Shoot

I think Miss Rae, my kindergarten teacher all those years ago, was right. I would forget my head if it wasn't screwed on. I forgot to include Miss Lily's birthday lunch picture. Ta da!



Do I need to mention it was a little bit cold in the restaurant???

Cake

Yay, Miss Lily is one year old! I'm not going to bore everyone with stories, because it's late at night and I have a lot of cake and ice cream to clean up. The pictures should be chronological through the day. Don't miss the Nap one.... I think it's the best picture I've ever taken of Lily!

Oh yeah, and check out cute new shoes. :)















I do feel like I should point out that the cake eating has reinforced my decision to keep Lily away from sugary foods. She was a little crazy beast after all the sugar. Bathwater was sent flying to the four corners of the bathroom. Thankfully, it was short lived and she went to sleep without making any complaints. :)

Deck

I forgot to put up pictures of the deck in progress. Indulge....















No, no steps yet. It's taken 2 years to get THIS far.

Told / Eve

Well, I was told to update the blog by Pedro. And it's the Eve of Miss Lily's first birthday!!!! So first thing first, I bought her these boots today. Too cute, right??? Don't worry there's lots of pictures of her boots. She kept giggling as we tried them on in the store. And yes, I expect she'll usually wear some pants or something with them. :)




I'm also going to try to upload a video. Now, Miss Lily does fall down at the end so let me know if it's too upsetting and I'll take it off the blog. But she only cried for about 2 seconds and she was off and running again. It does show her control over her walking (except for the falling part). She can stop and change direction (and then fall over).






The boots have velcro parts where the fluffy part is down the side. Yes, I bought them a couple of sizes too big. I can't stand it, they're just too cute! And Lily doesn't have any pants on because it was over 80 again today and she had leather fluffy boots on!

Tomorrow Lily and I are going out for lunch with Stacy. If Daddy's nice we might bring him the scraps. :) MIGHT. I couldn't find any cute black shoes (hint hint birthday shoppers out there).


I personally blame BG for the fall, you can see her trying to get around him. :)

Preparations...

It's Miss Lily's birthday on Thursday so I'm starting to panic about the party now. :) Unfortunately, I've had some other things on my mind but I've put them to the side to concentrate on what's important here and now. I mean really, my little bean will have survived a year!! woohoooo!

Lily and BG are sharing window space for fresh air. It was 80F today. Do you know how crazy that is??? I like it when the seasons tiptoe up to each other. I think this year it's going to be a plunge from summer to fall. brrrrrr I hope BG and Lily will be good friends. He puts up with her better than the other cats. :)

Let's see today on Sesame Street there was a bit with Anderson Cooper. He was joined by Dan Rather Not and Walter Cranky. HA! Okay, I was laughing. And I got to see my favorite song on Between the Lions. I realized I've been getting some of it wrong.

Sven said Ted, send ten tents
Ted said Sven, send ten cents
When Sven sent Ted ten cents

Ted sent Sven his ten tents

Then Ted sent Sven ten tents

I hold Lily facing me and sing to her slowly, then speed up and try not to screw up the words. It's hard but fun and she laughs like a fool. :) Okay, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Here's one of my favorite funny baby videos:

Crazy

A few days shy of being a toddler and Miss Lily is driving me crazy. I will take part blame for it. We've been trying to clean out the house, thereby making a huge mess. Lily likes to get into things. I'm frustrated right now that we don't have a safe Lily room. I have to constantly say "don't touch!" and I know that sucks for me AND her. Mostly me though. :)

And here is the reason that Pedro and I can't leave baby stuff out around the house. BG likes to make "friends" with them. I think the Elmo chair was too big to be molested but I still don't want cat hair all over the place. Let me rephrase that. I DO have cat hair all over the place. I try to keep it off of Lily's stuff.

On the positive side, we did get an old stereo table out of the house. We also started on a side porch. I'd say the side porch, but we haven't had one for a while. We got the posts in and a frame done. Yes, I helped dig the post holes! My shoulders aren't hurting YET. Yes, that's Lily climbing into a filing container. Maybe she'll be a really tall spelunker when she grows up.

Daddy turned that same container into a toy box (I think the toys are breeding by themselves) and she wasted NO time in climbing in it. I'm not sure what the tongue has to do with it.


Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we watched a really good documentary last night - The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. If you've got Netflix, watch it!!! (I cried a couple of times - dern cute parrots) Pedro even shushed me a couple of times, so you know it's good. :)

I also forgot to mention that Lily is walking a good deal more. It ain't perfect but it's not uncommon to see her walk four or five feet on her own. And Pedro, if you see this - she got a hold of Loki, and she loves it.

hmpf

Well, Miss Lily wasn't as heavy as I thought she'd be. She's only 26 pounds. I guess we could have kept her jumper longer. (I don't want to hear it Pedro!) She does have a big old melon - 19.5 inches. Her height is beautifully following the growth chart - it's just well above it. She's the size of an average 21 month old. Wow. The thing that I was worried about was her iron level. They did a finger prick for that. 36%, the nurse said it was perfect! Go mommy!

How did she behave? Well, she's a week shy of her birthday so she didn't get any shots. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that she didn't cry. I brought her favorite monkey with her and when she got agitated, I'd rub her monkey's tail lightly over her face and she loved that! Seriously. So we're going back on the 22nd for shots. weeeeee!

And I checked online and anaranhado is spanish for orange. What-ever.

Oy vey

I couldn't post anything yesterday. I had to let the shock of the events settle a bit. I had a crappy day but it got much worse. It looks like a big truck hit our mailbox. We share a post with the neighbour across the street. Theirs is all twisted, ours is on the ground. While I was talking to someone from the maintenance department at the lake, an older man drove by and said he saw mail scattered on the road, scooped it all up and put it in the one remaining mailbox. What a lovely man, no? That wouldn't have happened in the city!

Anyway, in going with my crappy day theme, I decided to get my flu shot as well. My arm is still sore. :P I wasn't home when the mail box was hit or I probably would've been after the driver like a shot! I do like Boo Radley-ing out the window. And if you don't know what that means, read To Kill a Mockingbird, slackers!

Today Miss Lily has a doctor's appointment so I'll have to let everyone know how much the behemoth weighs. I do have a lot of questions since we haven't seen him in a while. She's a pretty healthy (and destructive) baby so I haven't been doing too much wrong. My kind of questions are: will her teeth grow straight. Pedro's: can she have a baby pillow. No kidding. Lily slept through the night. But Pedro took her to bed with him. I know it's sweet and he loves to snuggle but I think she needs to be able to sleep on her own, in her own crib. I know, I'm a grinch.

Brat

Okay, I realize that most of you don't think Miss Lily is a brat but she's getting there. Yesterday she was lucky that I was too stunned by catching her playing with my Chanel makeup to get mad. Yes, she can open the drawers to my dresser now.

Today she mucked about with my email so badly, one of them was green! It took me an hour to get my email back to the way it was, which is probably why I forgot to feed her lunch. She was pestering me so I gave her a banana cookie. I should have figured out she was hungry because she ate the cookie straight away and didn't smear it all over the place. (sorry Elmo chair)

I like to call the above two pictures "I didn't do anything to your computer - honest". Pedro calls this one "ha ha, I tricked mommy!" Sigh. In the good news department, Lily slept through

the night last night. We kept her up 30 minutes later than normal. And in case you're worried, when Lily woke up from her afternoon nap she got a big batch of banana strawberries. :) In the next picture, you can almost see Miss Lily's "stink" face. Of course, you can also see my big fat arm, but try to ignore that. :)

Lastly, I just have a pretty smile from Miss Lily. She really is a good looking kid. She was charming them at Food Lion today. I'd like to know why I go through bananas so quickly. Is it because I have a Monkey Shine??!!!! (that's one of Lily's nicknames)

** Don't forget to click on the pictures to make them big - Lily is sure working those big brown eyes! **

Arananhado

Lily has a toy that has 3 different colored handles: blue, red and yellow. It says the colors in 3 different languages. Well, she was holding onto the yellow and red and I heard it say "arananhado". I was like, great we have a possessed toy. What I discovered after playing with it some more is that it actually says more colors if you hold more than one handle. So you hold yellow and blue and it will say green. I guess the orange is defunct in spanish because I'm quite sure orange is "naranja" not "arananhado". But correct me if I'm wrong.


Lily is being a little terminator today. She's in her toybox again scattering everything to the four winds. Here she is eating her peanut butter and wheat bread for breakfast. At least I didn't have to worry about her dropping it - that PB is sticky!

Here she is with banana cookie on her face. She was kind enough to give one of her dollies a kiss too so I had two faces to clean off. I've been trying to get videos of her walking but it's hard to catch. She only makes it a few steps. Oh and I think that's why she's been waking up in the middle of the night again. Pedro woke me up at 5:30 (again!) cuz she wasn't sleeping. I observed through one crusty half-opened eye Miss Lily bouncing in the middle of her crib, while not holding on. So I think she practices in the middle of the night. Still something I need to discourage so it's back to the baby books!!!!

Apples

Here's the only pic of Miss Lily today - which I had to take with my cell phone! Pedro! Anyway, I looked up the Carter Mountain Apple Harvest Festival (phew) and here's the info.

I feel like I should provide instructions on the photo. Well, Lily is twisting around the desk, smushed beside her Elmo chair as she lifts her right leg in the air and slugs her juice. Normal behavior, right???

Apple donuts. yummmmmm

Sch-wing!

We all had a great time at grandma & grandpa's house over the weekend. We went to a craft fair (of sorts) on Saturday and I swear it was 88 degrees (that's 31C-ish). ugh I got some soaps and a wall cabinet of sorts. It's too hard to explain right now. :) As you can see, Lily loved the swings. Daddy took good care of her and she was squealing with delight! She did pretty good for her first time. Unfortunately, she'd lose her smile if grandpa got too close. But she doesn't cry when she sees him. That's an improvement. :)

Daddy was the rockstar over the weekend. I guess he's always the rockstar. hmpf Miss Lily was playing with her ball this morning. Throwing it against the wall and having it bounce back to her. Unfortunately, every rechargeable battery I grabbed is dead, so I couldn't video it. Pedro! Let's see... I finally had a fried Twinkie. I think I should have never had one so I could always wonder at how good it must be, instead of discovering how not good it really is. I also had a funnel cake. As you can imagine, my body is pretty upset with me right now and has formed a formal protest. I'll let your imaginations figure that one out.

Ex-Ci-Ting!

I didn't get a picture of it but Miss Lily stumbled along like a drunken butterfly (picture erratic swooping) and walked by herself for about 8 steps. I'm not sure why she had to have her arms flailing about above her head but I'm sure it was for dramatic effect.


She turned around from the coffee table and just started walking (drunken stumbling). It was so funny. She has been trying to cruise more, walking around door frames whilst clutching the aforementioned door frames.



The pictures are of Miss Lily this morning, realizing she can reach MUCH farther onto my desk if she stands on her Elmo. I already have too many things squashed into a shrinking area. Lily is my climate change! Anyway, here's one of my favorite pictures. It's from last spring. I remember Pedro and I were arguing while I was holding her, hence her apprehensive expression. :)

Ouch

I'm sorry I haven't posted very much in the last few days. I've got a bad sinus infection. I've felt really blah. I know, no one cares about me. I dressed Lily up in her pretty shirt and skirt to go out Tuesday, I think.

Oh yeah, and I posted about what a good sleeper Lily was and then she refused to sleep that night! And hasn't slept well since then. argh! Why do people have babies?? I guess they are kind of cute when you first bring them home.

Lily has her first black eye. She slipped whilst yelling at the tiles. It's not too bad and daddy was a trooper and put ice on it gently while she cried. :) I wish the little monkey would learn though. She stood up in the same spot after she fell. I know they need to learn things but you'd think they'd at least learn not to do it in the same spot! So I called bathtime over. She used to like sitting in the bath!

I guess it's not technically a black eye, more like a bruised cheek. Poor little thing. We're going down to Newport News this weekend to visit with grandma and grandpa and go to a craft fair! Where I'll get to look at things and not buy them because I don't have any money because I don't have a job. Sniffle.

Good Day

Well, today was a good day. Even though I forgot to renew my car registration and Pedro had to go for me this morning. Thanks, Pedro! I've never had expired tags on my car before. I feel so rebellious! And stupid. I think those two things go hand in hand more than we realize. Anyhoo, Lily is my favorite baby again. She fell asleep on her own in about 5 minutes tonight. She ate everything I put in front of her today and some of it was new. New cheese - cheddar! Oh, but she did hate the raspberry. Oh well.

We had chicken with Thai peanut sauce for dinner. It was a little spicy. I also added mixed veggies: squash, green beans, zucchini, carrots, red pepper. Lily ate it all! I'm so proud of her. :) I understand that this fabulous eater I have may one day disappear and be replaced by Finicky McFussyeater, but I'll enjoy it for now. :)

All the pictures are from today. She still loves climbing in her toy box. :) And yes, she is wearing a white shirt with pink polka dots and pink shorts with white polka dots. I realize there is a special place in hell reserved for people like me. :)

I even made real applesauce today. Not baby applesauce. It has cinnamon AND cloves in it. It's so yummy, and it was so easy to make. Lily is quickly pulling away from all baby foods so I wanted to find something I could make that she and I could share. I guess I don't have anything to complain about. Lily has been sleeping through the night and refuses her pacifier sometimes at night. Sometimes, she wakes up sort of crying so I get ready to pop one in and she keeps her lips pursed. She doesn't want one. The only thing that really wakes Lily up at night is being cold. She's going to be a true southern gal. :)