9 Month Birthday

Noelle turned 9 months old yesterday. We had a friend tell us that now we've had her as long as we waited for her. I thought that was sweet. She's still an absolute joy to us, and it's amazing to see her learning new things everyday.

We don't have a doctor's appointment for a couple of weeks, so I don't know her official stats yet. Here are some things she's doing now:

• Crawling EVERYWHERE and faster, too!


• She's pulling up to her knees.


• She can balance pretty well if we stand her up against a piece of furniture.


• She got her first (and second) "goose-egg" by bonking her head on the coffee table. Poor thing!


• She can say "uh-oh". Sometimes she says it in the right context, so I'm not sure if this will end up being her first word. I wonder if that means she'll be clumsy. Hmm...

I think that's about all for now. Not much exciting going on in our house. Enjoy the pics!

Babies and Bluebonnets

I figured that all of the bluebonnets would have been frozen from the snow we got a few days ago, but Chris has a coworker that has a front lawn full of them! He suprised me and took us there yesterday for some pictures. We had a lot of fun and got some great pictures.

Here's a word of advice: If you are ever photographing a baby in bluebonnets...they are poisonous! To my horror, Noelle got a petal in her mouth while we were taking pictures of her by herself. At the time I didn't know if they were poisonous or not, so we looked it up on the internet when we got home. They are! We're not sure if she actually swallowed anything or not, but thankfully she hasn't had any ill effects.

Happy Birthday to Our First "Baby"

Today is Hannah's 6th birthday. Which means that technically she's 42. (It's weird when your dog is older than you.) Anyway, Hannah was a birthday gift to me the summer before we got married. That is probably one of the very best gifts I ever got.

When she was a tiny puppy and wouldn't sleep through the night yet, I remember one night holding her and crying and thinking..."I'm never going to be able to have a baby! This is SO hard, and she's just a DOG!!!" Luckily, I got past that. But having a dog was at least a tiny, little bit of a wake up call to the responsibility that a child is.

Well, for 5 years, Hannah was truly our baby. I would hear of people that had to give away their dog when the baby came because it would bite, and I thought there was no way I could do that with our Hannah. It's funny how things change when you actually do bring home your real baby. That day, Hannah really lost her position as baby in the family and turned into a pet. :-) We still love her tons, but now I see her as more of a dog and less of a family member. In fact, I actually had to look up her birthday in my scrapbook to make sure it was today!

We can tell that Noelle really likes Hannah. When Hannah comes into the room, Noelle will giggle and reach for her. Hannah, on the other hand, just kind of tolerates Noelle. She does sneak in a few licks on the face, though! Yuck! I'm hoping that now that Noelle is eating some food on her own (and dropping some on the floor) they will soon become friends.

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Merry Christmas...Um, I mean, Happy Easter!

Can you believe the weather? It snowed here quite a bit yesterday, but it wasn't enough to cause major chaos. We bundled Noelle up and took her outside for a minute and she got her first taste of snow!






Here she is all dressed up for Easter. (She did have a sweater on when we went outside!)



We had a wonderful time with family this weekend and we were all very spoiled by our parents! We hope you had a blessed day with your friends and family, too!

He Don't Eat No Meat?

One of my favorite lines from My Big Fat Greek Wedding is when the main character is explaining to her family that her fiance is a vegetarian: "What do you mean he don't eat no meat? Oh, that's okay. I make lamb."

Up until now, Noelle has been a vegetarian. That all changed this weekend! Man, baby food meat smells bad! Anyway, she had her first taste of chicken. We were ready with our camera, anticipating a funny face, but this is as close as we got. She seemed to think it was okay yesterday, but today she screamed when I tried to feed her.

Noelle is feeding herself a little more now. We've tried the Gerber "puffs" that dissolve really easily in your mouth. She's also had some small pieces of soft vegetables and fruits. She seems to really like doing it by herself...I think she'd eat anything that she got to do herself. I must admit I'm still really freaked out about her choking! On this particular day I think she had a hole in her mouth. :-)

Here's a couple of cute pictures we took after church today. Thank you, Mimi, for the adorable chick!