New Things

What is a post without a picture? Not one you want to read, so here are some pictures. Both of these are from March 20th.

She is such a happy baby when she wakes up. She loves mornings! And her bears (which are now taken down).

So, here are some updates about how Julia is growing and learning.

1. For a few weeks now she has been pulling herself up to standing. She also moves from one object, piece of furniture, or toy to another while standing up and holding on.

2. She loves doors and opening and closing doors. It is a new peek-a-boo game for her.

3. For a few weeks now she actually claps, with her flat hands, when you say "yay!" or sing Patty Cake, etc.

4. She hates being put in the exercauser or play pen to play. Once there, sometimes, you can calm her down to play, but not often. She would rather stand outside of the exercauser and play with it or another toy.

5. We had to remove her bear mobile over her bed now that she stands up and yanks at it.

6. She still loves: baths, her blankie, her bed (for naps and bed time), eating (more so when she can feed herself), mornings, doggies, her mommy, her daddy, being chasing by someone else who is crawling.

7. She does not mind getting dressed, but does not really like to be laying down when it happens anymore. She wants to get dressed while she is playing with her toys or standing at the music table. That also goes for diaper changes. After you get the diaper off (and her bottom partially wiped when it is, um, dirty) then she crawls off at a high speed. If you try to flip her back on her back then she starts fussing.

8. Oh, and she absolutely is horrified of the changing tables in public bathrooms. She always has been. The last time I tried to change her out in public (this past week) was at Noodles and Co. and I ending up holding her in my arms in front of the mirror (single person restroom) so that she would not scream (she was whimpering in front of the mirror until I turned the water on). The changing table was only useful to set my purse and the dirty diaper on once it was taken off. It was a good thing that she was only wet that day. I think she actually goes into a panic when we walk into a public restroom. (But she plays in the bathrooms at home. Go figure.)

There is probably more to this list, but my brain always fails me when I make it. There are so many things I want to write down so I do not forget, but once I start I cannot remember them all.

Julia at Ten Months

Last Sunday my precious baby girl turned ten months! She weighed (according to our home scale) 16.8 pounds on Sunday evening.

We had a full weekend, with a nice day on Saturday. We have patches of tall grass (mainly where our future deck will be) and we have bare dirt spots (mainly right out front and right out back). Here Julia sits in the tall grass out back, and you can see our bare dirt behind her.

We walked over to the neighbor's yard sale across the street. They had a lot of toys out there. (The lady was a kindergarten teacher and they have grandchildren.) We found this cool, little, wooden Radio Flyer scooter for Julia to play on. We need to sand down the rough spots on the wheels before she can learn on it in the house.

Maw Maw even came outside to join us in the nice warm breeze for quite a while.

Now, here are some pictures from Sunday. Here she is, cute as can be in the morning.

And playing with the toys that Aunt Betsy (Brooke, Dylan, and Uncle Ritchie) gave her for Easter. Speaking of Easter, Julia got gifts for a week straight (just about).

And here she is reading a book after dinner.

Ok, so snow pictures next week, I promise!

MB Trip Part 3

Julia thought that closing the drawer was hilarious! Hope you do too!

MB Trip Part 2

Easter Pictures:

"Cheese!"

And here are her four teeth:

Awesome portrait.

Another cute portrait.

Happy Easter! This is what our eggs and flowers looked like. We went neon this year!

MB Trip Part 1

Here are some picture from our Myrtle Beach trip this past weekend when we went to visit Vicki. We went to the beach on Friday.

What She Does Now

Cute picture from when we arrived at Vicki's.

So, here are a few more observations that I need to write down for memory sake.

1. She has been "clapping" when prompted. She does the closed fist clap, the one closed fist one open hand, or the right hand to the chest and left hand down (or on her leg). She claps about 70% of the time.

2. She has been shrugging her shoulders for months now. Vicki has a video of it that I must get so that I can have evidence of this. It is the cutest thing.

3. She does the "all done" move for just about anything when she is well rested and happy. It can mean all done, I want more, or just pay attention to me and laugh.

4. She loves to cuddle up on mommy when she is tired, but then wants to be put down in bed with her blankie right away.

5. She still loves bath time.

6. She is eating great. She loves things like cheese, apple, pear, pasta, carrots, potatoe, salmon.

7. Still only four teeth. (Her two top "fangs" and the bottom two.) I need to get a picture of her fangs.

8. Still loves Max and gets excited with dogs. I think "GEE" means dog, as in doggy.

9. Words: Dadadaddy, GEE, goo (or good), and lots of babble talk. Not so much of the mamama these days, but sometimes. She still says hi, hey, yeah, and yay, but not as much. I think new words are cool to her and she says them a lot more than ones she previously had under her belt. She tries to repeat words you say to her all of the time.

10. She gives low fives and high fives about 70% of the time.

11. Crawling like crazy and now pulling up on stuff. She can walk when you hold her hands, when she is in the mood. For a while now, she has been standing holding onto stuff for short periods when she is set that way.

12. She sits in shopping carts and restaurant high chairs these days.

13. Her feet stick out of the carrier a little.

14. She has a folded hands move that is cute. She has done this for months. Folds her hands together with fingers interlocked and moves the knuckles from side to side (trying to keep her wrists in roughly the same place).

That's all I can think of right now. Julia and I are on vacation in SC visiting with Vicki, so hopefully I can get pictures (and videos) from her to post before I leave tomorrow. Snow pictures up soon too.

Valentine's Day 2009 Part 2

And here is the cute dress (from her cousin Addy) she got to wear. I know these top two pictures are not the best, but I kind of like them.

Almost artsy pictures, I would say.

And my mom, AKA Grandma 2 or YUN G-mom, really wanted to give Julia her first french fry. We (meaning me and Julia) went to Gabriel's basketball game that day. Afterwards, we all went to Five Guys for burgers and fries. Julia go to eat her first french fries. Just after this picture, I rolled up her sleeves, and she enjoyed.

And later that evening we went to Betsy and Ritchie's for pizza and kid cookie decorating. The babies got together too. Here is Julia, Drew (her cousin), and Emma. It was cute to watch. Drew was just getting to the sitting stage, but had to be supported. Julia was sitting and doing her rolling. Emma was crawling all around.

And the two cute cousins together.

Ok, another post tomorrow (I think).

Valentine's Day 2009 Part 1

And here are some cute pictures from the morning on Valentine's Day. I just love this picture and I don't even know why!

And here is the angel with her one and only blankie! We finally asked (and if you ask, you shall receive) for a small travel (wash cloth sized) blankie from Grandma. It is cute and has a pretty pink flower for Julia to play with. I'll take a picture of it one day. This helps for car rides and trips away from home during nap times! She really uses her blankie as a security blanket to soothe herself.

And she loves her globe too. It plays "When you wish upon a star..." and she likes the soothing melody. If you wind it up she will just stare at it until it stops and then make noise so that you wind it up again.

This precious look says, "What do you want mom, I'm watching my globe sing (or more correctly, play) to me?"

And another post tomorrow, I promise (because I'm going to set it up now to post then... ha ha.)

Quick Post

Here are a couple of slightly old pictures, since a post is better with pictures. Here Julia is flying with her Uncle John and enjoying every bit of it. Picture is from February 15th.

And here is a funny face from February 17th. She likes to eat and, generally, does not get too messy (for a baby).

And for the quick update...

1. She knows "all gone." She puts both hands up (like the "I don't know") and sometimes says "a ga." She does this when her bowl is empty, when her bath toys are taken out of the tub (and put away), when you Daddy or Max leaves the room, and sometimes for no good reason other than to get a response from you.

2. She is eating relatively well, with regards to real food. She eats small chunks of quite a bit of things.

3. She loves crawling. She likes for you to crawl with her. She loves to crawl to Max's room when she gets the chance.

4. She laughs a lot more now. She laughs at things people do. She laughs when you mimic her. She even has a real belly laugh from time to time (been about three or four weeks now).

More to come. I plan to get Valentine's Day pictures up this weekend. And hopefully snow pictures some time next week. Keep in tune.

Camera Phone Pics

And a couple cute pictures from my cell phone. Isn't she adorable?

I'll do a better update later, but FYI... she now has two more teeth. They came in Wednesday the 25th (or maybe even Tuesday). They are the top ones just to the sides of where her front teeth would be.

These pictures were taken on March 7th.