Recent Pics

A few pictures from around the house.

Our little Beatles fan.This is when we knew Mia was ready for her nap.
How cute are those sandals?
What a big girl getting ready to eat her lunch.

Lily thought it was pretty funny that Mia enjoyed playing with her hair.

A Braves fan in the making.

Oslo

I have mentioned before how much Lily loves her ABC cities board. She has been on a kick for the last few days where she wants to hear about Oslo each night. Tonight though, as we walked over to her board after reading her Bible story and saying a prayer, she said "You sit there Mommy (pointed to her bench), and I tell about Oslo." She pronounces it "Osolow" each time. Here is the story she told me...

"Osolow is in Norway. It is far, far away from here. It cold there. People used to live there named Vikings (pronounced "wikings"). They wore helmets. You know what funny about those helmets? (Dramatic pause) They had horns! (as she points to head and starts laughing)." I reply how silly that is to have horns on their helmets; she thinks having horns on a helmet is hysterical.

I then ask her what the Vikings built. She replies "Boats. They use oars to move boats. They go vroom-vroom on this side and vroom-vroom on the other side (demonstrating how to use an oar on one side of her body and then on the other side). They use a sail. They have one sail and sailboats use two sails. The wikings have one sail on their boat and Things That Go sailboat have two sails ("one sail" because the picture of the Viking boat shows one brightly colored sail on the boat but her Things That Go book has a sailboat that shows two sails)." Obviously, I have been telling her these things over the last few days (though she came up with the one and two sails comment on her own), but it amazes me how she remembers what I say and repeats it back to me. I wish I had this good of a memory! She has asked me a few times about Dakar, Senegal too, but unfortunately, I don't know anything about that place. I just describe what's going in the picture which satisfies her for now.

She then turns on her humidifier "so it don't get too hot in here," turns on her Beatles lullaby CD and then lets me put her to bed. I cannot tell you how much I love the fact that Lily loves to learn about new things. I hope she will keep this curiosity up for many, many years!

Growing Girl

I can't believe how quickly Mia is growing up! She will be 8 months old this week...where does the time go? I thought I would give you a quick update on what she is up to these days.

Her first tooth arrived yesterday, on the bottom-left of her gums. I think the one right next to it will break through very soon. Even though she gnaws on everything, it hasn't seem to be too disruptive or painful for her, thank goodness. I am convinced she is going to start crawling any day now. She pretty easily gets up on her hands and knees; she'll rock back and forth, go backwards and in circles, but just hasn't quite figured out how to move forward yet. She grunts and wants to go forward so badly, but it hasn't happened yet. We have moved her up to 12 month pajamas, and they fit great. I feel a little badly about keeping her little toes in the 9 months ones for a couple of weeks now. She wears either 9 or 12 months in other clothes; the shorts fit better in 12 months, but the shirts fit better with 9 month. Really though, she's cute in anything, whether too big, too small or just right!

She is turning into a pretty good eater. She drinks 8 ounces of formula for breakfast and before bedtime plus 6 ounces before her afternoon nap. She also eats 7-8 ounces of baby food for lunch and dinner. She drinks a little water from a sippy cup with her food too which she really seems to enjoy. She is pretty good at eating almost any type of baby food we give her except green beans; she really doesn't seem to like those. However, she happily eats everything else. She really loves the little Puffs we give her as a treat. I am looking forward to the day she figures out how to pick up the Puffs herself and get them to her mouth; that will make meal time for the rest of us a lot easier. Of course, if she can pick up and put Puffs in her mouth, that means she can pick up and put lots of things in her mouth (like small toys Lily leaves behind) which won't be as much fun.

Mia loves to play peek-a-boo. This morning after she finished her bottle, she picked up her burp cloth and kept putting it over her face. I would say "Where's Mia?" and she would pull it down while I replied "Peek-a-boo!" or "There she is!" She grinned so big each time. Lily was sitting next to me and found this amusing too. We did this for about 10 minutes. She also likes to clap her hands. This comes from endless times of patty-cake with Lily and others. Just like Lily, Mia seems to love books. I hope this is a common interest they will always share. I love reading books with them. She also really enjoys bath time and splashing around. We're going to the beach in just over a week, and I am hoping her love of baths is indicative of the fun we'll have in the pool and ocean.

She is a good sleeper too. She goes down between 7:30 and 8 each night and sleeps until about 7 or 7:30 the next morning. She takes a 1.5 hour nap at about 9:30 and about a 1.5-2 hour nap about 2. She still takes a short 30 minute nap around 6 each evening which is nice when we are eating dinner in. I think she will drop this little nap soon though. She wakes up happy and sweet as she can be.

I cannot fully tell you how truly blessed Ryan and I feel to have such wonderful, sweet, loving girls. They are gifts from above!

Polar Bear

Lily really likes polar bears. She has a hooded towel that we dry her off with after her shower, and she always says she is a polar bear; I guess because it is white and has a little face and ears on it. Last week, Bama brought her a Little Einsteins' Animal Alphabet book (Bama finds some of the best books for Lily!), and it has that "P" is for penguin and polar bears. Bama showed her how "swim" like a polar bear, so now, each time Lily gets to that page, she likes to demonstrate how the polar bear swims which looks just like you think it would look like. Tonight, she showed Ryan and me (again) and asked us to try it too. I did and she accepted it. She looked at Ryan, so he did it, but she said "No, let me show you." She did it again, looked at Ryan and told him to try it. He did it again, but Lily said "No, Daddy, that's The Wheels on the Bus." For the record, both times it looked correct to me. We couldn't stop laughing while she demonstrated yet again though! Ryan tried again, and this time it was acceptable to her. She makes me laugh every single day!

Breakfast with Lily

While Lily was eating breakfast this morning, I was giving Mia her bottle at the table so I could talk with Lily. She is at such a fun age right now; you never know what she is going to tell you! While our conversation wasn't anything extra-special, her conversation with Ryan was. He had a haircut at 8:30, so he was putting his shoes on in the living room while Lily was eating. I told her Daddy was about to leave to go get his hair cut. She stopped eating, looked towards the living room and this was their conversation:

L: "Bye Daddy! Have a good haircut time!"
R: "Thanks Lily! Bye!"
L: "I love you so much."
R: "I love you so much too."
L: "You come give me a big hug and kiss before you go?"
R: "Of course I'll come give you a big hug and kiss before I go."
Ryan walks over to the table and gives her a hug and kiss.
L: "Bye Daddy! Love you so much!"
R: "Love you so much too Lily."

How sweet is that?!

Once Upon A Time

Ryan, Lily and I were relaxing before getting Lily ready for bed, and Ryan asked Lily to tell us story. This is what we heard...

"Once upon a time, there was a princess...named Mommy. She went to Disney World. She rode monorail, train, roller coaster, carousel, It's A Small World and Dumbo. She met Daisy and Pluto."

She loves to make up stories or listen to us tell stories. Of course, this time she told about our trip to Disney because we had just talked about it a few minutes earlier. She and Ryan recently sat for almost 30 minutes making up a story together about being at the beach and seeing all the fish, whales, sharks and turtles. All the animals were named Mommy, Daddy, Lily or Mia except for the turtle who was named Dude Crush (thank you Finding Nemo). Also, each night after we read her ABC travel board, she picks one city that she wants to hear a story about. Her little imagination is really working these days!

Two Quick Stories

1. Almost every time I walk into the house, Lily comes running to see me and greets me with "MOMMY! I glad to see you Mommy! Look! I got something for you!" and then she runs into the living room or playroom, and shows me a book or a puzzle or whatever she happened to be playing with recently. So, when I came in from work yesterday, I wasn't surprised to get this greeting. I turned the corner to the living room though, and she says "I cleaning Mommy!" Sure enough, she had been moving all the toys from the living room back into her playroom, and she was putting them away neatly. Not only did I love how nice the rooms looked, but I loved how proud of herself she was! You could just see she was so proud of her cleaning accomplishment. So, I started to tell her how good it looked, how I appreciated her hard work and how proud of her I was, but she just kept saying "Hold on, hold on. I still cleaning. Hold on, hold on." She took about 5 more minutes of cleaning before every single toy, book, puzzle, kitchen item, Little People, baby doll accessory, blanket and pillow were neatly put away. It was great to come home to a clean house and a very happy and proud little girl! How long will a child keep this up before deciding cleaning isn't fun? I will enjoy it while I can!

2. Lily has really started to love sharing a bagel with strawberry cream cheese on it with me for breakfast. She likes to bite right into the middle of the it though, so it gets cream cheese all over her lips. Yesterday, she did this, started giggling and said "I have bagel lips!"

Mia's Follow-Up

I took Mia to see Dr. White this morning for a follow-up appointment. At her six month well-baby check-up, Dr. White noticed she had extra fluid in her ears. Since she not started babbling with consonant sounds at all, she was a little concerned the fluid was affecting her hearing and in turn, her speech. She prescribed a short round of amoxicillian to see if it would help, and asked that we return in six weeks for a follow-up.

After examining her (Mia did pretty well with her poking around in her ears), Dr. White said she was still above normal fluid levels, but since she was starting to babble some (we have heard "bababa" and "mamama" a few times in the last couple of weeks) and the fluid wasn't infected or bothering her, we will just continue to keep an eye on it. We'll see Dr. White again in about 6 more weeks for Mia's 9 month check-up (can you believe it?!) to see if the fluid level continues to creep towards normal.

This is really good news. If the fluid level had come back as high as before, or we had not heard any babbling yet, Dr. White might have referred us to an ENT specialist to consider getting tubes put in her ears. I know this is a very common procedure for kids, but I don't want my baby to go through it if it is not absolutely necessary.

On another note, they weighed her, and she is now 18 pounds, 7 ounces. They didn't say what percentage this is (they only do that at well-baby appointments), but I can see that her 9-month pajamas are getting a little tight around the toes! Her other 9-month clothes fit fine (maybe because Lily stretched them out for her when she wore them), but I think I might have to go ahead and move her up to 12-month pajamas. How can she grow up so fast?!