10 months...and walking??

Haley turned 10 months old on Tuesday. Time has flown by so fast. I'm starting to plan her big first birthday party. It will be on March 27, here at our house. If anyone would like to come, let me know and I will send you an invite. We want as many people here as possible to celebrate the big day.

First off, here are some pictures of Haley trying to mount her train after it has tipped over. I just thought they were too cute not to post.

Here she is playing rough with daddy, but loving it.


Here she is during her monthly photo shoot. I can't believe it has been 10 months already. She's growing too fast.

Here she was with her stuffed lamb just a few days after she was born. The lamb was bigger than she was.

Here she is with the lamb now.

OK, so I may have been a little ahead of myself with the title, but her is her latest version of walking. Notice how angry she gets when she can't go any farther. She's so funny.

This was the first time she was able to do this without my help. Before, she would push the train but wouldn't walk with it. Therefore, she would almost face plant on the ground. She has also started to stand for a few seconds without holding on to anything. I'm pretty sure she will walk before her first birthday. I THINK I'm ready for it...

No silly cold can keep us down

Well, Haley developed a nasty cold this past weekend and it has carried on into this week. This is the third cold she has had in her life and definitely the worst. Her poor nose has been like a water faucet and I can't use the bulb sucker without Scott's help. So, I have been having to wipe it constantly and it is so raw that she just cries every time. I have been letting it run until it gets too messy. For this reason, I feel like we are drowning in snot. We are both covered in it by the end of each day. Now, I have the cold and so the snot just keeps flowing. It's not pretty around here. She also has a terrible cough and today it was so bad that it made her vomit her breakfast and then her lunch too. Today was not a lot of fun.


So, we have been cooped up in the house all week to try and prevent spreading our germs (even though Scott has it now). We have been trying to make the best of it and we have played our heads off. Even sick, Haley is the sweetest baby alive. These are some pics from our last couple of days.

One of her favorite things to do - play in the dishwasher.

Notice the snot streaked across her face.


It was so nice out yesterday that I put her highchair out there for lunch. She absolutely loved it.

Eating cheerios (her favorite). You can also see her raw cheeks and nose in this picture.

She is about to sneeze here. Notice the cheerio on her head.

Rubbing her eyes because she was getting tired. A great shot of the cheerio.

Here she is looking over the step of our deck. She can't decide if she is brave enough to go down. She never did.

She did figure out how to go up the step though.

The short journey of the infant car seat

Haley has now outgrown her infant car seat. The limits are 22 lbs and 29 inches. While she could still be in it for a while to come weight-wise, she has outgrown it in length. So, I did tons of research and lots of asking around and finally made a decision. I got a great deal on diapers.com and ended up with two high end car seats for the just a bit more than I would have paid for one at BabiesRUs. The fabric was not what I would have picked normally, but this one was on closeout, so I couldn't resist. Plus I got a discount and free shipping. I was so excited. We have yet to try them in our cars, but I'm confident that they will work (we will make them work).

I feel like she has not been in the infant seat for very long. Ten months is nothing in the grand scheme. I have always heard that you want to keep them in the infant seat for as long as possible because you can carry them around more easily and if they are asleep, you can transfer them more easily. However, Haley has stayed asleep in her seat probably 10 times or less since she has been born. She always wakes up when we open the car doors, no matter how hard we try to be quiet. There have been several times when I have so carefully carried her into the house only to find her wide awake once we got inside. So, that part doesn't really affect us. I think this will not be a terrible transition for us and I look forward to her moving up in the world.

So, here is Haley's car seat journey so far...

One of the first pictures in her infant seat. April 2009 (1 week old).

The last picture in the infant seat. December 2009 (9 months old).

Her new big girl seat. She seems so small. January 2009 (9 1/2 months old).

I didn't get a picture, but each time we put her in it, she immediately started rubbing her eyes like she was exhausted. Hopefully that's a good sign :).

Of course, she found the tag and loved it. I hate to remove it.

The new crawl

I want to start out this post with some pictures of Haley's newest form of entertainment. She has been able to open our bathroom drawers for a while now, but she always just immediately slammed them back closed. She never knew that they would stay open or that they had anything in them. Well she finally figured everything out the other day, and she had a blast pulling everything out and throwing it on the floor. I sat there and watched her because we didn't have much else to do and I am willing to let her do a lot of things if it will entertain her for a while. I thought everything in the drawer was fairly safe and there wasn't anything she could hurt. Well as with most situations, she somehow figured out that there was a way to make a big mess. I had two little bottles of vitamin E that I used back when I was pregnant. I never thought she would be able to get the cap off, but she proved me wrong. She ended up spilling a good bit all over the floor and herself. Fortunately, the damage was very minimal and easy to clean up. I learn something new from her every minute it seems. She always amazes me. She had a great time, though, and was so proud of herself. She kept pulling things out and looking up at me for reassurance and then smiling so big when she knew that it was okay. It was fun for both of us.

Then I let her play with herself in the mirror. She loves to see herself and two of me. She just looks at me in the mirror and then back at the real me and laughs. It's so fun to watch her learn.

She loves to grab on to the faucet. It always cracks her up.

Here is her new way of crawling. She just started this a few days ago. I'm not sure why she does it and she really only does it when she is chasing one of the cats. I can only figure that it's the next step in her learning to walk. It's very funny to us though.

Snow Day

Haley got to experience her first snow today. I was really hoping there would be more. Normally I just hate it when it snows because it shuts the city down and I still have to make it to work, but today I didn't have to work. It would have been a great day for a lot of snow. I had visions of putting Haley on the ground in a couple of inches of snow. No such luck. I was kidding myself. She did, however, get to see a few flakes. We had a great day anyway.

The first picture outside. She seemed pretty happy about it even if she didn't know what was going on.

I think she was looking at the snow falling.

Looking at the snow that fell on her hand.

The most accumulation we had all day :(.

The flakes did get bigger, but it still wouldn't stick.

I finally got a good picture of her teeth and I wasn't even trying. Notice the one on her top left that has come through (right side in this picture). The top left is swollen and will come through any day. She's getting so big!

Bath time fun

Tonight, during Haley's bath, I decided to take some pictures of the fun. She loves bath time, but things are getting harder with her standing and starting to figure out cause and effect (she throws toys over the side to see what happens). Bath time is always interesting.

Standing up.

It's like she is saying, "Please stop taking my picture while I'm naked. I'm embarrassed."

Oh, this is so dangerous! I don't know what to do about it.

She loves her toys. This is also a good pic of her teeth. The top ones are starting to come in now too.

This is her favorite toy. It's a rubber ducky, but she loves the little hole in the bottom the best. Go figure.

She ALWAYS throws rubber ducky over the side and then cries when I won't give it back. If I do give it back, she just throws it right back over.

Here she is giving her bear a "kiss". She is so cute!

9 month birthday and a visit from Mimi, Pop and Uncle Blake

Haley turned 9 months on 12/26. She's growing so fast. Where has the time gone? She had another check up at the pediatrician's. She weighed in at 17 pounds 5 ounces. That puts her in the 20th percentile for weight. She was 29 inches long, though, which is the 90th percentile for height. So, she remains long and lean. She has her two bottom teeth and one of her top ones is starting to come in. She has been amazing, so far, through the whole teething process. We are so lucky. She continues to sleep really well at night - from 7 or 8 to about 7 in the morning. We are spoiled with this too. She is eating really well. She will try anything and likes most of it. She has, however, started to refuse the pureed stuff and really prefers feeding herself or having big people food. We are sort of struggling to figure out what to feed her most nights. She loves mac n cheese, eggs yolks, cheerios, yogurt, fruits and pasta. It's so much fun to watch her feed herself. She has to have food in both hands and then stuffs as much as she can into her mouth. Most of it makes it to her mouth, but she drops a good bit too. In just the last few days, she has started to stand for a few seconds on her own without holding on to anything. Once she realizes what she is doing though, she falls down. She is getting very brave.

9 month pictures (if you look closely, you can see the bottom teeth).

She is mad at me for taking the rattle away.

She got over it.

Reading Mother Goose to herself.

Getting weighed at the doctor's.

She is fascinated by ducks.

She has now reached the height limit for her car seat, so we have to get her a big girl car seat ASAP.

Studying and admiring her Pop.

Watching Mimi sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Splashing with Pop.

Pop reading the menu to Haley at the Cheesecake Factory.

Eating mac n cheese and loving it.

Playing with a sugar packet. She thinks it's so funny to put things in Daddy's mouth.