From Lily November 27-30

Wow, these holidays have just been sneaking up on me! I can’t believe Thanksgiving is over already and we’re in full-fledged Christmas season. And don’t forget Birthday Planning!! Lily had a great first Thanksgiving. We went to my Grandma’s house and she was able to eat the whole dinner (including a small piece of pumpkin pie!) and she loved it all. She spent the rest of the evening entertaining the family, walking all around the room, playing with ribbons, rocking on a rocking horse, and tormenting her cousins. She really did seem to have a great time, and was very well-behaved, and SO cute!

The down-side of Thanksgiving was my Grandma’s health. She’s 93 and has been having a number of health problems lately and was really not feeling well. She’s on pain medication that makes her zoned out and drowsy, which is hard. She ended up in so much pain at the end of the night that we ended up calling an ambulance and she was admitted to the hospital. She’s still there, but her Doctor has hope that he can treat her pain relatively easily, so we’re still waiting to see how that goes. Unfortunately she will have to go to a nursing home once discharged from the hospital.

From Lily November 27-30

On Friday we packed up and drove down to Rochester to visit Uncle Shawn and Auntie Shannon and crew. We hung out with them for a number of hours, then went and stayed at Grandma Gayle’s motel in Lanesboro! We’d never been there before, so it was neat to see it and it gave Jason a chance to go hang out with his Mom (working at the Legion in Lanesboro) after Lily and I went to sleep. Lily slept very well for being in a strange place and in a pack-and-play she’s not used to! On Saturday we drove from there to Grandma Gayle’s farm from Thanksgiving part 2, and Lily got to ride a Pony! She seemed to like it ok, but she really LOVED the doggies and kitties on the farm. She kept giving all the dogs nice big open-mouth kisses whenever they’d come up and sniff her. Yup. Open-mouthed kisses. Farm Dogs. Yummy. She even did give one of the horses a big kiss, which was ADORABLE!

From Lily November 27-30

When we weren’t eating and riding horses, we did manage to get a few other things done. While in Rochester we brought Lily into the Stride Rite store and had her feet sized and bought her her very first pair of real shoes! She’s getting used to walking around on them pretty quick and they are so stinkin’ cute and little.

From Lily November 27-30

We also just had fun spending time with Lily. I can’t believe how much she is learning now, it just seems like her brain is on overdrive. There’s a book we read her quite frequently (”The Going to Bed Book” by Sandra Boynton) and we noticed this weekend that she’s actually started acting out certain parts of the book, which never ceases to crack Jason and I up. When you say “..with some on top and some beneath, they brush and brush and brush their teeth” she puts her finger in her mouth and wiggles it around. Then when you say “..and when the moon is on the rise, they all go up to EXERCISE!” she shakes both her hands up and down in front of her. Trust me, it’s about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. She also blows kisses, sometimes at the most random times. I just love this little girl like nothing else, and I’m in complete denial that she’s turning ONE in less than 2 weeks.

Ok, before I get all sappy - here’s a short video of her walking between Jason and I from sometime last weekend… Enjoy!

From Lily 11 months

From Lily 11 months

That’s obviously the most exciting news, but there has been so much else happening! Lily is finally towards the end of round 2 of the SAME stupid cold! She’s been sick since just before Halloween, poor baby. Along with this cold she has been drooling more than ever, which I attributed to the cold and breathing with her mouth open since her nose is so stuffy.. not quite! The other day she finally let me look in her mouth and she’s cutting at least 4, possibly up to 6 teeth AT ONCE. She’s going from 2 to 6+ teeth instantly.. no wonder she’s been drooling so bad! I’ve seen at least 3 of them already break through the gum so hopefully the worst of it is over.

From Lily 11 months

Lily has also mastered climbing stairs. She does really well going UP stairs, but is still working on going down. For some reason she still doesn’t seem to have much concept of ledges, so she wants to just walk right off a step like she was stepping on flat ground. I keep having to turn her around and pull her legs down to teach her to “scooch” backwards. I think she’ll get it pretty soon!

Now that she’s super-mobile, her absolute favorite game is “chase the kitty” or, if the kitty isn’t mobile, just “attack the kitty”. This is NOT Mama’s favorite game, nor is Gibson a big fan either. Gibson will be just sleeping on the couch and Lily will walk over to him and grab his fur, pound on his face, pull his tail or whatever she feels like doing and she giggles the whole time. Gibson doesn’t appreciate being woken up so rudely and has started to swing at her to try to get her to back off. This logic doesn’t work for an 11-month-old, so Lily just giggles and keeps going. She’s now been bitten twice - once a week or so ago as a warning (didn’t break the skin or anything), and a much harder bite today when she pulled his fur pretty hard. I spend all day chasing her around the house and trying to keep her away from the kitty, but the second I try to get anything else done she’s already attacking the cat. Argh! If anybody has had any experience with this, I’d appreciate any tips!

From Lily 11 months

Other than that, Lily has her 1-year pictures tomorrow (early because I had a coupon that would expire) so that should be exciting and here’s hoping they turn out well! I’m hoping for a repeat of her 6-month pics, NOT her 3-month pics!! Also, Lily has recently decided she loves this “game” where Jason and I toss something back and forth to each other and she watches us and laughs and laughs! It’s so cute! She has this little egg shaker (plastic egg you shake and it makes noise) and Jason tossed it to me and she laughed, so we turned our camera onto video mode and kept going - we’ve been trying to get her laugh on camera for so long but she normally stops laughing when she sees the camera. I’ll post the video below, but before you watch it here’s the disclaimer - WARNING: very cute baby, and very messy house! Please, please ignore the mess. It was a work-from-home day so I was really busy working and taking care of her and chasing her throughout the house as she threw everything onto the floor, and then I had to fall down and die from exhaustion, and it just left no time for cleaning. So, if you hold the messy house against me then you have 3 options -
1. You’re cut off! no more Lily pics and stories
2. You’re welcome to come clean my house for me anytime you like - I’ll make it work.
3. I’ll always accept donations for maid service and/or cleaning supplies (I dream of Roomba).

Now, bring on the cuteness!

From Halloween 2008

How did I forget to post about Halloween?? I’m so fired from blogging. My apologies, and once again it’s been too long since I posted an update. Sadly, Halloween was the only time I’ve even taken pictures since the last time I posted, so that’s what you get.

Lily was a lady bug, a costume we inherited from Terri Osland I believe, and she was ADORABLE. She was also very, very sick. The poor baby got a BAD cold that hit her chest and she just looked and acted miserable and kept laying her head on my shoulder which is just about the cutest thing in the world and I would melt into a puddle every single time. We’ve been back on the nebulizer and she finally seems to be improving.

From Halloween 2008

Lily spent her first Halloween with her cousins Claire and Abby. Claire was a teddy bear, and Abby was a chicken. We all met at my grandmother (and Aunt’s) house early in the evening to visit with them and each baby received a special treat (2 - $1 coins for their piggybanks!), and Grandma (my Mom) and Grandpa (my Dad) handed out their treats as well - it was quite a score! Lily got a little black kitty stuffed animal, yogurt melts, some biter biscuits, cheerios, and even a mini-snickers for each of her parents! We visited for a little bit, but my Grandma’s physical therapist was there at the same time so she was a little busy and not able to visit much. We also did a mini-photo shoot to get pictures of all 3 babies together in costume. It was so cute because they were so aware of each other and kept looking at each other and reaching out to touch each other and Abby was so excited that she almost threw herself right off the couch! I think you can tell in the pictures that Lily wasn’t feeling really great, but she was still really, really good.

From Halloween 2008

From Halloween 2008

After leaving Grandma’s house, Lisa went out on a date with her husband and my parents brought the twins over to my house for trick-or-treating! We went out really early (5:00) and only to 2-3 houses of people we knew in the neighborhood. We walked over to Lily’s daycare house and introduced Jen to Lily’s cousins, and my parents, skipped the Beaverson’s because they weren’t home, ran into our neighbors Jerry & Judy in the street and were just heading to Derek and Alix’s when they drove by just coming home from Derek’s parents house! We ended up going back to my house to let the girls play for a few minutes and Derek and Alix brought over the cutest little dinosaur.

From Halloween 2008

We ended up handing out all 5 bags of candy and turning out our lights about 8:00 (after Lily was in bed). It was pretty tame, but all-in-all a good night, and I was really glad that Lily got to spend her first Halloween with her cousins! I hope we can make that more of a tradition as the girls get older and actually start to care about the holiday and what they do to celebrate it!

Well, sorry the update was so late, but that’s about all the fun and excitement we’ve had around here! Lily keeps growing and changing constantly and I swear she’s saying a bunch of words, but I just can’t quite tell for sure. I’m almost POSITIVE she says “book” as books are about her favorite thing in the WHOLE WORLD, and she says Mama and Dada and kitty and “duck” (she loves ducks, I don’t know - seems to be a pretty common thing!). Whenever she drops or throws things on the ground we usually say “Uh oh, all gone!” so this morning she dropped her bottle on the floor and I swear it sounded like she said “all gone!”. She’s definitely getting some of the tones or sounds down, even if she isn’t totally saying the words - it’s so much fun to watch!

From Halloween 2008

I promise I will try an invent some excitement for the next post - thanks everybody for sticking with us! And, JILL ANDERSON - I hope this will be a good start to your week! heh

P.S. I’m so impressed with myself - I’ve already started Christmas shopping!! I’m also starting to plan Lily’s 1st birthday (less than 5 weeks away - what?!!?) and it’s very bittersweet, but I’m getting excited about it.

P.P.S. In case you don’t read my sister’s blog, she had big news this week as both of my nieces have started to CRAWL now! We’re going to have 3 mobile babies at Christmas - holy cow!! Very excited for them!!