you are trying to put them on ; You drank from a hose for the first time yesterday; You went on your first train and boat ride in Boston (also first time in Boston); You saw fireworks for the first time; You got your 7th tooth in ( on Friday July 18th ) ; You sound like you are trying to carry on a conversation with us; And you went to your first rock concert.

You are really starting to grow fast Lily! I'm not ready for you to be a toddler, but I look forward to it all the same! I still have one more month with you as a baby in your first year though...so lets make it fantastic! And no matter how big you grow, or how much you learn...you will always be my baby! I love you sweet pea!

Love always,
Mommy

11 Month photo's:
"Sorry Mom, no time to take pictures! I'm busy snacking on apples from this tree!"

"Look! I'm growing some hair back there finally!"
"Yeah, I know I'm pretty!"
"I still have chipmunk cheeks!"
"mmm, apples"
"I'll help you fill the pool Mommy!"
"Splashing in water is fun!"
"Get me outa here!"
Today, on her 11 month birthday, we went to a nearby playground to take more pictures:

Standing on the playground:
This is the face I love the most...it's her "I'm really happy" face:
Unfortunately, most of the shoot looked like this:
She kept walking away from me! There were some kids playing on the bigger kid playground. She wanted them to come play with her! "Hey...come play with me!"
Happy 11 Months Lily!

Pawsox Game and Big Papi

On Saturday, July 19th, we went to our second Pawsox game of the season! We were SO luck to have already bought the tickets back in April, because David Ortiz was scheduled to play three games in Pawtucket, including the night we were there! We heard they sold out of tickets very quickly after it was announced Ortiz would be playing, so I'm very happy we bought our tickets early...and that we bought tickets for the first row! Our seats were great, in the front row behind 3rd base.

It was a mad house when we got to the stadium. We had to park pretty far away, even farther than last weekend when we saw the Drop Kick Murphy's play! Surprisingly though, when we got into the park, not all the seats were filled, like I would have imagined they would be! The first row where we were sitting was virtually empty until about the second inning. It was nice to have the room for a while, so I could get some pictures without being in anyones way.

Here's Lily hanging out in our seats before the game started:
Of course everyone who was there was just waiting for Big Papi to come out of the locker room. It was very exciting when he did! He came out onto left field (right in front of us!) to warm up.
Here he is getting his legs stretched out:
It was so much fun seeing him so up close!

Before the game, Lily giving a little prayer to the baseball gods that we win:
Onfortunately the game didn't go so well for the Pawsox. The team they were playing, the Toledo Mud Hens, scored 9 runs in the first 2 innings!

Lily not happy with the score:


"Oh Geez!"
"Oh my God!"
There was one bright spot, Papi hit a home run!
Papi running the bases after his home run:
Unfortunately every other time he was up to bat, he struck out! Oh well...we can't win them all!
In the 9th inning, we were down 13-5. It's rally time!
I'm sad to say, even the cutest fan there wasn't enough to turn the game around. We've been saying all along that Lily is the Red Sox lucky charm (they won the AL East, and then the World Series right after she was born, and then at our very first game Jon Lester through a no hitter) , but we think she may be the Pawsox bad luck charm! They have lost both games we've been to! It's still a fun time though. And we were lucky enough to see Ortiz right up close!

Just Being Silly

We were in a silly mood this morning during breakfast. I dug out a pair of Harry Potter glasses that we got at one of the midnight release party's, and put them on Lily.
Please excuse the bandaids. Orion accidenly fell on Lily last night and one of his claws caught her head. She's fine, so don't worry! It's just a minor scratch, it doesn't bother her at all!

Hope this brightened your day!

Walking, and Now TALKING!?

I have finally got a good video of Lily walking. She walks all over the place now, at any chance she can get! She's getting really good at it already!



Last Friday Lily said what we think may be her official first word (we're still debating if the cat I heard a few times last week count...but she has yet to say it again, so I think maybe it was just a coincident. ) While at our friends Becky and Jon's house, Lily said "duck" several times! She's been saying it since too! Tonight I got a little video of her saying duck. It's close to the end of the video.

End of the Week Updates

Lily has really become quite the character lately! She does little things that keep me laughing all day long! One of her new things to do is walk around the house holding one of her onesies. She will put it on her head, or stretch it across her tummy, and look at me like she's saying "Mommy, I want to wear this!" She does it with our cloths too. Right now she's walking and crawling around the floor next to me with one of my tank tops pulled over her head! I wonder if she's starting to get the concept of clothes?
The other new thing she does that just makes me laugh and laugh...she will stand up and bend over so she is looking upside down through her legs! Sean put it perfectly the other day, she's looking at the world in a new way! What do things look like upside down?
One other new thing, she's been trying to say kitty and cat lately. I've heard her say cat very clearly a few times, but I think she may have just stumbled on the correct word by accident while trying to say it, because she can't produce it on cue yet. But every time she sees the cats, she will say things that almost sound like cat or kitty! She also seems to be trying to say duck when she plays with her rubber ducky in the bath tub. Or maybe she's trying to quack? It could be either! I can't believe she's already walking....and now trying to say words! She's growing up to fast!!
Last week my friend Asha sent Lily a tutu that she had made. Asha is really good a making these super cute tutu's, and I'm so lucky that Lily now has one! The first picture is of Lily in it, and so is the following picture. Lily just loves it! Thanks so much again Asha!
Here are a few pictures from our visit to the aquarium a couple weekends ago. Lily LOVES going to look at the fish! We've been going regularly to the Mystic Aquarium since Lily was 2 months old, and each time we go we see something new. This time we saw the new younger sea lion. He was really interactive with everyone watching the tank. He would come up to the glass, and follow your hand with his nose. A little boy had brought his toy stuffed dolphin to the tank, and this sea lion was SO interested in it! He kept trying to bite the toy through the glass! It was fun to watch!
Lily at the beluga tank:
Mommy and Lily with the Beluga whale:
Daddy and Lily watching the beluga's swimming

Checking out the new African fish tank:
Lily at her favorite tank, the big coral reef tank:
Across the street at the Old Mystic Village, we found a bunch of ducks. They were so interested in us when we stopped. I guess they must have thought we had food!