Weekly Update

This week we went Strawberry Picking.

Saturday was a BEAUTIFUL day around here. It was warm and sunny, but not hot at all. Brad, L and I had been apple picking in the fall and had a wonderful time. (here's a photo, hard to believe right?)



We had the best applesauce! Since then we'd planned to do as much picking this summer as we could just because it's a great way to get large volumes of fruits for jams, pies and some canning. In our region the first fruits to sprout up are strawberries! There are several places to pick strawberries, but we chose a farm about an hour away from our home and went on their opening day for strawberry picking. The lines were huge! We knew it would be busy, but we didn't really know "the system." There are basically two lines. One line is where you buy tickets to get into the fields and the other line is where you wait for the hayride to actually take you out. We later realized that several families sent one person to stand in the hayride line and then the other person went to buy tickets. It's a genius idea, but we just figured it out way too late. Next year when we have a 21 month old to chase around the place we'll keep that in mind!

Lucky for us, we've got a really happy nine month old (today!) who doesn't mind standing in line as long as you make funny faces at her and sing songs.



She's completely covered in slobber in this photo and it really only got worse from there. She's just a drool factory lately! (in fact, last night she figured out how to blow raspberries and those really help her to share her drool with the world) I love that you can see all four of her teeth and if you look closely you can see how white her gums are on either side of her top teeth where she's working on getting those to come in. She was happy to hang out in the baby bjorn and watch the million other kids running around. She wore her strawberry hat (of course!).







We took turns carrying her since she's getting pretty big! I tried to get her to wear her sunglasses since it was so bright and you can see in the second photo how thrilled she was about wearing them. She had them off in no time but I was happy that she would at least keep her hat on!



The line lasted awhile but we finally got on the hayride and headed out to the fields. Sweet baby L loved watching the tractors!







We took turns wearing sweet baby L and picking berries.





By the time we were through with the whole experience we had about 2 pounds of strawberries (including some purchased at the farm store), sunburns and a desire to eat! It was a great time and I know we'll be going back out there to pick other things this summer.

We came home and made biscuits and strawberry jam. YUM!!

We rounded out our great weekend by having a cookout with some really great friends. Little miss C is just about three and kept Sweet baby L going nearly the entire time we were there. Sweet baby L just watched and watched her and followed her about everywhere she went. It was so funny to watch!

This week sweet baby L started cruising (walking while holding onto something) a little bit. She's not very good at it yet, so she still will just drop to the ground and crawl to get something if she really wants it. She has also started climbing. She will climb all over either of us, or anything in her way to get what she wants. I can't believe that she's growing this fast. It is really going by way too fast for me!

She also did two other first things this week that I think are funny. I walked into her room Thursday night and found her standing up licking the rails on her bed. Licking, like tongue out of her mouth puppy kissing the rails. Since then she's been licking about everything. It's just so funny! She also was scratching herself the other night. It just occurred to me when I watched her do it that I'd never seen her do that before. Her neck must have itched and she just reached up and scratched it. Not a big milestone or anything, but I thought it was interesting. It makes me just be in awe at how much babies really have to learn!

Bunny photos to come! (I also absolutely cannot believe it's time for bunny photos!)

Weekly Update

It's been a pretty regular sort of week this week. We're putting in another offer on a house, but even that seems like it's getting to be old hat. Hopefully we'll be moving soon!

I love everything about sweet baby L, but I really love those eyes. Brad snapped this photo last night and I just love looking at those big eyes.



















I am loving this age. Sweet baby L is into everything. We have basically baby-proofed the area of our home where we spend most of our time and although she is teaching me daily where I need to tidy up. She loves the butcher block in the kitchen. The bottom shelf is just the right height for her to pull up on and "clean it off."

























Sweet baby L has been mimicking our faces lately. It's very cute! We still don't have those fifth and sixth teeth, but we're still working hard.

We'll keep you posted. Hopefully we'll have a house to move into this week!

Weekly Update

Sorry everyone! Late again, but that's life with an 8 month old, right?



















We are teething again! We only officially got to four teeth, and now she's working on SIX! The two teeth on either side of her top teeth are coming in. Her gums are white and swollen and she's eating like she's teething again (two ounces from the bottle at a time every fifteen minutes or so until it's gone, fine during the day...). She also is enjoying grinding her teeth. It drives me crazy. The sound of her grinding her little teeth together actually sends shivers down my spine (think fingernails on a chalkboard, yeah, like that) and it makes me cringe. I'm not sure what to do about this. Thankfully she's hopelessly smitten with her binky, so I just offer her one when she starts grinding away and so far it seems to work.

The crawling and pulling up are going well. She is getting so fast. She has a few things that she really likes: the power cord on my computer, the entertainment center and of course all those fantastic buttons, the stainless steel trashcan and the fireplace (ours is very close to the floor). The minute she hits the floor she's headed to one of those four places (or occassionally, the cat food bowl if it gets left out). She's keeping me on my toes trying to guess where she's headed and find something to distract her. I can't tell if she's really understanding me, but I tell her "no" and sometimes she looks at me and then actually leaves what she was doing. She seems to know what I'm saying, but I'm not certain yet.

She's pulling up on everything. I almost always find her standing in her crib. She's not yet really figured out how to get down from standing though. She'll stand in her crib when I put her down for her nap and then cry when she's ready for me to come in and rescue her. I don't think that she's quite gotten to the point where she's just crying to get me to come back in the room, since she does usually lay down and go to sleep after I pull her off the side of the crib once, but we'll see if that changes. When I get her up from her nap she scrambles to the side of the crib and uses it to stand right up and giggles. It's very cute. It seems like at every stage I keep thinking, "I just LOVE this age." So far, it's just getting better and better (I'll let you know if that still holds true when she's 13...).

And to add in something that I find a bit bizarre, she rolls her tongue to the side. She does it almost all the time and always to the right (which is funny, since I can roll mine to the left but not the right). I'm not sure why I find it so strange that she figured this out but it's really cute.

I have been worrying about her eating. She's getting on towards 9 months and I'm supposed to be transitioning her to eating more solids and fewer ounces of formula. Sweet baby L loves her solids, but I think I'm not doing a great job of offering them to her. Currently she has one meal a day that is fruit and plain whole milk yogurt, and then another meal that is a vegetable and oatmeal mixed with formula. I need to just add one more meal. I'm trying to transition her in to eating whatever we have for dinner, but with her bedtime schedule and our dinner schedule it's been really hard to get those things in order. I do think that she would really enjoy it, so that's my goal for this week. I'll let you know how it goes.

The weather has been great and the windows have been open. I think this photo is really cute. Sweet baby L crawled right up to the window where James had been all day (where I thought that she was going to attack him, as is her usual thing) and just joined him in staring out the window for awhile. I think that he was as surprised as I was!




















Have a great week!

Bunny Photos

Can you believe Sweet baby L is 8 months old? I can't!

We took bunny photos (a bit belated, actually) today and I can tell this is about to get a lot harder.

First we had this one:



then this one:



and then this one:



and the place that she was really wanting to get to was here:



but it made a cute photo but not neccessarily for the bunny photo. It was adorable though, and she was having a really great time patting the back of the sofa.



Then she sat down and I got this one:



Her hair is a little bit crazy from having been rolled around on, but hey... it's got a baby and a bunny and that's all we needed!

:-)

Weekly Update

Okay... It's been a long time but we had a lot going on!

Sweet baby L learned to crawl, traveled to far away places, went to court and had a visit by her uncle Matt. It really has been a very busy couple of weeks!

The finalization hearing went really well. It was all very easy (do you? yes. okay!) and we had a lot of family turn up. The judge was planning to do the hearing in his office, but when he saw was an enormous crowd we'd stirred up we moved to an actual courtroom. We had a wait a few minutes and got some cute photos of Sweet baby L being her cute self, and then the judge came in and less than 5 minutes later it was over. She's really and truly ours now! It's a really wonderful thing!









We then had a really nice lunch with people who came.



We had a great time with family too.



Sweet baby L got to meet her uncle Matt.



Cousin K likes playing with baby L except when she tries to play with his toys!



Cousin K LOVES having his photo taken, and then he wants to see it, and then take another one, and then see it...

Sweet baby L started crawling in earnest about a week ago too. She's pulling up on Brad and I, but only rarely on anything that stands still. She has learned a great trick though. She likes to pull up on things to her knees and then sit on her knees to play. It's been fantastic! She gets her own toys out of the toybox now!





Too cute right!

Bunny pictures to come...