Look at this Cutie Pie

This is the first time she's fallen asleep playing! THE FIRST TIME!!! Emmy would play herself into sleep nearly everyday either in her swing as a newborn - 6 months or on her play mat as a 4-6 month old. Lilah on the other hand has NEVER done that until one time last week. Can you believe that! hahahahha Maybe we're turning a new leaf?

Do you like my pasta face? My dad does!!

Lilah will be 9 months old in 3 days. She's moving around lots and can scoot using her toes to push and her open hands to pull to get to an object out of reach. Any day now she'll be crawling!!

Santa's Coming to Town!

Lilah's first Santa visit! I was totally expecting her to get freaked out by him, but to my surprise it was the scary camera guy that did her in. hahaha He was trying to get the girls to laugh and smile and was making really scary noises. I could see it was heading south and I tried to help and starting singing Patty Cake, which always makes her smile, and he got louder than me with his scary noises as if to tell me he knew what he was doing. I felt like punching him, lol, she wanted to hear patty cake mr. rude dude!! You can see by the picture that she was not buying his routine.

Emmy played the shy card. This surprised me too! I figured she'd cry. Santa talked with her lots and warmed her up before we tried getting her to sit on his lap. They talked about Barbie's and Toy Story. She kept pulling up the sleeve of her dress to hide her face and at one point got down and ran back to the stroller....climbed in and tried to buckle herself in hahha.

In the end we got the picture after two different shoots. Santa pictures are meant to be laughed at years later and I don't think this one will fail. I love Emmy's funny smile and Lilah's petrified look.

Over Due Update

The coloring is a little funny on their photo's. They were swimming this past Sunday at Grandma Jan & Grandpa Kingsley's house under the shade cloth... Lilah looks green and Emmy looks orange. Oh well....

Lilah

Crawling is just around the corner. I feel it can happen at any minute now or could still be up to two weeks away. She's able to move across the room now but not with a method of intention, it's more of a stringing together a bunch of small goals. Does that make sense? She'll try to get something slightly out of reach and she'll do a sitting spinning turn and reach, get it, then set her sights on something else. She'll also try to get up on all fours and get so made that she can't just GO.

Last night I tried giving her a bottle of water instead of the boob just to see if she wanted a drink in the night when she wakes rather than a feed. Boy did I make her mad! So I figured okay this time you wanted to eat...maybe next time, nope, just made her so made again. haha

Emmy

Potty training! Boy has that been going well. She does her business most times without being asked to and then she'll collect her potty and carry it to the bathroom and dump it and flush it. I go behind her and give it a good rinse and put it back in the living room. She has begun to pee on command and will do it before we are leaving the house and will stay dry on outings, bit of we are going on a long drive I will put on a cloth diaper as protection but generally don't need to as it will be dry on arrival and removel. We also put on a cloth diaper for her nap time after she's fallen asleep and will take it off as soon as she wakes up. Half the time it's dry still and the other half she's gone in it. That being said we definitely keep her in a diaper for night too. 90% of the time she's done a pee in her diaper by morning, but we do get the odd morning where she's dry and we love that! We're following the Fellom Method of potty training and you can find additional information about it here. After 90 days of what we call "naked butt" then we will start putting panties on her. I should add a count down ticker to our 90th day!! I think I know a little girl that will be needing lots of panties for her 2nd birthday!!

Dancing Girl

Lilah can dance now! While Emmy was watching her Fairy Dancing Girl dvd that teaches her the dances from one of her favorite shows "The Faeries" and Lilah kept looking up at the TV and then she'd wiggle up and down then back and forth and fast as she could while keeping her balance. Way too cute! I hope I can catch it on the video camera sometime!!

Here's the song she was getting down to: Jump Jump Star

Look At Me Mom!

Today while Grandma Jan babysat Lilah she tried to pull herself up and Jan stood her up and let her hang on to her legs. It's a first for her so I had to try and get some on camera! I dug out the play and stand table and boy did she love that! She played for the longest time with it both sitting and standing. She's also trying to pull herself up to a crawl stance. Emmy was crawling at 9 months and I said a long time ago that Lilah would crawl sooner, so she better get to getting if that is going to happen.



Link To Video On You Tube

8 months old: Lilah Asenith

8 Months old! That is crazy! She has stopped sucking on her fingers in the later part of her 6th month and that has yet to make a reappearance so I think she's done for good.

She's also stopped sleeping on her belly and is a total back sleeper now. Occasionally she'll sleep on her tummy but it's ultra rare.

With in the past two weeks her solid food intake has taking off like crazy and she loves handfuls of fresh fruit and steamed veggies. Some of her favorites is broccoli, peaches, watermelon, zucchini, and new favorite asparagus. She also likes peas with corn & rice noodles.

She weights 17lbs 6 oz or 7.89 kg and her measurement was 69 cm but I think I did that wrong so I'll have to do a double check on that one.


She sat up like a big girl in the shopping cart the other day for the fist time and she totally loved it!! She was giggling and kicking her feet the whole time!

She's also turned around now in the car. She hates to ride in the car and will usually scream the entire time so I thought turning her around and letting her watch the TV would be helpful. I'd say it's reduced the crying by 10% not a big enough amount to me. With my mom's visit over with we will not be riding around in the car as much so hopefully that'll help her.

She can completely sit up on her own now and has been for about 2 weeks. She can even sit up in the bath tub and play with her sister. She only lost her balance twice during her bath tonight but I think that's excellent because the bathtub is slick and I had washed up her buns so they were soapy.

I think her top tooth will be coming through soon as she's been a little extra cranky the past few days.

Halloween 2009

Let me say this first. Halloween is my favorite holiday.... even more so than Christmas and with this being said I can not wait to have our first proper Halloween party whenever that may be because Australia has no idea what Halloween is all about and us Harrison Girls are gonna bring it!!

So... this year we did the best we could. We spent the morning talking the girls to the theater to see the Strawberry Short Cake Movie. Emmy had a blast. She spent the first half watching the movie and the second half holding hands and walking around with a new friend (5 or 6 year old little girl) They would walk up close to the scream and then come back again. The theater had only a handful of people so it was pretty relaxed. Lilah did well for the beginning part and then she got tired so I had to go to an area where I could stand so she could get a bit of bouncing in the sling but she fell asleep after 15 min's and we were able to sit and watch the rest. Movie Review: OK I was never a strawberry fan, but never disliked it either, but this movie didn't do too much for me. Oh well.

After the movie we did a little shopping. I got a new dress..woot!!!! Then we headed to Toy's R Us for a Halloween Party. It was the ONLY thing I could find in all of Adelaide to do for Halloween. They had a coloring station, face painting, games, and candies.

She did sooo good for her first face painting. She held 100% still. We did a heart since it was simple, quick, and matched the red theme (snow white).

Lilah enjoyed herself the entire time. Such a happy little ballerina!!

Later on we stopped by Grandma Jan's and Grandpa Kingsley's for a Trick or Treat. Emmy was tired and both girls hungry so we didn't get any pictures *boo*

ps. I DID find carving pumpkins for the first time this year for $12.99 / lbs So it would have ended up costing us $50 for one carving pumpkin LOL crazy I know. Needless to say that I didn't buy one, but if we are still living here when the girls are old enough to remember pumpkin carving I will be shelling out the bucks to get one or two!!

Seashells By The Seashore

After dropping mom off at the airport....

Later in the day when it warmed up Kim and I took the girls to The Beach House. Our favorite party was just laying on the beach and playing in the water. I built a small sand castle for the girls and a little boy got too close it it and Emmy let him have it. She was full on yelling from far away haha. This was Lilah's first time going the the beach and she loved it. She snacked on some sand and didn't cry when Kim put her into the water (which was still a bit cold). After that I made us a beach picnic lunch while she played in her sunshade. After that she had a feed then we backed up and headed for the fountains. It was soooo much fun watching Emmy play in them! I can just picture next year when they both can play together in them. Next Emmy got a sorbet cone in flavor Watermelon...uummm! She made a total sticky mess, but that's what summer fun is all about, right!?

It was a bit chilly but she handled it pretty good!

Awwww aren't the just too cute!

Lilah eating sand haha

Our spot on the beach :)

Playing in the fountains :) Oh it got you!

Sorbet is her new favorite treat!

Thanks Mom!

Back To The Good U.S. of A.

We had to get up at 3:34 am to get ready for the airport. I had everything packed the night before and loaded up the car so all I had to do was make breakfast, get dressed, and scoop sleeping babies out of bed and stick them in the car. I made mom and Kim a huge omelet with mushrooms and bell peppers. I wanted her to have a full belly of food other than McDonald's or Burger King. Once we got to the airport Miss Emmy wanted to run around and not do anything she was told. Check out the temper tantrum below....

As we waited for her flight to board we got to watch the sun come up and it was very pretty and peaceful way to say our goodbyes. The loading ramp was broken so all the passengers got to walk out to large staircases to board the plane. It was neat to watch her walk out in the pretty sunshine walk up and wave goodbye before stepping onto the plane. Just like it is in the movies!

I was very glad that Kim had taken the day off from work and that we had a full day planned, because I needed the support and distractions because I knew I'd be very sad. I was also worried about Emmy being sad. Mom says the look on her face as she was walking away towards the plane was a very concerned and worried look. I was so afraid when we got home that Emmy would be looking for her or knocking on the guestroom door thinking she'd be in her room, but she's so smart. She totally understood that Grandma had left. I took her into the guestroom the next morning just so she could get a good look around and take it all in and in her jabbering I heard her say "grandma" by her tone I imagine she was telling me how this had been grandma's room and now she went bye bye.

Once mom got home and we got to make our first skype call Emmy was so happy to see her, or as my mom calls herself "Just the head on the screen!" lol I would love to know what Emmy really thinks. Does she think that my mom came out of the computer to play with her? On another note.....I love this last picture :) The ease of a hungry baby in a sling. No bottles, no warming, no pram...easy peasey!

Monkey Nut Cafe

Mom's last Wednesday here we took her to the Monkey Nut Cafe & Kies Family Wines. UUmmmm what a yummy lunch and some great wines! It was such a beautiful day and I was so happy that we were having some great weather for some of mom's last few days here. Of course here are the fun pictures :) Thanks for a fun afternoon Jan & Kingsley!!

While I Was Out....

Looking cute for grandma..

Please can we play doctor AGAIN!

Posing in our weedy backyard!

Grandma is a babywearing pro now too!

meeting santa

I'm not sure if this face says "I'm shy" or "What the heck is happening to me?!"

happy thanksgiving

Emmy's wearing her Halloween outfit with Santa clause reindeer antlers and balloon while wishing you a HAPPY THANKSGIVING heheheh

all clean and ready for bed

Just some photo's we took the other night after her bath and before bed. I think she's a doll and can't help myself... gotta post them! For some general updates she thinks it's wonderful to point her finger at things and she'll point her finger right in our faces and just smile. Twice a week we take her swimming and she's such a little water baby. Last night she let Kim put her under the water about 10 times while she held her breath. I was in my aqua class so I didn't get to see it and that's probably a good thing..... I would have been so nervous! Some things are better for dad's to do! It's hard to take the camera to the pool but Grandma Betsy has requested some pictures and video so hopefully sometime next week I'll post some.

caught in the act

Here is an official crawl caught on video. She's not allowed to dig in bags and she sees a moment of opportunity and she takes it! haha What motivation!

purdue day

I dressed Emmy up in her Purdue gear to match her daddy! It was a bit chilly that morning but it didn't take long to warm up and we had to change. We were heading down to the country market they have every Sunday morning and then to Auntie Robins & Uncle Bob's house for lunch.

As of last yesterday I am confident that Emmy is cutting another tooth. This will be her first on the top. It hasn't cut through yet but she's been cranky, red cheeks, chewing on rags like crazy, and just not herself in general. Poor baby!

Crawling

We took this video on Sunday of her attempting to properly crawl. She gets the idea, but after a few tries she falls down. Won't be long now!

good morning

I snapped these this morning after Emmy had her breakfast. She totally loves Brodie and he's so sweet with her and puts up with her rough love. There was a time when I use to wonder how he'd fit into my life when I started a family but he's the best little guy I could ask for and I'm so very happy that he's happy! Emmy's wearing the sweet little nightie her Auntie Sherry made her. Priceless! Brodie's also sporting his new haircut. Poor guy..... it's so short he looks pink in the sun.