They call her “Flipper, Flipper…”

Here is Lily’s new trick…a dolphin impression!  She has been squealing and chatting nonstop for the past two days, and I think it’s just adorable.  It’s right before nap time, so she mixes in a fuss for good measure!

20 Weeks

I spy…

 

 

…with my little eye…

 

 

…something scary!

 

 

Oh, wait!  I mean, surprising…

 

 

Golly jeepers, is this little girl sitting up by herself?  Who knew?!?!

_____________________________________

Okay, so she’s not REALLY sitting up all alone, but she’s doing pretty well!  I put her down for a minute under this new Boppy gym thing we picked up from a consignment sale today, and lo and behold she could sit pretty well. 

Best storyteller ever.

Michael’s parents came to visit this past weekend, and Mimi read Lily her bedtime story.  Lily thought it was HILARIOUS (as did we!), as you can tell from the videos!  If you only watch one, the third one (“Video 16”) is the best.  :-)

 

 

 

Water, water, everywhere…

Sippy cup practice!  :-)  (I promise…she was drinking water from the sink, and not from her tub.)

In these videos, Lily is clearly torn…the “game” of drinking from a cup is certainly alluring (despite the fact that her sippy cup attacks her head at one point). 

 

 

Unfortunately, this is offset by the fact that water is, quite simply, “yucky.”

 

Fancy Shmancy

Just a heads up that I’m trying to complete a (free, self-paced, totally unnecessary but interesting to me at least) online photo-editing course I stumbled across on the internet.  Why am I telling you, you might ask, when I haven’t actually started the “course”?  Because if I tell you I’m going to do this, silly, then I may actually feel pressure to follow through with it and I REALLY want to do it!  :-)  It has some great Photoshop techniques I’d like to learn. 

So here I am, publicly committing to bring you unnecessary and possibly even tacky Photoshop creations in the near future. 

Just because I care. 

You’re welcome!

Big girls don’t cry…well…maybe just a little bit

Last Friday, Michael and I found ourselves struggling to get Little Miss Lily to go to bed.  Many of you know we have had some trouble getting our little girl to go to sleep on her own these past few months.  We acknowledge that her sleep problems are mostly our own fault, as we have gotten her to rely on us bouncing her to sleep, preferably in a dark room with white noise blaring.

Ummm…oops. 

It worked for us, though, and she usually let us bounce her until she was asleep, and then we can put her in her crib.  About half the time she’d stay asleep, and half the time she’d pop right back up, demanding to be bounced again.  This wasn’t a “decision” we made, to make our daughter reliant on bouncing to sleep, but it was something that evolved in the early weeks out of our desperation to do anything to get her to sleep so that we could catch 40…err…20 winks ourselves. 

So on Friday night, we found ourselves bouncing a 4-month old bundle of cuteness (okay, so maybe she wasn’t looking quite so cute at midnight), putting her down, seeing her immediately open her eyes, hearing her immediately start fussing again, and repeating the cycle.  For two hours.  It was at that point, that we realized she was taking mini-cat naps while being bounced, and that we were finally doing more harm than good.  Something had to give.

Now I had already read Richard Ferber’s (as in “Ferberizing”) “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems,” and understood what our plan would be for letting her “cry it out” to fix these tedious sleep associations we had created.  We had just planned on waiting a few more weeks to actually implement the plan.  But Friday night, we finally decided to go ahead and implement the dreaded plan.

And I have to say, it went pretty well!

Night 1 (Friday), Lily cried for 39 minutes before falling asleep.  We went in every few minutes (at increasingly long intervals) to reassure her we had not run off to Timbuktu without her, but we refused to bounce the stuffing out of her.  It was a little bit rough, but we knew we were doing the right thing.

Night 2 (Saturday), Lily cried for 9 minutes before falling asleep.  Much better! 

Night 3, there was NO crying!  Same for night 4!  And now night 5!  Yippee!!!  Even naps are mostly fixed – she resists her late afternoon nap, but has only really cried before that nap once since we started the plan.  This has been an incredible turnaround, and we couldn’t be more proud of our big girl.

The best part is that she has actually been in an even better mood than she usually is, and stays quietly in her crib until I come and get her. 

Since no post is complete without video or pictures, her is what I wake up to in the mornings. Priceless!

 

What’s up, doc?

Lily went to the doctor today for her 4 month checkup, and she checked out just fine on everything.  We have the green light to start solids in about a month or so, so that should add some excitement to our schedule.  Now to go shopping for all the needed accessories!  Any moms out there have any “must haves”?

The big news everyone wants to know, of course, is how little Lily is growing.  Well she’s continuing her quest to be a beanpole baby, and is now at the 95th percentile for height (26 inches), and the 24th percentile for weight (12 pounds, 10 ounces)!  She had lots of fun at her visit, flirting with the doctor and nurses, and staring at herself in the mirror next to the exam table…that was, until shot time.  Lily got 4 more shots (2 in each leg), but only cried for 10 seconds or so – much better than last time! 

_______________________________________

She was in a great mood by the time we got home.  See?

_______________________________________

Someone tell this little girl that it’s OKAY to recline – stop trying to sit up all the time – YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO!

_______________________________________

By tonight, Lily was feeling pretty miserable from her shots, and went to bed a little early, so hopefully she’ll be feeling better tomorrow.  Last time she was SO sleepy for the next two days, so we’ll see how she does this time.

_______________________________________

In other news, Lily turned 18 weeks Tuesday, so here’s her weekly picture:

And I think I’ll use the first picture above for her close-up weekly picture.  Such a cutie, if I do say so myself!

Flippin’ out!

Michael just got us a new video camera thingy called a Flip Mino, so we have taken some new videos over the past few days.  As to the content of the videos, it’s more attempts to solicit Lily’s sweet giggles, with more and more success!  She is so much fun, and Michael and I are ridiculously addicted to her laughs.  I find myself stealing tricks from fellow bloggers to get Lily to laugh (Adrienne – I can’t do your funny voice you used to get Anthony to chuckle without hurting my throat, so no success for me there!  Caroline – Eric’s song got lots of smiles from Lily, but no giggles for me.  Kate – Clara laughed just being talked to, so we certainly haven’t had that luck!  I do have to try your finger-jabbering thing, though.). 

We’re going to the doctor today (Wednesday, July 15th), so wish us luck in not crying TOO much at our shots!

 

 

 

4 Months Old!

Happy 4 Month Birthday, little girl!

Here she is at 4 days, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, and now 4 months!

 

17 Weeks

Time sure is flying!

New trick!

Michael and I are well aware that we’re already out of new material for entertaining Lily and getting her to smile.  We have a few standbys, and seem to be always using the same, tired tricks.  I think Lily has finally taken notice.

So here is Lily’s (not mommy’s) new trick – (adorably) attempting to mock her mommy.  “Yes, Mommy,” she says, “Even I can do that one!  How about some new tricks now, okay?” 

 

 

This Fourth is Her First*

* Since my friend Stefanie already jumped on the much catchier title “Baby’s First Fourth” for her blog, my creativity-challenged mind could only come up with this much clunkier title. Deal with it. :-)

In any case, this was Lily’s first Fourth of July, and she was every bit as excited about it as you can imagine. That is to say, of course, that she had no clue it was a holiday and that there were patriotic reasons behind her parents’ hare-brained scheme to drive all over tarnation and then force her to be outside in the sweltering heat while watching her parents consume fair-esque foods that would later come back to haunt one of them (i.e. Kristin).

While I love fireworks, we figured that exploding projectiles weren’t going to be our little lady’s cup of tea this year, so we decided to find a daytime festival that we could participate in. We located one in Brevard, NC, and made the trek up there during Lily’s nap*. It was nice (for Kristin!) to get out of the house, and we had a lovely drive through the mountains.

*Oops – I just re-read that. We ALL went during Lily’s nap – not just Michael and Kristin. Glad I could clear that up!

_____________________________________________________

As you can see, Lily had lots of fun*.

*Okay, she didn’t have THAT much fun, but it wasn’t as bad as this picture – it’s just that I only took a couple of photos!

_____________________________________________________

Now THIS is more like it! Fun for Lily is eating your stroller straps and hands while hanging out with Hank, the country western puppy. Bizarre floppy hat entire optional.

_____________________________________________________

Happy (Belated) 4th!

Weeks 0 - 16

Well, we’ve reached the 16 week mark!  Now honestly, that is really only significant in that it’s the week I chose to post all of these weekly pictures!  You’re welcome.  So away we go…

Here goes Lily from 0 weeks to 16 weeks old:

And again:

Fun, huh?  :-)

Willis Wedding Weekend

Last weekend, we went to Columbia to attend the wedding of our friends Shawn Willis and Elizabeth Smith. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures at the wedding, but here we are at a rehearsal celebration the night before.

It was so great to celebrate with the Willis and his bride, and to see many dear friends we hadn’t seen in too long.  While Michael and I were enjoying some much-needed (for me, anyways) adult conversation, Miss Lily got to spend lots of time with her Mimi and Papa Bogle!  They babysat for us both nights, and we were so appreciative!

Happy Father’s Day!

This year, we celebrated Michael’s first Father’s Day!  The timing was great, because it was Lily’s Baptism weekend, so Michael and I got to see both of our own fathers that weekend, too.  For Michael’s present, I had some pictures made of Lily in her Gamecock cheerleading uniform.  They turned out so cute.  She was in such a good mood the day we went, and smiled for her pictures.  Here are some scans of a few of them.  The rest can be seen at: http://smilestore.picturepeople.com/my/images?tk=acac4996-e073-4733-a0e7-4f8c0bf904c8 

 

Here are some pictures we took at home that same day.

On a serious note, I do have to say that I am blown away by how amazing a father Michael has turned out to be.  I love this man even more than ever, and I am constantly amazed at his love and patience for his sweet little girl.  We love you, Michael!

Bless this baby!

On June 20th, Lily was baptized at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Simpsonville.  Her godparents were Michael’s mother and my great Uncle Gillis (my maternal grandfather’s brother).  Uncle Gillis was unable to attend, so my father stood in for him.

I have to say, I was SO proud of Lily – she didn’t make a peep the entire time!  My mom sent up the beautiful family christening dress made by my paternal grandmother (a.k.a. Granny) that was worn by both my brother and me for our Baptisms many years ago.

 

 

The jury’s still out

A couple of weeks ago, we set up a baby pool in the backyard for Lily to enjoy.  Unfortunately, we picked the one day when it was overcast and it wasn’t 100 degrees outside.  We didn’t want her to get chilled so she just put her feet in the pool. 

As you can tell…

…the jury…

…is still out.