Talking to the dog, birds, trees and flowers

Easter Weekend

We had a great and very busy Easter weekend. It was Colin's birthday and Earth Day. On Easter we went to church, I ran and made lemon meringue pie for Easter dinner (just like my grandma used to make for me- the entire time I thanked grandma for her endless hours in the kitchen making lemon meringue for me - like every child I was clueless as to the time that went in to the meringue she made to selflessly.), we went to the Davis' for a big dinner and Colin finished working on our bikes. We couldn't help but get Easter pictures of Lily in her dress by the tulips, we would have gotten more but it was raining and then she fell in the mud- so sad.

w
Saturday for Colin's birthday pre-funk we headed up to King Estates for a 5k to prepare us for next weekend's half marathon. It was so beautiful to run through the vineyard. The run kicked all of our tails as it was over bumpy terrain and up lots of hills.

I pushed Lilly in the stroller and she was a trooper. She loved every second of the bumps- talking the whole time to hear her voice make all of the funny sounds. Every time she saw Colin she would point and yell "Dada!" It made our day.

For Earth Day (well the day after) we spent the morning in the sunshine, Lillian admiring the trees, talking to the birds and animals and us fixing our bikes to get them ready to ride this spring.

Look whose hair is long enough for a barrette now.

Bust a move!

Click on the link below to see Harper and Lily bust a move. You can tell she has her mama's dancin' gene- quite clearly a Nye.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGwaXcEOYOQ

11 months old

We officially have an 11 month old. All of the feelings of where we were last year, how far we have come, how much she has grown fill my head every day. We drove back from Seattle on her birthday and she did amazing considering our trip to Portland the weekend before and our trip up to Seattle were mini nightmares for all members of the family. We once again concluded that there is NO WAY we will be able to make the move to MI via a family road trip. Instead Lily and I will be flying and Colin will be moving everything.

Lily continues to excel with all of her fine motor activities - picking small items up, feeding herself, helping to dress herself, even zipping and unzipping mom and dad's coat occasionally. She is also a talker - non-stop. She is developing new words every day and making words of her own up and looking at us with such intent and directive when she tells us something as if we are supposed to know what she is saying. This week she has come down with a miserable cold - lots of crying and 2 nights of NO sleeping. Last night she was crying so hard because she did not want to be changed and when I was finished and finally picked her up she actually yelled at me with words I could not understand. It was funny and sad at the same time. Also odd because we do not yell at our house. She is starting to get up on her knees when crawling but never actually moving on her knees while crawling. She just this weekend started to cruise (walk herself along furniture) between furniture which is a huge milestone.
Everyday we feel more love and joy with this girl, even through the sleepless nights.

A few busy weeks

We have a had a few busy weeks full of fun trying to squeeze every last droplet out of the northwest before we make our way back Michigan this summer. Last weekend we went to Seattle, walked the University of Washington campus to see the beautiful cherry blossoms, we spent great quality time with friends playing, eating, talking and laughing. We could not help ourselves from taking an abundance of pictures of Lillian with the trees.

We walked many parks and sat by the water. This is Dahlia, Whitney and Nathan's 15 month old. Lily loved being with Dahlia, she followed her around the entire weekend and loved playing with her toys. We also got to meet Kasen, Krista and Eric's 3.5mo old son. Sadly we didn't get any group kid pictures but Lily loved watching him and talking with him, he is a big talker so Lily had a little competition.

The group left to right: Tiffany, Brian, Julie, Lily, Colin, Krista, Kasen (3 months), Eric, Whitney, Nathan, Dahlia. All friends and their partners from P.T. school.

Lillian ate her first mouth full of sand. It was great, we set her outside of the canoe and she crawled inside immediately and took a BIG lick of the seat -sand and all. Here we come Big Bradford Lake, Lillian is ready for her weekends at the cottage in Michigan.

The last week or two have been rough because she cut through 3 more teeth. We are at a total of 8 and I can see a molar starting -eek.

Harper was over a few weeks ago and Colin played for the kids. They loved every second of it and they both crawled over immediately to play the guitar themselves.

A few adorable moments and words

It seems like every week brings about many new changes. As you all know Lillian is more of a talker than anything else. (I don't know where she gets it from.) She is always carrying on some sort of conversation, be it with the cat or the dog or one of us. Every weekend we notice new words/sounds. She has been muttering papapapa, dadada, upppp, tat, dat, gat but officially as of just a few days ago she has said 'mama' with purpose - either when I walk in to a room or when she discovers me by crawling around the corner. I think, she occasionally points at the cat and says 'cat' in her own little way but Colin seems to think she says 'cat' to a lot of things.
Last night we were eating dinner and she officially said her second word 'water' when asking for her water glass. Colin and I just looked at each other and said 'Did you hear that?' I handed her the glass and she was happy. It proceeded to happen 4 more times.

She is loving real food. I rarely have to make pureed food for her any more. She wants what we have. She is even starting to wean herself pretty quickly from breast feeding.....my emotions are so mixed about that. I will save that for a different post.
I don't want to jinx our nights but we have had at least 1 week of a little baby girl going to bed at 8 pm and not waking until 6 am. Prior to this last week we have had a few nights here and there but nothing lasting more than a week. It is so amazing and such a blessing. I still hold my breath every night just waiting for this all to change again. If there is one thing I have learned it is that everything is a phase.

Yep- this is what I turned around to the other day. Not Lily feeding Chev but Chev helping himself to a little beans, peas and avocado. Unbelievable!

Look at these two. Do you think she may look a little like her dad?

More 9 month professional pictures

cue the ahhhhhs............