A Proud Daddy

Teething this time has gone a bit rougher.  I think I'm getting a dose of what it's normally like when your child is teething.  For a week she wouldn't eat and cried most of the day unless I held her. Poor little girl.  One day was so bad that I finally distracted her by turning on a movie.  We watched a half hour of Tangled, and the world was better for both of us.


Little A is so funny though.  Even when she is going through this rough time she smiles as much as she can.  She is just a naturally smiley, happy child, and I am extremely grateful for that.  It's hilarious (and sad) to watch her face go from pouty lip and watery eyes, to a big giggly smile, and then back to tears again. 

One particularly exhausting day of teething ended like this.  First time she's ever let us lay her back in the high chair without screaming.  She fell right to sleep.

Little A has also taken to chewing on her bibs.

In the middle of September Allan went on a camp out with the scouts.  He was gone Friday night until Saturday afternoon.  He left again early Monday morning for a work trip and was gone until midnight on Tuesday.  We missed him greatly.  Little A kept looking at his picture and then looking at me with a puzzled expression.  Poor girl missed her daddy.  I turned on a video he made me a while ago, and she burst into giggles.  She was so happy to see him and hear his voice.  The next day when he came home from work she was absolutely thrilled.  She couldn't get enough of him and smiled all evening long.

Little A has started getting a lot more reachy and grabby of late.  She still doesn't pull my hair much, but she sure likes to grab plates, cell phones, the computer, and anything else that strikes her fancy.  She has especially become interested in strings.  She loves to put them in her mouth and suck on them. 

Reaching for Daddy's plate.

We've been trying to get her to roll the other direction, crawl, and stand more.  The other day I laid next to her on the side that she usually rolls.  She was good and stuck on her belly.  I thought she was going to scream at me, but instead she thought it was hilarious that I was in her way.  Little A loved to bump into me.  She would do it again and again and burst into giggles every time.  I did finally get her to roll the other way.  She thought that was pretty funny too. She's rolled that way a few times since, but she still prefers the other direction. 

Love this cute ladybug outfit.

We'll also hold her up on her knees.  She hates putting her hands down and prefers to hold them straight out behind her like she's flying so we have to place them down for her.  She held herself up there the first couple times we did it and now she just belly flops as soon as we let go.  Then she'll promptly roll over and play with her toes.

I decided to stand her up by the couch one day to see what she would do.  She loved it!  Especially being able to suck on the couch cushion (funny baby).

Little A so proud to be standing up!

She is still very unwilling to do any pulling up or getting to her hands and knees herself though.  I think one day she'll just start doing stuff randomly, and we'll be amazed.


Little A said Dad!  One morning she woke up a lot earlier than she normally does so Allan took care of her while he got ready for work and read his scriptures.  He made her a bottle and then woke me up and handed her to me so I could feed her and he could go to work.  I started to feed her and he said good bye as he headed out the door.  She quickly threw aside the bottle, sat up, looked at him and said "Dad" in this sweet little voice.  It sounded like she was teasing him, lol.  Of course he hurried back to give her hugs and kisses.  He was a very proud daddy that day.

This adorable outfit came from AG.  She is our wish come true for sure!

Little A has really grown in the last couple of weeks.  I had to change out her clothes from 3-6 and some 6 month clothes to 6-9 and some 12 month clothes! 

Cute outfit from K5.

At her last baby shower K2 and K6 gave her this awesome cabbage patch crocheted hat.  I finally got around to taking some pictures with her in it.  I can't wait for winter to come so she can wear it!

Mamma's little cabbage patch.  :)

Allan and I had a fun date in September.  We try to alternate weekends staying in and going out for our dates.  This time we went to dinner, frozen yogurt, and the children's play.  We dropped A off to be babysat by her favorite people.  She loves them and has a ball every time she goes there.  Dinner was delicious.  We took our time and had some really good conversation.  Then we went out for frozen yogurt, my favorite.  The play was really cute.  It was written by some locals and was based on the story "Treasure Island".  The kids did great, and we had a lot of good laughs.   We love date night!

Allan decided to give Little A her first drink out of a cup.  She and Allan got completely soaked.  She loved it though and always asks for drinks out of our cups now.

Love this picture of Allan and Little A.

Little A has always been a good sleeper.  Lately she has been trying to space her naps out longer.  This just makes her very tired in the evenings.  One day she decided she wanted to skip her evening nap entirely.  I set her next to Allan, who was doing some work for his church calling on the computer, and came back to find this,

She had slowly leaned over further and further until she was sound asleep on the couch.  Haha! Poor girl.  She woke up to eat her last bottle and went right back to sleep for the night.

AG also gave her this cute onsie.  It says "Superman was adopted too"  Love it!

One of my friends started teaching Belly Dancing and I have been going.  It's a lot of fun.  FYI - belly dancing is not exotic dancing.  It was created by women to prepare for pregnancy and labor and can be done completely modestly.  It is actually really technical and kind of difficult.  And a great abdominal workout.  So don't worry, I'm not doing anything crazy here.  My friends little boy was sick the last time so we didn't go, but hopefully we'll be able to go this week.

We have been practicing how to roll a ball.  She mostly loves to lick it.

Little A has started a new thing on her play gym.  She'll bite the seat, bounce, and then lift her feet in the air and hang until it stops bouncing, then do it over again.  It's pretty cute to watch.  She'll often rock herself to sleep this way.  I'll look over and she'll be sound asleep hanging in the air and biting her seat, lol!

She has also started jabbering more and more.  My favorite sound that she makes is "yukyukyukyukyuk".  It reminds me of Goofy's "ha-yuck".

The thing in her hand is her new favorite toy.  It's one of those things that makes a crinkly, crunchy noise.

Little A has always been a calm, easy going, sensitive baby.  She jumps and startles pretty easily and still doesn't like deep voices.  We watched my friends baby the other day while she was at the hospital with her older child.  A loves other kids and at first her and the baby (who is about a month and a half younger than A) were having a blast.  I fed A, then fed the baby, and we were all happy.  Then the baby got tired and started to cry.  She wanted her momma, and I was not the right person.  As soon as the baby started to cry A looked at her with this concerned look on her face.  Then her bottom lip popped out, and she started whimpering.  Pretty soon she was in tears too.  She does this every time she hears a child crying.

This didn't make it very easy for me because they both just kept crying harder and harder because the other one was crying.  I was very relieved when Allan came home and took Little A. I took the baby outside and walked her until she fell asleep.  Little A became even more upset when I walked away from her holding another baby.  She was so distraught.  It all ended well when the baby went to sleep, and A got her momma back. :)

Little A has never liked to wear bows and has always tried to get them off of her head, but the amount of time she'll wear them has shortened significantly in the last couple of weeks.  Here is an example for you:

Yes, she did let go and get smacked in the head, lol.

I've started trying to distract her with toys after I put one on.  It lasts long enough to take a picture.

We went to the Salsa Fest for a family outing last weekend.  We haven't been doing very good about remembering our camera lately, so we don't have any pictures.  It was a lot of fun though.  We saw some hot air balloons from our kitchen window before we left.  We stopped at the car show and looked at the cars.  My favorite was one that had heart shaped seats.  I would never want to drive that thing, but it was pretty awesome.  Wish I had a picture.  We walked through all the booths and got a sample of an oil that was supposed to help Allan's headache.  Miraculously it actually did!  It didn't take it away, but it helped.  That an improvement from anything else we've tried.  We're hoping to go to a class and learn more so we can try some more things.  We also watched the Karate school perform, which is always fun, and, of course, tried all of the salsa.  There was so much salsa this year that we ended up taking most of it home.  We gave little A a taste of the most mild one, she really liked it.  I was surprised.  I thought she would be disgusted.

Allan did take this awesome pic with his phone while we were there.

I also went to the General Relief Society Broadcast.  It is always very uplifting.  I especially enjoyed the talk about covenant making from Sister Burton.  She commented that we do expect our young children to keep the covenants they make to God when they are 8 years old.  She then went on to give an example of how a child in her family kept his covenants by serving his grandmother.  I thought during her talk that children are often the best covenant keepers.  The Lord told us that we need to be like little children and emulate their meekness, humility, and desire to love.  All of these qualities make them good covenant keepers.  There is so much we can learn from our children.

I put Little A in these cute overalls for the first time.  Allan loves overalls on her and I knew he was going to love her in these.  They lasted about a half hour before she peed through them.  Every time I put her in overalls she leaks or has a blow out.  Seriously every time.  It's a curse. 

Love the sweet expression on her face.

 A loves to play with puppets.  I usually take them out one at a time and sing songs and talk to her with them.  This last week I needed to get a few things done so I gave her the whole basket.  It was a huge success.  She thoroughly enjoyed taking them out and tossing them.  Her favorite part though was untying the strings on the basket liner.  She was very pleased with herself.  Once she got them untied she promptly took her pacifier out and stuck one end in her mouth.

We really enjoyed watching General Conference this weekend.  We always look forward to conference weekend.  It's so nice to slow down and spend some time as a family listening to the words of the Prophet and Apostles.  Little A was enthralled.  She rarely gets to watch anything so she couldn't take her eyes off of it.

Watching the Saturday morning session.

We went to the family BBQ that Allan's company puts on every year in between conference sessions on Saturday.  We rode on a golf cart (A got a huge kick out of that and giggled about it for quite a while.  She cried when we got off.), ate some yummy food, let A have her first taste of ice cream (which she loved), took A down one of the bouncy slides and to the petting zoo where she petted two tiny baby pigs, a calf, and a sheep, and talked to several of Allan's friends from work.  There was also a zip line that we wanted to go down but the line was too long.  We wouldn't have made it back in time to catch the next conference session.  We had a lot of fun.  We completely exhausted little A.  On the golf cart ride back to our car she cried the entire way.  As soon as she was in her car seat she fell asleep.  Here are some pics:

Going down the slide.  She had no expression until about 3 minutes afterward at which point she burst into giggles.  Delayed reaction, lol.

Petting the baby pigs.

Petting the calf.

Petting the sheep.  She burst into giggles about 3 minutes after this too.  I guess she has to think about things for a while before she can react to them.

She woke up in the middle of the afternoon session and played really well through the hole thing.  We were so grateful because it enabled us to focus better on the messages and actually get something out of them.  Little A and I also listened to the Priesthood session while Allan viewed it at the chapel.  I really enjoyed listening to it and being able to talk about it with Allan when he got home.

Today she was exhausted but didn't want to go to sleep.  I laid her down on the blanket in the living room, and she wiggled and groaned alternately trying to stay awake and go to sleep.

Little A trying to go to sleep.

After a while she insisted on sitting up.  We sat her up and gave her some toys.  She grabbed her stuffed cow and gave it a big snuggle.

Snuggling the cow.

After a while I decided to try and put her to bed again.  She screamed at me when I left the room but then pulled the blanket over her head and went to sleep. 

Taking Little A to bed.