May 2012

Well, I am clearly behind on things over here, and this is my attempt to catch up on a an entire month in one post. Which should be easy to do because not a ton of super exciting things happened, and I don't have very many pictures. Well, not as many pictures as usual :)

One reason that not a lot happened, and that not many pictures were taken is that May was spent being entirely tired and exhausted from being pregnant! We found out towards the end of April, and the baby is due around the New Year. We are very excited, but as I mentioned, I'm very tired. Fortunately, being tired seems to be my only symptom. I haven't had the queasiness or food aversions that I had with Amelia at all. Which is great, but it does make me worry that something isn't quite right. Because I always need something to worry about. 

I had a great looking ultrasound on May 15th (at about 7 weeks along), and I have another appointment in a couple weeks to hear the heartbeat again. So, all is well and good so far, and I'm going to try to not worry so much about having an easy pregnancy. Besides, I'm sure it will catch up to me at some point. 

In an attempt to keep this post from being a mile long and filled with every day, possibly boring photos, I attempted some collages. 

Here is one of Amelia enjoying the swings at a new park we found. It's an awesome park, but since she still can't walk, there isn't much to do except swing. As soon as she is toddling around, this will be a great place for her to come back to. 

These were actually taken in the car on the way to the park. Starbucks was having a sale on their drinks so we stopped and I picked up something to relax with while I read a book and Tom and Amelia played. It was a perfect evening to be out there. 

There is no special reason for this photo, I just thought she looked cute that day. 

She loves to stand and even take a few little steps, but she still needs assistance in those areas. But it does make her pretty happy. 

Clearing the shelves is one of her favorite things to do right now. We've made the bottom shelves of all our bookcases just for her and filled them with books and toys and blankets that she can pull down and not harm. This is her attempt to get even higher by standing on the pile of books she already pulled down. What a little evil genius!

 Amelia LOVES hanging out with Tom on the floor. Especially now that she can cruise around with support. He becomes her own personal jungle gym, but he doesn't seem to mind. 

She still eats plenty of purees, but she's also getting into more of the adult food. This is her first attempt at a chunk of lasagna, which was a bit of a mess but she seemed to love it!

And for some reason I have photos of a random snack of cheese and kamut. Goodness knows why, I just love to take photos of this kid I guess. 

Sometimes when I go into her room in the morning, I find an insanely happy baby! Actually, she wakes up happy on all days, but some days the grins are bigger than others days. On this particular day, she also happened to have a GREAT case of bed head, which made it all about 1000% more fun. She also kept moving around, you can see the action in the pictures. 

She likes to chew on the edge of the table. This is evidence of her classy moves at the Cheesecake Factory, where I had a Mother's Day dinner. 

If she isn't sleeping spread out flat on her tummy, she's sleeping all balled up with her little tush in the air and I love it so much. For some reason she also gravitates to the edge of the crib. Her head is always right up against the rails. I have no idea why. 

 More random photos of not much. I had cleaned all the bath toys, and some little people that I picked up at yard sales over the weekend and I threw them out in the sun to dry. She found them and was in some sort of baby seventh heaven as she chewed on them and spread them out. 

The last weekend of the month was an extra long one for Tom thanks to Memorial Day, so we decided to take a day trip on Friday down to Laurel Caverns. It's a couple hours south, and we hadn't been before but we thought it would be fun to check out. As usual, I got some pictures of Amelia in the car seat. By the way, I'm realizing now that it will be hard to impossible to get any car seat shots of the next baby. At least not the great ones I get now. And definitely not as many, since they will be sharing the back seat and there will not be room for me back there with them. Sigh. 

We got there and checked out the view. Not for very long though, because it was pretty darn hot. 

But it was a pretty great view. 

A little bit of stink eye. 

It was warm outside, but it's always colder in caves so Amelia got all bundled up for the journey through. 

The hat was made by Tom's mom, and we all love it :)

The first looks around. 

Fancy lighting. 

Cave ceiling. 

Checking it all out. 

Getting bored and playing with Tom's neck. 

I forgot to take a picture of the sign on the way in, so I had to get one on the way out. 

I would love to say she slept all the way home, but she didn't. This "nap" lasted for maybe 20 minutes, tops. She has been really picky about where she sleeps lately, which makes it hard to be out of the house for more than a few hours. She sleeps great in her crib, or in a pack n play at a hotel, but she has to be isolated. If there are any people around, or things outside the window to see, or any action of any kind, she won't sleep. Even if she's super tired. 

Later over the weekend we found another new park. Again, it's a place she'll enjoy much more when she can walk, but now we know it's there. And Tom really liked it ;) 

It reminds me a lot of Wildcat Park, which I went to as a kid, so it was fun to find a similar park for Amelia to go to. It's all wood structure, with lots of towers and places to hide. Fun!

See? He loved it :)

Fortunately, they had the Amelia special: baby swings. As usual, she had a pretty good time in there. 

Tom even found a big kid swing for himself. 

With encouragement, she tentatively crawled through this little tunnel. 

It was a super warm day, so we stopped for some ice cream on the way home!

May did have one big accomplishment - the stairs! Sometime in the first week of May, at about 9 and a half months old, she figured the stairs out and just went for it. It was kind of strange and amazing to see because it really seemed almost out of the blue. She had spent some quality time at the bottom of the stairs, hanging out, reaching for the second step, and maybe sort of trying to climb, but not really. Then one day, she just started going up. 

It's new favorite thing to do, and we had to put a gate at the bottom of the stairs to stop her from doing it all day. Also to stop her from doing it without supervision. It got to the point where if I ran to the bathroom for literally 30 seconds I would come out and not find her, and then look up and see her up on the second flight of stairs. So, a gate it is. 

This is a video from the first day that she started to go up. She goes much faster now, and without nearly so much caution from us behind her ;)