Lily’s Eleventh Month

One more month, Lily, and you will be 365 days old. Has a year already passed? It’s very difficult to wrap my brain around that thought. Surely you are still a teeny tiny baby! You aren’t though; you are becoming more and more independent each day. Watching you go from dependent on us for absolutely everything to being able to do so many things on your own has been amazing. You a such a sweet sweet joy in our lives and God blessed us tremendously from the moment we saw two pink lines to now and many many more years in the future. 


Firsts: Halloween; Trunk or Treat (you dressed as a ballerina); decorating the house for Christmas; Thanksgiving with the VKs, Wrights, and Milsteads; trip to Gary Springs; sitting on the 4-wheeler (no rides just yet); Black Friday experience (You were not allowed to come with Mommy from 4am to 8pm but Daddy brought you by the Galleria for a little while); Iron Bowl. 


News Headlines: San Francisco Giants win the World Series, Cam Newton is being investigated by the NCAA because of allegations between an “agent” and Mississippi State, Auburn wins the SEC West and the Iron Bowl 28-27, Prince William and Kate Middleton announce their engagement (and that they will marry in April). I stole these from Rebecca because I always ask your Daddy for these and he is asleep 🙂 


Favorite Toy: Anyone’s cell phone or laptop


Mommy and Daddy’s Favorite: The way you wave and say hello. You stick your hand out in the air and say “A”. You wave to us when we come to get you out of the crib in the morning, you wave to Sanibel when you first see her in the morning and when we get home from school, you wave to any and every picture and mirror you see. One of your favorite things to do is look at yourself in the car window when we are about to put you in your car seat. You recognize yourself for sure and you are starting to recognize other people you know…but whether you know them or not, you wave and say “A”. The Sunday after Thanksgiving (today) you and another boy, Cash, were “talking” and you waved and said “A” over and over again and you kept trying to touch his hands. 


Milestones: You are completely crawling (no more scooting!); you can pull up and walk across whatever you are holding onto; I wish I could say you had more teeth but I would be a liar, still only 2 bottom teeth; Size 3 diaper and 9-12 month clothes, although your pants are always falling off because you don’t have a fat tummy to hold them up 🙂 You carry your weight in your thighs…this is the only time you can appreciate having big thighs. 


Weight/Length: 19 pounds, but I have no clue about the ounces. You’ve been sick for the past 2 1/2 weeks and have had no appetite due to the antibiotics you were on so I assume you lost some weight. Probably 30 inches long. 


Like Mommy: You like to dance to Elvis’s Christmas album. 


Like Daddy: When you are sick, all you want to do is sleep.


Best Memory: You’ve been saying bye bye for a while now, but not always at the right time. One morning when Mommy dropped you off at daycare, she said bye to you and you immediately responded with a “bye bye” and a wave. Now you say it on command every time. You say it when you see Mommy packing your diaper bag and when you can sense we are about to go somewhere, you crawl to the door and say bye bye and wave. Another favorite memory was when you were sick and you felt so awful that you would just let us hold and snuggle with you. It reminded us of when you were an infant and we could hold you all day and never want to move. 


Biggest Challenge: You had an ear infection that kept you feeling sick for almost 3 weeks. You ran high fever (104) for a week and were sick at your stomach from the Omnicef (I will request to never have that again!) The medicine took a while to get completely out of your system, so even after the infection was gone, you still had upset stomachs and no desire to eat anything. You were very fussy and slept a lot. Anyone that knows you knows that you never fuss (unless we are bathing you or changing your clothes) so the fact that you were fussy most of the time made it obvious that you were very sick. 


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: This is more like the grossest moment. Like I said before, the medicine you were on while you were sick really messed up your stomach. One day after school, we pulled into the garage and I got you out of the car. When I picked you up, I thought you felt very hot and wondered if you had a fever again. Then, I was putting you on the floor in the den and realized my arm was soaking wet with what I call poop juice (because there was nothing solid about your poop). I looked at you and you were covered in it! Needless to say, I immediately stripped you down and bathed you. A day or two later, we woke up and brought you into our room to play because Mommy didn’t have school due to the Thanksgiving holidays. The first thing you did was crawl straight to Sanibel’s crate and let her out (which we didn’t know you could do) and Sanibel threw up bright orange liquid all over our white rug. So, Mommy cleaned that up as best she could then fed you a bottle. You then threw up that bottle all over the den, and crawled through it. Mommy needed to quickly change you, so she put a towel over the throw up so Sanibel wouldn’t bother it. Unfortunately, Sanibel did find it because when we returned to the den after changing your clothes, there was no evidence of you throwing up.


New Explorations: Now that you can pull up on anything, one of your favorite activities is to pull up on the glass front door or the windows in the sun room at TBone and Nona’s house. You then lick the windows from top to bottom and cover the windows in slobber. You are becoming more and more mobile and you crawl VERY fast when you are excited about something. 


Food: You are still eating mostly Gerber 2nd foods. You aren’t a big fan of 3rd foods because the chunky texture bothers you. But, if I put chunks of fruit or veggies in the 2nd foods, you eat it just fine. If you are feeling well, you will eat anything we put on your tray. I try to make at least one thing for dinner every night that you can eat. We found out today that you love Jim N Nicks cheese muffins. You also helped Grandma Reese finish her BBQ potato buy putting a handful of the potato in your hand and eating one bite at a time. 


Words: I think it’s safe to say that “bye bye” was your first word. You also get Sanibel’s attention by saying in a raspy voice “buh buh buh”. 


How We Celebrated: We were still in Birmingham for Thanksgiving, so we attended Christ City Church that morning, then went to Jim N Nick’s for lunch with the VKs and Wrights.