Ten Months

Lollypop!

Sweet baby of ours.  On this, your Uncle David's 34th birthday, you also turn 10 months old!

Speaking of Uncle David, you are very pleased that he is engaged!  You love your Aunt-Leah-to-be, and she is so sweet to you.  They are planning for a wedding later in this year, and we are very much looking forward to it!

You're still pulling up on ev-er-y-thing, and I've caught you a couple of times trying to stand up on your own.  I don't know if you mean to do it, or if you start to do it by instinct, get halfway into it before you realize that you really don't have anything around you to hold onto!  I figure we get to enjoy your crawling stage a little bit longer.  At least I hope so.  It's so sweet, and you're really pretty effective with it.  You can get from one end of the house to the other on your own.  (And you're usually looking for me when you do it).  I love the sparkle in your eyes when you crawl over to my desk chair, pull up on it and say whatever is the consonant of the day to get me to pick you up.  Speaking of consonants, you're saying "ma-ma's" (not for mommy), "da-da's" (not for daddy, yet), "ba-ba's", and you've just started this crazy "ha" sound that is accompanied by a crazy, wheezy, hyper-ventilating sound.  lol...  Sorry.  It's hard to describe!

You love to turn over the garbage can at my desk and take out every.single.piece of what-have-you that's in there.  And, yes, I let you do it.  It's pretty much just paper.  And it amuses you.  And I get a blog post finished.  It's all good.

You have become strangely uninterested in baby food.  You'll eat it, but not with the delight you had been having.  You want to eat cheerios and corn chex and things like that.  You want to nurse a lot instead of eating.  You like to squish beans and peas in your mouth, but you don't want to eat them.  It's a conundrum.  Thankfully for you, your mommy is so busy with all the rest of life, that I don't have time to worry about it.  I have enough of a memory left to know that it will all work itself out.  And since you're still nursing, I'm not worried about nutrition.  (And your blood tests from your last check-up confirmed that you don't need vitamins, so it's all good).

Tooter and Poodle both can make you giggle.  Your daddy can *really* make you giggle.  And I'm still the person you have to have at night.  :-)

As of today, you have your fourth tooth!  You now have two on the bottom, and two on the top (with the 2nd one on the top having juuuust broken through the gumline).  Teething is not your friend.  I was hoping that maybe you'd be less susceptible to all the pain of it.  But, maybe that will come with the later teeth, like it was with your brother.  I hope so.  Because your nighttime sleep is pretty yucky right now.  Not that I mind.  I mean, I understand.  And I know that it will get better.  I just wish you could sleep better.  Sweet baby.

You've been to Florida and Alabama in the past 5 weeks.  Had a nine month well-baby checkup with vaccinations.  Been through an annual meeting at church as well as Singing School.  Survived the kitchen getting new countertops.  And you're getting through the summer heat as best you can!  It's been a hectic month for you.  I will admit to some crazy-mommy moments because of all the activity, but you have that instant forgiveness for crazy parents that God blesses the babies to have.  Ahhhh, that we all could have that knee-jerk forgiveness trait again!

It's a little disconcerting that you will be a whole year old in just two wee months.  But I can not tell you how blessed we feel because of you.  You are loved by your family, by your church, by your siblings' friends.  (And their mommies!)

And your daddy and mommy feel lighter and brighter when we see you.  We feel warmer and more complete when we hold you.  And we know that our family is better because of you.  Happy 10 months, our darling girl!

Eight Months

Happy Eight Months Birthday Lollypop!!!

Dear one dear one!  Where to start.  It has been a busy month for you!

You have your First Tooth!  It broke through on 4/12/10.  Ohhhh, it gave you fits.  And its next door neighbor (these are your bottom front teeth) is trying to make its way up through your gums currently, and isn't being much nicer to you.  Add to the teething issues, you've battled a cold for the past almost 3 weeks.  You're beginning to get better now, else I'd be getting worried.  But, this has been a doozy of a cold.  You've had a runny nose for weeks, and quite frankly, you're sick of it!

A few weeks ago, you got to a sitting position all by yourself for the first time.  :-)  It was in the cry room at church, and Sister Donna and Sister Heather (along with Jaxsen and...  uh oh, I can't remember which of Heather's babies was in there...  Probably Wyatt) were in there to see it.  So proud of you!

Your sweet big sister helped to keep you from taking a header off the chair while I tried to get these pictures.  Your sweet big brother was the one making you laugh by going crazy with Ballerina Bunny!

You are eating sweet potatoes, yellow squash, and carrots.  Tried green peas a couple of times... ha!  We'll get there.  Total fail right now.  Your food still needs to be very smooth - no chunks.  I have discovered, quite by accident, that you can pick up a cheerio, but you Can Not Eat Them.  Whew.  Interesting to me, though, is that you can pick up that cheerio with your first finger and thumb.  Good hands, little angel, good hands.

You are definitely a sweet hip baby now.  You've just gotten big enough that a person can carry you around on their hip.  But the position you love best is being hoisted up tall enough so that your head is near the head of the person carrying you.  You still love the cheek-to-cheek feeling, and OH, how I love that too!

Tooter takes the most interesting pictures of you.  :-)

From time to time you'll also lay your head down on our shoulders.  Ohhhh.....  that is THE best feeling. I love it!

And, buhm buhm buhm...  you've begun to crawl.  As of today, you have this crawl on one knee, push with the other foot thing going on.  You'll get about 2 feet before you stop!  So, I suspect that by this time next month, you'll be quite the mobile little munchkin.  You're also trying to pull yourself up to standing on people, things, stuff, etc.  Such a big growing-up girl!


A video taken on 4/16/10 of your beginning crawling.  Your wanting to be just like Poodle has already begun!

I think that's all of your new tricks over the past month.  I won't even mention your sleeping this past month.  Between teething and the cold, let's just say it hasn't been great.  But, it will get better!  You're almost over the sniffles!

I love you, you sweet baby angel.  You are our favorite little squishy!!!

Seven Months

Happy Seven Months my sweet baby!!!

Let's see... what wondermous things have you been up to in the past month.  Well, I guess the big thing is that you have started trying "real" baby food.  Rice cereal was easy, of course, as was applesauce.  (Although your crazy mommy forgot and did applesauce first instead of rice cereal.)  At first you weren't crazy about sweet potatoes or squash.  (Oddly enough, yellow squash was a total fail!)  Although just yesterday (your actual 7 month birthday), you ate almost a whole cube of sweet potatoes without grimacing.  I guess your MooMoo was right.  I just needed to back off of everything but applesauce until you were ready!  And, I'm making your baby food like I did with Poodle and Tooter.  It's been fun reminiscing about those early baby food days with them.

You've started "talking"!  All kinds of babbling.  Dah-dah-dah-dah's all over the place.  Lot's of ba-ba-ba-ba's.  And you make this sweet, funny gargling sound.  We get that one a lot when you're super tired and you are trying to be in a good mood.  It's sort of the warning shot for us.  We know we've got about 5-10 minutes after you start making that noise before you begin the meltdown into being over-tired.

You are sitting up like a champ now!  You've already been rolling over and over everywhere, so the sitting up is a cool new trick for you.  You haven't tried to truly crawl yet.  But you will occasionally push yourself backwards when you're on your tummy.  Ha!

I do believe you are pretty close to cutting those first two bottom teeth.  You are definitely uncomfortable at times, and late afternoon/early evening (when you're tired) is the hardest time for you.  We're doing all the regular things to help you, but experience reminds us that the only real fix is having the teeth actually come in.  And they will.  Teething is such a short time comparatively.

You still light up like a lightning bug when Daddy gets home from work.  Your eyes actually get more sparkly when you see him.

You still think driving in the dark is the equivalent of having your fingernails pulled out, apparently.  Do NOT care for it at all.  But, in your usual sweet-tempered manner, you can almost always be consoled if Mommy sits in the back with you.  It's when I can't be back there that driving home when it's dark outside is super hard to do.

Your naps are getting more of a pattern to them, but there are still days that they can be super short and somewhat varied.  You are still pretty understanding when your naps get interrupted by life, and I'm so grateful to have your easy-going attitude.  I just hope I can remember to give you the grace and mercy you give me when I have prevented you from sleeping because of others' schedules.

Oh, my sweet heart.  Have I told you how good you smell when you get out of the bathtub?  And how glorious your smile is in the morning?  And how lucky you are to have a brother and sister who love you so, so much?  Have I told you how you melt your MooMoo's heart into a puddle, and how you make your GaGa laugh with joy?  How you smile so big when PopPop grins at you?  And how you love getting all your kisses from SueSue?

You are our lovebug, Lollypop!!!  Happy Seven Months!!!

If you have a problem with the video, let me know!