Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Santa Claus Visit 2012

Ho Ho Ho!



Tickling her while on Santa's lap greatly contributed to the happy girl we see here. She was a little hesitant and needed mommy and daddy to sit with her. I really love this picture of us. This totally captures my Lila. I was going to dress her up all fancy to see Santa but thought it was more her style to wear a Walmart Christmas tee, tutu and fun tights!


I think it's awesome that Neil was willing to sit on Santa's lap! What a good daddy. 

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Pumpkin Patch 2012

We went on our annual pumpkin patch visit to nearby Barn N Bunk, in Trenton, Ohio.


Love my girl, ignore the porta potties in background

She ran through the corn maze yelling "Go Lila!"


She loved it! She is such a big girl now.

Having a snack with Daddy


My cute girl. Love her skinny jeans and chucks.



Family pic at the pumpkin patch 2012


And last year... same place!
Funny how we look different but the same. Lila is much bigger, but same sun-squinty grin. Neil wore the same outfit, LOL and I am thankfully 15 lbs lighter this year! I think I'll celebrate by eating fudge, caramel apples and caramel corn!


I love FALL!!! I also am so relieved to have lived through my super busy time at work the last month or so. I haven't had time to eat let alone post to the blog. I am so happy to be able to think about something other than work! 

Lila is saying and doing so many new things, I hope to get an update together soon. She will be 20 months old in a week. I really can't believe that, but I love it! She is so much fun now!



Sunday, September 2, 2012

Lila's 18 months old!

Well, here we are! 18 months old and Lila is as wild as ever! We are having so much fun with our little ball of energy. She pretty much never stops moving, talking or dancing and wears us out all the time!




We were supposed to have her 18 month check up on Saturday but due to her recent fever we cancelled it. 

She weighs about 23 lbs and has gotten a lot taller. She is wearing a size 5 or 6 shoe! In May she was wearing a 3! She is wearing 18-24 mo. outfits and some 2T.

She wakes up between 7 and 7:30 and goes to bed around 8:30. Naps for around 2 hrs somewhere between 12:30 and 3:30.

I think both her molars on bottom are in and maybe one on top, so I guess that makes 11 or 12 teeth.



Developmental stuff


Saying more complex sentences. Like "Look at this” and “Look daddy, hat!” and “I want night night” or “I wanna go bye-bye or outside, etc”, “Where’d mama go?”, "I wanna cookie please!"

She has gone to the potty a few times, both pee and poo, and she’s wearing cloth training pants (wish they made these in 12-18 months size!) or no bottoms at home most of the time. This is helping me to know when she pees and is getting her used to the idea of the potty. I think she will pick it up fast when we are really ready. No rush though, I just want to catch her when she is interested.

Tries to put on pants herself, can put on shoes herself, and can take off tops and dresses. Tries to take off diaper. Can pull down big girl panties with help.

Loves identifying things: mommy’s shoes, mommy’s “babock” which means cup, baby’s hat, etc. She will sometimes say her name, says it like “Yaya” but usually calls herself “baby”.

She is feeding self really well with spoon and fork, still resorts to hands though!




Can climb up into her high chair and practically buckle herself in on her own. We just bought a small picnic table and we are transitioning to that.

Love to climb on chairs, beds, couches, ottomans, tv stands etc. and stand and jump on them. This is a big problem as far as safety and we have to correct her and watch her all the time!


Knows two letters! “O” and “B”.. working on L and some others. Anytime I sing the alphabet to her she says.. “B” “I”... for BINGO song


New words 


Seems like there are at least 2 new ones a day!

happy
pretty
picture
bow
owl and says “hoot, hoot”
bike
hotdog
pizza
meatball
crocodile
bagel
elbow
up
down
please
peas
sorry
pee-pee
poop
yucky
car
thank you
“bobo” for the book with Bobo the monkey in it
“go go” for Go Dogs Go (favorite book)
“moon” for Goodnight Moon



Favorites and funny stuff


Loves JUMP and Roar like a Lion by Patty Shukla
Itsy bitsy spider, Mr. Sun, BINGO, Hokey Pokey

Still loves Bubble Guppies. This is pretty much the only TV she will pay much attention to. She even laughs at appropriate parts and tries to sing along. We stumbled on Pajanimals the other day and she thought that was hilarious. 

The cat obsession continues this month. She puts her cat Mao in high chair, feeds it. Also Love babies! She “talks” to her babies and asks them questions “wanna go outside?” Loves to brush baby doll’s hair.

We are trying to get her to growl for Bengal (for Cincinnati Bengals).. and we will say.. what does a lion say? “Rarr”.. what does a bear say? “Rarr!”.. what does a Bengal say? “Peekaboo!” Every time!

“Cheese” when anyone gets out a camera


Can identify people’s clothes...like if I’m folding Neil’s t-shirts, she’ll say “daddy’s!”



She is a good helper! She will also sometimes put up toys and will throw things away for us. Great at following directions, most of the time!

The other day she got a “boo boo” and Neil kissed it. She then proceeded to very dramatically get another “boo boo” and fake cried to get more kisses

Tries to wash herself in the bath.. will try to lather bubbles on her belly, knees, etc.

LOVES to wash her hands and brush her teeth.


Can identify many animals and do their sounds... can do many more sounds than animal names though. She rarely says monkey, cat or dog but instead just says the sounds. She says “yeehaw” for horse. That's just too cute to correct! Still says "mao" for cat.


Signs “more” all the time!!! This was the only sign she was ever really taught.

Loves pink! She says “car car pink”! Everything is pink. I think she is getting the concept of colors but can’t really identify any of them accurately.






If she likes something, like getting lotion put on or enjoying her food, she’ll say, “i want this” or “happy!”

Says “pool!” or “I wanna go to the pool” when she sees daddy’s swim trunks or towels or beach bag. She is loving swim lessons and much more comfortable in the tub now too!


Pretends she is a cat. Crawls and meows. Feeds her dolls and toys.




Those are our random updates! She is so much fun and has such a personality! We love you Lila Bean!



Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

Our Fabulous Fourth

We had a great but extremely HOT 4th of July! Despite the heat, we still were able to do some of those quintessential July 4th activities - watching a parade, wearing red white and blue, drinking beer, eating watermelon, hanging out with friends, watching the kids playing in the baby pool, and doing some relaxing inside in the A/C as well.

We were thankful that all of our families had power restored from the storm the weekend before. My parents were without power for 4 or 5 days! I'm just grateful overall to have a nice, pleasant happy and healthy holiday! It really hit me this weekend just how lucky I am for everything that I have - health, friends, family, an awesome little girl and husband and sweet sweet air conditioning. And yes, freedom. It's not free, you know. I learned that from Team America. I'm not super patriotic, but yes, I'm glad I live in the good ole USA. Even in these 100+ days, what a wonderful summer it is!

My shining star!
Cute Ft Thomas, KY parade... for some reason there was a ton of Corvettes
Daddies and babies
Something was clap-worthy
A little concerned about the fire trucks
Our cute toddler duo - Lila, 16 months & Emmett, 13 months
"Look, I got stickers!"
Playing in the pool

I'm excited for the cool down we are supposed to get next week... mid-80s ya'll! So excited. It's almost been too hot to go to the pool! My mom is coming tomorrow and Neil and I are getting a date night! July 1st was our 6 year anniversary! Can't believe it's been 6 years since we got married. Time really flies. I hope everyone else had a great 4th of July too!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

My baby girl is 16 months old!


Lila keeps on growing and as I say every month, she is getting more fun and funny every day! She says and does the craziest things! Gotta love this little girl.

Love this little face
We finally got her 15 month checkup done last week. I'm finally not worried about her weight any more. She is fine. Just on the small side and extremely active. She eats a ton so I'm not worried. I was so happy to see she was over 21 lbs!

Weight: 21 lbs, 6.5 oz, 30th percentile
Height: 30.5 inches, 50th percentile
Head: 18 inches, I think? Not sure of percentile, but I think pretty average.

Great report at the doctor's appointment! She's doing so well with eating and diet, sleeping/naps, etc and seems ahead of the curve developmentally too... especially with her language. We are so happy and proud of her! I'm just amazed by how much she has grown up in the last few months. She got one shot and they want us to get the MMR shot at an allergist's office because of her egg allergy. I'm concerned about her having a reaction to the egg in some vaccines because of the severity of her allergy. We haven't scheduled it yet, but I'm happy to have a referral for a good local allergist for her! 

And just so I can remember, here is her bedtime routine at 16 months. We finally ditched the bedtime bottle (and all other bottles) this month. It was a very easy transition. After dinner and milk, we start around 7:30 with her bath, teeth brushing, try out the potty (no success yet), then play in her play room as a family, then one of us reads her 4-5 books and lays her down for bed with her lovies and her glow seahorse... and sometimes with a book. Sometimes she cries for a few minutes and then rolls around in bed for awhile, but other times goes right to sleep without much protest.

This post is going to be really scattered, but I just have no time to organize my thoughts but I just want to record what she is doing at this age so I don't forget!

She is obsessed with this cat stuffed animal that we bought her at FAO Schwartz on our trip to NYC in April. I don't like cats at all.. hate is a better word. But it's a super cute doll that teaches the child how to dress. It has zippers, snaps, buttons etc... so anyway, it's a cute toy, but it's still a cat. Ugh. Anyway, we've started calling it "Mao" which is how she says "meow". So it's a Chinese communist cat, I guess. She has to have Mao near her at all times, and if she can't see it she will look all around and yell "I want Mao!" So funny.

She did a perfect somersault this month! We try to encourage her to do flips and she actually did one perfectly and luckily Neil's parents were there to witness it. Sometimes she evens includes a "ta-da" for extra effect.

Loves hats

A few days ago she pinched me and it actually hurt so I was acting really sad to see what she'd do... she looked at me, patted me and said "Sorry!" It was so sweet!

She loves to spin around in circles!! She also loves to climb in and on everything. I just took her bumpers out of her crib because she has been trying to use them to climb out.

She is speaking in sentences now and almost all of them start with "I wanna" or "No wanna"... her favorite is "I wanna cookie!" which are sometimes the first words out of her mouth in the morning. That is far more endearing than when she is whining and yelling "I wanna cookie" over and over at 6pm while I'm making dinner! Cookies can be anything from teddy grahams, animal crackers, cheerios, shortbread cookies, etc.

Had to document the hair growth! It's out of control!

Her other favorite sentences: I wanna go, I wanna dance, I wanna cracker, I wanna baba, I wanna baby!!? , I want daddy.

Since she is now totally off of bottles and drinking milk from a cup, we've been trying to get her to stop calling her cups "baba". Sometimes we have to correct ourselves and we end up saying "baba cup". She is now calling her cups "babocks" or "bocks". Took awhile to figure that out.

She used to call Neil "daddy" all the time and would rarely call me "mommy" or "mama". Now she calls both of us daddy and almost everyone daddy including the 3 and 6 year old little boys at her daycare and random neighbors who are most definitely not daddy! 

Crazy face!! Not sure why the camera blurred her hair. Look at all that drool.
She's starting to like to dress up and do other imaginative play. She says, "I wanna hat" and I'll get her hats to try on. She also loves to put on bows, bibs and necklaces! She tries to feed her babies with a spoon and puts them in the high chair. So much fun!

When we play out back with her water table and baby pool, she keeps running away to other people's yards! I'm constantly chasing her which is both funny and annoying.

My mom wanted me to try to list all of Lila's words... let's try it out:

Daddy
Baba
Bye
Mommy (almost never says it)
Hi
Hey
Yay
No 
Dog
Teddy
Baby
Duck 
Moo
Uh oh
This
That
Oh
Car 
Truck
Balloon
Eye and I
Wanna
Bubble/bubbles
Ball
Look 
Book
Shoe/shoes
Hat “aat”
Cookie/cookies  “googie”
Cracker
Sorry
Meow “mao”
Hot
Go
All done
Outside
Park
Ta-da
Ouch
Ow
Yeah
Peas

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I've got right now!

Seems to understand everything we are saying.. which is awesome. for example, if she is getting in to something she shouldn’t.. I'll give her a task like “go take this to daddy” and she will do it!

My happy little Lila bean

She is loving the pool (we broke down and joined the Y again!), her play kitchen, baby dolls, Mao her cat, her Melissa and Doug farm puzzle (she's mastered it, I guess we should get her another one!)... but right now she is mostly loving being outside. We've been to the park, splash parks, King's Island and the pool a lot already this summer! She gets a lot of time outside at daycare too, which she loves! She is getting a bit of a tan too! Even with all that SPF 50.

That's all I have right now. I am hoping to do another post about all of the new egg-free recipes I've been making for my little love! We'll see if that happens...

Sunday, June 17, 2012

A Photo Post

Playing with her water table in the backyard

Daddy, Lila and Mommy outside by the fire in Brown County, IN
She's always dancing
"Is this right?"... early experiments with potty training
Emmett and Lila, BFFs
Hiking with Daddy
Splash park
Upside down in the side table
Cooling off