Ten Months

It’s that time again. Belle turned ten months yesterday. Before I know it, she’ll be turning one, starting kindergarten, and going to prom. Okay, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but this is all just going to fast {most of it anyway- the sick days, those seem to go soooooooo slooooooow, but you allow me to cuddle you, so I won’t complain.}

Dear Baby Girl,

You are such a sweetie—you’re a smiley, happy, energetic little thing. As always, you catch the attention of strangers every time we go out. When we do go out, it often has to be a quick trip through the store, as you are like Houdini squirming out of the seatbelt strap in the cart. Your personality is totally shining through in everything that you do! You’re so expressive and since you’re happy most of the time, you are just so fun to be around! You’re determined and you work to get your hands on whatever is catching your eye and the times when you’re having trouble figuring something out or can’t quite reach something—you definitely let us know. You’re a social little person and prefer to “play” only when someone is right there with you.

This spot in the kitchen has become “your” spot! You love any sort of box/drawer/bucket you can take things out of and put back in!

You had your first Thanksgiving, your first vacation/roadtrip too, this month. Probably you’re last roadtrip for quite awhile too. On your behalf, you were sick. But, you hardly slept. At all. And you just weren’t your happy little self so I took you to the doctor as soon as we got back, but as I expected, it was just a little bug. You got over it after another day or two and finally went back to your normal 11 hour night, and 3ish hours of naps during the day.

You’re still sporting around two teeth. We expected you to have a few more by now—you have been gnawing on things for weeks. But unfortunately, they are taking a while to break through. Even without many teeth, you still like to chomp your food as if you had teeth and it’s pretty cute to watch.

Gnawing on anything/everything. Right now it’s the strainer. But a few minutes from this pic, I found you chewing on the wooden drawer itself.

Speaking of food, you’re still adamant about feeding yourself. I have a cabinet full of unused baby food because you just won’t eat anything I try to feed you. You are eating all of the food we eat plus a four or five bottles a day. You love to find Jackson’s sippy cups and try to drink from them, so I have purchased ones for you. But you’re not very interested. You’re getting a different kind for Christmas, so hopefully you’ll give them a try!

You’re still wearing size 3 diapers and your clothes are anywhere from 6-12 month is size. You’re wearing a size 3 shoe and you look like such a big girl with them on!

You have become a more confident all-fours crawler. And you are fast. Especially when you hear Daddy coming in the door after work. No matter where you are in the house, you will make your way to him within seconds. You love it when Jackson plays crawling games with you—at home or even at the doctor’s office. You have been pulling yourself up for several weeks now and you’ve recently started cruising around the furniture. You can actually stand by yourself for a few seconds… until you realize you are standing by yourself and then you plop right down on the floor. When we try to get you to take a few steps, you often get heavy-bottom-syndrome as you would just rather sit down and then crawl to your destination.

As with most babies your age, you’ve begun experiencing separation anxiety this month. It hit practically overnight when just one day out of the blue you woke up screaming bloody murder, several times back to back. It took about three days to realize that it was simply your awareness that you were alone and that you weren’t dying. You really had me worried—boy can you scream! After a few {short} cry-it-out sessions, you were back to your normal sleeping/waking up routine. However, you often like to play the I’m-perfectly-happy-in-your-arms-but-I-will-scream-once-my-feet-touch-the-ground game, which goes along with the I-want-you-to-hold-me-but-I-cannot-hold-still-so-you-will-just-be-my-playground game. That is truly exhausting, but you’re slowly starting to chill out a little about me not holding you.

You mimic lots of our sounds. You can say Mama, Dada {also, hi dad}, and uh oh. You like to click your tongue and give kisses. Ohmigoodness, I just love me some of your kisses. There are a few different ones. First, there is the leaning of your forehead to my lips—you want me to kiss you. Second, you will make the muah sound while leaning in to kiss my cheek. And lastly, and this started just the other day and it is SO cute—you pucker up your little lips when I say, “can I have some kisses”. Sometimes you’re close and will lean in, but if you’re playing, you just look at me and give me a long-distance-kiss and then go back to your toys. Even just seeing this picture on my computer makes me want to lean in and give her a kiss!! I just can’t get enough.

{every time she does this, I think of the kid, Duck-Face, from Full House!}

You are just loved to  bits and pieces baby girl!!! Every single day is just so much fun with your smiles and giggles! Love Mommy and Daddy!

Our Texas Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we traveled down to Texas to visit some friends who moved down south this summer. We drove down with Brad and HanNah after the guys got off work on Wednesday and drove until the wee hours of the morning. 

We finally entered TX around 1am. 

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel. Eating out on Thanksgiving was a first for me. It wasn't bad, but I'd much prefer to eat home cooked turkey next year {as long as I'm not the one cooking it!}. But most importantly, it was fun to be with our friends and what a treat that no one had to cook or clean up!

We skipped Black Friday shopping this year and visited some places around Fort Worth instead. We had breakfast at some cool pancake place. Delicious! And then we headed over to the stock yards {where the real cowboys come out to play}.

Jackson enjoyed looking at the long-horn steers, but he wasn't so thrilled about me taking a step back to take his picture.

Jackson was so thrilled to be hanging out with his BFF, Carter. He was attached to him practically the entire weekend.

Texas is clearly the Dr. Pepper mecca {and we've even been to the Dr. Pepper museum in Waco}. Derek has had the jelly beans before, but Dr. Pepper jerky-- GAG!

I love me some boys in cowboy hats!!!!

And check out our cute little cowgirl! She's waving for the camera.

We went to this awesome ice cream place. You pick out a flavor of ice cream and two cookies and they smash it together to make your custom ice cream sandwich! Ah.may.zing.

We don't have many {or any pictures} from Friday afternoon on-- mainly because, well, sickness invaded our living space. We had nine people in a cozy two bedroom apartment, three who got sick at exactly the same moment. It was way weird. Lots of vomit. All night long. Lots of sleeping and recovering filled the following days. Thankfully, our family dodged that bullet. I did get the naseau bug on Saturday night, but fortunately, I was able to hold down my meal, but I was thought I was dying for a couple of hours for sure. 

And then, Derek and I were stuck with a little baby that WOULD NOT SLEEP! Oh my goodness. We had to drive Belle around at every moment we needed her to nap-- morning, afternoon, and bedtime! She had a high fever and was so cranky. She hardly ate anything and my word was she difficult! Did I mention how much time we spent in the car just to get her to sleep? We drove all the way to Texas so we could drive around and sit in the McDonalds parking lot so we could use their wi-fi because some little cranky-pants would wake up the moment the car engine went off. She has already been told that all the gas money we spent getting her to sleep will be deducted from her college fund.

It's really kind of comical to look back upon. Pathetic really. We were so careful to plan to make sure that our Texas trip wouldn't turn into a disaster {after our last trip ended up costing nearly $1,000 more than planned} and this bug just came and invaded our plan. I can't help but chuckle at how the whole thing panned out. But, we wouldn't have traded our visit for anything. I really miss Brooke {and Trey and Carter too} and it was just super great to hang out with her again. 

I'm sure we'll go visit again, but Derek has already made it clear that the kids will be kenneled the next time we venture out of our city. Yes, kenneled-- his words.

Vacation, pt. 2

The boys got the rental car picked up, our car to the shop Wednesday morning so we could still participate in some vacation activities and not let the mishap ruin the trip.

Houston Zoo:

We made it to the zoo in early afternoon, so a lot of the animals were resting and taking naps-- lazy things! The zoo did have lots of animals I've never seen before.We did get to see the zookeeper feed the lions though and hear him talk about the different lions in the zoo. That was pretty cool.

What's a Texas breakfast without a Texas waffle??

Visiting NASA was the most anticipated attraction and it did not disappoint. I really can't even explain all of the really cool things that we saw and learned about because it would just sound dumb. So, you should really just plan a trip down to visit it yourself.

NASA's control room until the 1980s with the flag that's been on the moon.

 So they have these full size, fully functional models of the the parts of the space station so that everything can be tested and the astronauts can get lots of practice before they go up to work on the "real deal." This is Grant in front of the space shuttle.

 

 Brad and HanNah in front of the Zarya, which is the Russian part of the International Space Station.

The astronauts lifestyle is definitely not for me. Sleeping in a bag, exercising two hours a day to minimize the damage that living without gravity causes, strapping yourself down just to use the potty... oh just thinking about it makes me cringe!

Derek is taking a look at the largest rocket ever built.

 This is the actual piece that the astronauts came back to earth in from one of the Apollo missions (can't remember which one!) Too cramped for me!

 

We had a great vacation. Granted, with one speeding ticket ($150), two no seat belt tickets ($150 each), and car troubles ($825) it turned out to be a bit more expensive than planned.... but it was so nice to get away and do some really cool things. For all of the places in Houston, we purchased a CityPass and it was a great deal. We'd definitely recommend it!! And kuddos for us for planning the trip before tourist season started-- it was perfect!

Vacation, pt. 1

While the boys are off taking care of the car issues and we are stuck chillin' in the hotel, it seems like an appropriate time to update the blog and share some pics from our trip so far.

Woo hoo! We made it to Texas.

Brad and HanNah

First stop: Galveston

The fabulous view from our hotel- the pool and the beach

Enjoying the beach!

 

Ate dinner at Landry's
(Caesar salad counts as seafood right!?! The dressing is made from anchovies, at least...)

Next Stop: Houston

Museum of Natural Science

Health Museum 

(lesson learned--Derek has more unique features than me)

The aquarium

Derek's checking out the sharks overhead.

After the aquarium we headed out to the movies. Derek and I went to see the movie Losers while Brad and HanNah saw Robinhood. We then headed back to the car, all got in and hear a loud popping sound. Derek diagnosed it as a problem with the shock on the back right tire. We then proceeded to spend a good hour in a Chipotle parking lot trying to figure to out how to get back to the hotel. All the rental places were closed, a taxi would have cost an arm and a leg. Thankfully HanNah's friend from college came to get us! The boys have the rental and are taking the car to the shop and hopefully it will be ready by tomorrow so we can head home. 

Despite the car issue, we're having a great time. It's even been nice just lounging in the hotel this morning/afternoon reading a book, watching tv, and of course updating the blog. I think the plans for the rest of the day include shopping and maybe the zoo.