9 Months Old

Hooray! It's Lyla's 9 month birthday today! She is getting so big! We are so proud of our Junebug.

Pajama Storytime

We have been wanting to take Lyla to Pajama Story time at our local library for a while now and tonight we finally had the chance to! She got all dressed up for the occasion...pajamas, robe, slippers...she even grabbed a special teddy bear to take along with her. We were super excited...the downer was that no one else showed up.
BUT, we didn't let that get to us and the librarian gave us our own personal story time. We sang songs, read several books, and although she was the only little bookworm there, Lyla had a blast. The library is 5 minutes from our house but when we pulled into the driveway, she was sound asleep in her car seat. We are hoping that she had so much fun that she sleeps all the way through the night...If she does you will see us at Story time every Thursday night.

New Picture

We have been busy lately working on creating a keepsake book online for Lyla. All of my computer time has been spent working on this book so I haven't had a chance to post a blog in a while. We have had to do a few "photo shoots" at home to get the right pictures for the book, and I thought I would share our favorite photo.

Gymboree

Gymboree is having a winter promotion right now where you can sign up for one free class, so Lyla and I thought we would check it out. It isn't exactly what I expected, but we had a lot of fun anyhow. Each baby was given a maraca to shake along with the songs and I think that was Lyla's favorite thing...I was able to use it to entice her to crawl around the room, climb up a ramp, and push one of those big foam balls around.

She also loved the singing and clapping, and she had a fit over the bubbles. I think we need to get some more bubbles for her because she absolutely loved them!

Yummy Food

Lyla is finally starting to really enjoy eating baby food....as long as it is totally pureed and has no chunky texture whatsoever.

Last night she ate a whole jar and a little bit extra for dinner! So far her favorites are:

Spinach

Sweet Potato

Pears- alone or mixed with anything

Prunes-even when she refuses to eat anything, she will still open up for a bite of prunes.

Apples

Plum banana

We have been buying more jars of food lately as she really loves it, but today I made homemade sweet potato and apple combo and she loved it!!

Weekend at the Coast

We spent the past weekend soaking up some winter sun rays at the coast! My dad has been down there since the first of the month escaping the worst of the juniper allergy season and we were more than happy to drive down for a visit. The weather couldn't have been more perfect and I think Amber and I even got a little sunbun. Lyla loved the sandy beach, but she will have to wait for warmer weather to dip her toes in the ocean as the water was very chilly!

First Sign

We have been working on teaching sign language to Lyla since she was 5 or 6 months old and yesterday she showed us her first sign! Here she is today showing off her new talent after eating breakfast.

Other signs we are working on learning right now are milk, more, please, and thank you.

Mirror Image

Last night, during Lyla's bath, she discovered her image in the water filter on the sink faucet. She thought it was the coolest thing!

New Yoga Class

Now that Lyla is crawling everywhere, we had to move to the Toddlers and Crawlers yoga class. I was a little worried because I had heard that a lot less yoga gets done and you mostly end up chasing around your baby. We were pleasantly surprised to find out this was far from the truth! The class was fantastic! There were lots of new songs and movements for Lyla along with a few old ones that she loved, and I was able to get a lot of yoga done while Miss June bug played with the other babies. We both had a blast and are looking forward to next weeks class!

Baby proofing

I am finally getting up off my rear doing the final touches of baby proofing to our house. We had already protected the outlets (she does, after all, have some Malmberg genes in her), but I finally installed a baby gate at the top of the stairs and started baby proofing the cabinets.

The cabinet latches are not fun to install. That's why it is taking me so long. However, now that she is pulling up on EVERYTHING and cruising around from place to place, I realized that I need to get this done sooner than later.





















Lyla found the baby gate to be totally hilarious. She has this look on her face like, "HA, you think this is going to keep me out!"

Christmas Dress

Looking back over our Christmas photos, I realized that we didn't really have a lot of great photos of Lyla in her full Christmas dress with her fancy shoes and all. By the time we were ready to take pictures on Christmas day, her diaper had leaked causing us to remove her tights...and her fancy shoes just wouldn't stay on without the tights. So I decided to dress her up in her Christmas outfit one last time and snap some pictures. The dress was a little small for her when we bought it, however I noticed that even though it has only been a few weeks since Christmas, the buttons on her dress were almost about to pop!

Sleep Update

Well it has been two weeks since we started Lyla's "Sleep Challenge"! She isn't exactly "sleeping through the night", but things are soooo much better than they were two weeks ago. The thing that changed the most was they way Lyla goes down for bed in the evening. No more tears at bed time for Lyla...or us. I am no longer nursing her to sleep (which honestly, I didn't realize I was truly doing...or maybe I was just in denial) and she goes down in her crib awake but very tired. Now, we read her a story before bed, say our last goodnight, and she drifts off to slumber land all on her own without a peep. We are still totally amazed by this each night.
She is still waking up once in the night...but we figure it will eventually get easier. At least it's just once and not three times. I'm not sure what our next step will be...I guess we will keep trying with what we are doing and hope for the best. Maybe she just needs a little more time than two weeks...

Balloon

Lyla LOVES balloons.
Loves them!
Today her Granny brought her one from the grocery store and she took it everywhere she went.






When we were feeding her dinner she kept looking over her shoulder. I thought she was watching me make dinner, but then Amber pointed out that she was staring at her balloon which was in the living room. Once we brought it to the dinner table she was able to focus on eating her veggies!





















Then she took it to the living room to play for a bit!
















She even took it with her to her bath!





















She probably would have loved to take it to bed with her, but we had to draw a line somewhere.

Crazy weather

You gotta love our weather here! Yesterday we were all bundled up as it was one of the coldest days we've had this winter. Lyla was wearing a thick coat to keep her warm as we ran a quick errand. She wasn't too happy about the coat because she couldn't move around in it.






















Today we were outside swinging in the sunshine!

















The forecast shows that tomorrow will be a lovely 70 degrees or more! I love it! This will give us a chance to get out and work in the garden before it turns cold again!

Lyla's 2 week sleep challenge!

One of the most popular questions we get about Lyla is, "Is she sleeping through the night?" Before we had Lyla, I probably asked this question to lots of new moms as well. Now I know why I got all of those dirty looks. From now on I will just bite my tongue...when asked this question, my eye begins to twitch.
Perhaps it is because I am so darn tired!
So no, Lyla isn't exactly "sleeping through the night" which was okay for a while. She was getting up once, maybe twice and it was fairly easy to get her to go back to sleep. But then things changed...she has started waking up 3-4 times in the night crying her little eyes out and the only things that will calm her down and get her back to sleep are rocking and nursing. So that is what we have been doing lately. This isn't really working for us though as we are all exhausted. So I checked out some books from the library to get some ideas of what might work for us to help our June bug (and us) get a good nights sleep. The book I liked the best is called Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mendell as her plan to help baby sleep fit in most with what Amber and I are comfortable with. The whole idea is that if you can help baby learn to fall asleep on their own, then they will be able to sooth themselves back to sleep when they wake up in the night...pretty much common sense right. I guess the reason we like this plan so much is that when baby wakes up in the middle of the night, you are encouraged to continue doing the same things to get her back to sleep (rocking and nursing). Which even though we are so very tired, we enjoy doing. So Mendell says that a majority of babies will be sleeping better in the night by two weeks. We started this plan on Dec. 31st, so check back by Jan 13 to see if Lyla agrees with Dr. Mendell.

Look who's talking

I managed to catch some video of our little chatterbox!

Hello 2009!

Happy New Year! We are all so excited about the new year ahead of us full of possibility, happiness, and lots and lots of laughter! This is going to be an amazing year!