Making great strides

This past weekend, we made a hastily planned trip to Wisconsin to see my grandpa. He had just had surgery to remove blood that was trapped on his brain. This kind of thing is extremely serious for anyone, let alone someone who happens to be 93 years old. He is recovering much in the same way as if he'd had a stroke. He is having to re-learn everyday things, like eating and talking. His progress is surprising everyone. The doctors were questioning if he would ever be able to eat again, then the next day, he ate potatoes. His speech is improving and he's even surprised us with some of his old funny comebacks. He is having a lot of trouble wish his short term memory, though.

He loved seeing Lily. He lit up when she came in the room, even wanting to hold all 18 lbs of her. That was great to see. He's always loved babies. I wasn't sure if he knew exactly who she was when I told him "This is your great grand-daughter, Lily". He still looked a little confused. Then I said "From California, remember, we went and got her in California?". His eyes got bright, "This is HER!", he said.

More from BBQ and Blues

My brother just sent me this video of my niece dancing at the BBQ and Blues event. Check out that hip action!



I love that girl!

New Pier

On Saturday, Lily and I joined in the dedication of a fishing pier at one of my dad's parks. It is pretty neat because this is a special pier designed to make fishing more accessible for people with disabilities. The design includes tackle box rests and slots in the railing to allow for fishing poles to reach the water from a lower height.

Here, my dad is helping give the dedication speech:



Next is the official aquatic seed toss:



and finally, Lily enjoying a little grandma time:

Five months

My sweet little thing, you turned 5 months old on Saturday! Here are the things we want to remember about you at this age:

-You love holding onto one foot with each hand and then, eventually, chewing on them.

-At this point, sometimes your jabbering sounds more like loud complaining. Hopefully that isn't how you really feel.

-You are rocking like you want to crawl and moving your arms and legs in the correct way, but can't actually move yet. You can, however, scoot backwards while laying on your back.

-You are reaching for toys and getting really frustrated when you can't quite reach them.

-Everyone swears you're teething, but no teeth in site yet. Just lots of chewing and lots of drooling.

-You love to reach out and "pet" any animal that is unfortunate enough to walk by. I say "unfortunate" because your "petting" involves a lot more hair pulling then we would prefer. So far, they've all been pretty good sports about it.

-If we sit you down on your butt, you can sit up for quite awhile before eventually teetering over. You look really proud of yourself while doing this. If you are holding a toy, it ruins your concentration and you usually fall right over.

-You are getting to be a real daddy's girl. You light up whenever he walks in the room and smile at him any chance you get. I have never seen your dad happier.

-You are a jumping fool. So much so, that you have what we are referring to as "jumper's toe", where the skin is getting a tad bit peely from all the jumping.

-You've got more personality to your laugh these days. More of a belly laugh than before.

-The first ever solid food you ate was a piece of dried up old leaf that you picked up out of the grass as mommy was changing you. I tried to fish it out, but couldn't get all the little pieces out in time.

-You grunt and sigh a lot.

-Peekaboo sends you into fits of giggles. Especially from across the room. You also love playing patty cake.

-Crinkly stuff makes you really happy. Especially paper.

You are everything we could have asked for and more. We love you to the moon and back,

Love, mommy.

Dude!

Look at the superstar on the front page of the local paper! Double click the picture to view full size.

Single babies

Three posts in one day! What has come over me? A friend shared this with me and you know I can't resist anything Beyonce.

For the record, this is NOT Lily. Hopefully she will have skills like this one day, though.



*edit to add another one. What is it with babies and this song?

Full circle

I've been thinking a lot about the path we took to get where we are today. I was compelled to go back and revisit some of my self portraits from the last few years. I think they state my feelings better than words ever could.





The last photo was taken by Corey today.

Movie time

Break out the popcorn, it's video time. The first one shows one of Lily's favorite things, making her butterfly flap it's wings. Whenever we change her, we let her pull the cord and make it fly.



Tickles by daddy:



Strong girl, sitting up all by herself. I am amazed at her balance.

BBQ and Blues

The BBQ and Blues event that Corey came up with was a success! The best guess at attendance was around 500-600. They ran out of BBQ twice and had to get more.





Lily's bud, Henry and his family made a surprise appearance.



We camped out at the park this weekend, it was Lil's first camping experience. We wanted to start her out young and she did very well.

Corey's parents joined us, along with my brother Zack, his wife Monica and their little girl Lexi.



Lil did a lot of dancing to the blues with mamaw and me, it really tuckered her out...

Like daddy, like baby

Lil is getting really geared up for the Bengals this season, just like daddy.



Unfortunately, rooting for the Bengals usually results in some of this:



In other news, Lily wore jeans for the very first time the other day. I have this thing, I like to only dress her in really comfortable stuff. I feel when you are a baby you should be comfortable at all times. You have the rest of your life to worry about how you look. If I could get away with wearing onesies and sweatpants all day, I'd do it in a heartbeat. These jeans are exceptionally soft though, and she seemed to like them.



More evidence of her being a big girl:



You may have noticed, she's lost some of her mop. I'm not sure where it went, but now she has a little patch of long hairs on the top and the sides look like she has a buzz cut. I promise, we did not shave her head.

Oh no!

Yesterday, Lily and I attended an event for my work. Part of the training was learning about invasive species. Lily ended up having a close encounter with the pond weed "Hydrilla". It may have been fake, but Lily still wasn't sure about it...



as time went on, she got even more worried...



in the end, she decided she could just chew her way out.

Cha-cha-cha-changes.

Life has been in warp drive lately. Since I've been a lame blogger recently, I wanted to catch up on some photos from the last week or so.

Little girl is now rolling both directions. We'll leave her on a blanket while we walk into the kitchen for 30 seconds and she's rolled over and over, chilling in the middle of the floor by the time we get back. Her smile is instantaneous these days. She generally is a very happy little girl. She can sit up unassisted (for awhile) but she hunches over a somewhat, and uses her knuckles for support, making her resemble a tiny little gorilla.





She is really enjoying playing with her feet and sucking on them, too. It makes changing a cinch... for now.



Last night we had friends over for a homemade noodle supper.




People know when they come to our house, Stinky is going to sit on their lap. Thats just the way it is.

Yet another bouncing video

This one was taken at home, is longer, and features a cat-baby stare down. The peep and the end melts me every time.

These feet are made for jumping

The other day, we noticed that Lil and I were both wearing mouse and cheese socks. How cool is that?! Thanks to our friend Jennifer, who lives in Brown County where they make the cutest baby socks ever, we have an ample supply of adorable tootsie covers.

Speaking of feet, Lily has been putting them to good use lately. Here is a video of her at the in-laws. She was showing off her bouncy skill she's gained since I recently found a seat just like this one at the 2nd hand store.

New little niece

Little Gracie Mae entered the world just after 10 pm Saturday night. Mom, dad and baby are doing great.

Waiting it out.

We are currently sitting at the hospital waiting for Corey's little sister to have her baby. As you can see, Corey and his dad are settled in for the long haul.

Long couple of days

I am definitely ready for the long weekend. The last few days at work have been long ones. On Tuesday I only saw Lil for about 30 minutes in the morning before work and didn't get home until around 9:30 so she was already in bed. Thursday wasn't much better as I had to ride up to Purdue University for a meeting and didn't get home until late. The only good part, was that I was able to work on some knitting while riding up there. I finished this little Shrug. It is supposed to be a 3 month old size, but it's pretty big still. I'm guessing it turned out more Like a 9 or even 12 month size. It is knit from super soft cotton. I'm going to knit up another one once I spin enough yarn of consistent thickness for one of these.