Crawling and 8 Months Old

Audrey our little munchkin, pumpkin, chicky, and goose, is 8 months old! (Yes, she has a lot of nick names!) Here are some pictures from this weekend.

She is finally covering some ground with her crawling. She has been inching and rolling her way around for weeks, but this week she finally gets from point A to B in a straight line. Granted, she is not cruising around on all fours yet...its more of a lay on her belly and dig her toes into the ground, drag herself across the floor crawl, but believe me when she wants something she's fast! She will do her crawling thing and then she will stop get on all fours and rock, decides what she wants to do, then get back on her belly and go. I have video of her crawling but we are still trying to figure out how to convert it to post it. Hopefully it will be up soon!

Something new and weird that she is doing is she has this little froggy rattle. It was the first rattle that I gave her to play with. I remember putting it around her wrist when she was just a couple weeks old and thinking she is never going to play with this thing! Well not only is she playing with it, but she's sucking on it. I know...I know, everything goes to a baby's mouth and they suck on anything...but not like this. She sticks the arm or leg in her mouth and sucks on it like it's her pacifier. It can stay in her mouth for an hour if I let her. I can put her in the car with it in her mouth and then pull her out and take her in the house and that froggy is just hanging there. I have even given her paci to her, but left the froggy in her lap, and she pulls the paci out and puts the froggy in her mouth instead.

Another little thing she likes doing lately is I will put her paci backwards in my mouth and she thinks it is so funny so she steals it from me with her mouth. I then pull it back from her and we do it over and over again! She is so determined to get it from me, but she understands that it's a game and that I'm playing with her...so we laugh through it all.

Here are a couple more new little things...

- She makes this clicking noise with her mouth

- She is sleeping in her own bed straight from 10pm to 7am. I nurse her at 7am and she falls back to sleep, so the two of us go back to bed and sleep in till 9 or so. (I know...I'm so lucky, and believe me I'm enjoying it!)

- She is my cuddle-bug! She loves to cuddle, hug and kiss. She has to hold my hand or arm if it's within reach. If she feels like giving a kiss and your cheek is not close by... no worries she will kiss your hand, your arm or even your leg! She is sooo loving!

- She loves Gymboree class and watching all the other babies.

- She loves all the different food I have introduced to her this month like...avocado, mango, strawberries and blueberries.

- She gets so excited when she eats she makes this grunting-growling sound with every bite.

- She is really starting to talk (her own gibberish) but I think she really is trying to tell us something.

- She points with her right pointer (and talks) when she reads a book, looks at pictures or a magazine. It's really cute!

- I have been working on waving hi or bye-bye with her forever...and now she is waving. Granted...she is waving all the time, but she does do it especially when people wave at her.

- When Daddy walks in every evening her face lights up, she is so happy to see him and can't wait for him to come and pick her up. When I walk in the door from doing errands or running in the evenings she starts screaming and crying and won't stop crying until I pick her up. I know she wants me...but how come she is not happy to see me?

Anyway...I'm just amazed at how every morning when she wakes up she looks like she literally grew over night...even her hair is growing at this fast pace!

A Very Special Day!!!

Sunday was a very special day...not only because it was Bryan's first Father's Day, but also Audrey was baptized at church. I'll start with the baptism first.

Here is the wording from her baptism card that we bought her. It brought tears to my eyes when I read it because it says just what I believe.

A Baptism Blessing
A baby girl is a miracle born from the heart of love.
A baby girl is joy that fills the very deepest parts of your soul.
A baby girl is a treasure, brand new to this world, who has lived in your dreams always.
May your baptism be the very precious start of knowing now and always that God's love is in your heart.

(Bryan and Audrey before church)

My Mom (who just had knee replacement surgery and did so good making it to the service) and Audrey.

After the service we came back to our house for a little brunch and a nap. Almost everyone nodded off for a little while. Well, almost everyone...Bryan ate a quick meal, helped Audrey open her gifts and then had to go into work for a couple hours to do a system maintenance run.

At home after the service opening gifts with Daddy and Aunt Arianne

I have been waiting for an excuse to order my favorite cake, a white cake with banana filling, since my last baby shower before Audrey was born. Well this was it!!!

Now to Father's Day. We started off the day making Bryan breakfast in bed before church...but I realized (after I made them) that the buttermilk biscuits were expired, and instead of them rising and smelling the house up as fresh baked bread it smelt really sour. Oops! So he got a sausage, cheese wheat English muffin instead with fresh fruit. Oh well! He opened his gift from Audrey too. We went a couple weeks ago and made this beer mug for him with her hand and foot prints on it. It was so much fun making, I wish I could have taken some pictures of her doing it, but since it was just me, her and the lady working there we didn't have any extra hands to hold a camera. We also got him a gift certificate to a store called "Brew it Yourself". He has been reading up on brewing his own beer so this certificate should get him a kit to get started. Now where all this beer is going to be stored is another question!!!

Here's a picture of Audrey with her Daddy, Grandpa Craig and Pappo before we went to Perry's Steak House for dinner to celebrate Father's Day. (Bryan also snuck Millie in there since she was our first baby!)

Happy Father's Day!!!

Fun with the Suitcase

While I was unpacking I turned my back on Audrey for a second and found her pulling herself up on the suitcase... she eventually climbed right in. Funny how kids find the most practical house items more fun than all those toys we buy them!

Thank you honey for helping Mommy unpack!

California Dreaming

Yes, about right now, in the 100 degree weather with humidity, I am totally dreaming of last week when we were cruising around Orange County every evening with jeans and hoodies on. We got back Saturday afternoon from a beautiful week in Newport Beach with Bryan's Mom and Step-dad, Craig. They own a time share there and invited us to come with them as our summer vacation. Let me just start by saying, "Why do we live here in Houston?" It is so nice there...the Pacific Ocean staring at you all the time, the ocean breeze, the landscaped and clean highways, the hills and cliffs, and the 70 degree highs that you can do whatever you want to in. Since we have been back I have done everything I can to stay inside during the heat of the day (which is pretty much all day!) A lady asked me there, "So, how do you like living in Houston?" this was the first time that I had trouble answering that question honestly. I have always lived here and really have nothing bad to say about it, since every place has its pros and cons, but the only honest thing I could say was that "It's Home!" Well, we are back home and back to our routines in this steamy scorching heat. Ha!

Anyway...here are a lot of pictures from our trip.

First trip on an airplane...she did great!
First night there and dressed to go out in the cool evening air for a little walk around the resort. We had dinner at Ruby's Diner for the best burger, fries and chocolate milk shake ever!!!

The moon over the hills.

Our first full day there we went down to Crystal Cove Beach (where the great movie Beaches was filmed) to see the ocean and eat at the Beachcomber restaurant for lunch. It was an awesome little restaurant right on the sand...such a great place that it had over an hour and a half wait. Well worth the wait, plus who could complain with that scenery!!!

Grandpa Craig and Audrey

I just had to take off my shoes and walk through the sand!

I forgot to put sunscreen for Audrey in our diaper bag, so I saw this precious 10 month old baby named McKayla and borrowed some from her...Audrey's new little friend.

Finally seated at our table!

After an afternoon on the beach we decided to head to Fashion Island, which is the local mall, for a little shopping. It was a great day that ended with some sunset pictures from our balcony.

Grandma Marcia and Audrey

Here is a fun shot of a messy green bean face after dinner...Yummy!
We also took a day trip to Catalina Island. We loaded the ferry and enjoyed the hour and fifteen minute ride to the beautiful island. It was a cloudy cool day and when we got off the ferry I felt like I was getting off a cruise ship at a port city in Europe. Catalina Island is a really neat place to visit since everyone owns golf carts and uses them as their main source of transportation. They only allow 800 full size vehicles on the island at a time and there is an eighteen year waiting list to own one. Crazy!

Us on the ferry!

Audrey on our open aired tour bus.

I did a lot of nursing in public on this trip, as hard as nursing is to keep up, it really is convenient.

Audrey sporting her new Catalina Island baseball cap.

The whole gang in front of our ferry the Catalina Flyer.

Bryan and I also took a little day trip on our own while Grandma and Grandpa watched Audrey. We drove down to Dana Point and went on a Dolphin Safari. We had a lot of fun on the boat and actually saw a lot of wildlife right off the coastline. This boat trip sounded so good when we signed up for it that I forgot that I get sea sick. I didn't remember this until we got to the harbor and I saw the boat and realized that I am going to be hanging my head off the side the whole time. We had about 30 minutes before we left, so I got on the phone and called my doctor to see if I could take one dose of Dramamine (motion sickness medicine) while breastfeeding. No luck, her office is closed on Wednesday afternoons! So I called Audrey's pediatrician...he and his nurses are so helpful, but I had to leave a message and hope that they called me back ASAP. (Which I felt bad for since it was not an emergency like most of their calls are with little ones.) While I was waiting for their call back I decided to call my old family doctor to see if they could tell me. I know I was desperate!!!! Well while I was on hold with them, Dr. LaCour's office beeped in and told me to go ahead and take it and to have fun. Thank goodness! My persistence paid off and I am so impressed with her pediatricians office time and time again! Anyway, we had a great time (with no sea sickness) and saw a seal, hundreds of dolphin, a six foot shark, a sixty foot Fin Whale, and some sea lions. Aaamazing!

Our safari boat

Dolphin swimming along with the boat
The Fin Whale
The Sea Lions sunbathing

Our Munchkin playing in the condo.

California Cool!

The condo has beautiful grounds including a large fire pit to sit around on those cool California nights. We bought some graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows and headed down there to make Smores. So yummy!

Cute picture of Daddy and Audrey headed down to the fire pit.

Audrey loves taking naps in the fresh air (too bad it's too hot here to do that) but she always fell asleep out on the balcony. Here she is sleeping in Grandma's arms.

Grandpa Craig loved "walking" Audrey around the condo. She is wearing a little outfit that I bought her on Balboa Island that says "Little Chick" on it...perfect for our little Chickadee!
On our last day there Bryan, Audrey and I back down to Crystal Cove Beach. It was not the beautiful blue sky day that we had there earlier that week, but still such a beautiful place. I absolutely love the sound of the waves crashing!

Daddy's feet and Audrey's feet. Even her feet are just like him!

All smiles on the plane ride home!
What a great vacation!!!