January 2014

The New Year always  makes me look back on everything that was amazing about the previous year and look ahead to all I hope for the coming year.  The previous year was our first full year as parents and was full of major firsts for Lilly.  2013 was a great year and I am really looking forward to watching Lilly grow through 2014.  One of my goals for the year (I don't really like to use the word resolution) is to post at least one blog per month, but more importantly to do something new with Lilly every week.  It could be a new activity, a new song/dance, a new place, a new friend...something new.  We already started with several new experiences already!

We are having a blast using the new camera to take some awesome shots of Lilly.  One of Lilly's favorite things to do is to have a tea party.  She grabs all of her dishes (usually dumping the entire container on the floor) and sets out cups, saucers and spoons and tea pots for herself, her dolls, Darren and I, or whoever she is playing with.  Today she decided to take all of her stuff into the hallway to host her party.  Darren caught some great shots of her in action.

Time to clean up!

Look at my silly girl!  She makes the cutest faces.  Her smile is just contagious and immediately changes my mood.  Just looking at these pictures makes my heart ache with how much I love her!

Lilly loves Elmo and has several Elmo's World DVDs.  One of them is Elmo goes to the Doctor, which she wanted to watch over and over.  She would ask for "Elmo Dah-tor" when we let her pick which DVD to watch.  I think the only reason she wanted to watch it was because of one part with cartoon dogs sneezing over and over.  She CRACKS UP every time she watches it.  I rewound it and let her watch it a few times and then finally got my act together to get a video of her adorable laugh.  Enjoy!

We went up to New York to visit our families after the holidays.  The trip there was...well, it was not fun and is not worth recounting, but our visit was just awesome!

Lilly has crazy hair right now, so I need to do something to it every morning.  This is not an easy task with a toddler who does not want to sit still,  but we make it work, usually with a lot of "hold stills, face forwards, and don't touch thats."  Here is a before and after...

My crazy little girl had such a blast playing at Grandma's house!  She especially loved to build towers with the nesting cups and knock them over...or eat them??  ;-)

 Lilly loved playing with the dogs as well.  My mom's dog, Duke, and my Aunt' Mare's dog, Alfie, were both so good with Lilly!  She would bring them their toys, give them kisses and hugs and get very excited when they were around.  Duke likes to be in his crate when he gets nervous (and he was nervous when we first got there), but Lilly didn't like that he was in there.  She would go up to his crate and call him to try to get him out, then she would bring him toys or his bone so he had something to play with.  What a sweet girl!

 My sister loaned us some toys to play with while we were at my mom's house so we didn't have to bring too many with us.  Lilly was completely overjoyed when she saw the Elmo, Big Bird and Grover toys!  She loves the Sesame Street characters.  When she gets up in the morning, I ask her about her dreams.  I usually ask her if who she dreamed about and then list people or characters that she knows.  She then repeats them to me and it's so cute!  She can say all of the Sesame Street characters.  Now when we do this, she says a lot of them on her own without me having to say them first.  I love sharing these special moments with Lilly, especially over track out when we're not rushed in the morning.

Lilly was very excited that her cousins came over to play with her!  My sister brought Nick, Anthony and Brianna over several times while we were there, and it was just awesome to see them playing together!  Each one of them took time to play with Lilly and did an awesome job of being patient with her and doing things she wanted to do, even though they are all older.  Nick was especially great at building towers with her and letting her knock them over.

 Clearly Lilly was having an amazing time with her cousins!

 Here's the whole gang!

Lilly also had an amazing time playing with Aunt Mare.  My Aunt is so wonderful with kids and always has been.  I can remember her always taking the time to play with us when we were little and I am overjoyed that she does the same for Lilly now.  We are so lucky to have such amazing people in our lives who love and care about all of us, and who enrich Lilly's life with their love and time.

 This is Lilly's beauty shot.  Look at those eyes!

At one point Lilly asked to sit in the rocking chair and Darren helped her up.  We both figured she would climb right back down, but she asked for her babies, sat them beside her and sat on the chair, rocking the babies and humming to them.

She then asked for my mom's iPod and played with that on the chair for a little while.  She was very fascinated by the iPod, even though it didn't have any of the aps she knows.  She liked playing the music.  Speaking of iPods, we blew my family's mind when we showed them how Lilly can navigate the iPad by herself.  She can turn it on, unlock the lock screen by swiping, choose the PBS kids ap, and then select the video she wants to watch (usually Elmo, though now she also likes Daniel Tiger, Peg+Cat and a few others).  I am always amazed at how quickly Lilly picks things up!  She is truly a sponge right now and is so eager to learn new things and try new things (hence my goal for this year).

Our new experience for the first week was Lilly's first experience with snow!  My mom, Aunt Mare, Darren, Lilly and I went for a chilly walk on the only day of our visit that was somewhat nice out.  We went to the local library and Lilly played in the children's room, then it started to snow!  Lilly was shrieking with delight as the snowflakes fell on her!  She was waving her arms to try to catch them and giggling to herself louder than I had heard in a long time.  She was absolutely loving it!  So needless to say, she likes snow.  Sadly, I don't!  I am one of those people who doesn't miss the snow (at all!) and is fine to never see a flake.  I am glad my daughter got to experience it though!

Nick and Lilly also spent a lot of time drawing on her new magna doodle.  Nick would draw Elmo or Lilly and show it to her.  She wasn't always sure who/what the drawing was, but she was so happy to play with him!

All that playing left our little peanut exhausted!

Since it was our last day in New York, we wanted to try to get some family pictures.  Lilly even joined in the fun when Aunt Susan let her borrow her camera!  Lilly absolutely loved playing with it and "taking pictures".

We tried to get a shot of my mom with all of her grandchildren, but Lilly was a little cranky (it was already past nap time).  So I sat in on the picture so she would sit.

Lilly didn't want me to put her down, so she was my little sidecar in all of the rest of the pictures as well.

The morning we left Lilly was running around the house wearing my old Daisy Duck hat and then she found Tom's old Pluto hat.  I think Duke was a little confused by the hat ;-)

Lilly is still somewhat of a picky eater, but I was so proud of her for trying my latest Pinterest recipe: Taco cupcakes! (which sound weird, but were awesome!).  She only ate a few bites, but I was so glad that was she willing to try something new.

 A new food is a new experience I guess, but our new activity for this week was practicing some new skills.  I found some activities (also on Pinterest) to help with Lilly's fine motor skills.  One was quite simply putting pipe cleaners through a colander.  She had a great time doing this!  I don't have a picture of it, but the other thing we did was to sort pom poms into a painted egg container.  I just painted the bottoms of each egg slot a different color and we tried to teach her to put the right color pom into the right color slot.  She was more interested in just putting them in the container, but she had fun so that's all that matters!

Darren is working at a track out camp this week so Lilly and I have had some alone time in the morning.  This morning after emptying out her tea set from it's container, she ran around the house with the bucket on her head!  I managed to catch it on video.

Lilly is not always conventional when she plays with her toys.  She found a new way to push her stroller around.

Special thanks to Kalan for giving us a princess kitchen and piano for Lilly!  She LOVES them both!

I was working at the theater every night getting ready for our production of "Beauty and the Beast" and one night I brought Lilly with me for a little while so Darren could tutor.  Lilly had an absolute blast playing with all the girls!  They had baskets of stuff for a scene in the show and they all loved handing things to Lilly and would "awww" every time she would hand it back (we are working really hard on sharing).  They all absolutely loved her!  When we left Lilly even gave one of the girls a big hug.  She is already preparing to be a STAR!

Lilly is very interested in chapstick right now.  I have put some on her lips because the air is so dry right now, her lips were getting chapped, but now she wants it all the time!  The cutest part is that she always has to make an "Mmmm" sound when she puts it on.  I must have done that when I was putting it on her, because she does it every time.  This video gives you a glimpse at Lilly's chapstick obsession.

I was gone Mon-Sat night, so on Sunday when Darren was at basketball, I had some special Mommy/Lilly time and got my baby all to myself!  Darren usually gives her a bath since I feed her and put her to bed, so it was nice to get this special time with Lilly.  We took a few selfies to commemorate the moment ;o)

We made our monthly trip to Marbles on Tuesday.  We were still off from work, so we were able to go a little earlier than normal so we could leave before the impending snow (which never really came).  Lilly was exploring new things this time and enjoying some of her old standbys as well.  I look forward to this day every month now because it's so special to see her play and explore completely uninhibited!

One of Lilly's favorite parts of Marbles is the care and rescue section that includes some baby dolls in a hospital nursery and an ambulance.  She loves to drive the ambulance and to use the medical equipment as well.

 We were pretty surprised that she laid down on the gurney and put the defibrillator on her heart!  I know she must have seen another kid doing it the time visit or two before and was imitating them, but it was pretty impressive to see her do that with no prompting from us!

I see you!

 Marbles was practically empty, so we visited the water room that has been somewhat busy the last few times we have been there and Lilly wasn't interested in.  This time she realized that she can play in water!  She was hooked!

 After some mishaps with the water, Mommy realized we were better off wearing an apron to protect Lilly's clothes.  She loved splashing, and we didn't want to deter her.

 Her favorite toy was a rubber octopus.  She loved grabbing it and making it swim, or throwing it into the water.  I love how she sticks her tongue out when she is happy!

 Lilly took some time to hug a few doggies while in the Money room.

 Of course we had to make s few pizzas!

 Normally we don't stop and do any of the crafts, but the table was pretty empty, so we decided to let Lilly paint.  She loves craft activities.  The truth is she was more interested in the water than the paint, but she still had a ball!

Lilly LOVES to be outside.  She will go over to the entryway and get her hat, gloves, jacket and shoes and then go hang on the doorknob saying "side!" over and over until we go out.  Luckily the weather has been mild so we can actually honor this very adorable request.

The boys from the neighborhood were playing football and Lilly wanted to play.  They are nice kids and came over to her to let her hold the ball, but then she lost interest and went on playing.  I think sometimes she just wants to see if she can get something and then realizes she doesn't actually want it ;o)

"Plane!"  Lilly's vocabulary surprises us every day!  She knows words for so many things now!  A plane flew overhead and Lilly pointed up and said, "Plane!" clear as day.  I love that she can actually TELL us what she wants now!

This is actually a batch of pictures from a different day.  Darren has become a great photographer and managed to catch so many adorable pictures of Lilly that it seemed a shame not to include them.  I tried to narrow it down, but she is just so darn cute!  

I love this one because it looks like she is giving a "thumbs up!"

Lilly's eyes are so incredibly beautiful!  They are so big and expressive.  My heart melts a little more each time I look at her.  I think Darren and I are in a lot of trouble because Lilly has us wrapped around her little finger already!

Lilly loves Maggie still. Here she was holding leaves out for Maggie to sniff.  We then started throwing leaves up in the air and Maggie was chasing them around.  Lilly's giggles are the best sound in the entire world.

Lilly wanted her baby to get a chance to come outside and play too.  She is very cute with her baby dolls.  She gives them chapstick, has tea parties with them, gives them bottles, puts them to bed, and even puts them in her swing or takes them down the slide.  Clearly Lilly is asking for a little brother or sister to play with and take care of, right????

After we played in the backyard, we took a walk around the neighborhood.  Lilly was riding in her car for a little while but then asked to get out and "help" so I let her push the car.  She pushed it the entire length of our street and never complained.  She LOVES to help!

It was still nice out, so we grabbed the chalk and started drawing on the driveway.  Lilly still just scribbles, but she has so much fun doing anything creative.  She loves the color, play with stickers, use glue, play with pom poms and pipe cleaners...etc.  She must get that from her Daddy.

On Saturday we went to Holly Springs to see the free family movie in the morning (also a new experience for us this week!).  I wanted to see if Lilly would sit through a movie in a movie theater, but I didn't want to pay for this experiment, so this seemed like a good option.  The movie was "Brother Bear" and unfortunately, the beginning is kind of slow, so Lilly lasted about 25 minutes (though she did sit quietly for that entire time, so that is something).  Luckily I had a backup plan (come on, did you expect anything less???)  Family storytime was happening at 10:30, so we just walked over to the library and sat in on storytime instead.  The librarian started with a song about bubbles and walked around all of the kids blowing bubbles for them to play with.  Lilly absolutely loved it!  She had a huge smile on her face and tried to catch all the bubbles (and eat some of them).  Then she did a great job sitting and listening to the stories.  I think her favorite part was the singing and dancing though.  Lilly prefers to be up and moving rather than sitting still, but really, what toddler doesn't?  After the stories, Lilly was very excited to get stamps on her hands again and then picked out some books that she wanted to take home.  She sat down and started reading one herself in fact!  I hope Lilly loves to read as much as I do!

I have read that toddlers love to help and Lilly is no exception.  We have been working with her on picking up her toys and asking her to help with tasks like feeding Maggie, doing laundry, and light chores.  She loves it.  This video isn't the best, but Lilly was helping me to get the laundry out of the dryer and then I asked her to help me fold it and she started pushing the laundry basket herself.  I grabbed my phone as fast as I could to catch this.

Lilly made up a funny game of trying to make Maggie a doctor by putting her stethoscope around her neck.  Maggie actually played along really well and either way, Lilly had a blast!

I.  Love.  This.  Hat.  That is all.

 We do a lot of coloring, stickers, gluing and other crafty projects, but we have not painted in our house with our stuff yet.  Darren does NOT like to see Lilly messy.  Even when she is eating, he tries to clean her up mid meal so she doesn't have any food on her.  I am trying to get him used to letting her make her own messes and learn, so why not paint!  ;-)  She had the BEST time!  These pictures don't really capture how concentrated and serious she was, but she did this for about 45 minutes.  She wasn't giggling and screaming or throwing paint, she was carefully dipping her brush, blobbing her paint on her paper and choosing her colors.  Only at the very end did she even start dipping her fingers in it.  She is so cute!

One of my favorite things to do with Lilly is the have a dance party.  We put Pandora on the computer and just dance to whatever songs come on.  Lilly's dancing is more stomping around in a circle or spinning right now, but she loves it!

We had a snow day today...and no snow, at least not until about 6 at night.  By the way, we were playing outside in the sunshine in our sweatshirts just the day before...moving on.  So we bundled Lilly up so she could go out and see the snow before bath time and bed.  She loves going outside, so she was excited to get to go out.  There was just a light dusting, and the flakes were falling, so Lilly seemed interested in the snow, but a little confused.

 She liked it when I "wrote" in the snow on the cement blocks.

 We didn't stay out long because I was getting cold and Lilly needed her bath.  My blood has definitely thinned since moving south!

We had another snow day today!  Lilly didn't get the memo and only slept until 6:15, so we got up and played all morning while we waited for the sun to poke out so we could go outside.  I started marching around the hall with Lilly's doll on my shoulders, and then she was imitating me by doing the same thing.  She then noticed the beautiful white stuff out the window and it was time to get dressed and head outside!

For southerners we have a surprising amount of winter gear for Lilly!  Thank you hand me downs and buy/sell/trade!  Lilly was a cute little marshmallow all bundled up.  I swear it is just a complete coincidence that all the gear we have matches!  I guess little girl stuff is usually pink, so the odds were in our favor ;o)

We walked out the back and I put Lilly down on the patio.  

 She was fine for a minute while she watched Maggie run around and roll in the snow!  Maggie had a ball playing with the neighborhood kids and racing around the yard.

 Lilly tried to take a step and started saying "No!  No! No!"  I think she was scared because the ground was uneven and she wasn't feeling surefooted.  I took her hand and tried to get her to walk with me, but she was getting scared, so I picked her up instead.  She was much happier that way!

I tried to get her to touch the snow, but she was very hesitant.  So I tried sprinkling some in the air instead so she got to see it falling.  She seems to like watching the snow fall and feeling the flakes, but I think she is a little overwhelmed by any accumulating snow.