Lily’s Tenth Month

Reaching for the stuffed bear…

MAD because you don’t have it yet…

Content for a brief moment…

Ready to be done with this!

Lily Boo you’re in the double digits now, which means you might as well just go on to college. In just 2 months we’ll have a toddler roaming around the house. That’s just plain crazy!

Every stranger we meet talks about how beautiful you are and how we need to put you in pageants. Sorry Lily, this Momma is NOT putting you in pageants! But I guess I could at least send in a picture to Gerber and see what happens.

Mommy has been getting a little nostalgic and finds herself looking through the pictures from the day you were born. She is also starting to prepare a slide show for your first birthday and get party ideas. With your birthday just 3 days after Christmas she feels like your birthday stuff has to be planned before Christmas. But anyway, why are we already talking Christmas and birthday? It’s your tenth month and it was a FUN one…so let’s get started.

Firsts: Fiddler’s Convention, ice cream at Kreme Delite, lunch at LuVici’s, business trip with Daddy (and Mommy) to Orange Beach, swinging, dinner at the Shrimp Basket, fever/viral infection in your throat, hanging out in the hallway for a tornado warning, taste of cake…with sugar free icing of course, thanks to the Real Housewives of Orange Beach, AL

News Headlines: 33 Chilean miners rescued after 69 days; Auburn is undefeated and #1 in the BCS for the first time ever

Favorite Toy: the remote to our old TV, Minnie Mouse and Puppy

Mommy and Daddy’s Favorite: You KISS us now! If we can get your attention…IF…we pucker our lips and say “Give me some sugar”, you open your mouth wide and lean in for a kiss 🙂 It’s the most precious thing I’ve ever seen!

Milestones: The biggest milestone this month has been sitting up from a crawling position. You started doing this at the beach. You did it all day long and clapped for yourself everytime. Now, anytime we say “Yea Lily!” you think it’s reason to start clapping, no matter what you were doing. This has opened up a whole new realm for you. It has helped you start crawling more often and helped you really start pulling up on things. You still do the army crawl but it usually starts as a real crawl. Pulling up is the only activity you want to do now. You are getting better and better at it everyday. You can even take a few steps with us holding your hands.

Weight/Length: 19.4 pounds and probably 29-30 inches long

Like Mommy: You don’t like to be messed with. You don’t like for anyone to change your clothes because you don’t like your arms or legs to be confined. You don’t like your nose or mouth to be wiped. Getting you in the car seat is usually okay other than those rare times you decide to scream. When Mommy was little, she didn’t want to be buckled in until she was “cuntadull” (comfortable). I think if you could talk you would say the same thing.

Like Daddy: You like gadgets and technology. The remote, iPhone, laptop, keys, DVD player, satellite box, and really anything with buttons are your favorite things and you have a come apart if we pull you away from them. Maybe Santa will bring you a baby laptop 🙂

Best Memory: This is more of a “Most Vivid Memory” rather than best…it’s definitely not best. One weekend while we were in Bham, Daddy, Uncle Ben, Mommy, and you went to Granny Rosie’s to eat some delicious spaghetti. After dinner, you were crawling around, just minding your own business while some of us were drinking coffee. At this point, you had not tried to pull up on furniture yet, so we weren’t expecting you to start that night. But you did. You pulled up on the end table next to the chair Mommy was sitting in and pulled her hot cup of coffee on you. Mommy and Granny Rosie went into fast-mode. Mommy ripped your clothes off and Granny Rosie got some wet cloths to cool you off. It scared me to death because when Uncle Ben was a little older than you he did the same thing and was rushed to the hospital and treated for 3rd degree burns. Something Mommy will never forget. And all the while, that was exactly what she was thinking as she was ripping your clothes off. Thank the Lord, you were not burned even in the least bit. Most of the coffee did not have direct contact with your skin.

Biggest Challenge: Getting you to eat solid food. You only have two bottom teeth, so it’s hard for you to gum “adult” food. But we are determined!

How We Spend the Day: Our days haven’t changed much since last month. We are up early, Mommy drops you off at daycare (which you LOVE and it makes things a little easier on Mommy and Daddy to know you enjoy it), we are home by 4:30, we play until it’s time to cook dinner, you play in your high chair or crawl around while Mommy cooks and talks to you about what she is making, Daddy comes home around 6 and we all eat dinner together, then it’s bath time, story time, and bed time by 8.

Funniest Moment: You are really funny about touching anything new. You take your middle finger and very delicately stroke or poke a new object. One afternoon you were in the floor playing while Mommy went in the kitchen to get something to drink. Next thing she knows, you are crawling as fast as you can across the floor to the back door. Mommy finds you and a cricket eye to eye and she’s wondering how and if you will touch the bug. Sure enough, you smack your hand down on that cricket as hard as you can. Somehow the cricket survives and starts limping away. You crawl after it all around the den until it finally finds safety under the couch. You tried your best to get under the couch, but you are just too big! It made you a little mad, but you got over it quickly.

New Explorations: You have discovered how to pitch a fit when you don’t get your way! Anytime we take a toy away from you, we have to quickly divert your attention to something else, otherwise you do this weird hand thing. You rub your fist back and forth across your mouth while screaming. I guess that’s the equivalent of stomping your feet down the hallway or slamming your door. You’ve done it so much that you have also discovered that you can make an Indian call with your hand. You do it on command and it’s pretty cute. You also roll your tongue REALLY well and you do it A LOT! It never fails to make us the center of attention in restaurants and people usually respond with, “Your baby is so talented.” Maybe you’ll be fluent in Spanish one day.

Food: You’ve tried chicken and Mom’s roast beef (Mentone Mom/Grandmother Mom/however you want to clarify which “Mom” I am talking about), diced peaches, green beans, carrots, baked potatoes, scrambled and boiled eggs, real oatmeal, rotini noodles, pancakes, pumpkin butter, cheese, cake, ice cream, and fresh cut sweet potato fries (thanks to your Aunt Leslie). Like I said earlier, it’s very difficult to get you to consistently eat any of these. You have so many things going against you…only 2 teeth, funny about texture, afraid to touch anything new. However, you LOVE cheese and have no problem eating it independently! You finally give yourself a bottle without being held. It makes me miss those days that we sat in the recliner and fed you, but it’s also something you need to learn to do and it definitely saves us time in the morning while we are getting ready! We are trying to ween you off the bottle and we are slowly but surely getting there. Granny Rosie’s sweet tea is probably your favorite non-milk drink so far…I can’t imagine why! It’s like liquid candy!

Words: No new words this month. Just your new sounds…the Indian call and rolling your r’s.

How We Celebrated: We went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, where you flirted with the two boys sitting near us. You WILLINGLY ate green beans and bites of Daddy’s biscuit with apple butter…hmm, maybe we are getting somewhere with this solid food thing 🙂

Here are some pics from your tenth month:

With Mommy and Daddy at the Fiddler’s Convention

Hanging out with Nona while the square dancers are stomping their feet

Playing with TBone and Uncle Sparky on the floor. You LOVE Uncle Sparky almost as much as you love Sanibel. Sparky is more fun to play with though, because he is too old to move away quickly when you touch him. He probably doesn’t even know that you pet him!

Playing peek a boo with your new book “Peekaboo!” that Nona gave you

Pretty mad at us for making you sit on the hay

The three of us on the square

Your first taste of ice cream and boy was it good! Give me some more!!!

Good to the last drop…

Granddaddy came to see you for his birthday

Excited about your new clothes from Grandma Reese

Sleeping with your hiney in the air!

Not happy about riding the desk chair down the hallway

We went to Mentone one Friday and Saturday. Mom (Grandmother Mom) pulled out all of Uncle Ben, TH, and Cleveland’s old toys. Here you are playing with a train that plays music.

Reading with Pop
Playing with Mom in Mentone

Reading…still your favorite

Strolling down Libby’s Meadow in Mentone

Eating at the Shrimp Basket in Orange Beach with Grace and Tommy. Remember the wedding invitation from last month’s post? It was for Grace’s wedding…and she’s getting married tomorrow!

Clapping for yourself because you sat up. You began to sit up while we were in our hotel for Daddy’s business trip. For a while, you would get all the way up on your tippy toes with your head down on the ground and hiney straight up in the air, then kind of fall over until you were sitting up. Very cute 🙂
Peeking behind the curtains in the hotel. You loved to look out the sliding glass doors.

Swinging at San Roc Cay

Mad yet again because we sat you in the sand

A beautiful sunset our last night at the beach

Your name in the sand 🙂

Sleepy eyes in the morning on the beach. The last morning we were there Daddy had to be in a conference, so we sat on the beach, just the two of us. It was peaceful Mommy/Lily time 🙂

A little more awake now

Playing with your rubber ducky. Without him, bath time wouldn’t be enjoyable for anyone.

First time to see/touch a pumpkin. After carefully examining it with your middle fingers, you decided it was safe to play with and loved the sound it made when you beat on it.

I’ve been waiting for this to happen…

Proud of yourself for helping Mommy with the laundry. Little do you know those clothes are dirty and don’t need to be folded yet. I guess that’s a good thing since you dumped them all on the floor.

Terrible pic, but it’s the only one I have of you on your toes before you sit down.

Close up…all smiles 🙂

Cutie pie

Your toothy grin

Playing with your remote

The more mobile you become, the more at risk Sanibel is. She is such a frantic dog and scurries away anytime you get near her. Here, you are trying your best to pet her and Sanibel is trying her best to find a way off the chair to get away from you. She’s not safe anymore in Daddy’s recliner.

What do you do when you are stuck in the hallway? Play with diapers and wipes, of course! The day you were sick and Mommy stayed home with you also happened to be a severe weather day for us. We had tornadoes all afternoon so we did a lot of playing in the hallway.

Watching Baby Einstein on your sick day

Guess who’s toy you are chewing on? It’s not yours 🙂 I hope Sanibel doesn’t see this picture!

Remember this guy? This pic is from your 7th month. We call him Guncle Us, only because Nona one day called him that instead of Uncle Gus. To be honest, he isn’t even your uncle, but we refer to him as Guncle Us now. Turns out a “guncle” is a real word which means an honorary non-related GAY uncle! HAHA. So I am clarifying that your Guncle Us is NOT gay!