A pat on the back... in the bathroom?

This is what I found at work on the bathroom mirror on Monday morning. How cute!

Never mind what the girls thought of me bringing a camera in there...

Love this

I see something like this in Lily's future: http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2010/01/the-handmades-dr-ada.html

We've reached the "noggin conking" phase

It was inevitable. Our little dear is venturing into new territory, and with that come the bumps and bruises associated with mobility. We are doing our best to protect her and baby-proof things but but it is impossible to predict every slip or trip. Corey learned this yesterday while hovering over her while she stood, grasping the entertainment center. One minute she was fine and dandy and in the blink of an eye she had slipped down between his outstretched arms and conked her noggin on side of the cabinet. This came shortly after I had received a hearty lecture from him on how I must not have been paying attention when she fell against a plastic toy.

I hate it when she gets hurt. It breaks my heart. But what can you do? Living in a bubble is not really an option (but don't think I haven't considered it), and after all, it is part of life. A small amount of pain is part of learning and growing. You need to test the limits before you can move on to the next step in life. It's just hard to let them learn the hard way. I don't want to make it sound like we aren't doing everything we can to make our home as safe as possible. I just know that some degree of noggin-conking is unavoidable.

I love (and fought for) our wood floors but right now, I'm wishing we had carpet.

Oh black and white, how I love thee

True

Last night, speaking of Lily, I said "Can you believe something as cute as this is ours?". Corey said "Brook, I don't think she's ours, I think we're hers".

I think he got that right.

Speaking of husbands, have you seen this blog? Too funny.

Also, the big news around here is that Lily finally has a tooth coming in! It has been working it's way up for the last few days. Today, it finally broke ground. Here is the best close-up I could get.



You go girl!

Christmas at home

In all the years of my life, I've never spent Christmas at my own house. When I was young, we always traveled up to Illinois and Wisconsin to visit family. When I was older and lived away from home, I'd go home to visit mom and dad and spend time with Corey's parents. A long time ago, I decided when I had a child of my own, I wanted them to have Christmas morning at home. A lazy day to eat good food, play with new stuff and cuddle with family. That is exactly what we did this year and it was everything I could have hoped for. We all spent the entire day in our jammies and it was fabulous!





Corey made homemade cherry cordials and I made peppermint-chocolate ice cream and lavender-lemon ice cream.



We didn't go crazy on gifts for Lily, I don't believe in that. I did make her a few things including this blue, hairy creature with interchangeable facial features





On Christmas Day evening, my mom and dad came over and on Saturday my brother's family joined us at our house. We had fun together playing games (Guesstures, Pictionary), making homemade personal pizzas and being entertained by my niece Lexi.







Baby Hunter got to cuddle with Stinky.



and after everyone left, Lily was pretty tired.

8 Months

Dear Lily,



Yesterday, you turned 8 months old. You are still quite big for your age, wearing 12 month clothes, but you have slowed down a bit with the weight gain in the last month or so. That also correlates with the time you started crawling, so I think you are working through the calories faster than you used to.

You've had your first real cold for the past week. You have been coughing, having trouble sleeping, and not eating as well.

Even with the cold, you have been quite happy and silly, at times even downright giddy. Especially if you are really, really tired. You smile so much, I'm surprised your cheeks don't get tired. You have become a great crawler, following us from room to room. When you are in the livingroom with daddy and I am in the kitchen cooking, you always crawl in to me and pull yourself up on my legs so that you are standing there hugging them. You do this until I pick you up and cuddle you close. Speaking of that, you love being squeezed. You used to often squirm away when we'd hold you tight but you seem to want more closeness now. You want to be held a lot more recently, which is funny since now you have more independence with crawling.

You have graduated out of the co-sleeper since you can pull yourself up and possibly fall out of it during the night, so today we moved the crib into our room so you can still sleep next to mommy and daddy. Your favorite bedtime activity is when I lay your down. You start laughing and crawl as quickly as you can across your co-sleeper and pull yourself up. You then stand there and wait for me to tickle your armpits and grab you and lay you back down. This sends you into fits of giggles and you start the game all over again.

Things I want to remember about this age:

You are starting to give pretty good kisses.
You hug your stuffed animals.
You can crawl and pull yourself up on things with ease.
You have not quite figured out how to "cruise".
You want us to hold your hands and let you walk around the house constantly. To the point where our backs are aching. You love to walk to see every nook and cranny of the house. You especially like to check out the toilet.
You are getting really excited about the mural on your wall. You love to look at the pictures when mommy makes the animal noises.
You are terrified of the vacuum cleaner.

Every day we love you more than the last.

Love mommy