Who is 9 months old??? Lily is!!!! :)

Hello hello!

Well, here we are, 9 months old!  Little Belle is doing tons of fun stuff these days!  First of all, on August 17th (Aunt Can-Can's birthday), Lily took her first steps!  It happened like this...I was finishing up changing her diaper when Brandon walked in the door home from work.  I stood her up and she was smiling and giggling.  Brandon walked up to her and held her arms out and she focused on him and took 2 steps towards him!  It was so cute, it brought tears to my eyes!  We have spent the past few days trying our damest to get it on video!

Here is a little video of her walking...The best we could get for now!



When ECI came on August 20th, Lily was 23 lbs 15 oz and 29 1/2" long. 

She LOVES Buzz-Buzz the bee at our park! 

Here are some fun things Lily has done this month:

She has started making tons of strange sounds and enjoys freaking us out with them.
She is concentrating super hard on walking.
She is going from standing to squatting and sits squatting a lot.
She is doing "the ostrich" (standing on her feet and putting her head to the ground).  Goofy loves looking through her legs and tries to grab things.  I see a tumbleset in her near future. :)
Now, instead of putting her hand down and waving hello and goodbye, she holds it up and waves.  She does this to everyone when we are in the store! 
Mimicking lots...She is making kissy noises, clicking her tongue and pointing a lot at everything.  She is still calling me "Emmm" and will call for "MaMa" if she is upset.
"Ba-ba" and "Ga" are 2 new babbles she has discovered.
She has been getting on her knees and dancing...
She has found out that she can whisper with her babbles.
Whenever her toys start "singing" she blah blah blahs the whole time. 
Her two top teeth started cutting the gums on the same day. (August 14)
Lily stayed in a hotel room for the first time when we went with Brandon for a work trip to Lafayette...We then went and spent a few nights at my mom's house.
Lily is starting to come around to my mom and family.  You still have to tread lightly for a day or so when we go, but she is getting better. 
She is still drinking from a sippy 4x a day and just gets a bottle at night...this will be the last month for a bottle.

Here are some things she enjoys this month:

Doing "the ostrich"
The Barney phase is coming to a close and Sesame Street is becoming a favorite. She also loves "Word World"...this week.
Me singing songs to her in the bathtub "head, shoulders, knees and toes" and  "ABC Song".
She LOVES the Hannah Montana theme song!  
Daddy...she loves her daddy so much!
Running for the gate when it is open to get to the cat food and the whole time she is doing it, she is smiling.  

She is eating mostly table food now and only baby food when we are on the go.  She LOVES spaghetti (or anything that involves noodles), broccoli, peas, turkey and of course, bananas.
She is wearing 18 month clothes.  We have pretty much grown out of the 12 month clothes.  

She is now allowing us to lay her in her bed while she is falling asleep.  We are doing a (somewhat botched) Dr. Sears method where you get them drowsy and put them in their bed.  You then put your hand on them, and slowly move it away.  It has made the seperation anxiety at bedtime much better.  She is doing really well with this and now since those top two teeth have completely come in, she is sleeping MUCH better! 

We have joined a playgroup through meetups.com.  I have heard of it before, but since I didn't know anyone, I was skeptical to try it out.  Well, one of the moms in Kindermusik mentioned that she signed up with The Treehouse Tots of NE Houston through the site and we should all sign up so we could get the kids together outside of music class.  I signed up and then another mom signed up as well.  It's fun to get to talk to them outside of class.  We all are new moms with all the kids aged within a few months of each other.  Kindermusik starts again at the end of this month.  We miss it.  Lily LOVES music class and adores Sandy (the teacher)!   With the playgroup, se have gone to Kids In Action (gymnastics), Jumpalooza (they have a great <2 jumpy thing) and the Humble Baptist Church Indoor playground (such an amazing kids building).  The only sketchy one was Kids in Action.  It was older and had a lot of home made gym equipment.  Of course, that was the meet-up Lily seemed to like most!  It's ok...she just has to be watched carefully in there, especially with all the older kids running around.  Jumpalooza is 2 minutes from our house and it is 3 bucks all you can jump.  Super great.  The indoor playground was amazing though.  It is at Humble Baptist and the church has 3 stories devoted to bible study for kids and has a 2 story indoor playground with a separate indoor playground for little ones.  There are murals of bible stories all over the building.  It's amazing the church has put so much time and money into their children's area.  They have a MDO program which I may look into putting Lily in the next year or two...the place looks really bible oriented which would give her a good foundation.    The playgroup has so many more things going on.  Holiday parties, Astros games, festivals, craft fairs, pumpkin patch trips...so much stuff.  Each member (76) has to host 3 meet-ups a year so there is a lot of variety.  We are really excited we have joined.