Wow… she’ll be 9 months old on Saturday, which means she’s been out as long as she was in. Hard to believe…

We had a wonderful visit to Michigan with Mike’s family. Audrey enjoyed all the attention–maybe a little bit too much! For the first few days we were home, she was terribly sad that all her new friends were gone (i.e., she would not play by herself or let me put her down). Now she’s working on her top two teeth, which have been on the way for a month. We’re really glad they’re coming, except for the part where she wakes up for an hour at 2:00am every night. A little point FINALLY broke through, and we’re hoping that will relieve some of the pressure and she’ll be more comfortable.

OK, so on to the good part–the pictures! Audrey got all dressed up for Christmas Eve, but that didn’t stop her from working. She’s ALWAYS working.

She’s getting so steady on her feet now. She can stand well without holding on to anything–even while playing with a toy. No steps yet, but I expect her to take off running any day. She did take a break from her work to open a few presents from Grandma and Grandpa.

I think she’s under there somewhere… And speaking of gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, she got a super cool rocking horse! Check it out:

Sadly, the car was so full that Grandma & Grandpa had to take it back to their house for us, but Grandpa’s coming down in a week and will bring it for her then. Can’t wait!

During the middle of the present-opening festivities on Christmas Day, Audrey decided that she was fascinated–absolutely SPELLBOUND–by Mike’s ear. She examined it very carefully.

In the end, I think the ear met her exacting standards.

To break up the drive home, we stopped at our friends Tom & Steph’s house. Their daughter Olivia was born 12 days before Audrey, so the girls are the pretty much the same size and age. (They’re coming down today for New Year’s Eve and staying through Saturday–so excited!!) Audrey and Olivia played together, which in baby-speak means “I’ll eat your toy, you eat mine.”

Finally, I leave you with this, a very rare photograph indeed. Audrey willingly wore, for two hours, without screaming or tearing it off, a HAT. I know. Mind-boggling.

Happy New Year!

Let’s see… where to begin?

Ah. We’ll start with the snow. (That’s the TWO FEET of snow we got in Maryland on Saturday.)

Audrey was not that impressed. Mike and I, on the other hand, were laughing like giddy schoolchildren when I took this picture. (True confession. I was laughing–Mike was kind of squealing. Something about the wisdom of a man in unlined and uninsulated jeans crouching in 24″ of snow. Spoiler alert: He hopped up pretty quickly.)

Anyway.

We made it to Michigan safely to visit Mike’s family, and we’ve been having a great time. Mike’s lovely, lovely parents kept Audrey Tuesday night, and Mike and I got to go out! By ourselves! To dinner! At a grown-up restaurant! And sleep late! Heaven.

Audrey is enjoying meeting Mike’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. So many people to play with! So much attention! Here she is with her great uncle Jon:

Wait a minute… Is my daughter staring longingly at a can of Yuengling and attempting to lunge across the dining room table to retrieve it?

Yes. Yes, she is…

And here she is with her great uncle Kevin:

She couldn’t wait to get her hands on that mustache (or “mustRache”, as her couisn Jenna would say).

Audrey had a great time playing with her… first cousins once removed? Second cousins? Never mind. She had a great time playing with Jill, Chelsea, and Morgan:

We can’t wait to have our first Christmas morning with Audrey–stand by for cute present-opening pictures next week…

Merry Christmas!

I have a feeling Mike and I are weeks–maybe days–away from a complete change in our way of life. Audrey can now stand by herself for a few wobbly seconds. From her steely-eyed look of determination, I’d guess that walking isn’t far behind.

No sooner do I set her down than she speed crawls to the nearest vertical surface, stands up, and starts working on inching her way toward wherever I’m going. Or the Christmas tree. Or the nearest piece of electronic equipment. (We’ve been working a lot on “no” this week.) Our peaceful days of knowing she couldn’t get into serious trouble as long as we were in the same room are over. She can. And she’s FAST. This has sparked a flurry of belated baby-proofing. All the plugs need caps!!! We have to bolt the bookshelves to the wall!!! We need baby gates–everywhere!!

Another example. I took her up into our bedroom to do the laundry. I set the empty basket on the floor. Audrey immediately began using it as an improvised walker and shoved it all over the room. She would have tried to go straight out the door into the hallway where (gasp!) the stairs are, but, well, the laundry basket is wider than the door. Thank God.

Instead, she got stuck in a corner and left the basket with a shriek of frustration. Then, feeling bold, she tried to take an unassisted step. It didn’t go so well.

Babies are apparently (and thankfully) pretty darn flexible.

With her newfound mobility, getting her dressed is now a 2-5 person job.

End result after 35 minutes of vigorous and screechy struggle:

And feeding her? It’s kind of like wrestling a greased pig. (I’m not calling my daughter a pig. No, a pig would actually EAT.)

Sit still for eating? No, ma’am. She’s got important things to do, like shaking ornaments off the Christmas tree, and seeing if her entire arm will fit through the slats on her play yard, and stalking Bad Cat.

So um, Reeves family? I hope you’re ready…

I’m so excited about Audrey’s first Christmas! We got our tree up, decorated, the house, and made a gingerbread house (with help from good friends) to mark the occasion.

I think it looks phenomenal–especially for a first attempt! It was a lot of work, but I definitely think this is something we’ll try to do every year.

Audrey’s mobility continues to explode. She crawls all over the place now, and she can pull herself up to stand. She recently had a prolonged wrestling match with one of our Christmas decorations trying to stand up.

I think the bells won that round. Mike has an awesome video of it, but I can’t post videos to this site. Boo! She’s also tried pulling up on the dining room chairs, but they don’t seem to offer enough handholds.

She had much more success pulling up on and “cruising” along the couch. She looks so small standing up!

She’s doing much better drinking formula (she kind of dropped off with the ear infection), but she seems to have confused meal time and play time. Every time I move a spoonful of food toward her mouth, she presses her lips together and starts laughing. Eventually, she’s laughing so hard that she can’t keep her mouth closed and I can sneak the spoon in. She does much better feeding herself, and her love for slimy bananas in the mesh feeder continues unabated.

Hope you have a great weekend and are enjoying the holiday season!

Audrey was 8 months old yesterday. To celebrate, she got an ear infection in both ears. Hooray! The poor little thing has been such a trouper. We can tell when it bothers her because she cranes her head back like she’s trying to get away from the pain. It breaks my heart! But the antibiotics are helping and she’s definitely on the mend…

Last week I told you that Audrey sleeps in some strange and contorted positions. This one might be my favorite. We were at my parents’ house and, after trying to get her down for a nap for about 20 minutes, Mike went in to check on her and found her sound asleep like this:

Apparently, she was sitting up playing and just… conked out. Only a baby could sleep like that! (He repositioned her for a more comfortable nap.)

Audrey had a great first Thanksgiving! Here she is checking her look before we headed to her great-Granny Holyfield’s house:

8 months old, and she’s already hogging the mirror. But it was worth it–she looked pretty darn adorable!

Over the past week, at least four people who DON’T KNOW MIKE have seen me out and about with Audrey and said, “Wow, she must look like her dad.” What does that MEAN? Anyway, she has his eyes and his cheeks and his look of concentration (but she lives on my schedule–early to bed and early to rise), and it’s fun to see our traits emerging in her. Apparently she’s also inheriting his ability to play a musical instrument–check this out:

Or maybe she’s got her Papaw’s knack for whistling. Time will tell…

The day after Thanksgiving, Audrey and I got all dressed up again and attended a baby shower for Audrey’s new cousin, Lucy, due to arrive toward the end of January. We may not look alike, but I think we look pretty good together!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

First of all, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I was torn–should I wait until later in the day so I could post pictures of Audrey in her Thanksgiving finery, or should I publish this morning to make sure it gets done? Yeah. I have visions of me in a turkey coma later this afternoon, so I figured I’d forge on… There will be Thanksgiving pictures to look forward to next week, which I’ll roll into Audrey’s 8-month post. Eight months. I need to go lie down for a moment.

The play date I mentioned last night was a smashing success. Audrey and her little friend, Kendall, had a great time! And Kendall? ADORABLE.

They had such a great time playing together. They held hands and traded toys and generally rolled each other all over the play yard.

BIG NEWS. Audrey can crawl! She’s not very fast yet (thank God), and she goes in bursts of 2-3 “crawls” and then needs to rest, but she’s mobile.

Sniff. Before you know it, she’ll be decorating her dorm room.

There are some other random pictures from the past week that I have to share because they’re just too cute.

EXHIBIT A: Audrey “chasing” the cats across the couch. (Don’t worry, Dad–I wasn’t going to let her crawl off the couch!)

EXHIBIT B: After about 7 months, we finally stopped swaddling Audrey for sleep. If we didn’t swaddle her, she would flail around and keep herself awake. Anyway, since we’ve stopped, we’ve discovered her in a range of bizarre and hilarious sleeping positions.

EXHIBIT C: Mike has decided that Audrey is going to Penn State, and he swears she’s an enthusiastic supporter of the Nittany Lions. I don’t know, though, she looks a little skeptical to me…

And finally, we’re doing Christmas with my family early this year since we’ll be in Michigan for the big day. Audrey’s cousin Jenna bought her Uncle Mike a very special Christmas present–she knows of his love for all things sparkly and mythical.*

That’s right, it’s a purple, glittery, My Little Pony brand unicorn. Mike can’t wait to buy the matching stable and sparkly accessories!

*N.B.: I may be slightly exaggerating Mike’s love of unicorns. Very slightly.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Audrey has her first official play date today at 10:00am! I joined a local moms’ group, and one of the members is coming over with her 9-month old daughter, Kendall. And since Audrey is the size of your average 12-month old, I figured it would be a good match. I should have some pretty cute pictures next week!

Audrey and I spent the afternoon outside today. It was about 60 degrees, so I got her dressed and took her and her bouncer outside. She bounced on the grass (with tennis shoes) while I raked the yard. She LOVED it. She caught a falling leaf and was absolutely fascinated. She crunched it until there was nothing left. And then a flock of birds flew overhead and she was mesmerized. We’re definitely going to spend as much time outside as possible before winter sets in!

And we hit another milestone–Audrey is now big enough to ride in the front seat of a shopping cart. (Paranoid mother that I am, I cover all the surfaces with blanket because… ew… random baby drool.) It makes shopping so much easier!

Audrey and I have started experimenting more with her hair. Here she is in one of my favorite hair bows:

Of course, we take the hairbows off for meal time because, well… observe:

Audrey’s favorite is the little pink velcro hair bow. Pretty darn cute…

Hmmm… I didn’t realize this was going to be “Special Delivery: Hair Edition”, but there you have it. Our next post will be on Thanksgiving Day – hope you all have a great weekend and safe travels!

Oh, Audrey… She’s starting to learn things I’m not sure I want her to learn. For instance, she can now shake her head vigorously when she doesn’t want to be fed. On the one hand, it’s good that she’s communicating. On the other, it’s… well, it’s hard to feed a baby that’s shaking her head a mile a minute!

She looks so innocent, doesn’t she? “Who me? Hard to feed? Naaaah.”

She’s also started doing this thing that I find hilarious. Have you ever seen a bar scene in a movie where the character takes a shot, grimaces, then slams his hand on the bar and says “Hit me again”? It’s kind of like that when she’s trying a new food. She takes a bite, makes a horrid face, then slams her hand on her highchair a few times like she’s forcing herself to choke it down. Then she smiles and opens her mouth for another bite.

Audrey has learned to clap (kind of–she misses a lot), so she applauds when I do pretty much anything. It’s kind of nice to get enthusiastic applause for unloading the dishwasher. Yay!

Mike and Aunt Christine SWEAR that Audrey is a Penn State football fan. I didn’t believe them until I saw her get dressed up to show her team spirit for the game.

Audrey also attended Mass at our new Church, Our Lady of the Chesapeake, for the first time with me and Grandma Schiller. She must have been feeling the Christmas spirit a bit early (like Target and the mall and Old Navy and Starbucks and what the heck–it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!), because she got dressed up all in red.

And because it’s something we rarely do (because I’m usually behind the camera), here’s a picture of me and Audrey. She’s almost as tall as I am!

So who does she look like? Hmmm…

Have a great weekend!

It’s been hectic around here!

Mike and Audrey had their first weekend alone together. I was in a friend’s wedding on Halloween, and since Audrey hadn’t been feeling well, we decided it would be best if she and Mike stayed home. (In retrospect, it was definitely the right decision–the pastor’s kids both had swine flu, so I would have been a nervous wreck worrying about her!) While I was bridesmaid-ing (and later that night, breaking my ankle. Long story.), Mike and Audrey donned their costumes, and they and Aunt Christine handed out candy in our new neighborhood. Here they are, the Mad Hatter and the world’s cutest white rabbit:

I’m told they had trouble keeping her bunny feet on. There’s nothing Audrey hates more than a shoe…

Except maybe folk music.

Let me explain… Audrey continues to amaze us with new abilities every day. Her hand-eye coordination is really taking off. A few days ago, I was singing her to sleep (“Dream a Little Dream of Me”), and she took her pacifier out of her mouth and plugged it squarely in mine. I guess she’s not a fan of the Mamas and the Papas!

She’s working hard on building up to crawling. She can scoot around backwards pretty well, but she’s still working on forward crawling. She’s very determined, though, and spends at least a few hours every day in the “gym” my parents got her as an early Christmas present.

Wow. I guess crawling is hungry work. (Rest assured, we do feed her non-plastic products.)

We hope you all have a great weekend!

Audrey will be seven months old on Monday. SEVEN MONTHS.

This week’s update will be short and sweet. As you probably already know, we moved this Saturday. (Thank you, Mom, Dad, Kathy, & Christine for all your help!!!!) We don’t have internet yet, so I’m logged on to a random wireless network and it goes in and out. I have some adorable pictures, but unfortunately cannot find the cord that connects the camera to the computer. It’s packed in one of the many boxes still sitting in the garage.

Let’s see… in addition to the move, Audrey’s second bottom tooth is coming in. She’s got her first runny nose (I think it’s probably teething-related and not a cold). She ate bananas and pears with the mesh teether and LOVED them. She’s soooo close to crawling–she gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth like she’s ready to take off. She’s started saying ma-ma-ma-ma, which I would dearly love to believe is directed at me, but since she says it to Mike, the cats, and her toys, is probably just another developmental milestone. It’s been a busy week!

I took a picture with my phone and sent it to the computer to tide you over until next week, when we will have ADORABLE HALLOWEEN PICTURES. The quality isn’t great, but here she is!

She’s on our bed with her new favorite toy, the Fisher Price Little Snoopy that Kathy brought–it was Mike’s when he was little. She thinks it’s hilarious and will absolutely crack up when you pull it around for her. She also spends a lot of time trying to chew the green knob on his tail. Also pictured is the blue bulb I have to use to clear her nose. She’s not as big a fan of that.

Have a great weekend and happy Halloween!