Six Months

Today was Lily's six month birthday. It's really hard to believe that a half a year has gone by, but I'm not sure why it seems that way. When I think about it, new things have happened almost every day, much faster paced than life before Lily.

Lily's big recent achievement is eating solid food. She's been doing it for about a week now and in general it's been going pretty well. So far she's eaten avocado and pears. She definitely prefers pears, but she didn't know that until she ate avocado, then pears, then back to avocado. The second time with avocado she wasn't much of a fan. So we mixed it with pears and everyone was happy again.

So far, Lily's shown a few talents and a few areas to work on. Above all, she's a great sleeper at night. We always knock on wood when we mention it because we really hope she keeps it up. Us getting as much sleep as we need definitely helps keep all of us happy. She's a great sitter, able to sit for as long as she wants to as long as she doesn't decide to reach for something a little too far away and tip over. I guess the big head makes balance a little difficult. Her latest addition to the sitting repertoire is rocking back and forth like she's doing toe touches. Once in a while she'll even lean all the way over and try to eat the blanket she's sitting on. Her greatest talent is probably hair-growing. She got a head start by growing a solid base while waiting to be born, and she never looked back. She's already able to sport a sumo-style pony tail, and she's proud of her trick of growing a different color hair than she entered the world with.

On the down side, she's not much of a conversationalist, and she's still working on her sense of humor since she only laughs every couple of days. Over the past week she has also been a bad diaper changee, preferring to roll around and either smack the wall or grab the side of the changing pad. In the interim I've learned to change her diaper while she's on her tummy.

A Good Day

It was my Birthday yesterday. I am now 31 years old. What does it feel like? I definitely don't feel old but it does feel like I am far away from my 20's. Why is that? Not being able to go to a bar after our birthday dinner out because I already felt a bit too tipsy (and embarrassingly tired) is one reason....sleeping in till 7:20am on my birthday is another reason....walking casually around the city at night while it's dark out giddy that I'm surrounded by people in public after 7pm is yet another reason. Those reasons aren't really related to being 31 as much as it does to being a mom but wow, so different from my 20's.

The Birthday ended up being a darn good day. I enjoyed breakfast out with most of the Girls Night crew. We can go from talking about tax consultants to romance just like that. We are not a quiet table, love that.

We spent the afternoon with friends and at the pool. Taking Lily to the pool for the first time was the one thing I really wanted to make sure happened and it did. More on the pool in a minute. I do have a quick funny story. While hanging out at our friend's party, there were about a dozen of us in one big room. Nate stayed near Lily while she did her yoga poses on her blanket while I was at the other end of the room catching up with others. I could see Nate's eye suddenly widen and Lily looking a little taller than usual. Lily was having "a first", and like typical first time parents, it was like we just won the lottery. I screamed "It's a first!" and leapt for the camera. After taking way too many pics, Nate and I chest bumped each other in excitement. OK, the last part was made up but it makes me giggle. You'd think Lily's first was doing a cartwheel but all she did was get up on all fours, putting her knees under her butt for a prolonged period of time, that's it and it was awesome!

The pool was a blast. At first, Lily was chill and indifferent to the water and much more interested in the ceiling lights. Thanks to Dad making her giggle the most yet from simply going underwater and popping up to say peekaboo, she quickly fell in love with splashing and kicking her legs. If there was music like Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros playing while Lily was giggling at Daddy, I would have bawling tears of bliss. Surprisingly, I kept my composure. My love for swimming doesn't even compare to my first love of tennis. I will probably drop to my knees and bawl when Lily hits her first tennis ball over the net.


I'm going to end this post with an adorable Birthday wish from my friend Austin. Birthdays bring out a healthy competition of who gives the best birthday song rendition within my family. This year, the champion is adorable Austin Grossnickle, blowing the competition away. Special thanks to Vaughn and Barb for helping make my day.

It was a good day.

Boo

Happy Halloween! We're not very big Halloween people, but managed to get in the spirit long enough to get Lily into a costume and show her off a little. If it weren't for Mark & Katie offering to let us borrow a costume, Lily probably would have missed out on her first Halloween altogether. In any case, she did get to dress up as a cute little bear cub. And in my humble opinion, the operative word there was cute. She was more interested in sucking on her newly furry hands than in grrrrr-ing at people, but all in all it was very fun.

Other than that, not a whole lot to report. Lily's coming up on the six month mark in a couple of weeks here, and it seems like she's pretty much where she's supposed to be developmentally. She's picking up new things, most notably scooting a little bit by sitting up and rocking. As she rocks forward her butt scoots forward a little and she can very slowly make her way forward. We'll have to get this on video soon. She also likes to get up almost onto hands and knees and then rock from side to side. Still seems like a long way to crawling, but she's definitely improving her balance. Here's a video of her rocking on her tummy.

I do have one funny story. We were at mass today and the archbishop was thanking all of the people who serve as readers and altar assistants, etc. When he was done, he asked the congregation to give them all a round of applause. Lily had never heard this much clapping before and gave her "what the heck is going on?" look, waited until the clapping was done, then started wailing. Luckily she calmed down quickly when she realized that the clapping would not hurt her.

We're putting together October pictures, they'll probably be posted later in the week, linked again from the upper right of our blog page.